Understanding Wage Slavery

END EXPLOITATION 

The majority of people are disillusioned and have deep questions about the prospects of life under capitalism. Our aim is to create an independent, mass workers movement for socialism.  Building up a mass workers’ movement for socialism does not mean that every person must be an expert on Marxist economics but only to be clear on the basic principles of socialism. People make revolution out of necessity, not out of a theory, but out of a practical, understanding of the need for revolution. The working class must emancipate itself. No one can do it for them. The Socialist Party are not made up “social workers” who try to patch up the problems of capitalism and make life “better” for the workers, but  instead are workers organising with fellow workers to fight for our interests. We want the workers to take possession of the means of production and abolish the wage system. The Socialist Party’s task is to explain every aspect of the worker’s situation, every aspect of their exploitation without exception. Our propaganda must reach out to the majority and explain why socialism is the only solution. We must start from the appearance of things and patiently explain again and again why capitalism is the source of the workers’ misery. Capitalist society is built around the idea that some people should profit off of others. We think that this is why there are so many people living in poverty right now at the same time that there are a few people with incredible wealth. Part of why capitalism continues to exist is that we can’t get a lot of what we need and want unless we have money. Most of us can’t get money unless we work for someone else. This means our bosses have a lot of control over our lives. If we lose our jobs and can’t find new ones, we risk losing our homes, losing access to health care, let alone being able to spend money on the things we enjoy. Bosses know that if they fire us we won’t have an income anymore. Many bosses use this to push people around on the job. We basically give up our democratic rights on the job. We don’t have a right to free speech at work, for instance. The boss can tell us what to say and what not to say. We think that’s wrong too

We are not utopians. The struggle for reforms is a labour of Sisyphus. Every gain extracted from capitalists and their state they will try to take back. Capitalism cannot be reformed. It must be destroyed. We think that all people should have their basic needs met – people should have enough food, and safe secure homes, access to medical care, access to entertainment and the arts, and so on. We think it’s terrible that our society wastes so many resources on the lifestyles of a few super rich people while so many poor people go without the bare necessities. We think if we did away with capitalism this wastefulness would go away and there would be plenty for everyone. We want to replace capitalism with a world that is more democratic. The very essence of capitalism is slavery: the enslavement of workers by the capitalist class. Today, all workers suffer under capitalist slavery: either wage slavery or physical, chattel slavery. There are currently more than 35.8 million people physically enslaved as chattel. Approximately 95% of the 6.4 billion persons now living suffer under capitalist wage slavery: 6.175 billion. When you read the word slavery, it may seem as though it couldn't possibly be that people are literally slaves today--slavery seems like an outmoded form of life from previous centuries. Whatever we feel, slavery is very much a fact of life for all people in the world today. A person is a slave if he has lost control over his life and is dominated by someone or something--whether he is aware of this or not. Wage slavery is the condition in which a person must sell his or her labor-power, submitting to the authority of an employer, in order to merely subsist.

A capitalist slave is:

1.      Forced to work at a "job" owned by a capitalist (owner of jobs, the means of production, and the profit from the jobs) through necessity or through mental or physical threat

2.      Owned or controlled by a capitalist "employer" (wages, hours, working conditions)

3.      Dehumanised, treated as a commodity: a faceless entity filling a slot, a hired hand

4.      At the mercy of the capitalist: the capitalist can--and now does so with a vengeance--destroy jobs by "staff reduction," mechanize jobs (e.g. robots welding automobiles), or take jobs to a cheaper labor location

5.      Without a voice as to how much profit the capitalist can make from the worker's labor and cannot bargain for higher wages or safe working conditions

6.      Unable to support himself and his family when he cannot find a job

7.      Reduced to poverty or destitution or death by an ever-reduced job "market"

Just as plantation owners in the American South and the capitalists who made millions from the international slave trade in earlier decades of our history brainwashed most Americans into believing that chattel slavery was a "fact of nature." In the same vein, capitalists have programmed most contemporary people into believing that the evils of capitalist slavery are necessary to the smooth running of society. The capitalist system of greed, selfishness, subjugation, and exploitation has camouflaged itself the illusion of equal opportunity for all and has seduced people into ignoring its contradictions, injustices, and malevolence. Just as the world attempts to rid itself of chattel and debt slavery with the realization that slavery is not "natural"—but in fact evil and unnatural-- workers throughout the world must now free themselves from capitalist slavery. We must replace capitalism with a socialist cooperative commonwealth society that ensures that all people can live free from slavery of any kind and assure that every person has the means whereby they can sustain themselves and lead a free and productive life.

To overthrow capitalism, we must work hard to understand just what has led to our enslavement and what kinds of actions will be necessary to free ourselves from these insidious chains of servitude. We first need to understand the basics of our present economic situation. You have already endured the subjugation of a "boss" or "director" or "committee," and you know that the coercion, even if masked as "job description," "supervisor evaluation," or "company directive" can be as repressive as if there were literal chains fastened around your arms and feet.  Under the "wage slave" system you don't receive the full compensation for your work. By the very nature of the employer-employee relationship, you get less compensation than you should, because the employer takes excessive profits. Let's take a look at how this happens by examining a very simple example of an exchange:

The raw material to produce a sack of ground wheat, let's say, costs $1.00. The means of production for this job costs $1.00. The owner of the means of production (the capitalist) pays you $1.00 for your labour-power. The capitalist sells the sack of ground wheat for $8.00. Your labour has turned $1.00 dollar of wheat plus $1.00 in production costs plus $1.00 for your labour-power, into a commodity which is sold for $8.00. The profit is $5.00. The owner of the means of production (the capitalist) makes 5 times more in profit than you do in wages, plus he owns and can sell the means of production whenever he wants. And he can select cheaper labour as he pleases. A wage slave can't quit an oppressive job to find a less slave-like job, because in our present society, almost all jobs involve wage-slavery. So the options are obey and stay, die of starvation, or become a vagrant, which is illegal. Yet another reason why to oppose capitalism is because this economic institution acts as a parasite. Every worker, no matter how much they must produce to feed themselves, must produce extra to feed their boss, employer, or group of stockholders. The income is split between the costs of industry, the employer, and the employee. Fourth, fifth, and sixth cuts are taken out by the state, the middleman, and the final distributor. Each one of these groups take their toll on the product but contribute nothing. They simply stamp it as approved, living off of the proceeds from the sales without producing or creating. If there is an initial displeasure with capitalism, it is this: the many who work receive very little, while those few who do not labour receive the greatest income. In a single word, we socialists have called this exploitation, justified solely by legal possession.

The ravages of wage slavery are becoming clear for all to see and feel. We either overthrow this new slavery or we will continue as slaves. We must realise that our economic situation at present--a very few obscenely rich people owning companies and corporations and having illegally seized state and federal political power--is one which we can and must change. Our current economic and political circumstances are not written in stone; humans have lived under very different political and economic conditions throughout our history. We must begin to overthrow this present state of affairs where all workers suffer under capitalist wage-slavery. The political system and the economic situation should be directed toward the welfare of all, not just a few. We can bring about these changes; it is not impossible. We must first make all workers aware of our present plight and then begin in all possible ways to overthrow the new slavery, producing material changes leading to political freedom and economic equality of opportunity through building the cooperative socialist commonwealth