Slaves? Seriously?

Just going back over the old TCW episodes, I looked at the Zygeria arc for a bit, and then I remembered why the arc annoyed me: in the Star Wars galaxy, as presented, slaves make absolutely no sense. Not just as a moral issue, as a practical one. Why? Simply put, droids. Just a handful of minutes into the first episode of the arc, the whole thing became so bizarre I just quit watching. Dooku and the Zygerians march a massive droid army into the city, empty it of inhabitants, and cart them off for slavery. The problem with this is so blatant that I barely feel it needs to be said, but I'll say it anyway - why attract pointless moral condemnation and feed Republic propaganda when you could just cut out the middleman and just give the Zygerians the droids instead? Nothing they do with the slaves in any way requires anything shown to be beyond the droids' capabilities, and the droids clearly outnumber the Togrutas by dozens to one. Slaves in the entire galaxy make no sense when you could just build a sentient machine to do it better, more efficiently, and willingly, but this especially stands out. I'm really sick of the CIS being portrayed as evil for the sake of evil, but this just makes me want to find whoever thought this up and punch them until they become less brain-dead.

 

Making droids do everything and therefore creating no problems for the Republic, now what's the fun in that? But seriously, I think it's just so the Zygerians get more power and feel more powerful, like the Hutts. If the Hutts could be using droids instead, they would've done it a long time ago, but they continue to use inhabitants. If the Zygerians just left the Togruta alone and used droids, they wouldn't feel as powerful, and droids aren't as intelligent as inhabitants. Just look at Grievous, he hates having to work with droids all the time, unless he's winning. Grievous said something like "You expect me to win, but all you do is give me battle droids" once, which shows how they aren't always the best option. Slavery would also be an easier way for Dooku to gain control of a planet instead of negotiating with them, which hardly ever works.

 

You make some good points that I agree with, in particular that slave labor is likely less practical than simple droid labor. But really, slavery is endemic of many worlds of the GFFA in general, not just the Zygerrians in TCW; slavery was quite prominent in the original trilogy, since it was legalized by the Empire. You also see Jabba the Hutt keep many slaves, albeit not solely for labor...

The reason why I suspect the Separatists would assist the Zygerrians in obtaining slaves is probably because of some sort of a deal between Dooku and Atai Molec to provide Zygerrian support to the CIS in exchange for slaves; hence, the attack on the Togrutan colony on Kiros. The reason Zygerrians would want slaves, I imagine, is due to the fact that slavery is likely deeply ingrained in their culture, presumably dating back thousands of years to when they were a pre-spaceflight species. Perhaps their culture emphasizes dominance over other sentient beings, where the weak serve the strong in the most definite fashion. Thus, I would see them wanting sentient, living, breathing beings as slaves as opposed to droids--simply by principle, even if their labor is less efficient than that of droids. Even we humans are known to often eschew logic and reason in favor of irrationality.

And yes, I also agree that the CIS is often shown as doing many things For the Evulz, and such blatant support of slavery can only serve to make them unpopular in the eyes of most of the Republic's citizens. Still, as I stated before, they probably had to give the Zygerrians slaves in exchange for their support. Also note that Sidious himself says that the Sith Empires of old were built on the backs of slaves. So it makes sense that Dooku would be all for slavery as the way of the future Empire.

 

Well, yeah.

Not to get too political here, but you'll find that just about every side of the left/right political divide and Christian/Atheist religious divide tries to take credit for slavery pretty much dying out in the 19th century. The truth is that what really caused it was that the Industrial Revolution came along and changed the labor cost equation such that the already-tenuous economics of slavery simply didn't make sense anymore. This in turn changed the political/moral equation such that it was economically viable for people to let "the better angels of our nature" take hold and to do away with slavery. Slavery was always economically tenuous - you have to feed, clothe, and provide medical care for slaves at least up to the point where they can work - but it was always morally tenuous as well. If human beings were as good as we believe ourselves to be, we would have gotten rid of it long before we could afford to, but being flawed as we are, we got rid of it as soon as we could afford to and still be reasonably comfortable. Such is human nature.

That said, the Confederacy (in our world - let's call them the CSA to keep things straight) did have an ideological reason to want to maintain slavery, and it wasn't as simple as the fact that they just didn't like black people very much. Urbanized, industrialized societies work fundamentally differently than rural, agrarian societies do. It's not just a matter of living in apartments vs. plantation houses or riding in cars vs. horse carts. Everything in an urbanized, industrialized society is different - economics works differently, social structures work differently, politics work differently, families work differently, the formation of communities works differently, even family structures work differently. And not just in the United States - the same themes echo through Dickens's mid-career work - especially Dombey and Son, Bleak House, and Hard Times - so the Victorians were facing the same things. The War Between the States wasn't just about slavery; it was about two competing worldviews and ways of ordering life. When the CSA fell, a lot of things fell with it, including the original idea of the United States as a small-time farmer's republic - after that, its rise as an industrial powerhouse was unstoppable. That's bad and good. Fords and iPads are nice, and make life better; on the other hand, a small-time farmer's republic probably wouldn't have invaded Iraq or passed (or had any need to pass) the PATRIOT Act. Either way, the triumph of industrialism was basically inevitable, war or not.

So long story short, the Zygerians may have been slavers on grounds of principle or tradition. The episodes kind of make it seem that way.

As for the CIS, remember that Dooku's real purpose was to goad the Jedi into keeping the war going. That's what Palpatine wanted him to do, to deplete the Jedi's numbers, break down their morality, and set them up for Order 66. So a lot of what Dooku did probably didn't make any actual sense as far as the stated goals of the CIS went, but he did them anyway because they served his actual, secret, Sith goals. In other words, he used slaves just to piss off the Jedi enough that they'd keep fighting and not start asking the sorts of questions that Ahsoka started to after "Heroes on Both Sides" and that Barriss started to after "Weapons Factory". We know how that turned out - both of them ended up going off-script, in their own separate ways. Palpatine and Dooku both needed the Jedi Order as a whole to stay on-script, heading right on down the path to Order 66. Waving a red cape or two in front of them from time to time was a good way to keep them right where the Sith wanted them.

 

Even if the Zygerians were slavers by culture or tradition, it still makes no sense as to why anyone at all would choose to buy from them. Just as far as droids go, the B-1 battle droid. They're simple, cheap, and so easy to make that "quintillions" can be churned out over a three-year war. Even if we reduce that to one quintillion, and assume that a Star Wars year is twice as long as ours, that's still 456,621,004,566 droids produced every friggin' day. Yank their blasters and stuff their heads full of labor programming. That would easily out-compete any number of slaves, forever.

 

Well, there are a few situations where slaves still do make economic sense even in an industrialized society, which is why slavery still exists in our own world, albeit only a fraction of what it was 200 years ago. There could still be a few things that droids aren't very good at. The most obvious thing in the GFFA is the same thing that most of the still-existent slavery in our own world revolves around, which is sex. That puts a distasteful but rather obvious connotation on why the Zygerian slavers were so interested in Ahsoka (and explains the costume she was wearing in the original comics version of the story). In fact, think about most of the other slaves we've seen in the Star Wars saga - Oola and Leia come to mind. Both were rather lucky that Hutt biology meant that Jabba mostly wanted to watch them dance, bit whatever Jabba wanted from Oola that made her resist even knowing that she was risking getting thrown into the Rancor pit, well, it makes one shudder to think. But at least they were worth something, money-wise; being older with a kid in tow got Shmi Skywalker a gig sweeping floors in a junkyard in the Outer Rim, and even at that the only thing that made her valuable was that her son was good at podracing and fixing broken droids. Note that as soon as Anakin was gone, Watto palmed her off on some hick moisture farmer who bought her because he needed a wife and couldn't get one any other way (I guess the Mos Eisley Cantina doesn't make for a very good singles bar).

 

Common problem with space opera that is trying to playing on sympathies and allegories of past I guess.The sex for example, can be theoretically achieved by realistic androids, don´t know if they are supposed to exist in GFFA... But it´s kinda sign of stupidity of many groups of both good guys and evil aliens to not put bigger use of robots than they do. CIS droid army seems to exist to make it more accessible to kids, but it also paints them as pretty smart for space opera villains.

 

Ok... I like your reasoning, Narutakikun!

But I think the reasoning about pissing off the Jedi is quite logical. By having the CIS make innocents suffer (as Maul even said himself) the Jedi are rushed into conflicts they do not need.




I agree with you all of you here that given that there is an entire army of droids (HAIL THE CIS) fighting the Republic, there could be entire army of droids working instead of slaves. Droids do not require water or food so they are better for manual labor of any kind.

That especially makes worthless and stupid the backstory of Anakin - him being a slave on Tatooine. We did see that droids provide service there too.
...

Other reasoning I have seen about the Slaves of Kiros is that they were expert artisans and artists. It was stated that the Sith needed people with artistic vision so the Sith could build their monuments.
To which I agree, droids have not shown to have the power of art and painting in them.

 

Now I'm just imagining a battle droid attempting to paint a portrait Grievous, while a super battle droid tries to carve a statue of him out of stone, lol.

 

I love the CIS, especially, cause using droids for all purposes seems like the most logical thing.

BUT YEAH! I can just see these droids giving us results that look nothing like Grievous, but more like amateurish copies of Picasso paintings in his darkest days.

 

Slaves exist, because the underworld thrives... living, breathing servants are a symbol of power, wealth and status... besides, any slave can build a droid from spare parts.

 

A droid can't take over for this:

 

The image or video is currently unavailable.

 

Strange... I wonder why it showed in my browser.

 

QFT. (can u see it now?)

 

Droid Rebellion. You can thank HK-47's ancestor for making slaves a viable alternative to Droids.

 

To echo some of the other comments here, slavery may still exist for plenty of reasons other than practical ones. Beings who have slaves, Hutts particularly, can point to that fact and say "Maybe I can do it cheaper with droids, but I have the wealth and power to hold dominion over another living being and make them do as I say." it often serves as a symbol of power and status

Also, I have no doubt that sexual slavery is alive and well in a galaxy far far away and won't be replaced by droids anytime soon. the fact that Hondo could find a buyer for Ahsoka who wants a female Jedi whether they're dead or alive speaks volumes to the kind of people that are living in the darkest corners of galactic society and the things they'll do to get their kicks...and most of them would likely say droids are no replacement for the real thing.

All that said, regarding the slaver arc specifically, I did find it amusing that they led off the auction with the weakest, oldest, most pathetic Togruta they have. Who in their right mind leads off an auction with the worst product in the auction? It sets the tone for the rest of the sale.

 

When you discover a planet and you want to obtain its ressources, it's easier to enslave the whole population instead of trying to live together with them.

 

I don't think this is a The Clone Wars issue but a prequel issue. Besides, Ahsoka said something along the lines of that during the second Zygeria episode, I think it was "how can a society this advanced still practice slavery?" Besides, maybe it's a control complex. You can't get the satisfaction of controlling a mass of droids as you would a mass of living beings.

 

Rule of the Strong.

 

Sentient organics in the SW universe possess multiple advantages over the average droid, including mental flexibility, intuitive ability, relative ease of maintenance, etc.

 

The slaver issue has been an issue ever since it was first mentioned into SW lore. I mean one of the most popular things in the OT as recently reminded to me by other threads here is the Slave Leia.
So blaming it on the PT is not justified. Blame it on the not so perfect OT.
PS: According to the Wookieepedia, slavery is first mentioned in a novel back in 79 - yeah, blame the OT.

 

I think the Empire used slavery as deliberate opression / collective punishment, to break rebellious or troublesome peoples. Not because they specifically needed laborers, because, as already pointed out, droids.

The enslavement of the Wookiees for example, after the subjugation of Kashyyk. The Wookiees were enslaved to punish them for their rebellion against the Imperial New Order.

This is something that has parallels in reality too. After Cromwell subjugated Ireland, thousands of Irish were sold into slavery in the Caribbean. It was a form of collective punishment, the aim being to break the will of a people. That's just one example, there are many similar. In Roman times rebellious peoples were typically sold into slavery after subjugation.

Why the Zygerrians wanted slaves though, I have no idea. Same goes for Hutt slaving, and people like Watto owning the Skywalkers. Droids could have done that perfectly well.

 

Ask the people from the Pre-Prequel times to tell you. Those writers started the slavers thing in SW.

 

You clearly have never seen Bubblegum Crisis.