Possibly.

The fact that they can be owned, are compelled to obey orders from their masters --whether they wish to or not.

Not directly. But they can be inherited, which suggests that they can, just as you could do with any other property you owned.


The scene from HBP below neatly illustrates all of these points, btw, in case you wanted proof.

Spoiler

“Kreacher won’t, Kreacher won’t, Kreacher won’t!” croaked the house-elf, quite as loudly as Uncle Vernon, stamping his long, gnarled feet and pulling his ears. “Kreacher belongs to Miss Bellatrix, oh yes, Kreacher belongs to the Blacks, Kreacher wants his new mistress, Kreacher won’t go to the Potter brat, Kreacher won’t, won’t, won’t —”

“As you can see, Harry,” said Dumbledore loudly, over Kreacher’s continued croaks of “won’t, won’t, won’t,”

“Kreacher is showing a certain reluctance to pass into your ownership.”

[...]

“Give him an order,” said Dumbledore. “If he has passed into your ownership, he will have to obey. If
not, then we shall have to think of some other means of keeping him from his rightful mistress.”

“Won’t, won’t, won’t, WON’T!”

Kreacher’s voice had risen to a scream. Harry could think of nothing to say, except, “Kreacher, shut up!” It looked for a moment as though Kreacher was going to choke. He grabbed his throat, his mouth still working furiously, his eyes bulging. After a few seconds of frantic gulping, he threw himself face forward onto the carpet (Aunt Petunia whimpered) and beat the floor with his hands and feet, giving
himself over to a violent, but entirely silent, tantrum.

The best argument for the position that house elves are not slaves is pointing out that they are not human, IMO, though this too opens a rather large can of worms.

To state that house elves have nothing in common with historical examples of slavery and ohmygoshhowcouldyousaythatareuHermioneloverorsoemthing?

Bold.

And, you know, Wrong.

 

Are you me from 5 years ago?

Is your entire argument that Wizarding Nazis are bad? I ...don't know if anyone disagrees with you. This whole diatribe feels like a weird Tribal reckoning litmus test of DLP to verify if everyone on here has the same boiling hate for Wizarding Nazis that Starfox seems to have.

But like the median age of DLP is also like 30, I dunno if many people have the kind of vitriolic energy to spare towards... fics written by rape apologists?

Seriously man, I've read way too much fanfic and I cannot for the life of my remember anything with author's excusing Death Eater Rape. I think you might have just hit upon some porntastic niche.

 

In fairness we have multiple house elf threads and we really don't need another.

This is a story about a young man, desperate to be woke, soft centered and gooey, so blinded and set in his ways that spirited debate is called "hazing."

@Niez called him 'a promising young hopeful' but with all the drama lately I think people are forgetting that ''morons need not apply.'

 

Honestly, I would grade them closer to the end of humans on a scale of sapience. They are, after all, capable of speech, of articulating wants and desires, which is the prime marker for intelligence/sapience.

Going by that logic the notion that the system is slavery isn't too far-fetched, and depending on where an author wants to take his story, can easily be used as such. Conversely, there is an argument to be made for them being dependent on having a master as a side effect of their species, that is, if you view Dobby's wish for independence as an aberration rather than the norm.

The issue certainly poses many ways for utilizing it in the contexts of a story. Are elves, enslaved but also due to their biology dependent, to be pitied because they have no recourse if they aren't called Dobby? Or is there perhaps something enviable about their species-dictated simple-mindedness that brings them joy even in what humans would call abject conditions? I guess ultimately it's the notion of a possible biological dependence that is, to me, the deciding factor in the matter. If it is there, in a story, and it is strong, then I'd hesitate to call it slavery as such. If an author decides to make Dobby's case the norm, i.e. all elves can potentially live free and be happy, unencumbered by their need for a master if only they tried, then the needles moves along the scale.

 

Kinda? House elves are absolutely analogous to household slaves from the American South, in all practical terms, but at the same time, they like it, a lot. To the point where they typically go into fits of depression if their master mentions freeing them, and will fight tooth and nail to keep their place.

It's not clear how much of their burning desire to serve is innate vs cultural, but I'd be willing to bet it's overwhelmingly innate and just part of the species, that they have an intrinsic need to serve a wizard/family in much the same way humans have an intrinsic need to socialize.

And that changes the debate somewhat. It's not "are house elves slaves?", because they very evidently are, but "is it wrong to enslave someone who quite literally wants it more than the air they breathe?". And personally, I don't see any major issue with it. The house elves want to be slaves and will actively fight to be able to be such, so there's no real quandary here. Malfoy's treatment of Dobby was abhorrent, and basically just your typical example of Lucius twirling his moustache, and should absolutely be punishable by law, but otherwise there's not a whole lot else morally ambiguous with house elves in canon.

 

So there is no intrinsic value in freedom? There is no difference between having to work somewhere because of your specific life circumstances and being forced to work by the whip of your master? Is being a well-treated, happy, slave preferable to being a poor, unhappy freeman?

The fuck is going on here, seriously. And where are the Americans in this thread? The German guy is saying that as long as a slave has a button to kill himself he is not a slave. I'm scared.

 

Ultimately, it all comes down to choices. As long as someone wants to be a slave, they are a slave regardless of what anyone else says or thinks.

And house elves want to be slaves, more than they want to live in most cases. Which is why the whole thing is so weird to modern Western sensibilities, as, culturally, we find it hard to grok how anyone could want to be a slave. But the fact remains that they do, and as Hermione showed repeatedly, you're not gonna be able to convince any of them except the oddballs like Dobby to change.

At the end of the day, house elves are hard-wired to serve, in much the same way humans are hard-wired to socialize. Without it, they spiral into self-destructive depression or worse. Which, ultimately, means that how well you're able to stomach it comes down to how much you value someone else's choices, desires, and psychological well-being, versus your own self-satisfaction at imposing your moral values on everyone around you. I know which I'd choose, at any rate.

 

What are you talking about? Have you consciously decided to read Sesc's post from the worst angle possible?

What Sesc quite clearly said was that a maid working in someones home because she has literally no other option (except starving) could just as well be considered slavery. If not, then nothing can be considered slavery since you can always just kill yourself.
Basically, you can not be free if your economical situation dictates that you only have one path to take.

 

The whole point of freedom is to not impose your moral values on others, even if you find theirs abhorrent.

 

I prefer calling it 'being facetious for the sake of levity', instead of 'trolling', @Sesc. My serious point is that working because you are hungry and working because you are forced to, by the threat of pain or even death (in the case of slavery) is not equivalent. And is not equivalent in such an obvious way to me that I wondered why people would be missing it. Then I thought about cultural differences, and hence the quip about Germans and Americans, now ruined because I had to explain it .

 

You just know you're in for a ride when someone says 'people like me' unironically.

 

I disagree on the semantic points, but that's more because I generally find semantics to be important. It's slavery in every way that matters. Just because the one being enslaved is totally on board with it doesn't suddenly make it not-slavery. It just means that they're choosing to be a slave, nothing more or less.

 

The topic seems to have become the difference between slavery and employment.

As I understand it, Sesc's argument is something like this: freedom only means something if it is practically effective. There is no functional difference between being owned and being employed if the conditions of your employment are such that in practical terms you have no choice but to continue doing that job.

Depending on where you draw the line of "the conditions of employment amount to slavery", this position could be interpreted as either (i) a relatively uncontroversial statement of opposition to modern slavery or (ii) a more controversial statement of opposition to wage slavery.

Regardless, I do not think it is strictly correct to say there is no difference between being owned and being employed and that it all comes down to the conditions in which you work. However, I would not identify the difference as lack of freedom. Rather, I think the contrast between the positions is identified by different consequences.

[Warning: legal discussion]

The reason why I don't think the difference is in "the person is property" is that it falls apart under legal analysis. And ultimately, slavery (like property generally) is a legal institution.

Legally (and of course here I am referring to English law), "ownership" is nothing more than a legal right (or more accurately, a collection of different rights). Examples of rights that people have in relation to things include:

- Right of occupancy.

- Right of entry.

- Right to exclude others from entry.

- Right of access or transit.

- Right to build something.

- Right to stop someone from building something.

- Right to grow things.

- Right to stop people from growing things.

- Right to sell.

- Right to loan.

- Right to possess but not use.

- Right to possess and use only for a specific purpose.

Etc.

These rights come in all sorts of combinations, and "ownership" is really just a shorthand used to refer to a situation where a person has a lot of these rights. But very rarely is ownership ever perfect - almost all land, for example, will be subject to at least some third party rights and restrictions.

What this amounts to is that when you "own" something, there is nothing particularly special about that state. You merely have a right over something which a court recognises and is willing to enforce.

You know what else is a right that a court recognises and is willing to enforce? Contracts, including contracts of employment.

Fundamentally, were slavery to be legal in English law (and it has never been legal in English law, so one can only speculate as to how it would be achieved), then it would not be fundamentally different in kind to employment. It would be a set of rights which could be enforced.

What, then, is the real difference between slavery and employment? The difference is in the manner of enforcement.

For many contracts, courts can enforce the contract by ordering the parties to follow through. For example, if you agree to sell someone a house but then change your mind, tough. The court can (and usually will) order that the house is transferred. Such orders are backed up by the state's monopoly on violence: if you ignore the order, you will be physically seized and sent to prison.

This doesn't happen with employment contracts. A court will never order an employee to continue with their employment, on the basis that such an order would amount to a form of slavery (though they may order that an employee not compete against their ex-employer). Rather, if the employee has denied the legal rights of their employer, then the employer will be entitled to compensation.

Presumably the opposite would occur in a system of slavery. A slave who refused to work would be ordered to do so, and be subject to physical restraint if they continued to disobey.

The difference, then, is the threat of violence. Slaves refuse to work at risk of violence. Employees do not.

[Legal discussion ends]

Returning to the specific issue of house-elves, personally my view is that they likely possess a fundamentally different cognition to humans. Sentient, yes. But sentient in a different way. Sentience is not some binary thing. Different beings will be "wired" in different ways.

As a result, I simply do not think that an analogy with real life racism holds between two genuinely different species.

Racism is wrong because it is factually incorrect: there are no meaningful characteristics which are determined by a person's skin colour. If a specific race were genuinely, biologically stupid, aggressive and amoral, then racism against that race would be justified.

House elves are an example of a genuinely biologically different species to humans. What those biological differences are exactly, we don't know. We can only guess from what we observe. My own feeling is that house elves have an innate desire to serve others and specifically a family. I think that feeling is so strong that for many (if not most) house elves, if you freed them then they would likely commit mass suicide (cf. Winky, who was well on her way to drinking herself to an early grave even with the constant support of Dobby).

I also think emancipated house elves, if given full rights including the right to vote, would likely cause a significant shift in wizarding politics and not for the better. I doubt house elves approve of things like minimum wage, healthcare and holidays.

To present the house elf issue as simple is therefore, I think, intellectually disingenuous. It cannot simply be a matter of "slavery is wrong". To act responsibly towards elves is to consider not just their legal status, but the likely consequences of changing that status.

 

I never understood why people read Harry Potter fanfiction and love Muggle Wank, with "western muggles values" and all races being human reskins. Is not exploring a magic society more interesting that going on a moral crusade? I read a fic with a girl part of a sect of Persian Wizards learning magic based on Zoroastrianism with the duality good/evil (light/darkness) and how they had the task to imprison Angra Mainyu, it was fun to read the contrast between Harry and the girl, how the magic they learned magic deviated from each other and their expectations from the world. But people prefer reading about muggles shooting wizards and muggleborn´s muggle solutions to problems caused by magic.

I was going to ask how "weak-minded" the OP is that he can be challenged but then I remembered that I don't read mpreg.

 

I don't have must of an opinion on the subject, as most others have said what I think better than I could, but I feel the need to correct something here:

Marriage contracts dont exist: Wrong

Harems dont exist in real life: Also WRong.

They may not be used these days, or used far less than they used to be, but they most certainly exist.

 

I wanted to enter this discussion with some arguments of my own but now I think that it wouldn't be very wise of me.

I'll just say one thing: Read better fanfiction.

 

Well even if we take it for granted that the 'elves are hardwired to a life of slavery' to say they are not an exploited lot would be disingenuous.

They are for the most part sentient beings who have no choice on who they work for and what they can do because they don't have the liberty to say no.

All 4 house elves we have seen outside of Hogwarts have had pitiful lots.

Be it Dobby punishing himself just for having thoughts about going against his employers or Kreacher having to follow and obey a master he loathes. Even Winky is forced to follow orders that play on her phobias.

Long story short house elves had no agency and there were no laws in place to prevent their exploitation and completely dependant on the 'benevolence' of their masters before Hermione came along.

Well those were my 2 cents on the house elf debate. Apologies if I derailed the discussion.