Wage slavery

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Wage slavery is a term used to refer to a condition in which a person is legally (de jure) voluntarily employed but practically (de facto) a slave. It is used to express disapproval of a condition where a person feels compelled to work in return for payment of a wage. In colloquial terms, this may refer to people that make a cult of work (the extreme case is death from overwork, known also as karoshi), or those who require one to work to be socially acceptable. In terms used by critics of capitalism, wage slavery is the condition where a person must sell his or her labor power, submitting to the authority of an employer merely to subsist.

Wage Slavery can be described as a lack of rights. The only rights you get are the rights you gain on the labor market. If your children cannot make enough money to survive, they starve. Your choices consist of the workhouse prison, or the labor market. The rich receive protection from the government in the form of corporate welfare subsidizing them while the poor and working people have to be subjected to market discipline.

Sources disagree about what practical conditions would qualify a worker as a wage slave. For example, wage slave can denote a worker who has no choice in who they work for, or it can denote a worker who has no choice in the type of job they can get. Some also draw distinctions between workers whose lack of employment freedom is due to circumstances beyond their control (such as economic and geographic circumstances), or due to circumstances that are arguably under their control (such as a lack of education or ability).

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[edit] Wage slavery in capitalist society

Wage slavery as a concept is a criticism of capitalism, defined as a condition when a capitalist minority of the population controls all of the necessary non-human components of production (capital and land) that other people (workers) use to produce goods. This sort of criticism is generally associated with socialist criticisms of capitalism, but has also been expressed by some proponents of liberalism, like Henry George ([1]), Silvio Gesell and Thomas Paine ([2]), as well as the Distributist school of thought within the Roman Catholic Church. Criticism of capitalism on these grounds is connected to the belief that one should have freedom to work without a boss or obligation.

The use of the term "wage slavery" is also a rhetorical device to draw parallels between modern work and the historical institution of slavery, specifically to chattel slavery wherein one person owns another person as property. The concept of wage slavery suggests that even where the conditions of chattel slavery do not apply, wage earners may live in conditions which are practically identical with the conditions of those under chattel slavery.

A key difference between wage slavery and chattel slavery recognized by Karl Marx was that the individual laborers can in some cases refuse to work for a specific employer and cannot (legally) be subjected to corporal punishment by that employer. To Marx, wage slavery was a class condition, not an individual situation. This class situation rested on

the concentration of ownership in few hands,
the lack of direct access by workers to the means of production and consumption goods; and
the existence of the reserve army of unemployed workers.

Furthermore, in Marx's view, this situation was ultimately due to the existence of private property and the state.

Marx recognized that some working people could escape wage slavery and become capitalists, if only in small numbers. But to him, the profits received by the capitalists were dependent on the work done by the working class, so that too much upward mobility would lead to the downfall of capitalism, unless it was balanced by downward mobility out of the capitalist class. This suggests that even if the faces of the "wage slaves" change, the category remains. A common analogy is that even if some slaves can win their freedom (as in the Roman Empire), slavery as an institution will still exist.

Critics of capitalism may view the working class to be slaves if employers have unrestricted power to fire individual workers; this is especially true if they can blacklist them from other employment. The "at will" employment arrangement means that a worker may be fired (or quit) for any reason. If a worker fears losing his or her job more than the employer fears losing a particular worker, then the employer can govern the personal life of the worker. For example, a worker may be fired based on his or her religious affliation, unless protected by an enforceable anti-discrimination law. In an unrestrained form, this power even extends to basic civil liberties, such as the right to worship freely or to express political opinions. This power could also undermine the right to vote; fear of this factor was a significant motivator for instituting the secret ballot.

Instances of wage slavery that show the most similarity to chattel slavery occur in societies where educational opportunities are limited, unionization is violently suppressed, and property may be arbitrarily confiscated. By connection of global trade networks, these harsh instances of wage slavery are connected to and affect societies with stronger traditions of freedom and few noticeable effects of supposed wage slavery. Extreme critics of capitalism argue that the same basic relationships are present in all capitalist societies, even if their impact is lessened by various traditions such as state accountability to the people and the establishment of a mixed economy. A mixed economy can permit some private control based upon ownership, but also supposedly exerts social control of capital through state ownership of certain industries or regulation of private economic relationships. Some proponents of neoliberalism advocate that the state only own those industries that are truly public goods while at the same time allowing the rest of the economy to remain capitalist. Extreme proponents of capitalism advocate that everything, even industries that are essential to life, should be private property, bought and sold on the free market.

Critics of capitalism also assert that capitalist economic systems have a tendency to commodify the very things that should be most freely available in society—especially one that is technologically advanced. The result is that the market settles on producing products that are the minimum quality the market will support, as opposed to the maximum quality possible with available resources. A pronounced lack of leisure time is commonly the focal point of such an argument.

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Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../w/a/g/Wage_slavery.html"

Wage slavery

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[edit] Wage slavery in capitalist society

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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