Slavery and Jewish Thought

Is there a divine imperative that slavery be outlawed? This parsha seems to take a puzzling stance. "You," God says, (shall not be slaves because you) are my servants for I have taken you out of Egypt."

This would seem to presuppose that God only takes umbrage at Jews being slaves. In the Israel Museum, there is an original synagogue from Paramaribo, Suriname that used to be used by Jewish plantation owners about 300 years ago. Ironically, founded in 1736, the synagogue is named Tzedek ve-Shalom, justice and peace; the plantations themselves were given biblical names, and to the best of my recollection, the Jewish plantation owners' royal charter stated that they were allowed to not compel their slaves to work on the Sabbath.

I've shared in the past an interesting thought from R' Faivelzon, namely that the raison d'être, or guiding thought, behind human's role in history is to eliminate the curses of the bible. Can that be said about slavery? The tractate of Yoma reflects as to whether the jubilee year would apply if there were no slaves for Jewish slave owners to let free, and answers that the question bears no relevancy because there will always be a Jewish slaveowner with a slave that needs to be freed. 

As we grapple with these questions, it's important to realized that they bespeak - and shed light on - the role God intended for the Jew, and for the non-Jew. Likewise, there was preferred status to the non-Jew who adopted the Noachide laws, to whom one could not loan at interest; yet that notwithstanding, his stature was beneath that of the Jew, and were such a Noachide inhabitant of the land to enslave a Jew, the Jew's family were obligated uncategorically to put together their funds and release the Jew from bondage, so as to restore the Jew to a place where he could again become God's slave, and not that of man, showing a clear hierarchy, the Jew, in the light of the Torah being primary, the Noachide observer, secondary, and the idolatrous non-Jew, tertiary. The one caveat is that all of these demarcations were not immutable; a non-Jew or a Noachide observer could move up the ladder, though a Jew could not move down. Was - and is - Judaism an emblem of social, and religious mobility, or an archaic way of life at odds with modern progressive thought? 

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