Wage_labour

Wage labour is the socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer in which the worker sells their labour under a contract (employment), and the employer buys it, often in a labour market.Deakin, Simon; Wilkinson, Frank. The Law of the Labour Market, Oxford University Press, 2005^{[Quotation needed from source]} The products of labour become the employer\'s property. A wage labourer is a person whose primary means of income is to sell labour in this way.

Wage labour has existed in one form or another for thousands of years in many different kinds of societies. However, under capitalism, it transforms more and more labour into wage labour, so that wage labour becomes the main source of income for most people.

The phrase is also sometimes used to mean the labour done for an employer in exchange for a wage.

The most common form of wage labour currently is a contract in which a free worker sells his labour for a predetermined time (e.g. a few months or a year), in return for a money-wage or salary. However, wage labour takes many more different forms, and many different kinds of contracts and forms of remuneration are possible. Economic history shows a great variety of ways in which labour is traded and exchanged. The differences show up in the form of:

• employment status: a worker could be employed full-time, part-time, or on a casual basis. He could be employed for example temporarily for a specific project only, or on a permanent basis. Part-time wage labour could combine with part-time self-employment. The worker could be employed also as an apprentice.
• civil (legal) status: the worker could for example be a free citizen, an indentured labourer, the subject of forced labour (including some prison or army labour); a worker could be assigned by the political authorities to a task, he could be a semi-slave or a serf bound to the land who is hired out part of the time. So the labour might be performed on a more or less voluntary basis, or on a more or less involuntary basis, in which there are many gradations.
• method of payment (remuneration or compensation). The work done could be paid "in cash" (a money-wage) or "in kind" (through receiving goods and/or services), or in the form of "piece rates" where the wage is directly dependent on how much the worker produces, in terms of goods and services. In some cases, the worker might be paid in the form of credit used to buy goods and services, or in the form of stock options or shares in an enterprise.
• method of hiring: the worker might engage in a labour-contract on his own initiative, or he might hire out his labour as part of a group. But he may also hire out his labour via an intermediary (such as an employment agency) to a third party. In this case, he is paid by the intermediary, but works for a third party which pays the intermediary. In some cases, labour is subcontracted several times, with several intermediaries. Another possibility is that the worker is assigned or posted to a job by a political authority, or that an agency hires out a worker to an enterprise together with means of production.

Critique of wage labour

Wage labour under capitalism is often criticised, such as by socialists and most anarchists. They see wage labour as a major, if not defining, aspect of capitalism. In Marxist terminology, wage labour is defined as "the mode of production where the worker sells their labour power as a commodity",Marx, Karl. Wage Labour and Capital (and a wage labourer is one who sells their labour power.)

Most criticism focuses on the argument that under wage labour, exploitation occurs. The employer who buys this labour power, owns the labour process and can sell the products to make profit. On the other hand, the worker sells their creative energy and their liberty for a given period, and are alienated from their own labour, as well as its products.

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 [wage] labourer, on the other hand, sells his very self, and that by fractions... He [belongs] to the capitalist class; and it is for him... to find a buyer in this capitalist class."

Wage labour is criticized on the grounds that the freedom to choose between "work or starve" or "work for this or that boss" doesn\'t mean it is not an authoritarian and unjust system. A slave who can choose his master is still a slave. A person who is free to travel from one to another totalitarian state would still be considered to be deprived of liberty. A person being hit with a hammer who is offered to be hit with a wooden stick or whip will choose the latter voluntarily, but the "freedom to choose" is limited to a coerced set of choices.

The rationale behind this critique is that other workers, not capitalists, produced the means of production. The capitalist obtains them with the money from previous profits. Those profits in turn came from previous profits and so on back to the origins of capitalism. Those original accumulations of money used to start this whole process of capitalist accumulation came from fortunes made as a result of conquest and direct expropriation (such as colonialism) as well as fortunes achieved under pre-capitalist class societies such as feudalism or slavery. Thus from a historical perspective capitalism cannot be considered just. \'Providing the means of production\' simply means \'allowing it to be used.\' Granting permission itself is not a productive activity, it does not produce anything. If producers cease to produce, production will stop in any society, regardless of the economic system. But if owners stop granting permission, production is impacted only if their authority over the means of production is obeyed. Their authority derives from the violent and coercive mechanisms of the state, which ensures that capitalists have this ability to allow or deny access to the means of production by workers. Not only is "providing the means of production" not a productive activity, it depends on a system of organized, systemic coercion to maintain the capitalist\'s monopoly (or near-monopoly) of the means of production. In the United States the richest 1% of the population (the wealthy capitalist class) owns more wealth than the bottom 95% of the population combined. It is physically impossible for that one percent to work harder than the other ninety-five percent. There simply aren\'t enough hours in the day. The average American worker works around 50 hours a week; for the capitalists to work ninety-five times more than the average worker he would have to work 4,250 hours a week.

Socialists and anarchists don\'t think "the creation of jobs" or "social mobility" (e.g. a poor person becoming rich) justifies a system. Slave owners also "created jobs" and that didn\'t justify slavery-- furthermore, if workers democratically run the factories, they create their own jobs and don\'t need the capitalists. In Colonial Brazil and United States, there were slaves who managed to become free and even become slave owners themselves.Koger, Larry."Black Slave Owners; Free Black Slave Masters in South Carolina, 1790-1860" It was as rare as workers becoming capitalists in contemporary capitalism, but it did happen and was theoretically possible for many slaves. Just as the theoretical possibility of a slave becoming a slave owner does not justify slavery, the theoretical ability of a wage-slave to become a capitalist does not justify capitalism. If one could go from being homeless to millionaire fascist dictator, that wouldn\'t justify fascism. In many Leninist states there were individuals who went from being a worker to being part of the ruling class, in some cases even joining the Politburo, yet that does not make Marxist totalitarianism an acceptable system. In the libertarian socialist view, the authoritarian power that the owner acquires by owning the means of production, is a form of statism. The fact that there have been some improvements in the standard of living under capitalism does not justify capitalism. Studies by economists like Richard H. Steckel, have shown that there were significant improvements in the standard of living in American slave societies. That didn\'t justify slavery.

The risk and effort of a capitalist doesn\'t entitle him to profit, anymore than a bank robber\'s risk and effort, since the inequality of power granted by property rights means that capitalist profit results from the exploitation of workers who are always paid less than the value of the goods they produce. It is true that investing usually entails taking risks (one could lose the investment), but just because someone is taking a risk does not mean that s/he is producing anything. Most human activity involves risks of some sort. If a criminal robs someone at gunpoint s/he is taking a risk as well. S/he could go to jail, the robbery could go wrong, s/he could get hurt, etc. That does not change the fact that it is robbery. The same is true of the risks taken by capitalists. The workers take as much of a risk, if not more, as the capitalist. If the business fails the worker is unemployed. The worker is then usually in a worse situation than the capitalist because the capitalist is wealthy and can weather such a situation much easier than those on lower levels of the hierarchy. In addition, many jobs entail risks to workers\' life or limb, whereas investment does not.

Capitalists like to claim that their wealth is the result of them working hard by running their business, managing portfolios, etc. A mafia boss also does lots of work to plan his robberies and keep his illicit enterprise going but his actions are still theft. Many capitalists don\'t even run a company, they derive their income solely from stocks, bonds, interest, dividends, rent, etc. This attempt to justify capitalist exploitation completely fails in these cases because they aren\'t even running a company or doing any work at all. Manipulating portfolios doesn\'t produce anything useful; sticking money in the bank and letting it accumulate interest isn\'t hard work. Most of the "work" done by capitalists running a business is in reality manipulating workers so as to maximize exploitation (thereby maximizing profit). Most capitalists hire people to do whatever coordination and administration is necessary for production and do little of it themselves. In contemporary capitalism this has led to the growth of a separate techno-managerial class that controls the workers for the capitalists. In general the higher up the hierarchy and the farther from the point of production the less genuine coordination is done. A thief that does a lot of scheming is still a thief.

The libertarian socialist view of states and corporations (and private ownership of the means of production more generally) is similar to St Augustin of Hippo\'s view of kingdoms:

Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies? For what are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms? The band itself is made up of men; it is ruled by the authority of a leader, it is knit together by the pact of the confederacy; the booty is divided by the law agreed on. If, by the admittance of abandoned men, this evil increases to such a degree that it holds places, fixes abodes, takes possession of cities, and subdues peoples, it assumes the more plainly the name of a kingdom, because the reality is now manifestly conferred on it, not by the removal of covetousness, but by the addition of impunity. Indeed, that was an apt and true reply which was given to Alexander the Great by a pirate who had been seized. For when that king had asked the man what he meant by keeping hostile possession of the sea, he answered with bold pride, "What thou meanest by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, whilst thou who dost it with a great fleet art styled emperor.

Capitalist property is based on the coercion of the state, since any attempt by the majority of workers to take over the factories to run them democratically, will be met by state (or hired mercenary) violence, which is used to protect capitalist property rights. Libertarian socialists advocate worker\'s control of industry and elimination of autocratic institutions-- to create a society where power (and the responsibility that comes with it) is more decentralized. By relinquishing their role as subservient, unthinking and insentient cogs in a machine, people would feel more responsible and more aware of their actions; they wouldn\'t be indoctrinated by centers of power, and would become appalled by behavior that now is condoned within the hierarchical institutional structures. Decentralization would encourage the kind of checks and balances and self-examination that are now lacking--bringing the more positive values of human nature to the fore.

Notes

See also

• Anarcho-Syndicalism
• Capitalist mode of production
• Compensation of employees
• Employment
• Labour (economics)
• Marx\'s theory of alienation
• Marxian economics
• Reserve army of labour
• Rate of exploitation
• Unfree labour
• Wage
• Working poor
• Slavery
• Child Labor

External links

• Wage Labour and Capital - Karl Marx, 1847
• Barbrook, Richard (2006). The Class of the New, paperback, London: OpenMute. 0-9550664-7-6. 
• LaborFair Resources - Link to Fair Labor Practices

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from Wikipedia