From Frankfurt to Westermann: Forced Labor and the Early Development of Finley’s Thought

Abstract

Finley’s conceptualization of Greco-Roman slavery was developing in the late 1930s, between W. L. Westermann’s traditional notions and the revolutionary ideas advanced by his contacts in the Frankfurt School in Exile. Turning points came in 1936, when he reviewed Westermann’s Realencyclopädie article on slavery, and in 1937, when he was hired to assist Otto Kirchheimer in the production of a monograph on penal history and reform. The resulting book, Punishment and Social Structure , became a classic text of modern criminology, but it also shaped Finley’s ideas concerning the nexus of forced labor, punishment, and the demands of a labor economy.

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