Wage Slavery

[DaComm]

What exactly is meant by this concept?

[syndicat]

well, consider actual slavery. you are legally owned by a boss. you have no right to quit and find another.

under capitalism this is "liberalized" in that workers can quit and seek another boss. but we're forced to subordinate ourselves to the managerial regime the capitalists create, that is, their overseers. the capitalists still claim they "own" the use of our working abilities, having "rented" them for a wage. so there are several elements to "wage slavery":

1. capitalists have a class monopoly over the means of production, the means to life.
2. thus we're forced to work for their firms.
3. thus we're forced to submit to their managerial regime that tries to control how our working abilities are used.
4. we're forced to do this in order to get wages which we use to buy commodities the capitalists sell, in order to have the things we need to live.

[Queercommie Girl]

well, consider actual slavery. you are legally owned by a boss. you have no right to quit and find another.


That's an understatement. In most forms of slavery societies, slaves have no right of life and can be slaughtered at will by their slave-lord masters, e.g. in Shang dynasty China.

[DaComm]

well, consider actual slavery. you are legally owned by a boss. you have no right to quit and find another.

under capitalism this is "liberalized" in that workers can quit and seek another boss. but we're forced to subordinate ourselves to the managerial regime the capitalists create, that is, their overseers. the capitalists still claim they "own" the use of our working abilities, having "rented" them for a wage. so there are several elements to "wage slavery":

1. capitalists have a class monopoly over the means of production, the means to life.
2. thus we're forced to work for their firms.
3. thus we're forced to submit to their managerial regime that tries to control how our working abilities are used.
4. we're forced to do this in order to get wages which we use to buy commodities the capitalists sell, in order to have the things we need to live.

And for playing the purpose of devil's advocate, how are we to respond when they say that workers can become self-employed, and is not bound by "slavery" to actually work for capitalist. I'd say that realistically speaking, the chances of being succesful nowadays a petit-bourgeoisie against monopolstic companies, I mean, look at it statsitically, an extreme minority actually rises up through the ranks to become better financially than workers. So realistically, their only option is to surrender themselves to the slavery that is Capitalism, why the way thanks for that, clarifying as usual. Your thoughts?

[Pretty Flaco]

I've always thought of wage slavery as being:
A. Tied to your job
1. You have no method to live without the job
2. Finding another job is too hard
B. Without your wage you cannot survive
1. Hence "wage slavery"

So it mostly is tied to the lower class laborers who must depend on the low wages thrown out to them by their bosses as a means to survive.

For example:
Mr. Bill works at a lumber factory. If he quits, he's unable to support his family and they all starve. He's unable to move higher up in the workplace because he lacks education which he couldn't acquire because his family lacked money when he grew up. Since he lacks money now due to his wages and long hours he can't start a new education and so he's basically stuck.

Am I dead on/close?

[Jazzhands]

And for playing the purpose of devil's advocate, how are we to respond when they say that workers can become self-employed, and is not bound by "slavery" to actually work for capitalist.

Self-employment/Freelancing doesn't work because you're still selling your labor to someone, so you are technically employed by whoever thinks your labor is the most valuable to them. It doesn't work by people competing honestly and fairly for a buyer's attention. It works by people slaving away at their computers in a desperate plea for attention because they need some way to eat but no way to get food because they never interact with other human beings. This is one way in which workers are dehumanized daily under capitalism.

Owning a business isn't much better. Owning a business means you have to have someone to keep in wage slavery. People work in capitalism under the threat of forced starvation. When they get fired, it is very difficult for them to find food. Pro-capitalists talk about "communist terror" all the time, but the system they argue for is essentially systemized terror.

[meow]

what is slavery but forced work? are you not forced to work to obtain a wage? and thus to survive?

therefore wage slavery.

[syndicat]

what is slavery but forced work? are you not forced to work to obtain a wage? and thus to survive?


not quite. we're forced to work by the human condition. it's a different thing if we're forced by a minority dominating class to work for them and their benefit and not for our own aims.

[anticap]

It's just like syndicat said.

In slave society there are slave-masters and chattel-slaves. The injustice is transparent: the slave-master 'owns' the chattel-slave, who is not free to choose a new master.

In capitalist society there are wage-masters and wage-slaves. The injustice is hidden: the wage-master 'hires' the wage-slave, who is free to choose his master.

In both cases the fundamental relationship is the same: master who lives off the labor of slave; slave who depends on master for subsistence.

However, there are fundamental differences as well. Here's how Engels compared the two in his Principles of Communism:


The slave is sold once and for all; the proletarian must sell himself daily and hourly.

The individual slave, property of one master, is assured an existence, however miserable it may be, because of the master’s interest. The individual proletarian, property as it were of the entire bourgeois class which buys his labor only when someone has need of it, has no secure existence. This existence is assured only to the class as a whole.

The slave is outside competition; the proletarian is in it and experiences all its vagaries.

The slave counts as a thing, not as a member of society. Thus, the slave can have a better existence than the proletarian, while the proletarian belongs to a higher stage of social development and, himself, stands on a higher social level than the slave.

The slave frees himself when, of all the relations of private property, he abolishes only the relation of slavery and thereby becomes a proletarian; the proletarian can free himself only by abolishing private property in general.