This is what wage slavery looks like

With the release of our newest introduction video, the comments people are making demonstrate their belief in and support of wage slavery.

Wikipedia describes wage slavery pretty well:

“Wage slavery is a pejorative term used to draw an analogy between slavery and wage labor by focusing on similarities between owning and renting a person. It is usually used to refer to a situation where a person’s livelihood depends on wages or a salary, especially when the dependence is total and immediate.”

“The term wage slavery has been used to criticize exploitation of labour and social stratification, with the former seen primarily as unequal bargaining power between labor and capital (particularly when workers are paid comparatively low wages, e.g. in sweatshops), and the latter as a lack of workers’ self-management, fulfilling job choices, and leisure in an economy. The criticism of social stratification covers a wider range of employment choices bound by the pressures of a hierarchical society to perform otherwise unfulfilling work that deprives humans of their “species character” not only under threat of starvation or poverty, but also of social stigma and status diminution.”

I think the analogy between wage (or salary) labor and slavery is apt. All you have to do is ask someone “When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?” Look to see if what they’re doing as an adult matches their answer, then follow-up that question with, “Why aren’t you doing that now?”

You’ll get a host of reasons why they’re doing what they’re doing instead of what they wanted to do as a kid. Often they’ll explain not following their dreams with an “indoctrination trope”, which is something I’ll explain in a later post.

Now, some people will scoff at the idea that capitalism fosters wage slavery. But it does. I’ll get to that in a minute, but first, it cannot be stressed enough that Copiosis makes people free.

Those three words are scary for people immersed in wage-slavery, including – oddly enough –  not only those who are the slaves, but also those who are not, yet still depend heavily on the wage-slave status of others.

For example, when someone says “Yeah but, if you give everyone the kind of freedom you’re talking about, then the things needing done no one will do.”  It’s remarkable so many people come back with that answer, while not realizing they are directly expressing support for wage slavery!

Think about your needs in the context of modern, capitalist society and it’s really clear that our society is heavily dependent on wage-slavery. The conveniences you enjoy – regular garbage pick up, food production (especially the shitty parts of that process), “waste” management (I’m referring to sewage here, separate from garbage “waste”) childcare, elderly care – all the things you’d rather not do or don’t want to do because you have other “better things to do with your time” are taken care of by others. You explain away the fact that these people often are paid the lowest wages/salaries yet do really important work, by saying “well they’re being paid” or “That’s why I pay taxes” as if that is a good excuse for keeping people in those jobs.

When people counter Copiosis saying “who will do the jobs no one wants to do?”  what they are really saying is “those people doing the work that makes my life comfortable better keep doing it because I don’t want my life to change and I’m not going to do that work. I don’t care how much better off my life may become. And I don’t care how shitty that job they’re doing is. They have to keep doing it.” 

That’s wage slavery.

For while a person may be paid for the work, often, usually, more often than not, that person is doing work he MUST do. Not work he would PREFER to do. And sometimes that work is shitty, or boring, or repetitive, or hazardous, or debilitating or dehumanizing.

Making. People. Free.

Those three words are scary to people who have been immersed in wage-slavery all their lives as both benefactors AND beneficiaries. Unfortunately very, very few have freed themselves from this paradigm. So of course the first thing people think of, if people are afforded the freedom to choose is “how will shit get done if we have no slaves (laborers) to do them?” Put more nicely it’s “who will do the work we need done”?

Thankfully Copiosis answers that question by offering a framework where things get done AND people are free. Without the need of human slaves.