[mgrthrow]

Slavery means lots of things. Chattel slavery, yes, but also forced labor like in us prisons. Indentured labor, child soldiers, forced marriage, etc etc.

The concept of "wage slavery" is basically, "you are not free to not earn a wage because you will starve". It's also easy to draw parallels between the commodification of ones labor and slavery.

It's a term that is not new, is widely used, and debated plenty. The incorrect response is to say, "that's a useless way to think". Show some intellectual curiosity - why do people believe that, what values do they hold, what are their reasons, which arguments do I disagree with, etc.

I'm a socialist, I don't think capitalists have a "useless way to think about the world", I have fundamental critiques of specific policies and different values on certain social behaviors.

[kazinator]

Struggle slavery; you're not free not to struggle on the face of the Earth, otherwise you will not survive. Man, how dare the universe spring forth creatures, yet foist that on them.

[heavyset_go]

Wage labor is an imposition on people by people with power, wage labor is not a natural law or state of being. It is not unlike feudalism in that respect.

[least]

> The concept of "wage slavery" is basically, "you are not free to not earn a wage because you will starve".

This is the baseline for basically pretty much all life on earth. You will die unless you perform labor to interrupt death. Your body itself must perform labor in order to generate the energy and to allocate the resources you provide it to survive as well. If you expand the definition of slavery to encompass labor, then all living things are inherently enslaved until they die. Philosophically that might be interesting in its own right but it's not actually a very cogent critique of labor nor does it justify the use of the word, "slavery."

[heavyset_go]

Wage labor isn't a natural baseline, though. It's an arbitrary system that benefits certain people at the expense of others, and is just as natural as feudalism, monarchism, etc.

If you want to make an argument from history and nature, you can't ignore that early human societies didn't have wage labor, nor were there asset owning classes that didn't work and depended on the labor of others. Those kind of relations eventually erupted with the advent of agriculture that allowed people to settle and accumulate assets.

[TheCoelacanth]

Yes, but with the invention of private property, people are no longer allowed to labor directly for their own survival as subsistence farmers without first working for wages and then purchasing land.

It seems strange now that wage labor is so normalized, but at the start of the industrial revolution, many subsistence farmers were forced off of the land they had farmed for generations as it was turned into large private farms and instead had to seek wage labor.

[kelseyfrog]

It might help to read more about Marxism to avoid a reductio ad absurdum.

The general argument as laid out in Capital vol 1 is highlighted in the working day[1]. This section introduces the contradiction between laborer and capitalist, namely, that a laborer is paid for his or her time, while the capitalist in turn receives the product of creation.

The point is that this is a rather strange exchange. Instead of the laborer's product of creation being bought as a commodity, the capitalist pays the laborer for their time. The capitalist makes a profit (in their subsequent transactions[2]) because the the money gained by reselling what the laborer produces nets a profit[3]. Were that this was a fair trade, there would be no profit to make.[4]

Extending this to all labor is evidently disingenuous as the argument is contingent on the exchange of money and I hope at this point, given the above, you can see why. All life on earth doesn't participate in economy of labor and earn wages. If you agree, and I hope you do, that such a proposition is absurd, then I kindly refer back to the first sentence of this comment as we're now on the same page.

1. Vol 1 Chapter 10. Section 1

2. The C-M in the M-C-M circuit.

3. Yes, even when accounting for raw materials and the investment in the instruments of production.

4. If you're yelling at the screen, "But that's the point!" then yes, we're also in agreement. This maybe one of those "so so so close" moments.

[luckylion]

> The concept of "wage slavery" is basically, "you are not free to not earn a wage because you will starve".

Slavery usually includes ownership and force. I believe "wage slavery" is mostly used today because of the connotations of slavery that the user wants to hang their idea on to, but also clearly knows that it's not really it. Like "chicken holocaust" isn't really a holocaust, even though some chicken farms are terrible places, but it's really not the same.

You wouldn't talk of nutritional slavery even though you're not free not to get nutrition, because you'll die. "Wage slavery" very much falls in the same corner, I think. Take away everything else, and imagine an individual being alone on earth. There's fruits to eat and wood around to build a shelter. If the individual doesn't reach for those fruits, and doesn't use the wood, they'll be hungry and cold, and eventually they'll starve. Are they a slave?

[eyelidlessness]

> Slavery usually includes ownership and force.

Ownership applies very specifically to chattel slavery, and does not apply to the vast majority of extant slavery today.

> I believe "wage slavery" is mostly used today because of the connotations of slavery that the user wants to hang their idea on to, but also clearly knows that it's not really it.

No, it’s a much more sincere concept than that, from an analysis that workers are forced to do labor which enriches others—in an involuntary exchange for a disproportionately small fraction of the fruits of that labor—rather than doing either the direct labor which would satisfy their own needs or the collective labor whose fruits would be shared by all.

The force is rooted in private property; importantly: private in this usage is jargon, meant as ownership of productive means, not as individual personal ownership of arbitrary stuff. To the extent productive property ownership is concentrated and pervasive, which is a nearly total extent in most of the world, this force is practically unavoidable for the vast majority of workers.

Your likening, along with several others, of waged labor to basic labors like nutrition or shelter is not wrong but misses the point. For “wage slaves” (quoted not to dismiss its validity but to indicate I’m still engaged with clarifying the term), the only options available to acquire food and shelter are:

- work to enrich others in exchange for a fraction of their productive output

- become an owner of productive private property and an employer of other “wage slaves”

- become an owner of some productive private property and voluntarily share it with others (to the extent that’s achievable, practical and sustainable)

- reject productive private property claims (which itself may be punishable by more explicitly forced labor! but in any case is a high risk to other aspects of one’s autonomy however limited)

If there truly are fruits to eat and woods around from which to build a shelter, from which anyone could freely choose that lifestyle rather than wage labor, then the term “wage slavery” would definitely be as sensational as you suggest. But for, well, nearly everyone who works for wages, that isn’t true. The options above are the only ones available, and acquiring private productive property is an exceedingly limited pursuit regardless of how one wants to use or share it. For the nearly everyone else remaining, they must toil so others profit or they must do crimes.