Wage Slavery

[RevMARKSman]

Could someone please tell me exactly what wage slavery is? An explanation of what the criteria are, etc. I have a basic understanding but not enough to use in a debate (currently in one on planetthinktanks.com forums).

Thanks.

[BobKKKindle$]

Well, Capitalists often describe their system as one which is fair and one in which Capitalists (owners of the means of production) and Workers have equal rights. They point out that workers are not bound to any particular master, and can choose whom to work for, what work to do, and where to work.

However, We Socialists believe that Labour under Capitalism is in fact Slavery, simply with the addition of a price in return labour as a commodity (a Wage, so to speak) We point out that as the worker does not own any of the means of production, he has no other means to survive except through selling his labour power. This means that Capitalists and Workers are certainly not on equal terms. In addition, the type of work avaliable is often extremely limited, and the worker will very often have no control over the work itself. The Worker does not own the commodities he produces, and is payed less than the full value of them - what Marx Termed, Surplus Labour value - and the Capitalists sells the Commodities in order to make a profit, despite the fact that the Commodities are stores of the Worker's labour and time, and the Capitalist has played no role in producing the commodities.

That is a basic, albeit disordered Description of Wage labour. More Experienced Socialists are free to add/rebutt.

[Morpheus]

Wage slavery is when one or more people have to make their living by selling their labor to others in order to survive.

In an economy based on slavery the ruling class is made up of slave owners who exploit the slaves they own and live off their labor. The slave is sold once and then belongs to that master until the master decides to sell him/her. This differs from capitalism in that the slave is sold once and for all whereas in capitalism the worker must sell him/herself repeatedly by the day or hour or some other unit of time. If the wage contract were made to last indefinitely, instead of for a fixed period of time, it would in fact constitute full-fledged slavery. Thus capitalism constitutes a kind of transient slavery repeated over and over, which is why capitalism is also called wage-slavery.