Wage Slavery

SLAVERY IS A POWERFUL word that conjures up vivid and emotional images of intense social, economic, and political conflict. Slavery gives rise to a world in which the desperate and woeful existence of those bound up as slaves include with cruelty, violence, and economic exploitation. By and large, being a slave has come to mean that the person has lost his or her social identity, and thus that person can be regarded as mere property and compelled to compulsory labor.

However, slavery need not be strictly defined in terms of chattel slavery through the literal ownership of one human being by another, but rather can take account of other forms of economic subordination and dependency. Wage slavery refers to a situation whereby workers, though freed from the actual chains of chattel slavery, may nonetheless be held in virtual chains by their absolute reliance upon wages. With limited economic and social opportunities, wages turn out to be a laborers' one and only means of support, and if those wages are barely enough to maintain a subsistence existence, then in effect a worker is trapped into a form of involuntary labor. Theoretically, a person is free to choose not to work under unacceptable conditions, but given limited opportunities and the necessity for one's own or one's family's economic survival, the worker in essence becomes a de facto slave since the ability to choose has for all practical purposes been removed. The lack of adequate income absolutely diminishes the ability of a worker to both save and invest and hence makes that person, and other family members, more vulnerable to poverty now and in the future. Higher incidences of poverty also tend to severely constrain the social, political, and economic opportunities of workers and thereby puts them at greater risk of being trapped in a low-wage, dead-end job.

Since slavery remains such a compelling metaphor, with roots dating back through thousands of years of human history, the use of the image of slavery in critically analyzing the plight of labor is apparent, even if not universally accepted as appropriate. In the mid-19th century there were a number of political writers and social reformers who questioned the progress of capitalism and used analogies to the institution of slavery to support their arguments. The philosopher and political economist Karl Marx relied on the image of slavery in a number of his writings. Indeed, one of the most oft-quoted expressions from Marx's writings makes clear use of this graphic image of oppression when he asserted, [Page 1144]“workers have nothing to lose, but their chains.” In Kapital, Marx contends that the working class is treated as an appendage in the production process and analogous to Roman slaves held in chains in the days of antiquity, while wage laborers in capitalistic societies are bound to owners by “invisible threads.” In Marx's analysis the relationship between employer and wage-la-borer was clearly not purely voluntary nor was it mutually beneficial. The owners of capital and the employers of the working class used the structure and influence of capitalistic forces to maintain their control over wage laborers. According to Marx, in “former times” owners had relied on political control and legislation to impose and secure control, but could now rely upon the institutions of capitalism to subordinate the working class.

...