> 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?
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.
> 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.
You say that, but that's not at all how it worked when that very thing has been tried by groups like the Khmer Rouge. Who, incidentally, took people from their homes at gunpoint in Phenom Penh, forced them to work for nothing, and even stole their kids from them. You can claim that's an implementation detail, but when you point out that workers collectives have trouble working on a very small scale, that's an indictment of the idea that this idea could work on a national scale, because organizational problems only get harder the bigger you are.
And despite the Khmer Rouge ostensibly doing that for the "collective good", being marched out of your home to farm rice at gunpoint seems to me to be a lot closer to what most people think of as "slavery" than choosing an employer, choosing what type of work to do, being able to obtain free education online for nearly anything, being able to start a business of one's own (including worker collectives, if you wish), and being able to get loans to start that business. All of which are regular activities for us "wage slaves" here.
It seems I haven't made my point very clearly: I wasn't suggesting that there's ample self-maintaining land for everyone, that's clearly not the case. But if there was, would its inhabitants be slaves? And who's slaves would they be? Nature's? God's? Their own?
Is a self-employed black smith who owns everything downstream a slave? He'll mine the ore, smelt the iron, produce his own coal for his fire etc etc. Still, he'll have to sell his product at a fraction of what it's worth it to his customers. Like your "wage slaves", it'll be a very large fraction of it, but it's a fraction, they wouldn't buy it if it cost more than it's worth to them. Is the black smith a slave?
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?