Problems in the Theory of Slavery and Slave Society

2 questions are posed: (1) What features do slave systems share in common which allow them to be identified as such? & (2) What characteristics allow us to label an entire social formation as a "slave society?" Discussion concerns characterizations of the place of slavery in a variety of archaic & early state systems, in the classical world of Greco-Roman antiquity, & in the societies of the colonial & postcolonial Americas, in particular the US South. Major conclusions revolve around the insistance that social formations are combinations of sectors, or "modes of production," & that it is the relationships of the sectors among themselves, in particular the dominance of one of them as the determinant feature of the entire unity, which defines the nature & position of each system of slavery in those societies in which it appears. Thus, slavery can be understood only in the context of an entire SE formation & not by itself alone. On this basis, it is tentatively concluded that the Greco-Roman world forms the only true slave society known to us. The relationships of various labor patterns in any particular society, as well as the class structure of slave systems in general, are briefly examined in this same general context. AA.