The common argument from
capitalists is that the working class voluntarily agrees to being
employed under a boss. this argument doesn’t reflect the realities of the material conditions of capitalist society The subject of voluntary
servitude is a belief system made by capitalists and their supporters
to keep workers mindlessly agreeing to exploitation and oppression.
To understand how voluntary
servitude is a false notion, we will need to detail the subject of
wage slavery, which is how us Marxists view the conditions for the
workers under capitalism.
As Karl Marx details:
“The putting of labor-power
into action – i.e., the work – is the active expression of the
laborer's own life. And this life activity he sells to another person
(the capitalist) in order to secure the necessary means of life. His
life-activity, therefore, is but a means of securing his own
existence. He works that he may keep alive. He does not count the
labor itself as a part of his life; it is rather a sacrifice of his
life. It is a commodity that he has auctioned off to another. The
produce of his activity, therefore, is not the aim of his activity.
What he produces for himself is not the silk that he weaves, not the
hold that he draws up the mining shaft, not the palace that he
builds. What he produces for himself is wages; and the silk, the
hold, and the palace are resolved for him into a certain quantity of
necessaries of life, perhaps into a cotton jacket, into copper coins,
and into a basement dwelling.”
“And the laborer who for 12
hours long, weaves, turns, builds, shovels, breaks stone, and so on –
is this 12 hours' weaving, spinning, turning, building, shoveling,
stone-breaking, regarded by him as a manifestation of life, as life?
Quite the contrary. Life for him begins where this activity ceases,
at the table, at the tavern, in bed. The 12 hours' work, on the other
hand, has no meaning for him as weaving, turning, building and so on,
but only as earnings, which enable him to sit down at a table, to
take his seat in the tavern, and to lie down in a bed.”
Detailed visual above to accurately show what is being explained.
The laborer sells himself completely, but for fractions at a time. He sells himself for 8, 10, 12 hours of his life to the highest bidder – i.e. highest wage.
In this regard, the laborer does
not belong to a master, like the slave, or the soil like the serf,
but instead to the 10 or 12, etc. hours of his daily life to whoever
buys them. The worker provides himself to the capitalist as the
capitalist desires, and the capitalist gets rid of the worker
whenever he sees fit. When he is no longer useful to him.
The
worker can not leave the capitalist class as he is dependent upon
their wage for survival. The worker is stuck with two options; work
or die. The worker himself is a slave of a different kind, a wage
slave. This is what we Marxists classify as “Wage
Slavery.”
The subject of capitalist
society is a subject of all means of living being priced and sold
like commodities, thus, the worker has no other option but to sell
his/her labor-power in order to gain a wage, to get what he/she can
for the need to live and survive.
Thus, with this understanding of
wage slavery, it is clear, the subject of voluntary servitude, is a
false notion made to suppress the real interests of the working
class, the interests of liberation. Wage slavery is inevitably
part of capitalism, and to destroy it, capitalism must be overthrown.
