Wage slavery and the misunderstanding of voluntary servitude

(Big respect to the YouTuber "Comrade Lenin" for making a video that inspired me to write this. Some of what was said in the video is written here.)

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.