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Originally posted by Vigilante:
Workplace? You mean wage slavery, that should go the same route as schooling...the trash.

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"Wage slaves" built the structure you live in, made all the furnishings and appliances inside it, made your computer and enable the internet to work, build and maintain the roads and sidewalks you use every day, provide health care services, put the groceries on the shelf at your local store, ship and receive those goods, the list goes on and on.

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Originally posted by MyNameisLeo:
There's a big difference between simply earning an honest living and being a wage slave. To me, the term wage slave conjures up a dead-end nowheresville job with a schmucky boss and dreary co-workers, living from paycheque to paycheque, getting drunk on the weekends to try and forget about it all.

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A "wage slave" is anyone whose livelihood depends on selling their time and labour to an employer, and therefore submitting to the authority of that employer. Thus, a dishwasher making $8/hour is just as much a wage slave as an electrician making $28/hour, or even a teacher who is on salary, but must submit to authority in order to survive.

[ 18 August 2005: Message edited by: MyNameisLeo ]

- Wage slaves can't afford the means of production of their goods or services. As a result, they sacrifice some of the value of what they produce to a capitalist who can provide said means.
- Wage slaves often have little immediate career prospects. Many of them don't have transferrable skills that make it easy to jump ship.
- Wage slaves are often subject to "golden handcuffs." Sometimes this means they take a huge pension hit to go somewhere else. In other cases, they can't find a job that pays as well for what they do.
- Wage slaves often work in authoritarian cultures. It is expected they will work long hours "to get the job done." Overtime (often unpaid) becomes chronic as long hours reduce productivity.

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Originally posted by MyNameisLeo:
By that definition, everybody in the world who earns an income is a wage slave. Which would pretty much be everyone except for the independently wealthy. And business owners.

[ 18 August 2005: Message edited by: MyNameisLeo ]

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Originally posted by scooter:

You know business owners that do no work? Considering how many Canadians own their own business that is a pretty outrageous statement.

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Originally posted by scooter:
You know business owners that do no work? Considering how many Canadians own their own business that is a pretty outrageous statement.

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Originally posted by MyNameisLeo:

Also, if you are happy with your job then, by definition, you are not a wage slave.

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And people liked being plantation slaves? Didn't know that.

[ 18 August 2005: Message edited by: MyNameisLeo ]

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Originally posted by MyNameisLeo:

And people liked being plantation slaves? Didn't know that.

[ 18 August 2005: Message edited by: MyNameisLeo ]

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Originally posted by Aristotleded24:
What does any of this have to do with communism?

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Gir Draxon: This is exactly what communism is about... when the workers don't own the means of production, they are wage slaves.

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Ha ha. Gir telling babblers what communism is about. Perhaps some babbler could head over to FD and tell them what conservatism is about.

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Originally posted by Gir Draxon:
This is exactly what communism is about... when the workers don't own the means of production, they are wage slaves.

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Hinterland: ...that's how they do it, people! They seduce the young!

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[ 18 August 2005: Message edited by: Hinterland ]