Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-xtgtn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-20T00:29:21.658Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

10 - Chains and Invisible Threads

Liberty and Domination in Marx’s Account of Wage-Slavery*

from Part III - Traditions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 February 2022

Hannah Dawson
Affiliation:
King's College London
Annelien de Dijn
Affiliation:
Universiteit Utrecht, The Netherlands
Get access

Summary

Marx’s account of wage-labour is permeated with neo-Roman republican vocabulary. But Marx, in contrast to some interpretations of the tradition, also stressed the structural dimensions of domination and its relationship to exploitation. In this chapter, I focus on Marx’s account of the periods before, during and after the agreement of the labour contract. Marx held that workers were structurally dominated by the capitalist class because their ownership of the means of production meant that propertyless workers had no choice but to work for a capitalist master. Marx argued that this enabled the capitalist and capitalist class’s exploitation of the workers in the bargaining and setting of the labour contract. Finally, Marx detailed how once the labour contract had been agreed workers were subjected to the interpersonal domination of the individual capitalist inside the factory workplace. Together, these three moments of domination undermined the worker’s liberty and, according to Marx, made them a slave of the individual capitalist and the capitalist class. Marx thus maintained that the putatively free wage-labour contract amounted to wage-slavery.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×