Sometimes I wonder if collectivist colabarate and come up with their pet rhetoric of the time. Which wouldn’t suprise me considering their nature. It seems like I have been hearing wage slavery arguments more increasingly recently, also the wage slavery article on wikipedia last time I checked a month ago was relativily small, now however its loaded with stuff. The article is very bias and hardly has any decent critisicism, just small things argued by Austrians like Rothbard. Anyways I contend that wage slavery cannot exist in a free market because you have a choice to leave your job. Anyways anyone have some comments on the subject that can give me ammo against this?
It’s very hard to argue with the wage slavery fanatics because
- Very few if any of them have much experience in the workplace
- Many of them have rarely worked at a station above slavery
- Many of them are terrible at managing their personal finances, and time preference
- Many of them have already bought into the notion of class warfare, without understanding the incentives that drive human action.
My suggestion is to ask them why people will not change their jobs? Even in our unfree western economies, the employee enjoys significantly less regulation and much more legal privilege than corporate and non-corporate employers do.
Obviously there is no such thing as wage slavery in a free market because employment is voluntary.
However, there is some truth to wage slavery under statism: Brad Spangler has two posts here and here, and I wrote a piece on it here.
I fully agree that wage slavery is entirley realistic under The Statist (a.k.a. Involuntary) Society. I think the potential for wage slavery will dramatically decrease with the abolishment of The State, the vindication of the free-market, & a society based on more voluntary principles.
Employment would be considerably more fluid & more mobile (i.e. some, under Statism, some may feel like they don’t have a choice to take the wage slave job & stick with it as long as possible, whereas in a stateless society, even in the initial phases of being stateless, such a prospect will seem much less necessary).
If anyone who did not know much about economics, or the implications of what this means, I would aptly use the metaphor that everyone would act similar to free-agents (ala sports) in that no one is required to be tied down in one occupation or one company beyond contractual agreements, and that contracts come & go as long as much as an individual’s desire & situation permit (not everyone will care to learn a new skill every 3 months, & neither will everyone just bother sticking with one skill.occupation for the rest of their life; in other words, neither “under-specialization” nor “over-specialization” will be as much of a problem, as it seems as it often is under our current Statist society).
Well, thank you for that, Mr Spangler’s post opened my eyes, I will now take his sincere and unbiased advice to join the IWW. What nonsense.
There is, simply put, no such thing as wage slavery. There is slavery, in which I submit you to my will through use, or threat of, coercion. Under this circumstance you lose utility ex ante and I gain it. You are forced to do what I dictate out of fear for your life and health. On the other hand, there I can pay you wage, which you voluntarily accept and we both gain ex ante utility.
I can either coerce you or make a contractual agreement with you in order to get your labour. The moment any coercion comes into it, I am no longer paying you wages I am making you my slave.
Stop pandering to the left.
For all of its problems there is still some semblance of a free market in the US and even much of Western Europe. Those that have a low enough time preferance can find a job if they like it. Nobody is being rounded up and forced into concentration camps. These leftists would have us believe all factories have “Arbeit Macht Frei” written above theirs doors.
Very good read. Thanks. btw, I sent a friend add request.
He pointed to Spangler. His conclusions and Spangler’s are not necessarily the same. I found his blog entry very well reasoned and even handed.
Employees already are much freer than employers under the state. While the situation is not optimal, they have a clear advantage.
People get fired for sexual harassment, but the firm pays the damages. Firms pay for wrongful dismissal, but employees are never never (or almost never) charged with breaking their employment contract.
Many employees qualify for unemployment. In Canada, our businesses pay into the employee’s unemployment by mandate. So if the business is failing, and the employee is laid off, he’s paid from funds the business had to contribute in advance. Perhaps if they had that capital, they might not have had to lay off in the first place!
The whole notion of wage “slavery” is so ridiculous to me, even under the state. Businesses are enslaved to labour, but one has to be on the other side of the payroll chequebook to understand that.
Slavery is a strong word. We’re all slaves under the state, but be clear. Labour gets enormous state privilege.
I don’t agree with calls to join the IWW at all, but I think you are over-simplying the prospect that wage-slavery doesn’t exist at all. Of course, for what the term “wage-slavery” describes, isn’t so much wage slavery as it is as “employment in a limited market constantly intervened with by The State”.
“Wage Slavery” jobs would actually flourish without The State, but the limitation of employment these jobs (many other jobs, say, like IT) experience under The State would eventually dissipate.
Imo, the term overshadows the overall economical nonsense (& in some cases, prolonged econmical slavery, such as when the bush administration changed the laws concerning bankruptcy: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7575010/ ) that all experience to some extend via The State’s existence.
If/When The State is eliminated, & there are still individuals running around preaching the injustice of having a wage job at Starbucks (assuming it is still around), I think people should promptly shun them & tell em to thank their lucky stars they no longer have to pay income taxes which end up funding State nonsense like the War on Errorism.
Those that bring up wage slavery arguments miss an important thing about liberty. That is, their argument is equivalent to asking the employer to be their slave, providing whatever payment they find right. It is also equivalent to cartelization, because although each individual employee would settle for the offered wage, the group believes this is unfair.
Their rationale is that those who have the means of production are in a position of power. But they do not see that lowering wages helps both sides: raising production and lowering unemployment. So their argument is essentially equivalent, again, to forming a monopoly that excludes the unemployed, so those remaining benefit from a higher wage.
As I see it, they’re no libertarians, even if they call themselves anarcho-syndicalists or otherwise. They would find more peace in communist statism. And they’re probably the kind of people that would justify stealing and pillaging with phrases like “claiming what they’re rightfully entitled to”.
Indeed, even though I only saw this post right after posting another post which would seem to say otherwise, I agree.
I actually only read his entry after I posted. So that was aimed at Spangler and anybody who agrees. I actually happen to agree with most of what he says, but why he draws on Brag Spangler is beyond me. The only conclusion that was reached in Sage’s blog entry was that government harms the poor. This isn’t new to anybody. My problem is not with the conclusion but the way it is twisted in some anti - capitalist mentality.
To be honest, I would agree with some of the conclusions reached. Their significance on the other hand I would dispute. So what, they’ve proved workers are worse off as a result of the state? They can join the rest of us then in attempting to abolish it, I very doubt that that would happen since the workers have been bought long ago.
This is just attempting to portray the workers as Orwell’s character Boxer, it isn’t valid. Big buisness isn’t necessarily the enemy and the poor aren’t necessarily our friends.
I think it was Engels (could be Lenin though) who thought that outside each communist factory should be a sign to the effect that “Abandon all autonomy all ye who enter here.” Pretty much sums up what real slavery is about - it isn’t capitalist.
Then why use the term “wage slavery”? It term seems to be contradictory. A slave is forced to work for someone (in-voluntary relationship), and a person who is hired and gets paid isn’t forced to work, like a slave is – he’s just bound by contract (voluntary relationship).
I object to the general application some use the term wage slavery for (which is usually low paying jobs, I imagine), but I can see certain instances where an individual may in fact be a wage slave, but it’s very possible that the person themselves is responsible for being in that position (i.e. the many MANY Americans who are wage slaves by their own fault by continually mounting up debt & subsequently not having money aside from just paying the bills).
In that instance, one should not be called a “wage slave”, but an idiot with a high preference (possibly) that needs to learn how to save. Those who rail against the massive wage of slavery of the state as an epidemic, are either kidding themselves due to ignorance, a simple misunderstanding, or worse, out of denial due to their own behavior. They might as well rail against the potential for mass wage slavery in the stateless society, lol.
However, with The State’s monopolization over charity (welfare system), I can easily see a normally responsible individual being temporarily trapped in a cycle of wage slavery until circumstances which are external (i.e. medical costs due to an accident where either no one was at fault, or someone else is) better, such as said medical costs are paid off before the individual becomes bankrupt.
Worst case scenario could in fact be homelessness for some, but that is not a call for package deal State solutions (or any for that matter, as none of them have been effective) either, which thus far, have had the effect of throwing a small nuke in the middle of the ocean, praying it destroys the hurricane on the other side of the planet.
I suppose you can say that these cases are the exception, but it would be a generalization to assume that all those who become bankrupt (which, last i checked, medical costs were a primary cause of bankruptcy) are irresponsible individuals, as well.
Without The State, I could easily imagine responsible individuals who would normally become collateral damage, due to The State’s existence, intervention, etc. & not by their own fault, would no longer have to worry about such, as long as they remain responsible, within the stateless/voluntary/anarchistic society.
The state does not monopolize charity. There are thousands of private charities in existence that operate without government funding. There are friends and family, churches, etc. To read this forum sometimes you’d think we were in Cuba.
Nobody has a right to sustenance, only the right to seek sustenance. Unless the state is the sole employer with which you can trade your labor for sustenance, there is no such thing as wage slavery.
You’re just making a knee-jerk reaction. Brad Spangler’s posts on the matter are quite sensible and doesn’t deviate from market anarchism, as all he’s really pointing out is that state-imposed barriers to entry causes the alternatives to wage labor to become either disincentivized or illegal. The term “slavery” probably isn’t appropriate to describe what the situation is, but it would also be ridiculous to deny the effects of barriers to entry.
I think you need to actually read and comprehend the arguments instead of going on a knee-jerk anti-leftist crusade.
Some of the stuff I have read from Spangler is ok, but when he writes about labour or business, he’s absolutely clueless.
Most collectivist arguments boil down to one thing: the idea that people have an inherent right to a middle class lifestyle.
unless you divest them of that notion, any other argument rolls off them like water off a ducks back.