Lisa Desjardins Ruth Desjardins wrote this very compelling essay in 1976 in support of Capitalism. It speaks to the concept of “wage slavery” which was a critique of Capitalism written about in “The Communist Manifesto,” by Karl Marx. How interesting that it is still very relevant today—maybe even more so than it was during the height of the cold war.
The Wage War
The term “wage slave” is an absurdity, an expression that is made up of two contradicting terms. Either a man is a slave or he is a wage earner. If he is a slave, he is forced (by pain of death or whip) to work, not for his benefit but for the benefit of someone else. If he is a wage earner, he works voluntarily and for his own benefit—a wage that is mutually agreed upon before he begins to work. The man exchanges his effort for a wage which enables him to buy whatever he needs and wants to secure his life and comforts.
The wage earner is not a slave to his wage, but dependent upon it for the support of his life. He is therefore dependent upon his own effort and ability for the support of his life. He is not dependent upon looting nor hand-outs, but proudly upon his own skill and industry for securing his needs. Nor is he exploited. The employer who offers the job and pays the wages is not the equation of a master who cracks a whip over a slave. To say that the employer has no right to expect a good job, when he is paying for it, is to exploit the employer. To say that the employer has no rights to his profits is to say that the employee has a right to a job and pay, that an employer must pay without any self-interest, that he must provide a job and pay to have it done without reason.
To denounce the need of a man to depend upon his own efforts and therefore wages to support his own life is to rail against reality (the reality that every meal and life-serving commodity must be earned—achieved by effort—by somebody’s effort) or to admit to the desire to rely upon someone else’s effort (by free loading, begging, cheating or looting).
The survival of Capitalism depends upon the dignity and honesty of man to recognize that for anyone to eat, somebody has to produce food, to refuse to be a slave to any man, and refuse to live as a parasite on the efforts of another, or as a thief or exploiter of another’s efforts and achievements.
Oppression does not come from the idea of free trade, but from the desire to exploit any man who can produce more than his own needs require, and to appropriate his goods, not because he gained them dishonestly, but because of an inability or unwillingness to compete honestly, or trade fairy with the man who produces them.
It is not the owning of wealth that makes a man an oppressor but how he acquires it and how he uses it. If a man earns his wealth by his own ability and effort, through honest endeavor and voluntary exchange, he oppresses no one. If he achieves it by slave labour, theft, fraud, or any means of unconsented appropriation of the products of another man’s labour, he is an oppressor. If a man uses his justly earned wealth to maintain his welfare, by paying for his needs, comforts, and interests, he oppresses no one. If he uses wealth to bribe, to threaten, to gain life-choking power over other men, he is an oppressor.
But Marx does not make these distinctions, nor does he refer to oppression by governments when he uses words like “bourgeoisie” and “proletariat.” These words which once mean “lord and serf,” “master and slave,” and they always meant government aristocrats and peasant workers. When Marx speaks of “bourgeoisie” he means capitalist, industrialist, employer. He makes no distinction between men who pay just wages and men who enslave. When he speaks of “proletariat,” he does not mean a feudal serf or a slave; he means a working man, wage earner, employee. He makes no distinction between the man who is forced to work for nothing and the man who volunteers to work for pay. He says that all proletarians are oppressed and exploited by the bourgeoisie. He means that all employees are oppressed and exploited by their employers.
What constitutes oppression and leads to struggle between men is the forced appropriation of the fruits of another’s labour. And the rich and poor classes created by forced appropriation is rightfully damned by any just man.
In a free country when the workers in an industry are paid unjustly low wages; when the worker sees the industry make huge profits and his employer become wealthy while he and his family barely survive; the worker revolts. He quits his job to seek better wages elsewhere, he goes into business for himself, or he may voluntarily join with his fellow workers to go on strike. They bargain with their employer for better wages, better conditions, better hours. The workers usually win, if not all, most of their demands.
In a country which is not free, when the workers are oppressed to the degree that they work more for the benefit of others than for themselves; when the rulers live in splendour while the worker owns nothing; when the worker sees his family die of starvation and his health fail from overwork and malnutrition; the worker revolts. He joins with his fellow workers—risking his very life—to fight against the system. This is a civil war.
Such oppression has been the root cause of most civil wars in history. Marx calls it class struggle. It is properly called man’s struggle for freedom—freedom from oppression, freedom to keep the fruits of his labour, freedom to claim and to own what he earns.
The freedom for man to keep what he earns, to spend it on his own livelihood, has been the freedom most predominant in the free countries of the world. In the countries which granted freedom to man to work, to trade, to own property, man gained power over his own existence—the power to support his own life. This freedom was made possible through Capitalism.
Capitalism destroyed the horror of master and slave and replaced it with the dignity of employer and employee. Where there had been only slave labour, Capitalism brought wage labour. Where that had been only appropriation, Capitalism brought free trade. Where there had been only humility and misery of begging, stealing, or starving, Capitalism brought the dignity and joy of earning, trading, and living. Where there had been only poverty for the worker, Capitalism brought a higher standard of living for the working man than had even existed on earth. (Marx denies this, but history proves it. On page 93 of The Communist Manifesto, Marx wrote: “The modern labourer, on the contrary, instead of rising with the progress of industry, sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class. He has become a pauper…”).
Besides the obvious material advantages, the worker, under the system of Capitalism, also gained self-esteem. This came from learning that he could, by his own work, support his life. Thus man was able to achieve the only moral and meaningful power—the power to support and control his own existence by his own ability and effort.
Marx saw only exploitation and lost opportunity in this. He saw that industrial workers had the collective power to take over the running and profits of the industry. Thinking they wanted this power, he expected the workers to unite and turn against the system and the men who made their wages possible, who increased wages as the industry prospered. Marx expected men who had learned the dignity of an honest job for honest pay, men who had learned to respect one another through honest trade, men who had acquired self-esteem and power over their lives to become power-crazed exploiters. He urged them to rise up in revolt against the “bourgeoisie,” to appropriate his industry, to wage war against him, and to kill him if necessary, in order to seize his property.
What Marx had not realized was that a wage earner in not a save to his employer nor to his wages. He is dependent upon his wages for the support of his life; which means he is dependent upon his own effort for sustaining his life; which means he is independent. He is not dependent upon theft nor hand-outs, but proudly upon his own skill and industry for securing his needs. Nor is he exploited. The employer who offers the job and pays the wage is not the equation of a master who cracks a whip over a slave.
An employer is a man with ideas and goals that he cannot meet alone. He is a man who is willing to pay for the services of another to enable him to reach these goals. Without the ideas and goals of the employer, there would be no job. Without the employer’s willingness to pay for the services of his fellow man, there would be no wages, but only a master and slaves to do his bidding.
Taking a man’s industry by force does not eliminate oppression. Forcing a man to provide a job and pay without allowing him to make profit does not eliminate slavery. These methods simply make the employer the slave and the employee the master. The relationship between the employer and employee is not the forced labour of master and slave but voluntary exchange and mutual agreement among men. It is the only kind of dealing among men that prohibits a master-slave relationship.
The word “proletariat,” the attempt to equate a wage earner with a slave is a smokescreen to hide the desire for what one has not earned, to escape the responsibility of maintaining one’s own welfare, to live on someone else’s effort. It also hides the guilty admission that if a man will not willingly support another, he can and should be forced to do so. Here is the concept of master-slave and it does not come from the idea of free trade, but from a desire for wealth and an unwillingness to compete honestly, or trade fairly with the man who produces it.
The honest worker in Marx’s time knew he was not a slave. He knew he lived in a new system where he was paid for his work. He took what he earned. He wanted nothing more.
There were those who did, but they were too few to start a revolution. They chose instead to live within the system, but not interested in free trade, they exploited it. Their methods were the same as those of all oppressors—force, theft, fraud, bribery. It is these exploiters that Capitalism owes its bad reputation. But it is these exploiters who are protected in our mixed economy.
When laws can be passed to prohibit the freedom of trade, rich, otherwise honest industrialists will bribe to get that freedom. When laws and politicians are open to the highest bidder, the honest capitalist soon learns the power of his money. When he sees that the laws protect the men who live on bribery, while the honest trader is at the mercy of such men, he learns that he can be either a crook or an honest fool. And when a man cannot be a trader, when oppressor or oppressed are his only choices, he will often oppress.
A mixed economy is a mixture of freedom and force—freedom to trade (within limits) and enforced taxation. In our country the workers are taxed in order to subsidize some at the expense of others, to help the unfortunate at the expense of the workers. This has created a new oppressor over the worker. He is the idle, the mediocre, the incompetent. He is the man who consumes but does not work; who demands equal pay for unequal work, who looks for hand-outs rather than earnings. When these men succeed, it is the wage earner, the able working man, who loses. It is the idea that the state has a right to a man’s property that allows it. It is always the negation of property rights and free trade that allows oppression.
It is because of a man’s honesty, his dignity and joy in work well done in exchange for just wages that he did not revolt against Capitalism; it is because of his sufferance, his willingness to accept great degrees of oppression that he has not yet revolted against a mixed economy. But should the oppression become too great, should the workers of the world unite, should the revolution which Marx expected to come; one would hope that man, the worker, will recognize his enemy. It is not Capitalism which is based on free, voluntary exchange and recognizes man’s rights to the fruits of his labour. The enemy is the exploiter of Capitalism—all men and all systems that seek to destroy it.
Capitalism is the only system which depends upon freedom to survive. It depends on the best within men—their dignity in being self-supportive, their honesty in taking only what they earn, their rationality in recognizing that every life-serving commodity must be produced (earned) by somebody. And Capitalism depends upon men’s refusal to live as a parasite, a thief, or an exploiter of another’s labour and achievements. It is the only system that does not enslave, but deals justly with men, as a trader.
If men remain rational, if they continue to value human dignity, justice, and freedom, if they continue to take pride in what they earn and reject what they have not earned, they will learn what it means to refuse to be a slave or to enslave others; they will realize that free trade is the only alternative to slavery; and Capitalism will survive.