ABSTRACT
The alternative to attracting workers by suitable inducements was to fix them in their jobs by force, and to decree lateness, absence from work or voluntary change of employment a crime against the state. Thus even "free" labor became, in effect, a form of state forced labor. Forced penal labor for the profit of the state they rightly judged to be the reflection in prison of serfdom or slavery in the outside world. There was a gradual change from labor for the prisoner's use and redemption to labor for the state's profit and the prisoner's destruction: the development of a system of "squeezing golden sweat out of them" on a scale hitherto undreamed of in the entire history of mankind, under any social system whatsoever. The decision to treat the state as coextensive and identical with the whole of society, denying all autonomy to non-state organizations, and to individual conscience, intellect, judgment and will.
