PRECURSORS TO THE LABOR SERVICES

The labor service as previously defined is a child of modernity. It presupposes, along with expanded state power, a new conception of the polity that is rooted in the “individual's immediacy to the state” - an idea that came to prevail only with the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. Henceforth, a person was no longer embedded within a hierarchical, corporate political order with numerous autonomous intermediate powers; instead, all (male) citizens had a direct relationship to the state. Previous differences of status were thus erased and all individuals were, ideally, treated equally. At the same time, the power of the state was given direct access to the individual. These, then, are the two fundamental sides to this relationship: the rights as well as the duties of both the state and the individual. This new bond grew even stronger in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. At one extreme, it culminated in total cradle-to-grave care; on the other extreme, it led to absolute state power to the point of the physical destruction of entire population groups.

Labor services are merely one expression of this modern relationship of immediacy. More familiar to us is military conscription, which began its triumphant advance in revolutionary France. It represented the duty of every male citizen to risk his life for the community in case of war. Political participation and other rights were often promised - and sometimes even granted - as a quid pro quo.