Talk:Wage slavery/Archive 2

Quotes are overlong
This page is overlong, one of the reasons is the length of the quotes in it. There are several quotes that are more than 10 sentences long. This both makes the article overlong, and distracts from the article itself. See WP:Quote for guidelines on how to use quotes. I'm going to boldly trim or remove the overlong quotations. Feel free to add back appropriate parts, but do try to keep quotations short and relevant to the points being made in the article. LK (talk) 19:23, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

I've been shortening the quotes, and noticed that the quoted text in this page is often unattributed. From the Wikipedia manual of style: The author of a quote of a full sentence or more should be named; this is done in the main text and not in a footnote. All quoted text should be prefaced with who is being quoted. LK (talk) 09:21, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Tagging II
Several mainstream leaning economist advocates or believers should not assert themselves into this article and subvert it with undue tagging or undue breakdowns of sentiment of meaning. Ganging up on the article is not going to improve it... and making editing gambits which are toward a sentiment of belief or mainstream direction is not going to improve it if the basic meaning of the phrase wage slavery is sought to be manipulated to cast a negative light on it. It is a real saying and idea... it has a past, present and probably future.. much has been written about it as a topic from every angle.

I would suggest that all parties step back... and attempt neutrality and fairness of presentation... not ideological pointing according to mainstream or heterodox weighting, according to those sources. The article brings out a lot of the debate of economics of the last couple of hundred years. It is valuable. It does not have to be charged. It can be presented creatively. It can be examined from many perspectives. To those tagging the article... why not just change and improve it... instead? Editing tags back and forth is pointless. Take the time to address the issues, work together in good faith to improve the issue presentation... lets start the process right now... and forget about blowing things out of perspective from either camp. Thoughtful edits... getting rid of info that does not bear up... adding sources and citations... and phrasing things neutrally. skip sievert (talk) 18:58, 26 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Skip, we are just trying to make sure that the page reflects the broader viewpoints that exist about wage labor and wage slavery. The POV tag is just a sign that editors are working on it. It's not a slur on the concept itself. No one is arguing that the concept shouldn't/doesn't exist or that it isn't notable.


 * The fact is, many people don't think that hiring someone, even if (especially if) that person would starve otherwise, is a morally reprehensible act similar to slavery. This page presents only one viewpoint on the topic. NPOV consists of making sure that all significant viewpoints on a subject are reflected in the page. NPOV should not be sacrificed to make a page more consistent. In fact, if a page is overly consistent – presenting only one point of view and not even hinting at dissent – that is a clue that it is not NPOV.


 * Additionally, although there are plenty of citations, this page is littered with synthesis. Remember that arguments or conclusions or should not be made on the page unless a verifiable source has already made those arguments or conclusions. That is, it is inappropriate to cite A and B, and than draw conclusion C from the references. Visionthing gave several example of this above.
 * LK (talk) 19:20, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

The POV Tag section already refuted these allegations, which actually reflect their own practices in this article so far. I presented very serious evidence showing a propagandistic or dishonest intent, which neither LK, JQ or VisionThing have answered. Therefore, any continued claims about POV or synthesis must be looked at with extreme skepticism. Please scroll up to the aforementioned section and see it for yourselves. I also want to add that a lot of these edit wars have to do with fact that the article, throughout, uses or assumes dictionary definitions of wage slave, which LK, JQ and VisionThing reject. You can see them here http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/wage%20slave and here http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/wage%20slave I'll post them once again for the sake of clarity:

Merriam-Webster

wage slave Function: noun Date: 1882
 * a person dependent on wages or a salary for a livelihood

''Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009''

wage slave

–noun a person who works for a wage, esp. with total and immediate dependency on the income derived from such labor. Origin: 1885–90

''The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2006 by Houghton Mifflin Company''

wage slave

n.  A wage earner whose livelihood is completely dependent on the wages earned.

99.2.224.110 (talk) 00:52, 27 January 2009 (UTC)


 * No one is arguing that the concept shouldn't/doesn't exist or that it isn't notable. Our argument is not with the definition of what 'wage slave' refers to, but rather with the way you make synthetic arguments to present your POV on related issues, and actively work to exclude other POVs and historical context from the article. Our disagreement seem to be over issues like, why it exists, the historical use of the term, whether its use is without controversy, and whether nation states are dependent on it.


 * Also, please note, stating that something is true does not make it true, making a long argument does not prove your claim, and claiming that something has been proven does not make it so.
 * LK (talk)

'''Well, LK OUR argument is that we have proven beyond reasonable doubt that all those things you mention are simply a red-herring and a reflection of your own biased contributions to the article. It certainly is true that "stating that something is true does not make it true". That is PRECISELY why I provided evidence and documentation in my response to your baseless accusations (see POV Tag section). Since after several days neither of you has been willing to counter it (undoubtedly because you CAN'T), any reasonable person should assume that you are not interested in neutrality, which was already obvious from the beginning when you state that you were OPPOSED to the dictionary definitions because you believe that what all those dictionaries call "wage slavery" is, in your words a "voluntary sale of one's own time and efforts". Since you keep deleting the part of the lead which I already defended in the POV Tag section, I am going to re-post the part of my response pertaining to it in the hope that you will answer the questions I asked:

You said, first of all, that "this phrase in the lead and others littered throughout the article...imply that workers are essentially slaves, and are either coerced or brain-washed into not expressing this fact":

''...at about the same time as the "rise of big business"[11][12] which marginalized skilled workers and increased the numbers of more easily controlled unskilled ones through "scientific" management, the open-shop, welfare capitalism and mass violence, thereby detracting from labor's class consciousness and its traditional aspirations to control the workplace. ''

The reason why you think that the phrase "litters" the article is because, you believe that 1) it "only reflects one viewpoint, and does not reflect the broader literature and viewpoints found on the subject." 2) the terminological change from "wage slavery" to "wage work" in the late 19th century shows that "workers and employers ha[d] matured to a less antagonistic relationship."

OK, since the aforementioned phrase allegedly "littering" the article is condensing the works of major historians and academics, who DO NOT confirm such "less antagonistic relationship" (in fact, quite the opposite), then we are simply left with a question of fact: Are the works I cited of these respected authors incorrect about the facts of that historical period?:

^ The Fall of the House of Labor By David Montgomery

^ The Labor History Reader By Daniel J. Leab p.118-119

^ Strike! By Jeremy Brecher

^ Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the Logic of Money-driven Political Systems by Thomas Ferguson p.72

^ Livesay, Harold C. Andrew Carnegie and the Rise of Big Business

And does the 1 paper you quoted contradict them or "reflect the broader literature and viewpoints found on the subject."? What does the "broader literature and viewpoints found on the subject" say about the shift toward the supposedly "more pragmatic symbolism" of the term "wage work"?

Was this alleged "pragmatic symbolism" an accommodation, a reaction to external power and domination, as the evidence of the works I cite shows? or was it a sign of "maturity" among "less antagonistic" parties?

Are you denying the existence of scientific management (or "Taylorism") in the late 19th century?

Are you denying "the rise of big business"?

Are you denying the efforts of management to implement the open shop at that time?

Are you denying the creation of welfare capitalism during that period?

Are you denying the peaks of mass violence in the 1880s, in the Great Depression of the 1890s, and then again during WW1, when a stratospheric strike rate and widespread union agitation brought on the temporary destruction of most organized labor through the combined effects of the great Red Scare, the Palmer raids, extensive deployment of federal troops, and something like civil war in parts of Pennsylvania affected by the great steel strike?

Are these facts, as you say they are "POV speculations and synthesis...drawing conclusions not in the cited texts"?

In other words, if the 5 authors cited ARE correct, then--I'll quote you once again-- you believe that they "imply that workers are essentially slaves, and are either coerced or brain-washed into not expressing this fact" 99.2.224.110 (talk) 08:15, 27 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Please read WP:OR, especially the section on synthesis. Sources cited must be directly related to the topic of the article, and directly support your argument. Find me a source that refers directly to why the term most commonly used by labour organizations changed from 'wage slavery' to 'wage labour'. The use of any other source in that sentence is synthesis. LK (talk) 09:26, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

LK, you continue refusing to answer my questions, but I'll make a few more points. if you can read the text, it says that the terminological change happened

AT ABOUT THE SAME TIME as the "rise of big business"[15][16] which marginalized skilled workers and increased the numbers of more easily controlled unskilled ones through "scientific" management, the open-shop, welfare capitalism and mass violence, thereby detracting from labor's class consciousness and its traditional aspirations to control the workplace.[17][18][19][20]

Let me remind you that it was YOU some days ago who deleted the words "with" and "accommodating" implying stronger correlation (something like "but with the rise of big business it was replaced by the more accommodating term "wage work") and substituted them with the words "at about the same time" and "neutral" respectively. Now, what you are saying is that you see no direct correlation between these historical events and the terminological change even though they happened at the same time--not even a strong possibility of correlation that would make it worth including. Yet with ZERO evidence, you claim that the terminological change was toward a more "mature" "less antagonistic relationship"? I repeat: The evidence goes the other way. That's why you want to ignore it while selectively quoting only 1 essay and hypocritically claiming that the works I quote don't "reflect the broader literature and viewpoints found on the subject."? So I repeat: What does the "broader literature and viewpoints found on the subject" say about the shift toward the supposedly "more pragmatic symbolism" of the term "wage work"? Was this alleged "pragmatic symbolism" an accommodation, a reaction to external power and domination, as the evidence of the works I cite shows? or was it a sign of "maturity" among "less antagonistic" parties as you claim?

'''Also, as easily seen on the history, you've reverted my edits more than 3 times, so don't hypocritically send me messages threatening me with banning me for doing it twice ''' 99.2.224.110 (talk) 10:21, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Opening paragraph
I rewrote the beginning a bit. Not sure if any of the two sides here are going to like it. Here it is

Wage slavery is a term often used by anti-capitalists (including socialists, anarchists, and communists) or other groups, to refer to a condition in which a person is legally (de jure) voluntarily employed but practically (de facto) a slave. It is used to express disapproval of a condition where a person feels compelled to work in return for payment of a wage. Ref. Some uses of the term could also refer to various forms of unfree labour, such as debt peonage. Similarities between owning and renting a person, could extend the term to cover a wide range of employment relationships in a hierarchical social environment, or a percieved coercive and limited set of job-related choices (e.g. working for a boss under threat of starvation, poverty or social stigma). Ref Some individual choices, could make a person dependent on wages or a salary for a livelihood, ref "esp[ecially] with total and immediate dependency on the income derived from...[wage] labor". ref

This may not be perfect or great... but it is better than what was there I think. Opinions? Also I have to agree now that the article is throwing every thing and the kitchen sink in the O.R. dept.... framing things p.o.v. - I took out some of the long lead in ridiculous opinion based stuff... and some other stuff that seemed way over kill with the same basic over the top introduction of ideas with flowery p.o.v. language. This article needs to be honed down further. It really does the whole thing a disservice to the interesting information in it to make it full of ranty introductions to ideas... and it seems to lead the reader... instead of letting the reader think for themselves by looking at good neutral information, (my opinion) skip sievert (talk) 01:56, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

I think wikipedia should have its OWN definition of wage slavery. You simply copied and pasted it from an obscure online finance dictionary. http://www.123exp-business.com/t/04254079490/ Furthermore, I think this definition is worse for several reasons. 1st of all wage slavery is not only used by "anti-capitalists". Liberals and others also use the term. In fact, as the article shows, historically, famous proponents of liberalism often used it, such as Henry George, Silvio Gesell and Thomas Paine as well as the Distributist school of thought within the Roman Catholic Church. Also, I see the "feels compelled to work" as either inaccurate or confusing. As the end of the lead says "wage slavery does not refer to the unavoidable subjection of man to nature (having to work to gain one's sustenance), but to the subjection of man to man (having to work for a boss)." In other words, a person may "feel compelled" by nature to work to feed himself or his family (e.g. the unavoidable subjection of man to nature) but that doesn't make him a wage slave--at least if by "wage" we simply mean "remuneration" "capital" or "means of survival"--all standard definitions of the term by many people (e.g. pro-capitalists). Now, instead of saying "Similarities between owning and renting a person, COULD extend the term to cover a wide range of employment relationships in a hierarchical social environment," I would say ""COMPARISONS between owning and renting a person, EXTEND the term...". Now when you cite the examples (e.g.) of working for a boss under threat of starvation, poverty or social stigma as a "PERCEIVED coercive and limited set of job-related choices"  I must seriously question your attempts to bring about "neutrality".  When you say that

'''Some individual choices, could 'make a person dependent on wages or a salary for a livelihood,' 'esp[ecially] with total and immediate dependency on the income derived from...[wage] labor' '''

which "individual choices" are you talking about? Those are the definitions of "wage slave" quoted from 3 major dictionaries. Are you claiming that being a "wage slave" is a matter of "individual choice"??? Interestingly, you relegate those 3 major dictionaries (footnotes 6 & 7) to a much lower place than the aforementioned obscure online finance dictionary--seemingly because those definition apply to the broader "COMPARISONS between owning and renting a person" which you want to downplay. NeutralityForever (talk) 05:51, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Issues
As I have stated previously, this article as it stands, or even as it stood a week ago, would have been a fine article for a newspaper, magazine or journal. (In fact I would like to again encourage the main author to submit it to a relevant publisher.) However, Wikipedia articles are different, in that they are supposed to be unbiased and report all significant points of view, not engage in original research - only reporting research and analysis already published by others, and stick narrowly to the topic as defined by the title and not wander off into related digressions.

The way I see it, there are three main problems with the article as it stands.
 * 1) Many sections take a particular point of view as given fact, and do not report the controversies, the alternative views and the diverse opinions on the subject. WP:NPV
 * 2) Large sections are original research. WP:OR They make arguments and reach conclusions not found in the cited sources - they analyze and synthesize the sources to reach original conclusions. WP:SYN
 * 3) The article digresses to related topics, not sticking to the topic of wage slavery. ie. It has become a coatrack for arguments against capitalism and industrialism. WP:COAT

Being an eventualist, I don't want to edit-war over these issues. However, I feel strongly that the tags should stay up, both as a heads-up to readers, and also so that editors in the future will address these issues. LK (talk) 06:04, 29 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I disagree. I think the tags should be removed. A lot has been revised in these past 10 days. Also, much of what was regarded as synthesis turns out to have been terminological confusion. For example, the statement
 * Wage slavery played a very important role in the modern consolidation of the nation-state structure that originated in the pre-capitalist...
 * was deemed "synthesis" and POV because of the misunderstanding about the meaning of the term "wage slavery". But after using the 3 aformentioned dictionary definitions of wage slavery (now in the lead paragraph) and a short historical explanation, the factual basis of the statement becomes uncontroversial:
 * The change in property relations leading to "proletarization"[78] of the work force, described as the shift toward dependence on wages for support[79] (later defined as "wage slavery"),[80][81][82] played a very important role in the modern consolidation of the nation-state structure that originated in the pre-capitalist...
 * NeutralityForever (talk) 06:37, 29 January 2009 (UTC)


 * As a guideline, if the article that you are citing does not even mention the topic of the page (ie. wage slavery or wage labor), the paragraph the you are supporting with the source is almost certainly synthesis. Remember that the source must be directly related to the topic and directly support your argument presented. (emphasis as in WP:OR) LK (talk) 07:19, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

I know that. That's why I'm still waiting for someone to show me which part of the article does not deal with information directly related to "person[s] dependent on wages or a salary for a livelihood" or "person[s] who work[] for a wage, esp. with total and immediate dependency on the income derived from such labor" or "wage earner[s] whose livelihood is completely dependent on the wages earned." i.e. the definitions of "wage slave" in the Merriam-Webster, Random House and American Heritage dictionaries respectively (which by the way, you YOURSELF chose to place at the very top of the lead paragraph) NeutralityForever (talk) 10:09, 29 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Visionthing already gave several examples above. Here are a few more:


 * 1) The sub-section 'Comparison with chattel slavery:Methods of Control' is sourced to works that are not about wage slavery. I doubt that you can find the term 'slavery' in the cited sources. The section is largely synthesis.
 * 2) The use of Adam Smith's quote is pure synthesis. Smith was not talking about wage slavery. His writings is taken incorrectly to support the thesis that workers are exploited. According to Smith, both capital and labour and both must be remunerated, hence it's only natural that the product of workers must exceed their remuneration.
 * 3) The same is true for the introduction section of 'Social effects'. Most of the cited sources do not refer to slavery wage or otherwise. Many of the sources are not even talking about the condition of workers. As an example, the first source from Amartya Sen is talking about starvation in India and China. The article uses this to imply an original argument: that since India was a market economy, and China was not, more people starve in market economies. This is pure synthesis, and is not even about wage slavery.
 * 4) In fact the whole section 'Social effects' is littered with original research and synthesis. For example, the caption 'Nationalism, like news media, entertainment and consumerism, can serve to veil wage slavery'. Is a controversial unsourced point of view that is stated as plain fact.
 * LK (talk) 11:00, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Reead through the discussion. I've already refuted Visionthing's "examples". Let's deal with yours:


 * 1) I repeat, please please please QUOTE ANYTHING that does not deal with information directly and importantly related to "person[s] dependent on wages or a salary for a livelihood" or "person[s] who work[] for a wage, esp. with total and immediate dependency on the income derived from such labor" or "wage earner[s] whose livelihood is completely dependent on the wages earned." i.e. the definitions of "wage slave" in the Merriam-Webster, Random House and American Heritage dictionaries respectively (which you YOURSELF chose to place at the very top of the lead paragraph)
 * 2) Once agaaaaain, where is Smith NOT talking about the aforementioned definitions??? Let's say I agree with you that "According to Smith, both capital and labour and both must be remunerated, hence it's only natural that the product of workers must exceed their remuneration." Is he not talking about "person[s] dependent on wages or a salary for a livelihood" or "person[s] who work[] for a wage, esp. with total and immediate dependency on the income derived from such labor" or "wage earner[s] whose livelihood is completely dependent on the wages earned."???
 * 3) Didn't both of the famines mentioned (the Chinese and the Indian) happen in economic systems based on "person[s] dependent on wages or a salary for a livelihood" or "person[s] who work[] for a wage, esp. with total and immediate dependency on the income derived from such labor" or "wage earner[s] whose livelihood is completely dependent on the wages earned."???
 * 4) The article offers plenty of sources and footnotes supporting that entire section, which as I said, is directly related to the aforementioned dictionary definitions. I'm not surprised that you didn't quote anything from the main text of the section. Instead you chose the much easier path of criticizing a pic caption. As you can see, the pic caption features a US propaganda poster with US flag and the word "freedom". Below that, as you say, are written the words: "'Nationalism, like news media, entertainment and consumerism, can serve to veil wage slavery". You'll find evidence for that proposition in footnotes  73, 74, 75, 127, 128, 130, 155, 156, 157. 159, 182, 183 NeutralityForever (talk) 06:22, 30 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm going to include a large section on the movie Titanic in this article. Since Titanic was made by people who earned wages, and the movie featured people who were paid, and it was made in a country where wage labour is the predominant form of labour, obviously it is relevant to this page. LK (talk) 08:16, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Unlike the Titanic movie, the facts and footnotes you call "synthesis" deal with important sociological and historical factors related to wage slavery as defined in those 3 dictionaries and the other definitions offered in the lead of this article. NeutralityForever (talk) 09:00, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Let me reiterate my position, this article is biased and filled with original research - synthesis not found in the sources. The tags should not be removed before the article is fixed.LK (talk) 11:54, 30 January 2009 (UTC)


 * How did You become the arbiter of wiki content and rules? Why does your opinion trump those of the editors that have put work into this page? The imperious tone and command in the comment above is very clearly inappropriate. 72.228.150.44 (talk) 14:13, 30 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Noting that editor changed text in his statement above, tone mentioned referred to the earlier text. 72.228.150.44 (talk) 18:31, 30 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Let me reiterate my position, this article is biased and filled with original research - synthesis not found in the sources. The tags should not be removed before the article is fixed. L.K. - I would have to agree... and I am not in either camp here. The article is kind of ridiculous in the throwing in the kitchen sink aspect of unrelated things. How is it the article is so long with sentiment of political/economic p.o.v. This subject can be treated with neutrality. That would be better, because right now it still reads like a manifesto of several brands of politics. Leading the reader by writing p.o.v. ultimately is unkind to the reader. The reader does not need telling or leading, they can figure out objective info. skip sievert (talk) 01:53, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Cut back of alleged disjointed arbitrary info.
I did a major cutback of information, and some minor writing/phrasing. It was easy. The article was trying to hit people over the head with a political/economic point of view/proclamation.... and that is uncalled for. Mostly it is an insult to people that may come here to find out information about the term 'wage slavery'... that may not be happy getting hit over the head, with essay like material on anarchism and communism etc... and so called democracy, according to pov interpretations that repeat the same diatribes of information over and over and over... and take on the role of truth giver. Really I hope the shortened lead... and cutting a lot of the nonsense out of the article is a new start point... and that people will now give up on the idea of trying to impose their will and just edit without the pov. The article is still messed up with pov and poorly written in that way in some other places... but.. I hope now that the shortened and better version will stick... and this version can now be refined hopefully downward. Overkill does not elucidate a subject as well as streamlined creative presentation and thought skip sievert (talk) 02:37, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Your major cutbacks were arbitrary and inappropriate. We've been battling hard over the facts these past 2 weeks. If you wish to make changes, out of respect for other editors, give detailed explanations of why the information that you want to delete, and the footnotes accompanying it are not relevant to the definition, concept, sociology and history of wage slavery. NeutralityForever (talk) 06:42, 31 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Reverted edits of NeutralityForever. Wikipedia does not publish original research or original thought. This includes unpublished facts, arguments, speculation, and ideas; and any unpublished analysis or synthesis of published material that serves to advance a position. This means that Wikipedia is not the place to publish your own opinions, experiences, or arguments. Citing sources and avoiding original research are inextricably linked: to demonstrate that you are not presenting original research, you must cite reliable sources that are directly related to the topic of the article, and that directly support the information as it is presented. Wikipedia is not a pov battleground. I gave detailed explanations of the edits. The article restored of the ridiculous O.R. edits previously is not a good idea. Basic neutrality is an issue and also inserting info. that has nothing to do with subject is an issue also. skip sievert (talk) 06:46, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

You haven't proven that the article contains "unpublished facts, arguments, speculation, and ideas; and any unpublished analysis or synthesis". All you did is state "This article is POV". That is not an explanation. You seem to have total contempt for the "neutrality" you claim to be promoting. Not only are you unwilling to defend your position with any real discussion about the contents you want to delete, but you arbitrarily deleted numerous excerpts that other editors have been debating over and working on for months and in these last 2 weeks, especially. Submit the contents you want to delete and as i said: give detailed explanations of why the information that you want to delete, and the footnotes accompanying it are not relevant to the definition, concept, sociology and history of wage slavery. I think the sections you deleted are very relevantNeutralityForever (talk) 07:01, 31 January 2009 (UTC)


 * NF, I think the problem comes down to this: There is a difference between what is acceptable and proper citing for an encyclopedia like Wikipedia, and what is acceptable for a term paper, a journal article, or even an academic research paper. A journal article is interesting because it contains new ideas and original analysis. Wikipedia does not allow new ideas or original thinking. Any ideas, arguments or analysis expressed in Wikipedia must be sourced to a reliable source that clearly and directly expresses the same ideas arguments or analysis.
 * The fact is, large parts of this article is original synthesis in support of a particular POV. This is clear to almost everyone who reads it. I count about 6 editors who have already stated thus on this talk page, and others have left similar comments in their edit summaries. Your blanket refusal to accept this fact does not make it any less true. The point is, we have consensus here to remove the POV and synthesis. If you really believe that you are correct, and that we are wrong, I suggest you start a Requests for comment on this page. If you are right, unbiased uninvolved editors will take your side. LK (talk) 10:40, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

There is NO consensus that the parts deleted are POV and synthesis. Many of us have voiced our concerns about the fringe of biased editors like LK who have been trying to force their POV onto this article. As anyone can see from the discussion, whenever it came down to actually ANALYZING and discussing their allegations they always lost, as they could not prove that the parts they called "synthesis" or wanted to delete weren't relevant to the VERY DEFINITION of wage slavery that they had agreed upon. Any proposed deletion HAS to prove that it is not RELEVANTLY related to the lead paragraph that the few dissenting editors THEMSELVES chose to leave intact. That would include

'''a TERM used to refer to a situation where persons are dependent for a livelihood on the wages earned, especially if the dependency is total and immediate.[1][2][3] '''

or

'''a SITUATION where persons are dependent for a livelihood on the wages earned, especially if the dependency is total and immediate.[1][2][3] '''

or

'''a TERM [that] is often used by anti-capitalists (socialists, anarchists, and other groups) to express disapproval of a condition where a person feels compelled to work for a wage[4] in a hierarchical social environment with a limited set of job-related choices (e.g. working for a boss under threat of starvation, poverty or social stigma). '''

or

a CONDITION where a person feels compelled to work for a wage[4] in a hierarchical social environment with a limited set of job-related choices (e.g. working for a boss under threat of starvation, poverty or social stigma).

or

a hierarchical social ENVIRONMENT with a limited set of job-related choices (e.g. working for a boss under threat of starvation, poverty or social stigma).

or

The USE of the term wage slave by labor organizations...

and so on

We as well suggest that if you really believe that you are correct, and that we are wrong, you start a Requests for comment on this page.

99.2.224.110 (talk) 11:15, 31 January 2009 (UTC)


 * NF, just a note, if you and 99.2.224.110 are the same person, please remember to log in before editing or replying to avoid the appearance that you are using a sockpuppet to distort consensus. Using sockpuppets is against community policy, and can result in the account being banned. LK (talk) 12:54, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

I fully agree that LK and Skipsievert have failed to provide any evidence that the parts they want to delete are synthesis. I also agree that a "consensus" does not exists and that they have been refuted anytime they tried to debate the facts. As user 99.2.224.110 says, until you can prove it with concrete facts, the parts should not be deleted 63.204.10.132 (talk) 13:48, 31 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Just to clarify, NF, you are not 99.2.224.110 or 63.204.10.132 ? And 63.204.10.132 you are also not NF or 99.2.224.110 ? And 99.2.224.110 same question for you ? I'ld like to remind you that sock-puppeting is against community rules. LK (talk) 14:23, 31 January 2009 (UTC)


 * The consensus of almost all the registered editors so far, that this page suffers from POV and synthesis. Mass reverts by anon IP editors against consensus, is a bad idea. The article is getting a little better in its trimmed down recent form... supported by L.K. -- The burden of proof is not on good faith editors, that are removing p.o.v. that is overtly non neutral. Guidelines in general are the criteria. Long rambling disconnected idea driving and herding of disjointed concepts... framed in overt lecturing and hectoring of the reader, is very obviously against guidelines. To call a spade a spade is to describe something clearly and directly. Rather than using oblique and obfuscating language, just "tell it like it is." Edit warring back to versions that are against consensus is not a good idea.


 * Right now it seems suspiciously obvious that a small group want to hijack the article for what ever reason. Maybe they are true blue believers in one thing or another and want to recruit people to the cause and or make a big statement. That is not the function or role of Wikipedia. This article can be made a good article and get all points across without accosting the reader with lecturing rhetoric of politics or idealistic pushing and shoving of p.o.v. - How about taking that approach... relaxing... and every one making sure the article is simple, creatively done... loaded with interesting information that does not repeat, and in an overall way looks like a neutrally done encyclopedia article? skip sievert (talk) 23:03, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

The only "small group" wanting to "hijack" the article are LK and skipsievert, who pretend their minority opinion constitutes some sort of "consensus". Follow wikipedia guidelines, and do what you have been requested to do. I agree with 99.2.224.110 and NeutralityForever that you should provide concrete evidence. That means, as 99.2.224.110 said, that

Any proposed deletion HAS to prove that it is not RELEVANTLY related to the lead paragraph that the few dissenting editors THEMSELVES chose to leave intact. That would include

'''a TERM used to refer to a situation where persons are dependent for a livelihood on the wages earned, especially if the dependency is total and immediate.[1][2][3] '''

or

'''a SITUATION where persons are dependent for a livelihood on the wages earned, especially if the dependency is total and immediate.[1][2][3] '''

or

'''a TERM [that] is often used by anti-capitalists (socialists, anarchists, and other groups) to express disapproval of a condition where a person feels compelled to work for a wage[4] in a hierarchical social environment with a limited set of job-related choices (e.g. working for a boss under threat of starvation, poverty or social stigma). '''

or

a CONDITION where a person feels compelled to work for a wage[4] in a hierarchical social environment with a limited set of job-related choices (e.g. working for a boss under threat of starvation, poverty or social stigma).

or

a hierarchical social ENVIRONMENT with a limited set of job-related choices (e.g. working for a boss under threat of starvation, poverty or social stigma).

or

The USE of the term wage slave by labor organizations...

and so on

I also agree that if you really believe that you are correct, and that we are wrong, you start a Requests for comment on this page. MethodstoMadness (talk) 01:22, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
 * — MethodstoMadness (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. Dayewalker (talk) 03:31, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Hijack of the sockpuppets?
Probably a good idea to alert the economics articles related groups about an attack of pov sock-puppets on this article. All appearance is that is the case. I restored the L.K. edit and further trimmed some truly awful pov sections. Took off some unrelated pictures with truly odd disconnected captions and also put on the Labor side bar... which makes sense to have here... and took off the Anarchy side bar... this article is not about anarchists/anarchy... per se... so why is a huge anarchy sidebar here? Obviously because it pleases the pov hijackers that are edit warring the article for their beliefs. That may sound harsh... but by all appearances this is exactly what is happening here. Someone is flipping i.p. addresses and editing back and forth... or so it would seem. Pity... because the article can contain interesting neutral information and be informative... rather than an exercise in agitprop nonsense. Not too late to assume good will here and follow the Wikipedia guidelines... that would be a good idea. skip sievert (talk) 02:15, 1 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Certainly looks like classic sock-puppetry. Probably best to go straight to admin intervention. It's unfortunate because there is a lot of good stuff in this article, much of it contributed by NF and earlier IP incarnations. With a bit more balance and less OR, it could be really great.JQ (talk) 03:00, 1 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree. Could you go ahead and do that J.Q.? The article as you said could be good very easily again... but with the current situation it is just starting to revolve itself with reverts. I reverted it twice today... each time asking these others to try and assume good faith and make the article neutral and creative, instead of a sort of flaming manifesto. skip sievert (talk) 03:05, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

A Red Herring and a strawman
As someone already pointed out, this page is visited upon by thousands of people. There have been many editors contributing to it. The few editors that want to delete huge contents ARE the hijackers who are doing so against the will of the majority of editors here and thus want to pretend that all the other editors are "sockpuppets". In fact, LK and Skipsievert have just been reported for each reverting the article 3 times in less than 24-hours. They are basically violating wikis rules while pointing their finger at others--a classical scam technique. Let's not loose focus here. What we should be discussing are the CONTENTS of what these people want to delete.

As I pointed out earlier, with the support of other editors, Any proposed deletion HAS to prove that it is not RELEVANTLY related to the lead paragraph that the few dissenting editors THEMSELVES chose to leave intact. That would include

'''a TERM used to refer to a situation where persons are dependent for a livelihood on the wages earned, especially if the dependency is total and immediate.[1][2][3] '''

or

'''a SITUATION where persons are dependent for a livelihood on the wages earned, especially if the dependency is total and immediate.[1][2][3] '''

or

'''a TERM [that] is often used by anti-capitalists (socialists, anarchists, and other groups) to express disapproval of a condition where a person feels compelled to work for a wage[4] in a hierarchical social environment with a limited set of job-related choices (e.g. working for a boss under threat of starvation, poverty or social stigma). '''

or

a CONDITION where a person feels compelled to work for a wage[4] in a hierarchical social environment with a limited set of job-related choices (e.g. working for a boss under threat of starvation, poverty or social stigma).

or

a hierarchical social ENVIRONMENT with a limited set of job-related choices (e.g. working for a boss under threat of starvation, poverty or social stigma).

or

The USE of the term wage slave by labor organizations...

and so on NeutralityForever (talk) 03:16, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

I agree with NeutralityForever. The accusations are ridiculous and intended to distract people from the actual content that wants to be discussed. The fringe editors have banded together to have their way and have been reverting edits numerous times in violation of wiki policy MethodstoMadness (talk) 03:25, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
 * — MethodstoMadness (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. Dayewalker (talk) 03:31, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

I agree with MethodstoMadness 96.252.37.113 (talk) 03:33, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

ANI discussion
In regards to whatever's going on at this page, I've filed a report at ANI, which can be read here. Dayewalker (talk) 03:46, 1 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Noting that adminstrative action was apparently taken in response to the ANI re the situation in threads above, which I have not followed closely. Perhaps someone who has can review and remove the tags if as I suspect they are no longer justified. 72.228.150.44 (talk) 16:57, 1 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I removed the tag and also moved the sidebar on slavery to the top now... replacing the agitprop poster which in and of itself expressed a p.o.v. sentiment... as did the description in the caption for it. Just deleted that from the page as it was more a manifesto agitprop thing and not really good for explaining the actual subject probably even with a different caption. skip sievert (talk) 18:25, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Low wages, deletions and article "improvement"
It is amusing to see how earlier Lawrencekhoo did not even want to allow the presence of the suggestion that "low wages" MIGHT refer to SOME uses of term "wage slavery" (see http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wage_slavery&diff=266941879&oldid=266939163 )claiming it was "highly controversial". This "low wage" use of the term was being suggested as an ALTERNATIVE use IN ADDITION to the MAIN definition offered in the lead and the major dictionaries it is based on. Namely

Merriam-Webster

wage slave Function: noun Date: 1882
 * a person dependent on wages or a salary for a livelihood

''Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009''

wage slave

–noun a person who works for a wage, esp. with total and immediate dependency on the income derived from such labor. Origin: 1885–90

''The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2006 by Houghton Mifflin Company''

wage slave

n.  A wage earner whose livelihood is completely dependent on the wages earned.

or

a hierarchical social environment with a limited set of job-related choices (e.g. working for a boss under threat of starvation, poverty or social stigma).

And yet when Quiggin, in disregard for these definitions and the footnotes at the end of the sentence (e.g. ""The bourgeoisie...has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage laborers"--Marx) adds the words "low wage" before the words "job-related choices" describing the MAIN DEFINITION of the term, Lawrencekhoo doesn't do or say anything. It seems that if editors are politically close to him (as Quiggin is), he doesn't cry "bias" or "highly controversial" even when their contributions are less defensible than those whose political views he finds unacceptable. This is not historically unusual, since at every historical period (monarchy, feudalism, chattel slavery etc), intellectuals supported their elite, hierarchical systems for most of their duration--always assuming that dissenters were "biasad" and that the defenders of the system had arrived at their conclusions "independently" (what a coincidence!).

Of course, it is as well not surprising that Quiggin, as well as Lawrencekhoo would want to ignore or lie about the content of the footnotes in question, since without limiting the main use of the term "wage slave" to "low wage" workers, they may grant some credibility to to dissenting views and, furthermore, their own higher paid positions as professors may include them in the category--which in turn would bring into question the degree of ideological subordination they espouse in the hierarchical system they function--especially since an important part of their institutional function is to prepare their economics students to enter the workforce to serve our hierarchical wage-based system. This in turn would bring into question their self-described role as agents of neutrality in editing this article.

Given that LK and Quiggin themselves agree with the proposition that the term is primarily "used by anti-capitalists (socialists, anarchists, and other groups)", whose perceptions FOUND THEIR WAY to the official definitions of major dictionaries, why is it that they and other recent editors decided to delete some of the parts delving in some depth into what these groups mean by the term?

For example, this part

...wage slavery, in the pervasively anarchist and socialist usage of the term, is often understood as the absence of: In terminology used by some critics of capitalism, statism and various authoritarian systems, wage slavery is the condition under which a person must sell his or her labor power, submitting to the authority of an employer in order to prosper or merely to subsist. Thus wage slavery does not refer to the unavoidable subjection of man to nature (having to work to gain one's sustenance), but to the subjection of man to man (having to work for a boss). This assumes that "democratic control of one's productive life is at the core of any serious human liberation, or, for that matter, of any significant democratic practice."
 * 1) A democratic or anti-authoritarian society, especially with non-hierarchical worker's control of the workplace and the economy as a whole,
 * 2) Unconditional access to non-exploitative property and a fair share of the basic necessities of life,  and
 * 3) The ability of persons to, broadly speaking, have say over economic decisions in proportion to the degree they are affected by those decisions.

If the term itself was created by these groups, why not give a substantial amount of space to their history and perceptions? This would not exclude criticism or alternative explanations. And why not admit the HISTORICALLY CONFIRMED close relation between property, government and the wage system??? This is so crucial to this article, that whoever deleted this part ("Role in the development of the modern nation-state") cannot be considered a neutral editor:

The change in property relations leading to "proletarization" of the work force, described as the shift toward dependence on wages for support (later defined as "wage slavery"),  played a very important role in the modern consolidation of the nation-state structure that originated in the pre-capitalist "...feudal period with battles for power between feudal lords, kings, the Pope and other centers of power which gradually evolved into systems of nation states in which a combination of political power and economic interests converged enough to try to impose uniform systems on very varied societies...In the course of the development of the nation state system, there also developed on the side various economic arrangements which about a century ago turned into what became contemporary corporate capitalism, mostly imposed by judicial arrangements, not by legislation, and very tightly integrated and linked to the powerful states, [which are] [un]distinguish[able]...from the multinational corporate system, the conglomerates that rely on them, that have a relation of both dependency and domination to them...[T]heir intellectual roots...come out of the same neo-Hegelian conceptions of the rights of organic entities that led to bolshevism and fascism."



The close link between property and the state has been noted by many outstanding thinkers. For example John Locke, who in 1690 wrote that "[t]he great and chief end...of men's uniting into commonwealths, and putting themselves under government, is the preservation of their property" or Adam Smith who described how ''"...as the necessity of civil government gradually grows up with the acquisition of valuable property, so the principal causes which naturally introduce subordination gradually grow up with the growth of that valuable property... Wherever there is great property there is great inequality. For one very rich man there must be at least five hundred poor, and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many. The affluence of the rich excites the indignation of the poor, who are often both driven by want, and prompted by envy, to invade his possessions...The appropriation of herds and flocks which introduced an inequality of fortune was that which first gave rise to regular government. Till there be property there can be no government, the very end of which is to secure wealth, and to defend the rich from the poor". This tight link between property and state was also noted by John Jay (who repeatedly said that "Those who own the country ought to govern it,") and by US Founding Father James Madison, who said that government "...ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority."''

In this respect, statist welfare measures can be seen as a consequence of the elite's fear of dispossession--yielding to some degree in order to appease the organized pressure of wage slaves. This organized pressure interacts with other economic factors, such as the need to stimulate demand (and thus workers' wages) and the relative power of internationally-oriented capital intensive vs. nationally oriented labor intensive business; with the former being more Liberal party-oriented, and the latter leaning more toward parties that oppose welfare measures and organized labor more forcefully. Individual political contributions by isolated average voters cannot efficiently compete with such influential, organized and motivated actors who invest loans, gifts or "cash paid in the form of excessive consultant, lawyer and other third party fees"; or function as lobbyists or "sources of contacts, [or] as fundraisers (rather than mere contributors), and, especially, as sources of legitimization for candidates and positions. In particular the interaction of high business figures and the [corporate] press." These actors constitute '"[b]locs of major investors [who] define the core of political parties and...most of the signals the party sends to the electorate, [causing] realignments...when cumulative long-run changes in industrial structures (commonly interacting with a variety of short-run factors, notably steep economic downturns) polarize the business community, thus bringing together a new and powerful bloc of investors with durable interests." This multi-party competition for control of the state can also morph, or be replaced by other elite elements; forming a one party state that relies more on violence than thought control.

Though seemingly paradoxical, the most prominent current critic of wage slavery, the anarchist Noam Chomsky, has defended the temporary use of state power on the grounds that it prevents even more oppressive forms of authority and wage slavery:

"I don't think the federal government is a legitimate institution. I think it ought to be dismantled, in principle; just as... I don't think people ought to live in cages. On the other hand, if I'm in a cage and there's a saber tooth tiger outside, I'd be happy to keep the bars of the cage in place – even though I think the cage is illegitimate...The centralized government authority is at least to some extent under popular influence... The unaccountable private power outside is under no public control. What they call minimizing the state – transferring the decision making to unaccountable private interests – is not helpful to human beings or to democracy... so there is a temporary need to maintain the cage, and even to extend the cage."

Also, take for example, all the information that was deleted from the "Methods of Control" section. Doesn't it seem crucial to understanding the history, and sociological importance of the term?

The methods of control in wage systems, differ substantially from those in chattel systems. For example, in his book, Disciplined Minds, American physicist and writer Jeff Schmidt points out that professionals are trusted to run organisations in the interests of their employers. The key word is ’trust’. Because employers cannot be on hand to manage every decision, professionals are trained to “ensure that each and every detail of their work favours the right interests – or skewers the disfavoured ones” in the absence of overt control. Schmidt continues:

"The resulting professional is an obedient thinker, an intellectual property whom employers can trust to experiment, theorize, innovate and create safely within the confines of an assigned ideology." Schmit goes on to show with statistical evidence that subordination to elite ideology, including aggression, is greater among those with more schooling, a conclusion corroborated in other studies as well. Nevertheless, some theorists have placed people like managers and professionals within a "managerial" or "coordinator class" somewhere in between wage slaves and capital, because they tend to "monopolize empowering labor in their jobs - while others, who we called the working class, do overwhelmingly only rote, obedient, tedious labor." This perspective, however, doesn't seem to draw very sharp distinctions, because it maintains that managers tend to "...become parasitic in proportion to their proximity to the top of the pyramid...the further the distance from the production process, the higher the salary; whereas the closer the distance, the more likely that a 'manager' is a worker with a little more power than average." In Propaganda (1928), the father of public relations Edward Bernays argued that "[t]he conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of." Similarly Walter Lippmann argued that "the manufacture of consent" amounted to "a revolution" in "the practice of democracy" and allowed the "bewildered herd" to be controlled by their betters. Those who compare wage labor to chattel slavery have attributed its perpetuation to a variety of social factors, such as educational institutions catering to the ideological needs of the biggest employers (government, corporations); natural mechanisms that induce intellectuals to get ahead in the hierarchy, make money and become influential by adopting and disseminating ideas that are serviceable to power; the mainstream media; economic phenomena like capital flight, nationalistic and commercial values and propaganda spread by a huge advertising industry and powerful government apparatus, the threat of unemployment or even the passivity and ideology spread by spectator sports and entertainment industry.

While there might have been a certain degree of thought control in chattel slave societies, in Manufacturing Consent and The Myth of the Liberal Media, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky claim that totalitarian systems tend to rely more on violence than propaganda. They present a substantial body of evidence showing striking qualitative and quantitative differences in the coverage of facts and events in the corporate capitalist media on the basis of their serviceability to elite groups. Their propaganda model identifies 5 major institutional factors affecting media behavior. In order to be hired, journalists, like other intellectual wage laborers, are pressured to internalize the ideological constraints of the institutional structure-- a task that usually starts in educational institutions and works as a filtering system. Therefore, unlike journalists in totalitarian states, western journalists can serve elite interests without being subject to state coercion. As their counterparts in totalitarian states, they identify freedom with the elite that dominates their power structure:

"We have a free press, meaning it’s not state controlled but corporate controlled; that’s what we call freedom. What we call freedom is corporate control. We have a free press because it’s corporate monopoly, or oligopoly, and that’s called freedom. We have a free political system because there’s one party run by business; there's a business party with two factions, so that’s a free political system. The terms freedom and democracy, as used in our Orwellian political discourse, are; based on the assumption that a particular form of domination—namely, by owners, by business elements—is freedom."

In a thorough study of war coverage comparing Soviet and western journalism, Media Lens concluded that

"[l]ike the Soviet media, Western professional journalists adopt and echo government statements as their own, as self-evidently true, without subjecting them to rational analysis and challenge. As a result, they allow themselves to become the mouthpieces of state power. It is fundamentally the same role performed by the media under Soviet totalitarianism."

Also, since the economic theories of the groups who created and most often use the term, postulate that the wage system--what they call "wage slavery"is the main cause of the extremely important capitalist "business cycle", why delete the explanation of it?

Other economists consider wage labor to be the central cause of the capitalist business cycle; i.e. the key to understanding its workings is that in addition to the disproportionalities within the market created by the lack of communication (thus information) that stems from its competitive, hierarchical environment, the workers' resistance against capitalist authority is the main force behind it:

'''Property sells products to the labourer for more than it pays him for them; therefore it is impossible.' In other words... the system is based upon wage labour and the producers are not producing for themselves.... Capitalism is production for profit and when the capitalist class does not (collectively) get a sufficient rate of profit for whatever reason then a slump is the result. If workers produced for themselves, this decisive factor would not be an issue as no capitalist class would exist. Until that happens the business cycle will continue, driven by 'subjective' and 'objective' pressures – pressures that are related directly to the nature of capitalist production and the wage labour on which it is based. Which pressure will predominate in any given period will be dependent on the relative power of classes. One way to look at it is that slumps can be caused when working class people are 'too strong' or 'too weak.' The former means that we are able to reduce the rate of exploitation, squeezing the profit rate by keeping an increased share of the surplus value we produce [while]... capitalists try to maintain them by increasing prices, i.e. by passing costs onto consumers, leading to inflation. The latter means we are too weak to stop income distribution being shifted in favour of the capitalist class, which results in over-accumulation and rendering the economy prone to a failure in aggregate demand [because]...products are above the purchasing power of the worker.''

In this theory, the dynamics of wage slavery closely interact with the fact that capitalists plan not with respect of demand at the present moment, but with respect to future demand. The need to maximise profits results in more and more investment in order to improve the productivity of the workforce (i.e. to increase the amount of surplus value produced). A rise in productivity, however, means that whatever profit is produced is spread over an increasing number of commodities. This profit still needs to be realised on the market but this may prove difficult as capitalists produce not for existing markets but for expected ones. As individual firms cannot predict what their competitors will do, it is rational for them to try to maximise their market share by increasing production (by increasing investment). As the market does not provide the necessary information to co-ordinate their actions, this leads to supply exceeding demand and difficulties realising sufficient profits. In other words, a period of over-production occurs due to the over-accumulation of capital.

Due to the increased investment in the means of production, variable capital (labour) uses a larger and larger constant capital (the means of production). As labour is the source of surplus value, this means that in the short term profits may be increased by the new investment, i.e. workers must produce more, in relative terms, than before so reducing a firms production costs for the commodities or services it produces. This allows increased profits to be realised at the current market price (which reflects the old costs of production). Exploitation of labour must increase in order for the return on total (i.e. constant and variable) capital to increase or, at worse, remain constant. However, while this is rational for one company, it is not rational when all firms do it (which they must in order to remain in business). As investment increases, the surplus value workers have to produce must increase faster. As long as the rate of exploitation produced by the new investments is high enough to counteract the increase in constant capital and keep the profit rate from falling, then the boom will continue. If, however, the mass of possible profits in the economy is too small compared to the total capital invested (both in means of production, fixed, and labour, variable) then the possibility exists for a general fall in the rate of profit (the ratio of profit to investment in capital and labour). Unless exploitation increases sufficiently, already produced surplus value earmarked for the expansion of capital may not be realised on the market (i.e. goods may not be sold). If this happens, then the surplus value will remain in its money form, thus failing to act as capital. In other words, accumulation will grind to a halt and a slump will start.

When this happens, over-investment has occurred. No new investments are made, goods cannot be sold resulting in a general reduction of production and so increased unemployment as companies fire workers or go out of business. This removes more and more constant capital from the economy, increasing unemployment which forces those with jobs to work harder, for longer so allowing the mass of profits produced to be increased, resulting (eventually) in an increase in the rate of profit. Once profit rates are high enough, capitalists have the incentive to make new investments and slump turns to boom. If profit rates are depressed due to over-investment then even the lowest interest rates will have little effect. In other words, expectations of capitalists and investors are a key issue and these are shaped by the general state of the economy. In this framework of analysis, interest rates are considered to reflect the general aggregate demand for credit in an economy, with private banks and other credit-generating institution's largely forcing the state's hand. In other words, money is created largely in response to the needs of capitalists. Governments do not force banks to make excessive loans; and the over supply of credit, rather than the cause of the crisis, is simply a symptom. The informational isolation of competitors entails individually rational responses resulting in collectively irrational outcomes. Competitive investment drives the cycle expansion, which is allowed and encouraged by the competition among banks in supplying credit--amplifying other objective tendencies toward crisis, such as over-investment, hoarding and disproportionalities. In sum, the market's "money supply is largely endogenously determined by the market economy, rather than imposed upon it exogenously by the state." Therefore, blaming inflation on the state's intervention in the economy is considered an ideological attempt to ignore market inefficiencies and the harsh realities of wage slavery.

Some other deletions might not be perceived as important, but definitely also describe significant aspects of "wage slavery" and its connection to other important contexts

e.g.

Environmental degradation and the handling of nuclear weapons by people following orders for wages hint at the mass suicidal tendencies of hierarchical systems such as wage slavery. This may be due to an incompatibility with the moral and survival instincts that developed in the more decentralized pre-civilization power structures that possibly encompassed most of hominidae evolution—though too little is known about Homo Erectus to know for certain. Anecdotal evidence suggests that humans retain strong altruistic and anti-hierarchical tendencies. Also, the anecdotal evidence in Lawrence Keeley's book The Myth of the Noble Savage was counterbalanced by William Eckhardt's statistical and mathematical evidence, which together produced the possible conclusion that primitive warfare among the more violent tribes was constant but of a very low intensity, and mainly psychological. According to Eckhardt, wars of civilizations produce far more destruction than all of the primitive wars, both absolutely and proportionally. Agriculture meant that humans shifted from taking what nature offered to a mode of control of nature. This shift to control ultimately led to the creation of our current forms of civilized hierarchy--probably based on the creation or magnification of abstract notions of land ownership. The perceived psychological roots and ramifications of facts such as that "[t]he human status as top mammal depends without question on [agricultural] food production" and that the "[h]unter gatherer... lifestyle, in terms of long-term stability and reliability, has been the most successful in human history" has prompted anarcho-primitivist author John Zerzan to consider wage slavery as simply part of a continuum of "hierarchy... domestication...[c]onformity, repetition, and regularity [that] were the keys to civilisation upon its triumph, replacing the [relative lack of disease...egalitarianism, autonomy] spontaneity, enchantment, discovery [and lack of strict hierarchy...between the human and the non human species] of the pre-agricultural human state that survived so very long".

etc Entresasix (talk) 05:01, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Wage slavery not limited to low wages--particularly main definition
in this part

More controversially, others point to the similarities between owning and employing a person, and extend the term to cover a wide range of employment relationships in a hierarchical social environment with a coercive and limited set of low wage job-related choices (e.g. working for a boss under threat of starvation, poverty or social stigma).

The "low wage" part is incorrect. Neither the dictionary definitions, nor the footnotes following the sentence (e.g. ""The bourgeoisie...has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage laborers"--Marx) limit the term to low-wages.

Merriam-Webster

wage slave Function: noun Date: 1882
 * a person dependent on wages or a salary for a livelihood

''Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009''

wage slave

–noun a person who works for a wage, esp. with total and immediate dependency on the income derived from such labor. Origin: 1885–90

''The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2006 by Houghton Mifflin Company''

wage slave

n.  A wage earner whose livelihood is completely dependent on the wages earned.

NeutralityForever (talk) 03:49, 3 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Changed it. skip sievert (talk) 04:06, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm having trouble editing the page even after by block was lifted. May I offer a suggestion? I think you can rephrase it the way it was

environment with a coercive and limited set of job-related choices

There's no need to add "wage" before "job" or complicate the phrase further with "aspects of" NeutralityForever (talk) 04:19, 3 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Really there is no need to pov... aspects of the article. The whole contention was about that before. I changed the thing in question... and took the diatribe out of it. It can be understood for what it is... no need to lecture people on morality ... ethics... and opinions... of ideas... presenting information allows a reader to think for themselves. Here is the diff... it may not be perfect... but a small factual change is an improvement.... However, neutrality is the thing that counts here not an emotional use of framing  coercive and limited set... again that is O.R.... the way it was used... here is the diff. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wage_slavery&diff=268183157&oldid=268058165 - I hope when you come back to the article you stop what you were doing before. Really what was there did not even work as an essay... because of the stilted presentation. Allowing people to think for themselves makes for a better presentation. skip sievert (talk) 04:58, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

And why do you think that describing "working for a boss under threat of starvation, poverty or social stigma" as "limited aspects of wage job-related choices" "allow[s] people to think for themselves"? Why do you think it is more neutral and less pov than "limited and coercive set of job-related choices"? I think the latter is accurate and that, in contrast, describing, say, the threat of starvation and poverty as "limited aspects of wage job-related choices" is very euphemistic. Such euphemistic language can only be reasonably interpreted as intended to PREVENT people from "thinking for themselves". Let's say I were to describe the threats encountered by a chattel slave as "limited aspects of chattel job-related choices". Let's say that someone claimed that saying "limited and coercive set of job related choices" was non-neutral and that "coercive and limited set" constituted an "emotional framing"? Would you consider that person neutral? NeutralityForever (talk) 08:49, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Modern Nation State & Pollution
Two of the sentences that were deleted from this article, seem to me essential. Some people may have complained about their elaboration, but the sentences themselves should at least be included, even if in modified form.

1- The change in property relations leading to "proletarization" of the work force, described as the shift toward dependence on wages for support (later defined as "wage slavery"),  played a very important role in the modern consolidation of the nation-state structure

2-The appearance of most of the world's pollution coincides with the industrial revolution and the "proletarization" of the work force defined as the shift toward dependence on wages for support which later came to be defined as "wage slavery".


 * I won't address the first issue as I did not remove it, but for the second, pollution is a result of the Industrial Revolution not wage slavery. It would have occurred regardless of whether it was workers or capitalists who owned the factories. As such, blaming pollution on labour-boss relationships is spurious (it is also not supported by the sources). As an aside, historically, socialist and communist countries had by far the the worse environmental degradation, a tragedy of the commons phenomenon. LK (talk) 10:46, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

You're introducing POV here. That mass pollution (or the same industrial processes) would have occurred whether or not wage labor prevailed--whether or not workers were producing for themselves (e.g. deciding what, where, when and how to produce) in non-hierarchical participatory environments, is rank speculation, and in my view, incorrect, knowing what we know about how the domination/degradation of man by man is associated with the domination/degradation of nature. You have excluded an extremely important historical correlation EVEN AS A POSSIBILITY because it doesn't coincide with your pre-conceived notions of society. You should JUST REPORT the historical facts and LET the readers decide for themselves. The assumptions underlying your comments about what you call "socialist and communist" countries is revealing. Those countries relied on wage labor and bosses just as much as any countries labeled "capitalist". A worker in the USSR didn't have any more control over the factory than a worker in the US. Wage labor was their main mode of production and labor activity--so blaming pollution on some "tragedy of the commons" somehow arising out of worker's control of the means of production is spurious. I am not aware of thorough environmental studies done in environments where real experiments with workers' control occurred, such as anarchist Spain--but at the very least it is clear that no so-called "tragedy of the commons" happened in anarchist Spain nor can you prove it happened anywhere else as a result of worker's control. And even if you could investigate a short period of time where region x inherited capitalist factories and had workers control and a certain amount of pollution, it doesn't follow that you could make serious extrapolations about what would have happened at THE BEGINNING of the industrial revolution had workers' control prevailed. The concept of "tragedy of the commons" itself seems highly propagandistic. I haven't heard of any terms such as "the tragedy of private ownership of the means of production" or "the tragedy of corporate externalities" etc This terminological double-standard should give you pause. As side notes, I should say that societies with common forms of land ownership--including indigenous ones-- had a much better environmental record and reverence for nature, and that an environment promoting a selfish, materialistic or irresponsible ethos (e.g hierarchical societies promoting consumerism or delegating enormous responsibilities to a few authorities for decision making) must at least be considered as being possibly conducive to pollution. In any case, the record shows that most pollution in the world has happened as a result of hierarchical institutions such as governments and corporations, whose origins are closely intertwined with the shift toward dependence on wages for support (later defined as "wage slavery"),  So, the real problem is that a lot of economists and sociologists conflate this scenario, in which unmanaged resources are free for all, with the situation that prevailed in the use of "commons," which were communally managed resources in village and tribal communities. E.P. Thompson, for example, notes that Garret Hardin (who coined the phrase "Tragedy of the Commons") was "historically uninformed" when he assumed that commons were "pastures open to all. It is expected that each herdsman will try to keep as many cattle as possible on the commons." ["Custom, Law and Common Right", Customs in Common, p. 108f] The commons, in fact, were managed by common agreements between those who used them. Similarly, those who argue that the experience of the Soviet Union and Eastern Block shows that "common" property leads to pollution and destruction of the resources also show a lack of awareness of what common property actually is (it is no co-incidence that libertarian capitalists use such an argument). This is because the resources in question were not owned or managed in common -- the fact that these countries were dictatorships excludes popular control of resources. Thus the Soviet Union does not, in fact, show the dangers of having "commons." Rather it shows the danger of not subjecting those who control a resource to public control (and it is no co-incidence that the USA is far more polluted than Western Europe -- in the USA, like in the USSR, the controllers of resources are not subject to popular control and so pass pollution on to the public). The Eastern block shows the danger of state owned resource use rather than commonly owned resource use, particularly when the state in question is not under even the limited control of its subjects implied in representative democracy.

This confusion has, of course, been used to justify the stealing of communal property by the rich and the state. The continued acceptance of this "confusion" in political debate is due to the utility of the theory for the rich and powerful, who have a vested interest in undermining pre-capitalist social forms and stealing communal resources. Therefore, most examples used to justify the "tragedy of the commons" are false examples, based on situations in which the underlying social context is radically different from that involved in using true commons.

In reality, the "tragedy of the commons" comes about only after wealth and private property, backed by the state, starts to eat into and destroy communal life. This is well indicated by the fact that commons existed for thousands of years and only disappeared after the rise of capitalism -- and the powerful central state it requires -- had eroded communal values and traditions. Without the influence of wealth concentrations and the state, people get together and come to agreements over how to use communal resources, and have been doing so for millennia. That was how the commons were managed, so "the tragedy of the commons" would be better called the "tragedy of private property." Gerrard Winstanley, the Digger (and proto-anarchist), was only expressing a widespread popular sentiment when he complained that "in Parishes where Commons lie the rich Norman Freeholders, or the new (more covetous) Gentry overstock the Commons with sheep and cattle, so that the inferior Tenants and poor labourers can hardly keep a cow but half starve her." [quoted by Maurice Dobb, Studies in the Development of Capitalism, p. 173] Colin Ward points to a more recent example, that of Spain after the victory of Franco:

"The water history of Spain demonstrates that the tragedy of the commons is not the one identified by Garrett Hardin. Communal control developed an elaborate and sophisticated system of fair shares for all. The private property recommended by Hardin resulted in the selfish individualism that he thought was inevitable with common access, or in the lofty indifference of the big landowners." [Colin Ward, Op. Cit., p. 27] As E.P. Thompson notes in an extensive investigation on this subject, the tragedy "argument [is] that since resources held in common are not owned and protected by anyone, there is an inexorable economic logic that dooms them to over-exploitation. . . . Despite its common sense air, what it overlooks is that commoners themselves were not without common sense. Over time and over space the users of commons have developed a rich variety of institutions and community sanctions which have effected restraints and stints upon use. . . . As the old . . . institutions lapsed, so they fed into a vacuum in which political influence, market forces, and popular assertion contested with each other without common rules." [Op. Cit., p. 107]

In practice, of course, both political influence and market forces are dominated by wealth -- "There were two occasions that dictated absolute precision: a trial at law and a process of enclosure. And both occasions favoured those with power and purses against the little users." Popular assertion means little when the state enforces property rights in the interests of the wealthy. Ultimately, "Parliament and law imposed capitalist definitions to exclusive property in land." [E.P. Thompson, Op. Cit., p. 134 and p. 163] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.2.224.110 (talk) 11:53, 3 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Let me explain again, if it's not explicitly stated in the cited sources, it shouldn't be in wikipedia. LK (talk) 17:45, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Let me ask you again then to read the sentence and tell me exactly how many of these 6 and a half million sources http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=safari&rls=en&q=%22industrial+revolution%22&btnG=Search or 1 million and a half http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=safari&rls=en&q=%22industrial+revolution%22+labor&btnG=Search are not "citable" or "explicitly state" this truism?

The appearance of most of the world's pollution coincides with the industrial revolution and the "proletarization" of the work force defined as the shift toward dependence on wages for support which later came to be defined as "wage slavery". NeutralityForever (talk) 18:19, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Custodial Note
Will attempt to provide some service to this article, presumably there are already sufficient other editors to defend the article against the deletionists, the current content is broadly consistent with en.wiki standards for politically sensitive topics. Bot archiving of the discussion and citeing other unrelated but procedurally related/precendential content to be supplied (by me or others). Lycurgus (talk) 00:56, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Also:

72.228.150.44 (talk) 11:01, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
 * 1) Both tags are clearly spurious, they should be removed ...
 * 2) The idea that one should be "neutral" about poverty. murder, etc. is absurd, idiotic, and a clear attempt to express a particular viewpoint rather than report on the article subject.
 * 3) The synthesis tag is equally so. obviously someone with a political agenda that wants to suppress the very topic is campaigning for that viewpoint. Synthesis of available info on the subject of an article is precisely what encylopædic content is, at it's best, about. Synthesis in the sense of bringing together information is confounded with the sense of literal "syn-thesis" the creation of a new thesis.

Setup for archiving, this page is currently 160K and I set the archiving to archive talk threads not modified in 180 days. 72.228.150.44 (talk) 14:45, 30 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Suggest there be no modifications to the current last thread and instead make any (hopefully brief) comment(s) in new one(s) as this page is currently > 180K; the large thread will be automatically archived in 3 weeks. 72.228.150.44 (talk) 18:05, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

New section?: "Anti-Capitalist Perspectives"
'''Given that the term was developed, and is mostly (or very substantially) used by anti-capitalist groups (anarchists, socialists), I propose a new section called "Anti-capitalist Perspectives". It could be something like this '''

Wage slavery, in the pervasively anarchist and socialist usage of the term, is often understood as the absence of: In terminology used by some libertarian socialist critics of capitalism, statism and various authoritarian systems, wage slavery is the condition under which a person must sell his or her labor power, submitting to the authority of an employer in order to prosper or merely to subsist. From this point of view, wage slavery does not refer to the unavoidable subjection of man to nature (having to work to gain one's sustenance), but to the subjection of man to man (having to work for a boss). This assumes that "democratic control of one's productive life is at the core of any serious human liberation, or, for that matter, of any significant democratic practice." "Wage slavery" is considered an important concept in anti-statist laboristic social theories; particularly libertarian socialism. That is because the change in property relations leading to "proletarization" of the work force, described as the shift toward dependence on wages for support (later defined as "wage slavery"),  played a very important role in the modern consolidation of the nation-state structure, that originated in the pre-capitalist ''"...feudal period with battles for power between feudal lords, kings, the Pope and other centers of power which gradually evolved into systems of nation states in which a combination of political power and economic interests converged enough to try to impose uniform systems on very varied societies..." From this perspective, "In the course of the development of the nation state system, there also developed on the side various economic arrangements which about a century ago turned into what became contemporary corporate capitalism, mostly imposed by judicial arrangements, not by legislation, and very tightly integrated and linked to the powerful states, [which are] [un]distinguish[able]...from the multinational corporate system, the conglomerates that rely on them, that have a relation of both dependency and domination to them...[T]heir intellectual roots...come out of the same neo-Hegelian conceptions of the rights of organic entities that led to bolshevism and fascism."''
 * 1) A democratic or anti-authoritarian society, especially with non-hierarchical worker's control of the workplace and the economy as a whole,
 * 2) Unconditional access to non-exploitative property and a fair share of the basic necessities of life,  and
 * 3) The ability of persons to, broadly speaking, have say over economic decisions in proportion to the degree they are affected by those decisions.

Anarchist theory maintains that that the influence of elite groups on the law and conception of "democracy" is seen in even the most advanced government systems prior to the era of corporate globalization. These conceptions allegedly exclude workers from directly controlling capitalist institutions and thus ending "wage slavery". Some less radical sources seem to confirm this influence. For example, in the first part of his magisterial two volume work The Transformation of American Law, Morton J. Horwitz writes:

"During the eighty years after the American Revolution, a major transformation of the legal system took place... [which] enabled emergent entrepreneurial and commercial groups to win a disproportionate share of wealth and power in American society. The transformed character of legal regulation thus became a major instrument in the hands of these newly powerful groups."

And even before this transformation, US Founding Father James Madison had already stated at the Constitutional Convention that:

"“In England, at this day, if elections were open to all classes of people, the property of landed proprietors would be insecure. An agrarian law would soon take place. If these observations be just, our government ought to secure the permanent interests of the country against innovation. Landholders ought to have a share in the government, to support these invaluable interests and to balance and check the other. They ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority.”"

Similarly, the President of the Continental Congress and first Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, John Jay said repeatedly that "The people who own the country ought to govern it." Accordingly, police function developed in the context of maintaining a layered societal structure and protecting property.

The growth-oriented nature of capitalism, and the hierarchical structure of the state system, prompted Murray Bookchin to argue that the proletarization of the workforce during the Industrial Revolution and the appearance of most of the world's pollution were not simply a coincidence:

"it is not until we eliminate domination in all its forms … that we will really create a rational, ecological society." In other words, to save the planet, people must "emphasise that ecological degradation is, in great part, a product of the degradation of human beings by hunger, material insecurity, class rule, hierarchical domination, patriarchy, ethnic discrimination, and competition." "[N]ature, as every materialist knows, is not something merely external to humanity. We are a part of nature. Consequently, in dominating nature we not only dominate an 'external world' – we also dominate ourselves."

From this point of view, the materialistic and competitive "grow or die" maxim of capitalism is inherently anti-ecological. A centralized state structure, though partially restraining of destructive market forces, cedes great power to a few individuals, which has the consequence of standardising and disempowering the majority while imbuing it with an inability to handle the complexities and diversity of life and its ecological systems.

According to some anti-capitalists, the methods of control in wage systems, differ substantially from those in chattel systems. For example, in his book, Disciplined Minds, American physicist and writer Jeff Schmidt points out that professionals are trusted to run organisations in the interests of their employers. The key word is ’trust’. Because employers cannot be on hand to manage every decision, professionals are trained to “ensure that each and every detail of their work favours the right interests – or skewers the disfavoured ones” in the absence of overt control. Schmidt continues:

"The resulting professional is an obedient thinker, an intellectual property whom employers can trust to experiment, theorize, innovate and create safely within the confines of an assigned ideology." Schmit goes on to show with statistical evidence that subordination to elite ideology, including aggression, is greater among those with more schooling, a conclusion corroborated in other studies as well. Nevertheless, some theorists have placed people like managers and professionals within a "managerial" or "coordinator class" somewhere in between wage slaves and capital, because they tend to "monopolize empowering labor in their jobs - while others, who we called the working class, do overwhelmingly only rote, obedient, tedious labor." This perspective, however, doesn't seem to draw very sharp distinctions, because it maintains that managers tend to "...become parasitic in proportion to their proximity to the top of the pyramid...the further the distance from the production process, the higher the salary; whereas the closer the distance, the more likely that a 'manager' is a worker with a little more power than average."

Anti-capitalists point out how in Propaganda (1928), the father of public relations Edward Bernays argued that "[t]he conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of." Similarly Walter Lippmann argued that "the manufacture of consent" amounted to "a revolution" in "the practice of democracy" and allowed the "bewildered herd" to be controlled by their betters. Anti-capitalists who compare wage labor to chattel slavery have attributed its perpetuation to a variety of social factors, such as educational institutions catering to the ideological needs of the biggest employers (government, corporations); natural mechanisms that induce intellectuals to get ahead in the hierarchy, make money and become influential by adopting and disseminating ideas that are serviceable to power; the mainstream media; economic phenomena like capital flight, nationalistic and commercial values and propaganda spread by a huge advertising industry and powerful government apparatus, the threat of unemployment or even the passivity and ideology spread by spectator sports and entertainment industry.

While there might have been a certain degree of thought control in chattel slave societies, in Manufacturing Consent and The Myth of the Liberal Media, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky claim that totalitarian systems tend to rely more on violence than propaganda. They present a substantial body of evidence showing striking qualitative and quantitative differences in the coverage of facts and events in the corporate capitalist media on the basis of their serviceability to elite groups. Their propaganda model identifies 5 major institutional factors affecting media behavior. In order to be hired, journalists, like other intellectual wage laborers, are pressured to internalize the ideological constraints of the institutional structure-- a task that usually starts in educational institutions and works as a filtering system. Therefore, unlike journalists in totalitarian states, western journalists can serve elite interests without being subject to state coercion. As their counterparts in totalitarian states, they identify freedom with the elite that dominates their power structure:

"We have a free press, meaning it’s not state controlled but corporate controlled; that’s what we call freedom. What we call freedom is corporate control. We have a free press because it’s corporate monopoly, or oligopoly, and that’s called freedom. We have a free political system because there’s one party run by business; there's a business party with two factions, so that’s a free political system. The terms freedom and democracy, as used in our Orwellian political discourse, are; based on the assumption that a particular form of domination—namely, by owners, by business elements—is freedom."

In a thorough study of war coverage comparing Soviet and western journalism, Media Lens concluded that

"[l]ike the Soviet media, Western professional journalists adopt and echo government statements as their own, as self-evidently true, without subjecting them to rational analysis and challenge. As a result, they allow themselves to become the mouthpieces of state power. It is fundamentally the same role performed by the media under Soviet totalitarianism." NeutralityForever (talk) 10:25, 5 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Bad idea... Given that the term was developed, and is mostly (or very substantially) used by anti-capitalist groups (anarchists, socialists), I propose a new section called "Anti-capitalist Perspectives". It could be something like this in my opinion... really just trying to pov the article again with that line of presentation. Take some time and read guidelines of how to write articles is my suggestion.


 * Wage slavery, in the pervasively anarchist and socialist usage of the term, is often understood as the absence of:

1. A democratic or anti-authoritarian society, especially with non-hierarchical worker's control of the workplace and the economy as a whole,[6][80][81] 2. Unconditional access to non-exploitative property and a fair share of the basic necessities of life,[82][83] and 3. The ability of persons to, broadly speaking, have say over economic decisions in proportion to the degree they are affected by those decisions.[84]


 * 1.Democracy is in the eye of the beholder... '`` In the case of a word like DEMOCRACY, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different.' -George Orwell, Politics and the English Language.


 * 2. Unconditional access etc. - This is jingoism in the way presented... that Marxian political philosophy and Marxian economics were never sufficiently radical or revolutionary to handle the problems brought on by the impact of technology in a large size national society of today. It is sufficiently revolutionary to be of some importance and temporary application to under-developed areas of the globe... maybe. Marxian communism is so far to the right that it is bourgeois. Trying to indoctrinate a pov version of social wisdom of previous history, is antithetical to explaining something to some one, as is the job of a Wikipedia editor. The Marxian political philosophy was a condemnation of the ills of so-called capitalist society and a propaganda political document that all wealth was created by work, labor and toil, a theme which he sums up in his `Workers of the World Unite. Marx, envisaged abolition of one estate and the creation of another, and that the capitalist class should be expropriated and the workers be installed as the new social elite in a socialist world. All based on scarcity Adam Smith economics and the 'glorification' of human toil. The whole historical framework of that kind of thinking collapsed as machine energy replaced 'labor theory of value' but Capitalists and their opposites still cling to these antique ideas. . but that does not mean that they should be promoted here from looking at an article and trying to learn something.


 * Marx wanted to eliminate the so-called `capitalist class, or for that matter any proprietary interest or group in our social structure. Marx wanted to eliminate the so-called exploiting and owning classes. The workers against the capitalists, or the capitalists against the workers, or, Karl Marx's slogan, `Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains, could be viewed neutrally as an ironic bad joke, as despicable as the capitalists' slogan that ``free enterprise can provide the best of all possible worlds. Both attitudes of the so-called radical left and reactionary right are alike, mere misadventures in the hostilities of oncoming social conflict. So... trying to make the article into a radical manifesto... agitprop... etc... is pointless... and really you apparently are in the same mode of writing as before... which is too bad... because you have not gotten the message of the difference between foisting political clap-trap at people and presenting information. But... I am being to pointed here maybe.


 * 3.The ability of persons to, broadly speaking, have say over economic decisions in proportion to the degree they are affected by those decisions. So... maybe you are a Marxist.. or an Anarchist.. or something similar, or different, fine... no one cares... but to ascribe value and judge these political/economic ideaologies here in a biased way, pov... like proclamations and truth really serves no one. skip sievert (talk) 15:19, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

I would qualify a good deal of what you just wrote as your own personal POV. I could spend time countering the things you said, as I did in my last post when I refuted the notion of "the tragedy of the commons" presented by LK, but it doesn't seem relevant here. You seem to simply be opposed to anti-capitalist ideas, so you oppose their presentation, even if they constitute an important addition to this article. Your accusations of inherent anti-capitalist "bias" are not relevant to the section for a simple reason: The term was developed, and is mostly (or very substantially) used by anti-capitalist groups (anarchists, socialists). Hence its title!: Anti-capitalist Perspectives. From the point of view of improving this article, the only thing that matters is:

Does the section portray their views vis a vis wage slavery accurately?

This is true of the criticism section of this article or of any article or section dedicated to describing controversial concepts.

99.2.224.110 (talk) 16:38, 5 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks but I don't think so. Wage slavery the term is common slang used by the rich and poor caste and class... Capitalists and Communists... etc. etc.... Wikipedia is not a mouth piece for p.o.v. presentations - My suggestion is that the various sock puppets or floating i.p. users here and true believers in what ever it is that they find appealing about 18th century antique Capitalist and Communist soldiers... all get together somewhere and start a free forum... where they can write regarding what they think is right and true. This is probably not the venue for it though. You seem to simply be opposed to anti-capitalist ideas.... Think so? Not really. I just think neutral presentation and creatively presented non p.o.v. is a better course. That was the problem with the article before. Trying to reintroduce the same dysfunction is not a good idea (my opinion). skip sievert (talk) 17:51, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Your assertion that anti-capitalists (e.g socialists, anarchists, syndicalists etc) are not the main developers and users of the term is refuted starting at the first paragraph of this very article. It would be easy for me to elaborate on how self-anointed "political moderates between extremes" have been refuted in every single political system throughout human civilized history, but that would be diverting the issues toward the same irrelevant path as you. So I repeat the question you didn't answer and add a few more:

1-Does the article show that anti-capitalists played an important role in creating and using the term?

2-Do the 3 dictionary definitions cited after the 1st sentence of this article reflect the anti-capitalist notion of the term?

3-Does the section portray their views vis a vis wage slavery accurately? NeutralityForever (talk) 20:03, 5 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Already answered those. Someone can use a dictionary definition and then give a pov. intro to a definition... but that does not present much of any thing in regard to creative presentation. The term has been around most likely since wage slavery was invented as contract law after around 3000 BC -Urukagina (reigned ca. 2380 BC–2360 BC, short chronology), alternately rendered as Uruinimgina or Irikagina, was a ruler (énsi) of the city-state Lagash in Mesopotamia. He is best-known for his reforms to combat corruption, which are sometimes cited as the first example of a legal code in recorded history. Communism aspects, socialism, and capitalism all existed in forms since that time period as types of the political/religious price system societies. Adam Smith honed the whole mess down at the beginning of the industrial revolution... and formed the modern basis of Capitalism and Communism and Socialism... using labor theory of value and scarcity economics... and really mostly they are interconnected and very much like each other in the big picture. The focus of the article is not about anti- or pro- capitalists..or communists etc. it is about a homily term... that is popular in culture... and not really even a part of some movement or other. Accurately portray? Pretty much the article is about 80% better than last week... so no doubt it can be improved... but not on the lines of before... in the form of pov editing. My impression here is that some editors are extremely focused on a very narrow aspect of this which in the recent past has been shown to be just about a dysfunctional way to examine the subject in regard to Wikipedia guidelines. skip sievert (talk) 21:41, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

You accuse me of POV. You pretend to be an agent of neutrality and quality. You engage in far-fetched historical speculations that would never make it to the article. Yet you deny the REAL historical evidence in the article about anti-capitalist influence on the term. NeutralityForever (talk) 06:54, 6 February 2009 (UTC) The references list above is tedious and repetitious placed for clarity/transparency; the whole thread will be moved in time.72.228.150.44 (talk) 17:56, 7 February 2009 (UTC)