Wage Labour - Criticisms

Criticisms

The first point of criticism is on the freedom of the worker. Wage-labour societies emerged from removing the alternative means of self-sustainment used previously by peasants. Historically, whenever people had their own land to cultivate—as was the case for most of the population in pre-industrial England, colonial Kenya, colonial Australia, or colonial Namibia—they did not commit to work for an employer. In such cases, laws were promulgated to expel peasants from their lands, and to make the price of the land artificially high so that a common person would have to work an entire lifetime to buy it.

The second point of criticism is that after people have been compelled by economic necessity to no feasible alternative than that of wage labour, exploitation occurs; thus the claim that wage labor is "voluntary" on the part of the labourer is considered a red herring as the relationship is only entered into due to systemic coercion brought about by the inequality of bargaining power between labor and capital as classes.

Wage labour is often criticized as "wage slavery" by socialists and most anarchists. They see wage labour as a major, if not defining, aspect of hierarchical industrial systems. In Marxist terminology, wage labour is defined as "the mode of production where the worker sells their labour power as a commodity", and a wage labourer is one who sells their labour power.

Some opponents of capitalism compare wage labour to slavery (see wage slavery). For example, Karl Marx said "The slave, together with his labour-power, was sold to his owner once for all... The labourer, on the other hand, sells his very self, and that by fractions... He to the capitalist class; and it is for him... to find a buyer in this capitalist class."

While most opponents of wage labor blame the capitalist owners of the means of production for its existence, most anarchists and libertarian socialists also hold the state as equally responsible as it exists as a tool utilized by capitalists to subsidize themselves and protect the institution of private ownership of the means of production—which guarantees the concentration of capital among a wealthy elite leaving the majority of the population without access. As some opponents of wage labor take influence from Marxist propositions, many are opposed to private property, but maintain respect for personal property.

Most opponents of the institution support worker self-management and economic democracy as alternatives to both wage-labor and to capitalism.