The Abolition of Wage Slavery as Our Moral Obligation, Part I

Despite having a site titled Wage Slave Rebel, I’ve yet to really expound on my views of what wage slavery is and what it means to us as lifestyle designers. I think it’s important that I publicize my thoughts sooner rather than later so you, as a reader, can have a better understanding of our narrative as a people and where this movement is really taking us (or at least where it ought to be taking us).

What we are doing — or what we are trying to do — goes much deeper than quitting jobs and starting blogs and writing books and working atop the sands of faraway beaches. These have just been symptoms of our attempts, methods of accomplishing a more subtle, much grander goal. While our individual goals can be worlds apart the one thing that really unifies us is this overwhelming uneasiness, this sense that whatever this situation is we find ourselves in, it’s not what’s best for us.

When we were younger we wanted to write groundbreaking novels, scale the most brutal mountainous landscapes, unearth hidden treasure, travel to the stars and beyond, watch as collectors admired our paintings and quietly assessed their worthiness. We were astronauts or scientists or architects or business owners or athletes. Most importantly, we often wanted these things all at once. We craved the freedom to be whatever we wanted at the moment we wanted. And amazingly, a good part of the time we wanted these things with others. It’s not hard to recall or witness a playtime in which an entire group of children are happily legitimizing each other’s daydreams.

The point isn’t that we ought to be childish and satisfied with pretending we are what we want to be. That we actually work toward becoming what we want to be is a very significant purpose of life. Rather, the point I want to present is that somewhere between there and here, we lost some vital part of ourselves — a philosophy, an attitude, a worldview — that, when absent, impacts our freedom so negatively that we are at once willing slaves to some societal expectation.

If this is the case — and I very passionately believe it is — then it’s only logical to ask, “What has changed?” What about our present situation has limited us and made us forfeit our most worthy aspirations for lives of mediocrity? I would argue that it is the seldom noticed but often felt oppression dealt by wage labor, also known as wage slavery, and the mindset acquired from such a system.

What is Wage Slavery?

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. – Henry David Thoreau

All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind. – Aristotle

Whatever lifestyle designers and self-described self-help gurus might have you believe, wage slavery isn’t simply a cute term for the job you hate. Wage slavery is a derogatory nickname given to wage labor by opponents of the wage labor system. The phrase is used to draw comparisons between the selling of one’s labor, time and the products of one’s labor for a wage with the system of chattel slavery, in which people are considered the outright property of their owners. There is not, opponents suggest, a significant difference between selling oneself (that is, one’s time, labor and freewill) and renting out oneself. In the same way that you would likely be opposed to a person selling themselves into a system of chattel slavery, you should also be opposed to a person disregarding their freewill and the products of their work for a fixed, regular payment. I happen to agree with this assessment.

Proponents of wage labor would likely object to the idea that wage labor is equivalent to slavery because workers within a wage labor system are given the ability to choose for whom they work, how much they are paid, and what job they would like to take. This, however, isn’t always the case.

In January of 2007, a series of gallbladder attacks, the last of which being nearly unbearable, forced me into an emergency room. Three days, one surgery and $18,000 dollars later, I was cured and buried hopelessly in a massive amount of debt. Luckily a good bit of the bill was able to be deducted, leaving me with approximately $2000 in medical bills. I had dropped out of college two months prior to that and had yet to find a job. I had been holding out for a part-time job at the public library, but, due to the emotional stress brought on by incessant calls and letters from doctors’ offices and collection agencies, my unexperienced 19-year-old self was sent into a panic. I applied to a telemarketing agency, a saw mill and a hospital, none of which paid very well or offered any kind of interesting work, but all of which I knew hired quite frequently. Within one month of my surgery, I was working as a hospital janitor, a job that paid $7 per hour for picking up garbage, discarded body parts, and infectious needles and cleaning up around the corpses of the recently deceased in the emergency room. On top of this, it was considered a “part-time” job in that if I complained about working 40 hours per week but only getting part-time benefits, they would be more than happy to cut me down to 36 hours per week to avoid it entirely.

Proponents might still say that I could have let the debt go until I got the job I wanted. They might also argue that I could have quit at any time. These arguments are both valid, but they ignore the root of the situation, which is my feeling threatened into and threatened to keep the job by the weight of debt and the need for an immediate livelihood. Suppose a single mother can’t afford to pay rent on her apartment or adequately nourish her child. Not many of us would think it good for her to turn to prostitution just because it’s immediately accessible and she feels it is the only option. The point is, should one accept a job out of, at the least, perceived necessity, they have already been coerced into doing the job and coercion contradicts freewill.

I won’t assume that my situation or the situation of the single mother is all that common, but those situations which are common are far worse. They are what lifestyle designers claim to rally against. That is to say, the crippling mental and emotional byproducts of the wage labor system. Working solely for money, status, obligation or material gain are all grotesque denials of our true callings. Thoreau hit the nail on the head when he said, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” This is true in nearly every office or workplace throughout the world. There exists this working class of people, all broken down into unquestioning, unhappy cogs who create excess and wealth for their owners while humbly hoping for their own survival.

If you’re reading this, you’re already aware of these byproducts and you’re sick of the situation in which you find yourself. You’re unhappy with what you are doing and you desire to exert your freedom to choose and do as you please. But where do you go from here?

Four Legs Good, Two Legs Better

In George Orwell’s fairy tale, Animal Farm, the farm animals become resentful of their tyrant, Man, because he “is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals. He sets them to work, he gives back to them the bare minimum that will prevent them from starving, and the rest he keeps for himself.” All the animals hold a vote and decide that Man is a mortal enemy and all animals must overthrow him. Under the motto of “Four legs good, two legs bad” the animals lead a Rebellion which puts them in control of the farm.

The animals then lay out a set of seven commandments declaring anything that walks upon two legs an enemy and banning animals from sleeping in beds, wearing clothes, and drinking alcohol among other things. Everything was wonderful. The animals finally escaped their oppression…

…at least for a time.

Soon enough the pigs, who were regarded as the most intelligent and who had led the Rebellion, started taking the animals crops for themselves, wearing clothes, and sleeping in beds just as Man had done. They defended these things as being protective of the common good, as actions which benefit the welfare of the entire community. Soon enough, the pigs even took to walking upright, heralding in the new slogan of “Four legs good, two legs better.”

This is a very apt story for lifestyle designers and runs almost parallel to what the movement is currently seeing. It disgusts me to no end to see that the answer most self-proclaimed lifestyle designers put forth for ending their oppression isn’t some wonderfully creative new form of business which might benefit everyone, but for they themselves to become the oppressors. Their goal is, essentially, to assign real work to others and rape the products of their labor for profit. This is exactly the kind of abuse that makes our current labor system intolerable. These lifestyle designers are separating the creators from their creations, paying them as little as necessary, and turning a profit while offering no real value themselves.

The Alternative

If we want to induce any kind of significant change, this cannot be an individualist movement. It has to be a collective shift in thought and action. We have to consider not just what is best for “me,” but what is best for all of us. That is to say, this current movement in lifestyle design depends on some people being ‘haves’ and some being ‘have-nots.’ If everyone was an entrepreneur, the logic goes, then there would be no employees and, thus, no good life of traveling and doing what you love. Much like the pigs in Animal Farm, these lifestyle designers seem to be saying that “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” I think this kind of thinking ought to die the most horrible death. If my success depends on another’s failure or oppression, I’d rather us both to break even.

What we need is to abolish this system of wage labor and replace it with a democratic system that entitles workers to manage themselves and to benefit directly from the products of their labor.

And that’s what I’ll discuss in Part II.

Related posts

1. Slavery of the Mind
2. Diary of a Wage Slave Rebel: A Brief Introduction to my Madness
3. Well-Intentioned Liars
4. On Fucking Up and Selling Out: What Happened to Wage Slave Rebel
5. Diary of a Wage Slave Rebel: How to Disregard the Safe and Certain and Almost Go To Jail… (Twice) – Part 1