"We have done this because we love liberty and hate authority." – Voltairine de Cleyre
Posts tagged wage-system
On Wage Slavery.
Dec 8th
Brad Spangler, Director of the Center for a Stateless Society, published this little gem under Talking Points: Wage Slavery: The Short Version.
From the body of the post:
The state acts to involuntarily transfer wealth from the productive class to a political class elite, thereby monopolizing/cartelizing capital. Additionally, the state forcibly cuts off opportunities for economic self-sufficiency. The result is that people are forcibly denied any alternative but to sell labor artificially cheaply in a buyer’s market, where the buyers are a political class plutocracy gorged on stolen loot and enjoying economic influence they are not rightly due.
From the comments section by the ever brilliant Neverfox:
There is also another way that I’ve discussed before: a situation where people are treated, through the wage relation, as a thing without responsibility for its actions, i.e. a legal non-person in some regard (though not necessarily every regard, which is why I don’t think it’s sufficient to point to some ways that they are treated as a legal person, e.g. by pointing out that they can voluntarily disassociate without fear of reprisal). The burden, I think, is on the capitalist (in the ideological sense, not the purely descriptive sense of someone who owns capital) to explain, other than by duration, why renting someone by the hour is substantively different from buying someone for a lifetime, even when it’s voluntary, if both happen to require that the worker give up something they have no right to give up, i.e. some aspect of their legal standing as a person.
Also checkout the C4SS Market Anarchism FAQ lovingly looked after by Ross Kenyon:
However, market forces naturally undermine exploitation. Market Anarchists tend to see economic domination of working people as the product of statism and not the market. In a free society without Benjamin Tucker’s Four Monopolies over land, currency, patents, and tariffs, the economic dependency proletarians have upon capitalists is virtually destroyed. Capitalism, in the sense of an unjust status quo characterized by state-driven monopolization of capital, depends upon a captive labor force whose better options are destroyed or precluded by state intervention in the market on behalf of a parasitic elite.
As a Wobbly I am committed to the end of the Wage System. I believe liberty, ethics and market forces, along with direct action, radical democracy, community building, P6 committed cooperatives and fighting unions will get us to that end. In a sense, I believe the whole universe is on our side. State-Capital is an upside down pyramid only held in place by violence, blood, oppression and silence. It will come down, it must come down. The only questions left are, “when?” And, ”how much more do we tolerate?”
As Kevin Carson has so eloquently put it in The Iron Fist Behind the Invisible Hand:
“The current structure of capital ownership and organization of production in our so-called “market” economy, reflects coercive state intervention prior to and extraneous to the market. From the outset of the industrial revolution, what is nostalgically called “laissez-faire” was in fact a system of continuing state intervention to subsidize accumulation, guarantee privilege, and maintain work discipline.”
Diogenes’ Barrel.
Aug 20th
The always insightful and wonderful Broadsnark has asked an important question:
So I guess what I’m wondering is: Do you market anarchist types envision a world full of artisans trading labor with one another or actual employment relationships? Do the majority of anarchists, who don’t subscribe to capitalist or market ideologies, envision a world based entirely on a gift economy? (A New Yorker goes to Hong Kong and has immediate access to what she needs to meet her needs?) Do you object to any sort of trading of labor for stuff?
My response:
Dear Mel,
This is a great question and a keen observation. Why would an Anarchist, one who finds hierarchy undesirable, volunteer or consent to an Employee/Employer relationship, a hierarchy? I would be suspicious of all contexts or circumstances that would bring such a relationship about; I smell authority and monopoly.
As a Wobbly I am committed to the eventual Direct Action dissolution of the wage-system and the promotion of Industrial Organized Labor into the mutually supportive industries of One Big Union, de-central and monumental.
As a market anarchist I foresee an economic landscape of communes, collectives, co-operatives, IWW closed-shops, Time Stores, Garage Networks, Self-employed micros, Family Mom & Pops, Gift Econs, Charity Non-Profits, Monastic Orders from Benedictines to Zen Buddhists, Strangers passing through towns nobly demanding to “earn their keep,” but let’s not forget Hermits, Homesteads and squatters. Everything in between, all of the above to include the stuff not even thought of yet. The “market” in market anarchy, for me, is a vocational, lifestyle, life-path bazaar; the more options the better I feel that authority is curbed and monopoly buried. I see/want a world where people can browse, taste test, try on, kick the tires and hassle free return any life they fancy; or knuckle down on one thing and feel the novel sensation of fusion with or mastery of one skill or craft, pushing it into new boundaries, ripping it up and starting again whether it be post-punk music, cabinet making or Starcraft II.
The only thing I ask is that the anarcho-culture understands, recognizes and supports the institutions of “opt-out,” “push-back” and the “benign busybody.” That the culture allows anyone to “opt-out” of anything whenever they don’t feel comfortable, or for any other reason really, without fear of reprisal. That the culture accepts “pushing back” as a natural, acceptable and corrective reaction, if someone is feeling controlled, dominated or marginalized. And that the cultural sees the pondering busybody who asks, “Is that really liberty? Is that really Equality? Is that really Solidarity?,” as benign and healthy for cultural anarcho-maintenance; meeting their questions with curiosity, reflection and concern for anarcho-sustainability.
I may be asking for too much from, but this is my commitment to you and everyone. I will be open and scrupulous, if you let me be fussy and indecisive.
Anarchy: dumping the bosses off our backs and unleashing our inner weirdo since Diogenes’ Barrel.
Keep us Honest,
–James
