Talk:Wage labour/Archives/2015

Facts of US Patent Law

I am not sure what changes may have taken place in recent decades, and I've no doubt there are cases where a patent can only be logically assigned to a group and therefore is directly assigned to a corporation or one of its' officers. However ... . Will research it and post here on a slow queue. Lycurgus (talk) 00:32, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

wage labour from Marxist pov

"It can be persuasively argued," noted one concerned philosopher, "that the conception of the worker's labour as a commodity confirms Marx's stigmatization of the wage system of private capitalism as 'wage-slavery;' that is, as an instrument of the capitalist's for reducing the worker's condition to that of a slave, if not below it."

This is...really bad. No it can't be 'persuasively argued' and the phrase 'Marx's stigmatization of the wage system of private capitalism' sounds odd. Wage labour is OBVIOUSLY a step up from slavery, serfdom and you can find several references that can support that claim (even in Marx's writings he makes this point clear -- criticisms of capitalism aside, it is a mode that is more free and advanced than feudalism, slavery, etc.

types

the section types doesn't make sense unless you're assuming a particular (all encompassing) definition of wage labour which I would caution against. Is there a reference to justify this approach? Because a Marxist definition of wage labour would preclude some of the things under type (forced, indentured labour, prison labour, etc would not apply).

So first you have to make clear what framework you're using and then types which correspond to the framework. As it stands now, some of the points under 'types' contradict some of the frameworks mentioned in the article (Marxist for sure, don't know about others) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.79.143.139 (talk) 00:05, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

more problems

According to Noam Chomsky, analysis of the psychological implications of wage slavery goes back to the Enlightenment era. (No ref, SOURCE?)

In his 1791 book On the Limits of State Action, classical liberal thinker Wilhelm von Humboldt explained how "whatever does not spring from a man's free choice, or is only the result of instruction and guidance, does not enter into his very nature; he does not perform it with truly human energies, but merely with mechanical exactness" and so when the labourer works under external control, "we may admire what he does, but we despise what he is."[11] -- this is from an ORIGINAL/PRIMARY SOURCE and considered ORIGINAL RESEARCH under wiki policy. You need secondary source.

and then the article jumps into Marxist arguments.

"For Marxists, labour-as-commodity, which is how they regard wage labour,[15] provides a fundamental point of attack against capitalism."

The problem however is you have not yet defined wage labour FROM A MARXIST POV. Wage labour, according to Marx and Marxists refers to free wage labourers, and not slaves. In the content above, there are references to slave or unfree forms of labour but this does not apply to Marx's and Marxist defintions of wage labour.

ideas for content

Create a section for Marxist views. Define wage labour using Marx or Marxists. Discuss how 'free' wage labour is framed by several factors (you have to sell yourself to employer to live, you dont control product of labour or labour process, etc) Discuss the ideological dimension of this FORM of labour (capitalist worker thinks s/he is receiving back total amount of value s/he produced, however the value (profit) produced over and above the value of his/her labour-power (wage) is appropriated by capitalist. You could compare wage labour form with serf labour and corvee system where the split between necessary labour and surplus labour is apparent whereas under capitalism it is not. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.79.143.139 (talk) 00:19, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

I wrote the current lede some years ago. I thought it had gotten wiped but it looks like there was a move and maybe an alternate article with the other spelling which got merged into Capitalism as a §. Only checked lede, and vaguely recall doing some edits on body. I'm against making this one much larger and also giving it a Marxist character, anymore than the concept itself imparts. Think that already has a place in the space of Marxism/Socialism articles. Think this should just be purely descriptive of the thing itself but it could be expanded with links and summaries of stuff elsewhere. Lycurgus (talk) 03:22, 27 June 2015 (UTC)