Slavery and the Market

It follows from Hume's thesis--Reason is the slave of Passions--that any successful manipulation of a Passion constitutes enslavement.  For example, working out of fear of immediate physical harm, or of irretrievable loss of income, is Slavery.  Furthermore, so, too, is doing so in anticipation of being able to afford a product the desire for which is the result of an effective advertising campaign, especially in the context of the pervasive acceptance of the marketing of a concept of 'freedom' as the having a choice between alternative products.  In other words, Slavery is business-as-usual in Capitalism, an unsurprising reflection of Smith's adherence to Hume's behavioral model.  Indeed, his only break with the latter is his positing of an impersonal Invisible Hand as the ultimate adjudicator of market activity, which is tantamount to a positing of a concept of Reason as potentially liberated from the Passions, as Kant well realizes.