Maybe a circular chain (no pun intended) of slavery can work if the circle is long enough? Each slave/slaver will get abused by their master and take out their frustration abusing their own slave. While it's true that if you go far enough in either direction you'll eventually reach yourself, there is not much you can do about it - even if you try to order your slave to order their slave to order their slave ... to order their slave to free you, by the time that order reaches your own master the incentive to enforce it will be so diminished that they could ignore it without much consequence.

Of course, in order for this to work we need a rule that a master cannot order their slave to give them their slave. Or - to be on the safe side - a master cannot interfere with what a slave does with their own slaves.

Hmmm... it wouldn't be circular if we had "levels" of slaves. Imagine you only directly enslaved the people in the level below you, and you were only directly enslaved by the people in the level above you. I think it would still end up circular in places, though, so maybe we should call these "classes" instead.

Wait a minute... MyGodIGetItNow.jpg