Difference between revisions of "Wage slavery"

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−	==Opinions on psychological effects==	+	Hello! ekddgkd interesting ekddgkd site! I'm really like it! Very, very ekddgkd good!
−	[[Image:WilhelmvonHumboldt.jpg|thumb|right|290px|[[Wilhelm von Humboldt]]]]	+
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−	Analysis of the psychological implications of wage slavery goes back to the [[Age of Enlightenment|Enlightenment]] era. In his 1791 book On the Limits of State Action, classical liberal thinker Wilhelm von Humboldt explained how "whatever does not spring from a man's free choice, or is only the result of instruction and guidance, does not enter into his very nature; he does not perform it with truly human energies, but merely with mechanical exactness"— and so when the laborer works under external control, "we may admire what he does, but we despise what he is."<ref>[http://books.zcommunications.org/chomsky/year/year-c01-s06.html Year 501: Chapter One [6/12&#93;<!--Bot-generated title-->]</ref>	+
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−	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>	+
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−	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>	+
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−	[[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>	+
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−	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<!--Bot-generated title-->]</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>	+
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−	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>	+
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−	===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]].	+
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−	In the 21st century [[Dubai]], employers pay low wages to many workers—often less than £120 ($178.83) a month, for a 60-hour work week. Often 'employment contracts', if they are given, "are not worth the paper they are written on," and [[collective bargaining]] and [[trade unions]] are illegal in Dubai. It all starts in their home countries, often India or Bangladesh, where local recruitment agents promise them high salaries and generous overtime payments. In these workers' home countries they are charged a "visa" or "transit" fee, averaging 200,000 taka, or £2,000 ($2,980), which in these home countries is supposed to be illegal.	+
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−	The workers pay the fee because they believe the figures they've been promised of future wages. However in most cases, it will take them the entire two-to-three year contract for them just to pay back that fee and break even.<ref>{{Cite news| url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/panorama/low/front_page/newsid_7981000/7981320.stm | work=BBC News | title=Dubai: From riches to rags | date=2009-04-06 | accessdate=2010-04-09}}</ref>	+
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−	In another contemporary case [[unions]] representing teachers in Louisiana have filed a complaint with state authorities alleging that a Los Angeles recruiting firm broke the law by holding more than 350 Filipino teachers in 'virtual servitude' in order to hold onto their jobs in five Louisiana parish school systems, including New Orleans' Recovery School District.<ref>[http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2009-10-01-filipino-teachers_N.htm By Greg Toppo, USA TODAY Retrieved October-4-09]</ref>	+
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−	In his book, ''[[Disciplined Minds]]'', [[Jeff Schmidt (writer)|Jeff Schmidt]] points out that professionals are trusted to run organizations in the interests of their employers. Because employers cannot be on hand to manage every decision, professionals are trained to “ensure that each and every detail of their work favors the right interests–or skewers the disfavored ones” in the absence of overt control:	+
−	{{quote|''The resulting professional is an obedient thinker, an intellectual property whom employers can trust to experiment, theorize, innovate and create safely within the confines of an assigned ideology.''<ref>Schmidt, ''[http://disciplinedminds.tripod.com/ Disciplined Minds – A Critical Look at Salaried Professionals And The Soul-Battering System That Shapes Their Lives]'', Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2000, p. 16.</ref>}}	+
	==Worker cooperatives, syndicalism and self-management==		==Worker cooperatives, syndicalism and self-management==

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Revision as of 23:49, 19 October 2013

Wage slavery refers to a situation where a person's livelihood depends on wages, especially when the dependence is total and immediate.^[1][2] The term draws an analogy between slavery and wage labor, and may refer to an "[un]equal bargaining situation between labor and capital", particularly where workers are paid comparatively low wages (e.g. sweatshops),^[3] or it may draw similarities between owning and employing a person, which equates the term with a lack of workers' self-management.^[4][5][6] The latter covers a wider range of employment choices bound by the pressures of a hierarchical social environment e.g. working for a wage not only under threat of starvation or poverty, but also of social stigma or status diminution.^[7][8][9]

Similarities between wage labor and slavery were noted at least as early as Cicero ^[10] and Aristotle.^[11] With the advent of the industrial revolution, thinkers such as Proudhon and Marx elaborated these comparisons in the context of a critique of property not intended for active personal use.^[12][13] Before the American Civil War, Southern defenders of African American slavery also invoked the concept of wage slavery to favorably compare the condition of their slaves to workers in the North.^[14][15] The introduction of wage labor in 18th century Britain was met with resistance – giving rise to the principles of syndicalism.^{[16][17][18][19]}

The use of the term wage slave by labor organizations may originate from the labor protests of the Lowell Mill Girls in 1836.^[20] 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.^[21][22]

Historically, some labor organizations and individual social activists, have espoused workers' self-management or worker cooperatives as possible alternatives to wage labor.^[5][18]

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Worker cooperatives, syndicalism and self-management

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Some social activists objecting to the market system or price system of wage working, historically have considered syndicalism, worker cooperatives, workers' self-management and workers' control as possible alternatives to the current wage system.^{[4][5][6][18]}

Labor and government

The American philosopher John Dewey believed that until "industrial feudalism" is replaced by "industrial democracy," politics will be "the shadow cast on society by big business". Thomas Ferguson has postulated in his investment theory of party competition that the undemocratic nature of economic institutions under capitalism causes elections to become occasions when blocs of investors coalesce and compete to control the state.^[23]

Noam Chomsky has argued that political theory tends to blur the 'elite' function of government:^[24]

“Modern political theory stresses Madison's belief that "in a just and a free government the rights both of property and of persons ought to be effectually guarded." But in this case too it is useful to look at the doctrine more carefully. There are no rights of property, only rights to property that is, rights of persons with property,...^[25] ""[In] [r]epresentative democracy, as in, say, the United States or Great Britain… there is a monopoly of power centralized in the state, and secondly– and critically– […] the representative democracy is limited to the political sphere and in no serious way encroaches on the economic sphere... 'That is, 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…”

In this regard Chomsky has used Bakunin's theories about an "instinct for freedom",^[26] the militant history of labor movements, Kropotkin's mutual aid evolutionary principle of survival and Marc Hauser's theories supporting an innate and universal moral faculty,^[27] to explain the incompatibility of oppression with certain aspects of human nature.^[28][29]

Influence on environmental degradation

Loyola University philosophy professor John Clark and libertarian socialist philosopher Murray Bookchin have criticized the system of wage labor for encouraging environmental destruction, arguing that a self-managed industrial society would better manage the environment. They, like other anarchists,^[30] attribute much of the industrial revolution's pollution to the "hierarchical" and "competitive" economic relations accompanying it.^{[31][32][33][34][35]}

Criticism

According to Eric Foner, most abolitionists in the U.S. regarded the analogy of wage earners to slaves, symbolized by the term "wage slavery," as spurious. 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."^[36] Most abolitionists believed that wage workers were "neither wronged nor oppressed".^[37] Former slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass described his elation when he took a paying job, declaring that "Now I am my own master." According to Douglass, wage labor did not represent oppression but fair exchange and former slaves for the first time receiving the fruits of their labor.^[38]

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.^[39] In this sense, the capitalists depend on the workers as the workers depend on the capitalists.^[40]

In mainstream economic philosophy, wage labor is seen as the voluntary sale of one's own time and efforts, just like a carpenter would sell a chair, or a farmer would sell wheat. It is considered neither an antagonistic nor abusive relationship, and carries no particular moral implications. From this perspective, the problem of poverty comes from an unequal distribution of income and can be addressed by government programs like social security and progressive taxation, and does not reflect a fundamental flaw in the capitalist system.^[41]

Wage slavery is also in contradiction to the 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.^[42] 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."^[43] 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.^[44] As Pateman argues:

"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."^[45]

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.^[46] 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."^[47] 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.

"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."^[48]

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.

"The comparable question about an individual is whether a free system will allow him to sell himself into slavery. I believe that it would."^[49]

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:

"[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."^[50]

See also

• Wage labor
• Basic income
• Capitalist mode of production
• Citizen's dividend
• Classless society
• Eight-hour day
• Firestone Liberian controversy
• Free association (communism and anarchism)
• Proletariat
• Refusal of work
• Salaryman
• Truck system
• Working poor

References

114. ^Carrier, Jerry "The Making of the Slave Class" Algora Publishing 2010

External links

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• André Gorz, Critique of Economic Reason and the Wage Slavery,1989
• Creating Livable Alternatives to Wage Slavery
• Essay on Societal Slavery
• How The Miners Were Robbed 1907 anti-capitalist pamphlet by John Wheatley.
• Land and Liberty
• Photo-story on modern-day slavery in Brazil by photographer Eduardo Martino
• Special situations in the USA
• Wage Labour and Capital
• Working for Wages, Martin Glaberman and Seymour Faber
• Slavery and the Welfare State by Stephen Pimpare, from A People's History of Poverty in America