How does Marx show that capitalism is a kind of slavery?

Question

indirect slavery, the slavery of proletariat

Letter from Marx to Pavel Vasilyevich Annenkov,

All official and liberal science defends wage-slavery, whereas Marxism has declared relentless war on that slavery

Lenin.

You hear the term "wage slavery" used quite a bit in Marxism.

• how does Marx show that capitalism is a kind of slavery?

Clearly there are overlaps in that the poor are legally obliged to work if they are to have minimum income, and in the profit extracted from workers. Obviously there are less pleasing dis-analogies, in the unavoidable barbarism of the slave trade.

Am I missing anything more esoteric which appears in the literature?

Answer 1

A capitalist society is based on the systemic exchange of commodities. In this system, the application of labour to materials is itself a commodity; so workers are paid (a "wage") "for their labour". Otherwise they would be unable to buy commodities, and the system would not be based on systemic exchange of commodities.

But there must be some mistake in that. If I sell a ton of apples, this operation cannot create value, and will only transfer value if it is a lopsided purchase. If the apples are sold at their value, neither buyier nor seller will gain anything. Of course, in real practice, purchases are often made above or below the value of commodities; but this cannot be the rule, or the systemic exchange of commodities won't endure. Which means, as a whole, as a system, those deviations from value must cancel each others.

But how does it happen, then, that a profit is made in the apple trade?

That's because the producers of apples do not, in a capitalist society, sell apples. Instead, they sell their ability to work - what is called "labour power". But "labour power" is a different commodity from apples, and it has a different value. So there is a quid pro quo here: the company producing apples buys one commodity - the labour power of its workers (and it buys it, in normal conditions, at its full value) - but the end result of the operation is that it has now a stock, not of labour power, but of apples. If the value of apples is bigger than the value of the labour power implied in their production, then you have a systemic transfer of value - from workers to employers - that does not violate the conditions for a sustained system of commodity production.

(As it is easy to realise, if the value of the labour power implied in the production of a commodity is not smaller than the value of that commodity, then the production of that given commodity is impossible under capitalist conditions, or, in other words, if it is produced, it must be produced as a non-commodity.)

Evidently, all this is possible because labour creates value; in labouring, human beings create more than they expend.

But that is what Marx and Marxists call "wage slavery": the systemic transfer of value, from workers to employers, that keeps workers' economic earnings always close to the socially acceptable subsistence minimum.

Answer 2

Capitalism is a natural progression (and possibly evolution) from the feudal system of Guild-master/apprentice to factory based, unskilled laborers which require no specific status or knowledge to operate and complete tasks. This evolution moves the slaver from Guild-master to, now called, owner, or what he calls, bourgeoisie (which is directly associated with the capitalist business owner). This is a mere structure change, but now, in the modern era, there isn't a necessity to have ownership or castes. He hypothesised that a rise and revolt of the slave working class (slave to the "wage"), or proletariat, against the bourgeoisie due to the realization that they lacked purpose within society (due to the fact that all labors were being conducted by the proletariat, or working-man).

Answer 3

I take it that wage-slavery is a polemical term, particularly, if as you do, one compares it to the actual 'barbarism' of real slavery, and which until recently was a real historical phenomenon.

Arendt points out that in the Greek polis a citizen accounted himself free if he did not bear the burden of labour, for which he had his slaves. If, however, every man is free in this sense then who is to carry out the labour of labouring? For this, men will have to come together to decide how to bear the burden amongst themselves. It seems a little hard to call that which is neccessary a form of slavery.

For Hegel, this is the construction of civil society; then every man who is free in himself will have to find himself through these very real limits.

Arendt, going on from Marx, points out that the labouring classes have been freed, but there has been no emancipation from labour itself. This she calls the only 'utopian' element in Marxs work, and she speculates that automation may eventually emancipate men in their plurality from this burden; though she doesn't consider that this will emancipate men from themselves; on the contrary, she supposes accelerating technology may amplify desire so that men become mere appendages to an environment made by machines.

Nevertheless, exploitative forms of waged work can come close to slavery or its condition. And this is what Marx is focused upon.

Answer 4

Slaves, by definition, are people who labor and produce goods but receive nothing from that labor or those goods except the capacity for mere subsistence. Slaves get enough to survive so they can labor the next day, while all other proceeds from their labor go to the slave-owner for his enrichment. In this sense, a slave is effectively a draft animal akin to an ox or a horse. They get put in the traces and smacked until they work, they get the minimum food and shelter needed to keep them healthy for future work, and they are allowed to breed to produce the next generation of labor animals. And when they cn no longer work, they are either put down or put out to pasture, depending on whether the owner feels any affection for them

The concept of wage-slavery is meant to point out that modern workers under the capitalist system are effectively slaves. Instead of being given minimal food and shelter directly in exchange for their driven labor, they are given a minimal wage (which they have to use to purchase their own food and shelter) in exchange for their driven labor. In Marx's day that was severe: children and adults would have to work twelve hour shifts just to keep a roof over the family's head and a day's worth of food on the table. In the modern era wages have become a more comfortable form of slavery, at least for the middle class, but that doesn't change the 'enslaved' nature of it. You work, you kiss the boss-man's a$$, you produce goods for the owner to profit from, or (as far as the boss-man and the owners care) you can go live and die in a camp by the roadside.

When our means of subsistence is entirely controlled by someone else, someone who takes everything they want first and tosses a bit of it back to keep us going, we are slaves. And honestly, a lot of people are perfectly happy being slaves, so long as they are comfortable and taken care of. But not every one wants to be a slave, and many of those who wouldn't normally mind being enslaved don't end up in situations where they are remotely comfortable or taken care of. And in those cases we see the sheer brutality of the wage-slave system.

Answer 5

I think that the use of "wage slavery" by Marx can be seen as metaphorical and polemical, as distinct from real slavery. The term "modern slavery" has been coined to cover people who are trafficked into effective slavery. In my view, some poor people are being subjected to a state of effective slavery through debt, insufficient state benefits, and unequal employment contracts. The idea of universal basic income provides a route to eliminating wage slavery and effective slavery.