Wage Slavery
ex Wiki
QUOTE
Wage slavery refers to a situation perceived as quasi-voluntary
slavery,[1]
where a person's
livelihood
depends on wages,
especially when the dependence is total and immediate.[2][3]
It is a
negatively connoted term used to draw an analogy between
slavery and
wage labor by focusing on similarities between owning and
renting
a person. The term wage slavery has been used to criticize
economic exploitation and
social stratification, with the former seen primarily as unequal bargaining
power between labor and capital (particularly when workers are paid
comparatively low wages, e.g. in
sweatshops),[4]
and the latter as a lack of
workers' self-management, fulfilling job choices and leisure in an economy.[5][6][7]
The criticism of social stratification covers a wider range of employment
choices bound by the pressures of a
hierarchical society to perform otherwise unfulfilling work that deprives
humans of their "species character"[8]
not only under threat of
starvation
or poverty,
but also of
social stigma and
status
diminution.[9][10][11]
The exchange of money and debt for work traces back to the disintegration of the "playful"[12] work in hunter-gatherer gift economies and the establishment of prostitution as a "fundamental feature of human civilization".[13] Similarities between wage labor and slavery were noted in ancient Rome by Cicero,[14] while the pervasive practice of voluntary slavery in medieval Russia indicates the previous historical coexistence of slavery and voluntary choice.[15] 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.[16][17] With the advent of the industrial revolution, thinkers such as Proudhon and Marx elaborated the comparison between wage labor and slavery in the context of a critique of societal property not intended for active personal use,[18][19] while Luddites emphasized the dehumanization brought about by machines.
The introduction of wage labor in 18th century Britain was met with
resistance – giving rise to the principles of
syndicalism.[20][21][22][23]
Historically, some labor organizations and individual social activists have
espoused
workers' self-management or
worker cooperatives as possible alternatives to wage labor.[6][22]
UNQUOTE
Is being a wage slave better than being a tax slave? Yes! A wage slave can move.
Tax slaves are trapped, unless they move to a less rapacious jurisdiction.