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'''Wage slavery''' is a term for wage labour which emphasises the unfree aspects of that | '''Wage slavery''' is a term for wage labour which emphasises the unfree aspects of that labour. "Wage slavery" and similar terms have been in frequent use almost as long as capitalist wage labour has existed. For example, in 1818 an English cotton worker described the cotton manufacturers as "despotic" masters who ruled over the "English Spinner slave."<ref>Bruno Leipold, pp 194-5.</ref> This worker also employed an analysis later used by Karl Marx and others, that the wage woker is unfree because he cannot escape the necessity of working for some capitalist master in order to survive: | ||
{{Quote|It is vain to insult our common understandings with the observation that such men are free; that the law protects the rich and poor alike, and that a spinner can leave his master if he does not like the wages. True; so he can; but where must he go? why to another to be sure.|English cotton worker, 1818}} | {{Quote|It is vain to insult our common understandings with the observation that such men are free; that the law protects the rich and poor alike, and that a spinner can leave his master if he does not like the wages. True; so he can; but where must he go? why to another to be sure.|English cotton worker, 1818}} | ||
By the time Marx had entered university, similar ideas were current in Germany. Marx's law lecturer, Eduard Gans wrote in 1836 that a visit to the English factories showed that "slavery is not yet over, that it has been formally abolished, but materially is completely in existence."<ref>Cited in Bruno Leipold, p 195.</ref> | By the time Marx had entered university, similar ideas were current in Germany. Marx's law lecturer, Eduard Gans wrote in 1836 that a visit to the English factories showed that "slavery is not yet over, that it has been formally abolished, but materially is completely in existence."<ref>Cited in Bruno Leipold, p 195.</ref> | ||
Marx used the idea at least as early as in his ''Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844'', in which he wrote that workers are forced to "carry out slave-labour, completely giving up their freedom, in the service of greed."<ref>Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, ''Marx Engels Collected Works'', volume 3, p. 237. (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1975–2005), henceforth MECW).</ref> | |||
Marx used the idea | |||
In | In 1847 Marx noted, as others had before, that the slave had some advantage over the wage worker in being more valuable to the master or less easily replaced: | ||
{{Quote|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.|Karl Marx|[http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm The Principles of Communism] 1847}} | |||
In | In "Wage Labour and Capital" (1849), he wrote that "the relation of wage labour to capital, [is] the slavery of the worker, the domination of the capitalist."<ref>MECW, volume , p. 237.</ref> | ||
Marx | Marx argued that although the wage labourer is not owned by any particular capitalist she or he is, in effect, owned by the capitalist class. In "Wage-Labour and Capital" he wrote that because the worker's "sole source of livelihood is the sale of his labour, [he] cannot leave the whole class of purchasers, that is, the capitalist class, without renouncing his existence. He belongs not to this or that bourgeois, but to the bourgeosie, the bourgeois class."<ref>Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, ''Marx Engels Collected Works'', volume 9, p. 203. (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1975–2005.)</ref> | ||
{{Quote| | In ''Das Kapital'' (1867) Marx even says that because of this structural domination over the worker, | ||
{{Quote|the worker belongs to capital before he has sold himself to the capitalist.|''Marx Engels Collected Works,'' volume 35, p. 577.}} | |||
In ''Theories of Surplus Value'' (1861-63), Marx noted that the French writer Simon Linquet had made the necessity argument already in 1767:<ref> | In ''Theories of Surplus Value'' (1861-63), Marx noted that the French writer Simon Linquet had made the necessity argument already in 1767:<ref>http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1863/theories-surplus-value/ch07.htm |title=Chapter 7 |work=Theories of Surplus Value |author=Frederick Engels |year=1847 |publisher=Marxists.org</ref> | ||
{{quote |The slave was precious to his master because of the money he had cost him… They were worth at least as much as they could be sold for in the market… It is the impossibility of living by any other means that compels our farm labourers to till the soil whose fruits they will not eat… It is want that compels them to go down on their knees to the rich man in order to get from him permission to enrich him… what effective gain [has] the suppression of slavery brought [him ?] He is free, you say. Ah! That is his misfortune… These men… [have] the most terrible, the most imperious of masters, that is, need. … They must therefore find someone to hire them, or die of hunger. Is that to be free?|Simon Linguet|Théorie des lois civiles, etc.| p. 467.}} | {{quote |The slave was precious to his master because of the money he had cost him… They were worth at least as much as they could be sold for in the market… It is the impossibility of living by any other means that compels our farm labourers to till the soil whose fruits they will not eat… It is want that compels them to go down on their knees to the rich man in order to get from him permission to enrich him… what effective gain [has] the suppression of slavery brought [him ?] He is free, you say. Ah! That is his misfortune… These men… [have] the most terrible, the most imperious of masters, that is, need. … They must therefore find someone to hire them, or die of hunger. Is that to be free?|Simon Linguet|Théorie des lois civiles, etc.| p. 467.}} | ||
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</ref> | it may draw similarities between [[slavery|owning]] and [[employment|employing]] a person, which equates the term with a lack of [[workers' self-management]].<ref name="globetrotter.berkeley.edu">{{Cite web|url=http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people2/Chomsky/chomsky-con2.html |title=Conversation with Noam Chomsky, p. 2 of 5 |publisher=Globetrotter.berkeley.edu |date= |accessdate=2010-06-28}}</ref><ref name="socialissues.wiseto.com">{{Cite web|url=http://socialissues.wiseto.com/Articles/161500532/ |title=From wage slaves to wage workers: cultural opportunity structures and the evolution of the wage demands of the Knights of Labor and the American Federation of Labor, 1880-1900. - Crime |publisher=Socialissues.wiseto.com |date=2007-08-30 |accessdate=2010-06-28}}</ref><ref name="spunk.org">[http://www.spunk.org/texts/places/russia/sp001861/bolintro.html</ref> | ||
Thinkers such as [[Proudhon]] and [[Marx]] elaborated these comparisons in the context of a critique of property not intended for active personal use.<ref>[http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1863/theories-surplus-value/ch07.htm Marx, Ch. 7 of Theories of Surplus Value, a critique of Linguet, Théorie des lois civiles, etc., Londres, 1767.]</ref><ref>[http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/ProProp.html Proudhon, Pierre Joseph. What is Property? An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government. ]</ref> | |||
[[ | |||
The Making of the English Working Class, p. 599 | |||
--> | |||
The | In ''The Making of the English Working Class,'' (1963) Marxist historian E.P. Thompson argued that the working-class' complaint during the 19th century [[industrial revolution]] in England was not reducible to a decline in material well-being. What mattered to workers was how the conditions of their work had changed - that their working life was now characterized by overwork, monotony, discipline, and most importantly the loss of freedom and independence. Thompson thus observed that 'People may consume more goods and become less happy or less free at the same time.'<ref>P. 211.</ref> | ||
being the | |||
== | ==Use or misuse in defence of actual slavery== | ||
Before the [[American | Before the [[American Civil War]], Southern defenders of [[African American]] slavery invoked the concept of wage slavery to favorably compare the condition of their slaves to workers in the North.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Foner |first=Eric |title= Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men|pages=XIX}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|last=Jensen |first=Derrick |title= The Culture of Make Believe}} | ||
</ref> | </ref> | ||
Some argued that workers were "free but in name – the slaves of endless toil," and that their slaves were better off.<ref | Some argued that workers were "free but in name – the slaves of endless toil," and that their slaves were better off.<ref name="urlThe Hireling and the Slave — Antislavery Literature Project">{{Cite web|url=http://antislavery.eserver.org/proslavery/graysonhireling |title=The Hireling and the Slave — Antislavery Literature Project |work= |accessdate=09-01-25}}</ref> This contention has been partly corroborated by some modern studies. | ||
According to historians Fogel and Engerman plantation records show that slaves worked less, were better fed and whipped only occasionally—their material conditions in the 19th century being "better than what was typically available to free urban laborers at the time".<ref name = "Fogel">Fogel & Engerman, Without Consent or Contract, New York: Norton, 1989, p. 391.</ref> | |||
According to another study, slaves in the United States in the 19th century had improved their standard of living from the 18th century.<ref name="JStor">{{Cite web|url=http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0145-5532(198223)6%3A4%3C516%3ATHOASN%3E2.0.CO%3B2-F |title=JStor}} The Height of American Slaves: New Evidence of Slave Nutrition and Health</ref> | |||
According to Mark Michael Smith of the Economic History Society, slaves could sometimes manipulate the master-slave relationship enough to "carve out a degree of autonomy"<ref>Debating Slavery: Economy and Society in the Antebellum American South, p. 44</ref> | |||
Many [[abolitionist]]s in the U.S., including northern capitalists, regarded the notion of wage slavery to be spurious,<ref name="Foner, Eric 1998. p. 66">Foner, Eric. 1998. ''The Story of American Freedom''. W. W. Norton & Company. p. 66</ref> saying that wage workers were "neither wronged nor oppressed".<ref name="McNall 95">{{Cite book|last=McNall |first=Scott G. |coauthors=et al.|title=Current Perspectives in Social Theory|page=95|url=http://books.google.com/?id=0h68KhoQ6RgC | isbn=9780762307623 | year=2002 | publisher=Emerald Group Publishing}}</ref> | |||
Abolitionist [[William Lloyd Garrison]] stated that the use of the term "wage slavery" (in a time when chattel slavery was still common) was an "abuse of language."<ref>Foner, Eric 1998. p. 66</ref> | |||
The abolitionist and former slave [[Frederick Douglass]] declared "Now I am my own master" when he took a paying job.<ref name="Douglass 95">{{Cite book|last=Douglass |first=Frederick |coauthors=Henry Louis Gates|title=Autobiographies : Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave|page=95}}</ref> | |||
[[Abraham Lincoln]] and the republicans "did not challenge the notion that those who spend their entire lives as wage laborers were comparable to slaves", though they argued that the condition was different, as laborers were likely to have the opportunity to work for themselves in the future, achieving [[self-employment]].<ref name="books.google.com">[http://books.google.com/books?id=_KdrTfTxqvgC&pg=PA183&lpg=PA183 p.181-184 Democracy's Discontent By Michael J. Sandel]</ref> | |||
==History== | |||
The imagery of wage slavery was widely used by labor organizations during the mid-19th century to object to the lack of workers' self-management. However, it was gradually replaced by the more pragmatic term "wage work" towards the end of the 19th century, as labor organizations shifted their focus to raising wages.<ref name="Hallgrimsdottir">{{Cite journal|last=Hallgrimsdottir|first=Helga Kristin|date=March 2007|title=From Wage Slaves to Wage Workers: Cultural Opportunity Structures and the Evolution of the Wage Demands of Knights of Labor and the American Federation of Labor, 1880-1900|journal=Social Forces |volume=85 |issue=3 |pages=1393–1411 |url=http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/social_forces/v085/85.3hallgrimsdottir.html |accessdate=2009-01-04|doi=10.1353/sof.2007.0037|last2=Benoit|first2=Cecilia}}</ref><ref>[http://socialissues.wiseto.com/Articles/161500532 From Wage Slaves to Wage Workers--Free text]</ref> | |||
[[Henry David Thoreau]] wrote that “[i]t is hard to have a Southern overseer; it is worse to have a Northern one; but worst of all when you are the slave-driver of yourself.” <ref>Thoreau, Walden, Penguin, 1983, p.49</ref> | |||
[[ | In the United States, self-employment became less common as the [[artisan]] tradition slowly disappeared in the later part of the 19th century. In 1869 [[The New York Times]] described the system of wage labor as "a system of slavery as absolute if not as degrading as that which lately prevailed at the South".<ref name="books.google.com"/> | ||
[[E. P. Thompson]] notes that for British workers at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries, the "gap in status between a 'servant,' a hired wage-laborer subject to the orders and discipline of the master, and an artisan, who might 'come and go' as he pleased, was wide enough for men to shed blood rather than allow themselves to be pushed from one side to the other. And, in the value system of the community, those who resisted degradation were in the right." <ref name="English Working Class p. 599">E. P. Thompson, The Rise of the English Working Class</ref> | |||
"Research has shown", says William Lazonick, "that the 'free-born Englishman' of the eighteenth century – even those who, by force of circumstance, had to submit to agricultural wage labour – tenaciously resisted entry into the capitalist workshop."<ref name="Shop Floor p. 37">Shop Floor, p. 37.</ref> | |||
Historically, the range of occupations and status positions held by chattel slaves has been nearly as broad as that held by free persons, indicating some similarities between chattel slavery and wage slavery as well.<ref>''The highest position slaves ever attained was that of slave minister… A few slaves even rose to be monarchs, such as the slaves who became sultans and founded dynasties in Islām. At a level lower than that of slave ministers were other slaves, such as those in the Roman Empire, the Central Asian Samanid domains, Ch’ing China, and elsewhere, who worked in government offices and administered provinces. … The stereotype that slaves were careless and could only be trusted to do the crudest forms of manual labor was disproved countless times in societies that had different expectations and proper incentives.''[http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/548305/slavery/24172/Slave-occupations The sociology of slavery: Slave occupations Encyclopaedia Britannica]</ref> | |||
The | |||
In the 1830s the [[Lowell Mill Girls]] condemned the "degradation and subordination" of the newly emerging industrial system<ref>Rogue States By Noam Chomsky</ref><ref>Profit Over People by Noam Chomsky</ref> | |||
and expressed their concerns in a protest song during their 1836 strike: | |||
Oh! I cannot be a slave, I will not be a slave, | :Oh! isn't it a pity, such a pretty girl as I | ||
:Should be sent to the factory to pine away and die? | |||
:Oh! I cannot be a slave, I will not be a slave, | |||
:For I'm so fond of liberty, | |||
:That I cannot be a slave.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/americanstudies/lavender/liberty.html |title=Liberty |work=American Studies |publisher=CSI}}</ref> | |||
[[Image:Portrait Emma Goldman.jpg|thumb|right|[[Emma Goldman]] famously denounced wage slavery by saying: "The only difference is that you are hired slaves instead of block slaves"<ref>Emma Goldman: A documentary History of the American Years</ref>]] | |||
According to Helga Hallgrimsdottir the term "wage slavery" was widely used by labor organizations during the mid-19th century, but was gradually replaced by the term "wage work" towards the end of the 19th century.<ref name="Hallgrimsdottir1">{{Cite journal|last=Hallgrimsdottir|first=Helga Kristin|date=March 2007|title=From Wage Slaves to Wage Workers: Cultural Opportunity Structures and the Evolution of the Wage Demands of Knights of Labor and the American Federation of Labor, 1880-1900|journal=Social Forces|volume=85|issue=3|pages=1393–1411|url=http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/social_forces/v085/85.3hallgrimsdottir.html|accessdate=2009-01-04|doi=10.1353/sof.2007.0037|last2=Benoit|first2=Cecilia}}</ref> | |||
Anthropologist [[David Graeber]] has noted that, historically, the first wage labor contracts we know about—whether in ancient Greece or Rome, or in the Malay or Swahili city states in the Indian ocean—were in fact contracts for the rental of chattel slaves (usually the owner would receive a share of the money, and the slave, another, with which to maintain his or her living expenses.) Such arrangements were quite common in New World slavery as well, whether in the United States or Brazil. C. L. R. James made a famous argument that most of the techniques of human organization employed on factory workers during the industrial revolution were first developed on slave plantations.<ref>[http://www.prickly-paradigm.com/paradigm14.pdf Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology p. 37]</ref> | |||
== | ==Opinions on psychological effects== | ||
Investigative journalist [[Robert Kuttner]] in ''Everything for Sale'', analyzes the work of public-Health scholars Jeffrey Johnson and Ellen Hall about modern conditions of work, and concludes that "to be in a life situation where one experiences relentless demands by others, over which one has relatively little control, is to be at risk of poor health, physically as well as mentally." | Investigative journalist [[Robert Kuttner]] in ''Everything for Sale'', analyzes the work of public-Health scholars Jeffrey Johnson and Ellen Hall about modern conditions of work, and concludes that "to be in a life situation where one experiences relentless demands by others, over which one has relatively little control, is to be at risk of poor health, physically as well as mentally." Under wage labor, "a relatively small elite demands and gets empowerment, self-actualization, autonomy, and other work satisfaction that partially compensate for long hours" while "epidemiological data confirm that lower-paid, lower-status workers are more likely to experience the most clinically damaging forms of stress, in part because they have less control over their work."<ref>Kuttner, ''Op. Cit.'', p. 153 and p. 154</ref> | ||
Wage slavery, and the educational system that precedes it "implies power held by the leader. Without power the leader is inept. The possession of power inevitably leads to corruption… in spite of… good intentions … [Leadership means] power of initiative, this sense of responsibility, the self-respect which comes from expressed manhood, is taken from the men, and consolidated in the leader. The sum of their initiative, their responsibility, their self-respect becomes his … [and the] order and system he maintains is based upon the suppression of the men, from being independent thinkers into being 'the men' … In a word, he is compelled to become an autocrat and a foe to democracy." For the "leader", such marginalisation can be beneficial, for a leader "sees no need for any high level of intelligence in the rank and file, except to applaud his actions. Indeed such intelligence from his point of view, by breeding criticism and opposition, is an obstacle and causes confusion."<ref>''The Miners' Next Step'', pp. 16-17 and p. 15</ref> Wage slavery "implies erosion of the human personality… [because] some men submit to the will of others, arousing in these instincts which predispose them to cruelty and indifference in the face of the suffering of their fellows."<ref>quoted by Jose Peirats, ''The CNT in the Spanish Revolution'', vol. 2, p. 76</ref> | |||
[[Erich Fromm]] noted that if a person perceives himself as being what he owns, then when that person loses (or even thinks of losing) what he "owns" (e.g. the good looks or sharp mind that allow him to sell his labor for high wages), then, a fear of loss may create anxiety and authoritarian tendencies because that person's sense of identity is threatened. In contrast, when a person's sense of self is based on what he experiences in a state of ''being'' (creativity, ego or loss of ego, love, sadness, taste, sight etc.) with a less materialistic regard for what he once had and lost, or may lose, then less authoritarian tendencies prevail. The state of being, in his view, flourishes under a worker-managed workplace and economy, whereas self-ownership entails a materialistic notion of self, created to rationalize the lack of worker control that would allow for a state of being.<ref>[http://books.google.com/books?id=JvG85s966koC&dq=to+have+or+to+be&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=AbpnS7-aGJyysQOe0fjVBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CCMQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=&f=false To Have Or to Be? by Erich Fromm ]</ref> | [[Erich Fromm]] noted that if a person perceives himself as being what he owns, then when that person loses (or even thinks of losing) what he "owns" (e.g. the good looks or sharp mind that allow him to sell his labor for high wages), then, a fear of loss may create anxiety and authoritarian tendencies because that person's sense of identity is threatened. In contrast, when a person's sense of self is based on what he experiences in a state of ''being'' (creativity, ego or loss of ego, love, sadness, taste, sight etc.) with a less materialistic regard for what he once had and lost, or may lose, then less authoritarian tendencies prevail. The state of being, in his view, flourishes under a worker-managed workplace and economy, whereas self-ownership entails a materialistic notion of self, created to rationalize the lack of worker control that would allow for a state of being.<ref>[http://books.google.com/books?id=JvG85s966koC&dq=to+have+or+to+be&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=AbpnS7-aGJyysQOe0fjVBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CCMQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=&f=false To Have Or to Be? by Erich Fromm ]</ref> | ||
== | Due to this lack of control, the exploited worker, according to [[Marx]], "puts his life into the object... [and thus] the greater his activity...the less he possesses...[H]is labour becomes an object...[and] the life which he has given to the object sets itself against him as an alien and hostile force"<ref>[http://infoshop.org/library/Fredy_Perlman:_Intro_Commodity_Fetishism#_ref-5 Fredy Perlman: Intro Commodity Fetishism - Infoshop Library]</ref> And since the worker could be working for wages or saving money instead of enjoying life or having fun, (which in a capitalist society often costs money), "all passions and all activity is submerged in avarice...[and] the less you are, the less you express your own life, the more you have, i.e., the greater is your alienated life."<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/needs.htm |title=Human Requirements and Division of Labour, Marx, 1844 |publisher=Marxists.org |date= |accessdate=2010-06-28}}</ref> | ||
Both the [[Milgram experiment|Milgram]] and [[Stanford experiment]]s have been found useful in the psychological study of wage-based workplace relations.<ref>Social Psychology of the Workplace By Shane R. Thye, Edward J. Lawler</ref> | |||
===Methods of control in wage systems=== | |||
In 19th century discussions of labor relations, it was normally assumed that the threat of starvation forced those without property to work for wages. Proponents of the view that modern forms of employment constitute wage slavery, even when workers appear to have a range of available alternatives, have attributed its perpetuation to a variety of social factors that maintain the [[cultural hegemony|hegemony]] of the employer class.<ref name="amazon.com"/><ref>Gramsci, A. (1992) ''Prison Notebooks''. New York : Columbia University Press, pp.233-38</ref> These include efforts at [[Manufacturing Consent]] and eliciting [[false consciousness]]. | |||
==Worker cooperatives, syndicalism and self-management== | |||
[[Noam Chomsky]] has said that<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/19760725.htm |title=Interview |publisher=Chomsky}}</ref> | |||
{{Quote|As long as individuals are compelled to rent themselves on the market to those who are willing to hire them, as long as their role in production is simply that of ancillary tools, then there are striking elements of coercion and oppression that make talk of democracy very limited, if even meaningful…}} | |||
[[Image:Noam chomsky cropped.jpg|thumb|left|Noam Chomsky] | |||
==Criticism== | |||
Philosopher Gary Young has argued that the same basic reasoning that considers the individual to be forced to sell his labor to a capitalist in order to survive, also applies to the capitalist in that he is forced to hire a worker to survive otherwise his capital will be exhausted through consumption, leaving him nothing to purchase the necessities of life.<ref>Young, Gary. 1978. ''Justice and Capitalist Production. Canadian Journal of Philosophy 8'', no. 3, p. 448</ref> In this sense, the capitalists depend on the workers as the workers depend on the capitalists.<ref>Nino, Carlos Santiago. 1992. ''Rights''. NYU Press. p.343</ref> | Philosopher Gary Young has argued that the same basic reasoning that considers the individual to be forced to sell his labor to a capitalist in order to survive, also applies to the capitalist in that he is forced to hire a worker to survive otherwise his capital will be exhausted through consumption, leaving him nothing to purchase the necessities of life.<ref>Young, Gary. 1978. ''Justice and Capitalist Production. Canadian Journal of Philosophy 8'', no. 3, p. 448</ref> In this sense, the capitalists depend on the workers as the workers depend on the capitalists.<ref>Nino, Carlos Santiago. 1992. ''Rights''. NYU Press. p.343</ref> | ||
[[ | The idea of wage slavery may be in contradiction to the [[classical liberalism|classical liberal]] notion of [[self-ownership]]. Under this view, a person is not free unless he can sell himself, because if a person does not own themself, they must be owned by either another individual or a group of individuals. The ability for anyone to consent to an activity or action would then be placed in the hands of a third party. Further, the third-party's ownership would also be in the hands of yet another individual or group. This regression of ownership would transfer ad infinitum and leave no one with the ability to coordinate their own actions or those of anyone else. The conclusion is therefore that if under wage slavery, self-ownership is not legitimate, there is no right for anyone then to claim enslavement to wages in the first place.<ref name="humanaction">[http://www.mises.org/humanaction/pdf/ha_10.pdf interpersonal exchange] on The Ludwig von Mises Institute accessed at March 11, 2008</ref> Of course, wage slavery can be seen as a form of [[duress]], in that one must be a wage slave to survive. | ||
==Employment contracts== | |||
Some criticize wage slavery on strictly contractual grounds, e.g. [[David Ellerman]] and [[Carole Pateman]], arguing that the [[employment contract]] is a legal fiction in that it treats human beings juridically as mere tools or inputs by abdicating responsibility and self-determination, which the critics argue are inalienable. As Ellerman points out, "[t]he employee is legally transformed from being a co-responsible partner to being only an input supplier sharing no legal responsibility for either the input liabilities [costs] or the produced outputs [revenue, profits] of the employer’s business."<ref>[http://ellerman.org/Davids-Stuff/Econ&Pol-Econ/translatio-v-concessio-P-and-S-final.pdf Ellerman, David, ''Translatio versus Concessio'', 16]</ref> Such contracts are inherently invalid "since the person remain[s] a de facto fully capacitated adult person with only the contractual role of a non-person . . ." as it is impossible to physically transfer self-determination.<ref>[http://ellerman.org/Davids-Stuff/Econ&Pol-Econ/translatio-v-concessio-P-and-S-final.pdf Ellerman, David, ''Translatio versus Concessio'', 14]</ref> As Pateman argues:<blockquote> | |||
"The contractarian argument is unassailable all the time it is accepted that abilities can ‘acquire’ an external relation to an individual, and can be treated as if they were property. To treat abilities in this manner is also implicitly to accept that the ‘exchange’ between employer and worker is like any other exchange of material property . . . The answer to the question of how property in the person can be contracted out is that no such procedure is possible. Labour power, capacities or services, cannot be separated from the person of the worker like pieces of property."<ref>[http://ellerman.org/Davids-Stuff/Econ&Pol-Econ/translatio-v-concessio-P-and-S-final.pdf Ellerman, David, ''Translatio versus Concessio'', 32]</ref></blockquote> | |||
Critics of the employment contract advocate consistently applying "the principle behind every trial," i.e., "legal responsibility should be imputed in accordance with de facto responsibility," implying a workplace run jointly by the people who actually work in the firm.<ref>[http://ellerman.org/Davids-Stuff/Econ&Pol-Econ/translatio-v-concessio-P-and-S-final.pdf Ellerman, David, ''Translatio versus Concessio'', 27]</ref> The people who actually work in a firm are de facto responsible for the actions of said firm and thus have a legal claim to its outputs, as the contractarian critics argue. "Responsible human action, net value-adding or net value-subtracting, is not de facto transferable."<ref>[http://ellerman.org/Davids-Stuff/Econ&Pol-Econ/translatio-v-concessio-P-and-S-final.pdf Ellerman, David, ''Translatio versus Concessio'', 26]</ref> Suppliers (including shareholders), on the other hand, having no de facto responsibility, have no legal claim to the outputs. | |||
While a person may still voluntarily decide to contractually rent himself, just as today he may voluntarily decide to contractually sell himself, in a society where "the principle behind every trial" is consistently applied, neither contract would be legally enforceable, and the rented/sold individual would maintain at all times de jure responsibility for her/his actions, including legal claim to the fruits of their labor. In a modern liberal-capitalist society, the employment contract is enforced while the enslavement contract is not; the former being considered valid because of its consensual/non-coercive nature, and the later being considered inherently invalid, consensual or not. The noted economist [[Paul Samuelson]] described this discrepancy. | |||
<blockquote>"Since slavery was abolished, human earning power is forbidden by law to be | |||
capitalized. A man is not even free to sell himself; he must rent himself at a wage."<ref>[http://ellerman.org/Davids-Stuff/Econ&Pol-Econ/Inalienable-rights-and-contracts.pdf Ellerman, David, ''Inalienable Rights and Contracts'', 21]</ref></blockquote> | |||
Some advocates of laissez-faire capitalism, among them [[Robert Nozick]], address this inconsistency in modern societies, arguing that a consistently libertarian society would allow and regard as valid consensual/non-coercive enslavement contracts, rejecting the notion of inalienable rights. | |||
<blockquote>"The comparable question about an individual is whether a free system will allow him to sell himself into slavery. I believe that it would."<ref>[http://ellerman.org/Davids-Stuff/Econ&Pol-Econ/translatio-v-concessio-P-and-S-final.pdf Ellerman, David, ''Translatio versus Concessio'', 2]</ref></blockquote> | |||
Others like [[Murray Rothbard]] allow for the possibility of [[debt slavery]], asserting that a lifetime labour contract can be broken so long as the slave pays appropriate damages: | |||
<blockquote>"[I]f A has agreed to work for life for B in exchange for 10,000 grams of gold, he will have to return the proportionate amount of property if he terminates the arrangement and ceases to work."<ref>''Man, Economy, and State'', vol. I , p. 441</ref></blockquote> | |||
==See also== | ==See also== | ||
*[[Wage labor]] | *[[Wage labor]] | ||
*[[Basic income]] | |||
*[[Capitalist mode of production]] | *[[Capitalist mode of production]] | ||
*[[Firestone Liberian controversy]] | *[[Citizen's dividend]] | ||
*[[Classless society]] | |||
*[[Eight-hour day]] | |||
*[[Firestone Liberian controversy]] | |||
*[[Free association (communism and anarchism)]] | *[[Free association (communism and anarchism)]] | ||
*[[Proletariat]] | *[[Proletariat]] | ||
*[[Refusal of work]] | *[[Refusal of work]] | ||
*[[Salaryman]] | *[[Salaryman]] | ||
*[[Truck system]] | |||
*[[Working poor]] | |||
==Other works== | ==Other works== | ||
*Bruno Leipold, 2022. "Chains and Invisible Threads: Liberty and Domination in Marx's Account of Wage Slavery". Chapter of a larger book by Leipold. Chapter available from [https://www.academia.edu/42539884/Chains_and_Invisible_Threads_Liberty_and_Domination_in_Marxs_Account_of_Wage_Slavery Academia.edu] with email registration. | * Bruno Leipold, 2022. "Chains and Invisible Threads: Liberty and Domination in Marx's Account of Wage Slavery". Chapter of a larger book by Leipold. Chapter available from [https://www.academia.edu/42539884/Chains_and_Invisible_Threads_Liberty_and_Domination_in_Marxs_Account_of_Wage_Slavery Academia.edu] with email registration. | ||
==References== | ==References== | ||
{{Reflist|2}} | {{Reflist|2}} | ||
==External links == | |||
==External links== | |||
*[http://www.antenna.nl/~waterman/gorz.html André Gorz, Critique of Economic Reason and the Wage Slavery,1989] | *[http://www.antenna.nl/~waterman/gorz.html André Gorz, Critique of Economic Reason and the Wage Slavery,1989] | ||
*[http://www.whywork.org/ Creating Livable Alternatives to Wage Slavery] | *[http://www.whywork.org/ Creating Livable Alternatives to Wage Slavery] | ||
*[http://web.archive.org/web/20060214144545/http://newslavery.org/ Essay on Societal Slavery] | *[http://web.archive.org/web/20060214144545/http://newslavery.org/ Essay on Societal Slavery] | ||
*[http://economicdemocracy.org/miners.html How The Miners Were Robbed] 1907 anti-capitalist pamphlet by John Wheatley. | * [http://economicdemocracy.org/miners.html How The Miners Were Robbed] 1907 anti-capitalist pamphlet by John Wheatley. | ||
*[http://www.ditext.com/us/us.html Land and Liberty] | *[http://www.ditext.com/us/us.html Land and Liberty] | ||
*[http://www.eduardomartino.com/pages/slavery_brazil.html Photo-story on modern-day slavery in Brazil by photographer Eduardo Martino] | * [http://www.eduardomartino.com/pages/slavery_brazil.html Photo-story on modern-day slavery in Brazil by photographer Eduardo Martino] | ||
*[http://irregulartimes.com/saipan.html Special situations in the USA] | *[http://irregulartimes.com/saipan.html Special situations in the USA] | ||
*[http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labour/index.htm Wage Labour and Capital] | *[http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labour/index.htm Wage Labour and Capital] | ||
*[http://libcom.org/library/working-wages-martin-glaberman Working for Wages, Martin Glaberman and Seymour Faber] | *[http://libcom.org/library/working-wages-martin-glaberman Working for Wages, Martin Glaberman and Seymour Faber] | ||
*[http://www.ralphmag.org/FL/poverty-reading.html Slavery and the Welfare State] by Stephen Pimpare, from ''A People's History of Poverty in America'' | *[http://www.ralphmag.org/FL/poverty-reading.html Slavery and the Welfare State] by Stephen Pimpare, from ''A People's History of Poverty in America'' |