Somewhat similar criticisms have also been expressed by some proponents of liberalism, like Henry George,[5] Silvio Gesell and Thomas Paine,[71] as well as the Distributist school of thought within the Roman Catholic Church. Criticism of capitalism on these grounds, however, might not always be connected to the belief that one should have freedom to work without a boss.
Anarcho-communist Peter KropotkinThe extreme subordination generated by wage slavery has also been recognized by right wing bosses like US financier & railroad businessman Jay Gould (1836–1892), who famously said "I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half."[72] The concept of wage slavery suggests that even where the conditions of chattel slavery do not apply, wage earners may experience social and psychological predicaments which are similar to those stemming from chattel slavery.
Anthropologist David Graeber has noted that, historically, the first wage labor contracts we know about – whether in ancient Greece or Rome, or in the Malay or Swahili city states in the Indian ocean – were in fact contracts for the rental of chattel slaves (usually the owner would receive a share of the money, and the slave, another, with which to maintain his or her living expenses.) Such arrangements were quite common in New World slavery as well, whether in the United States or Brazil. C. L. R. James made a famous argument that most of the techniques of human organization employed on factory workers during the industrial revolution were first developed on slave plantations.
A disparity in bargaining power compels wage slaves to accept a predicament they wouldn't otherwise consent to. Some critics of capitalism argue that wage slavery is present in all capitalist societies, even the richest ones. This has to do with two factors:
Wealth disparities: Even in a rich country like "the United States, the richest 1% of the population... owns more wealth then the bottom 95% of the population combined. It is physically impossible for that one percent to work harder than the other ninety-five percent. 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. There are only 168 hours in a week; it's not possible for this wealth disparity to be the result of capitalists working harder."[74][75]
Power disparities: The higher wages received by some workers in industrialized countries do not obviate the authoritarianism critics perceive in capitalist institutions—just as the improving material conditions of chattel slaves in the American south didn't obviate chattel slavery. Labor is treated as commodity, just like food or healthcare. The lack of democratic control of industry means that workers do not have a say over decisions in proportion to how much they are affected by those decisions. This, in turn prevents workers from directing their destinies and achieving a society where "work is not only a means of life, but the highest want in life."[76] Even high -paid professionals and intellectuals like lawyers and scientists may be considered wage slaves, since many of them rent and subordinate their mental powers to capitalists and other elites— getting ahead in the hierarchy by internalizing values that are serviceable to the powers that be. Even if every wage slave managed to become well fed, clothed, had healthcare etc; he'd still be in a position of subordination and deprivation of freedom.
To this argument, Marx added:
"The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honored and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage laborers...Masses of laborers, crowded into the factory, are organized like soldiers. As privates of the industrial army, they are placed under the command of a perfect hierarchy of officers and sergeants. Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois state; they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the overlooker, and, above all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself. The more openly this despotism proclaims gain to be its end and aim, the more petty, the more hateful and the more embittering it is...The selfish misconception that induces you to transform into eternal laws of nature and of reason the social forms stringing from your present mode of production and form of property – historical relations that rise and disappear in the progress of production – this misconception you share with every ruling class that has preceded you. What you see clearly in the case of ancient property, what you admit in the case of feudal property, you are of course forbidden to admit in the case of your own bourgeois form of property...You are horrified at our intending to do away with private ownership of the means of production. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society."[77][10]
Many advocates of wage slavery claim that consumer choice in capitalist societies constitutes an improvement in the standard of living and that today's wage slaves have many more consumer choices than chattel slaves. They claim that the market system reflects "what people want" and that people "vote with their dollars".[78] There is indeed evidence that many wage slaves in the 21st century have higher standards of living and more consumer choice than chattel slaves in the 18th and 19th century (although 21st century wealth inequalities are vast)[79]; but some historians don't find the comparison of vastly disparate time periods to be particularly revealing. Historians Fogel and Engerman, for example, reported that slaves' material conditions in the 19th century were "better than what was typically available to free [i.e. wage] urban laborers at the time".[80] Wage slaves' standard of living has improved since the beginning of the industrial revolution and similarly, American chattel slaves in the 19th century had improved their standard of living from the 18th century.[81][82]
The terms "advertising" and PR were widely adopted after the term "propaganda" gained negative connotations due to association with the Nazis.[83]Critics of capitalism claim that "voting with dollars" means that those with more dollars have more votes. They maintain that several undiscussed factors affect consumer behavior. For example, educational institutions cater to the ideological needs of the biggest employers (government, corporations); the media are profit seeking corporations selling affluent audiences to advertisers and relying primarily on business and government information; intellectuals tend to get ahead in the hierarchy and become influential by adopting and disseminating ideas that are serviceable to power; and a stated purpose of the advertising industry is to artificially "create wants" and stir away from consumer choices that may harm capitalist power (e.g. the most popular newspaper in England, the Daily Herald went out of circulation because of advertiser discrimination; news organizations stir away from programs hinting at systemic causes for societal problems even if these programs are popular.)[84] All this, they claim, distorts the framework of consumer choice and the psychological make up of consumers in a way that reflects elite interests and will, rather than that of consumers. Furthermore, in state capitalist societies, corporations in conjunction with governments have pushed for measures such as elimination of public transportation and alternate forms of energy, as well as propaganda to justify subidies to high technology industry through military expenditures. These measures, as well as the subsidies, bailouts and protectionism that allowed many countries to develop and create products at the public's expense (and without their consent), altered available choices and ideas and also allowed many industries to become competitive in subsequent "free markets"[85] whose development had therefore little to do with consumer choice.[86] A number of psychologists and environmental experts have presented evidence showing that rampant western consumerism is harming the planet (and human beings), and becoming a substitute for activities that are emotionally more fulfilling.[87][88] Most importantly, critics claim that "consumer choice" is only half the story, because people are not only consumers— they are also workers, and very often, their choice in the capitalist work environment is "work for a boss or starve"; i.e. it is limited to a (sometimes possible) choice among bosses and it doesn't involve choices and decisions regarding production, distribution, working hours, regulations, hierarchy etc (i.e. the choice to have higher control over one's productive life therefore one's destiny) because the workplace and the economy (including the advertising industry and entertainment industry) are not run democratically.
Already in the 19th century, Marx had pointed out some of the ways in which technology could be used to alienate workers: "Owing to the extensive use of machinery, and to the division of labor, the work of the proletarians has lost all individual character, and, consequently, all charm for the workman. He becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack, that is required of him. Hence, the cost of production of a workman is restricted, almost entirely, to the means of subsistence that he requires for maintenance, and for the propagation of his race. But the price of a commodity, and therefore also of labor, is equal to its cost of production. In proportion, therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases. What is more, in proportion as the use of machinery and division of labor increases, in the same proportion the burden of toil also increases, whether by prolongation of the working hours, by the increase of the work exacted in a given time, or by increased speed of machinery, etc."[89] Psychoanalyst Erich Fromm believed that the lack of worker's control and unhappiness/ dissatisfaction at the workplace means that people compensate their emptiness by seeking substitutes elsewhere (religious fundamentalism, drugs, consumerism etc). Fromm thought it very likely that a democratic, not-for-profit work environment would enable more choices for workers, having a drastic effect on subsequent consumer choice and all the mechanisms currently associated with it (advertising, marketing, concentration of capital etc) – as well as on the human psyche.[90]
Manufacturing Consent analyzes institutional factors causing journalistic subordination in the corporate capitalist wage system.In Manufacturing Consent and "The Myth of the Liberal Media" Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky present a substantial body of evidence showing striking qualitative and quantitative differences in the coverage of facts and events in the corporate capitalist media on the basis of their serviceability to elite groups. Their propaganda model identifies 5 major institutional factors affecting media behavior. In order to be hired, journalists, like other intellectual wage laborers, are pressured to internalize the ideological constraints of the institutional structure-- a task that usually starts in educational institutions and works as a filtering system. Therefore, unlike journalists in totalitarian states, western journalists can serve elite interests without being subject to state coercion. As their counterparts in totalitarian states, they identify freedom with the elite that dominates their power structure:
"We have a free press, meaning it’s not state controlled but corporate controlled; that’s what we call freedom. What we call freedom is corporate control. We have a free press because it’s corporate monopoly, or oligopoly, and that’s called freedom. We have a free political system because there’s one party run by business; there's a business party with two factions, so that’s a free political system. The terms freedom and democracy, as used in our Orwellian political discourse, are; based on the assumption that a particular form of domination—namely, by owners, by business elements—is freedom."[91]
In a thorough study of war coverage comparing Soviet and western journalism, Media Lens concluded that
"[l]ike the Soviet media, Western professional journalists adopt and echo government statements as their own, as self-evidently true, without subjecting them to rational analysis and challenge. As a result, they allow themselves to become the mouthpieces of state power. It is fundamentally the same role performed by the media under Soviet totalitarianism."[92]
A number of economic think tanks and analysts have favored a return to the days of Keynesian state capitalism, suggesting that the increased inequalities and slower rate of world economic growth in the neoliberal period (from the 70s till the present), as well as the "undemocratic... virtual senate of investors and lenders" created by financial liberalization, exacerbate the conditions of wage slavery.[93] [94]
Other economists consider wage labor to be the central cause of the capitalist business cycle; i.e. the key to understanding its workings is to understand that, in addition to the disproportionalities within the market created by the lack of communication (thus information) that stems from its competitive, hierarchical environment, the workers' resistance against capitalist authority is the main force behind it:
'Property sells products to the labourer for more than it pays him for them; therefore it is impossible.' In other words... the system is based upon wage labour and the producers are not producing for themselves.... Capitalism is production for profit and when the capitalist class does not (collectively) get a sufficient rate of profit for whatever reason then a slump is the result. If workers produced for themselves, this decisive factor would not be an issue as no capitalist class would exist. Until that happens the business cycle will continue, driven by 'subjective' and 'objective' pressures – pressures that are related directly to the nature of capitalist production and the wage labour on which it is based. Which pressure will predominate in any given period will be dependent on the relative power of classes. One way to look at it is that slumps can be caused when working class people are 'too strong' or 'too weak.' The former means that we are able to reduce the rate of exploitation, squeezing the profit rate by keeping an increased share of the surplus value we produce [while]... capitalists try to maintain them by increasing prices, i.e. by passing costs onto consumers, leading to inflation. The latter means we are too weak to stop income distribution being shifted in favour of the capitalist class, which results in over-accumulation and rendering the economy prone to a failure in aggregate demand [because]...products are above the purchasing power of the worker. [95]
From this point of view the market's "money supply is largely endogenously determined by the market economy, rather than imposed upon it exogenously by the state." Therefore, blaming inflation on the state's over-printing of currency is considered an ideological attempt to ignore the harsh realities of wage slavery.
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