Sometimes I wonder whether I am a wage-slavery. In general, I would not say so. But, there are some shreds of evidence that could lead to the following answer. I am also a slave of money.
Despite our world’s constant development, the wage-slavery problem is still a massive problem. Practically all people are money-enslaved people. Who are the first victims of money which came to my mind? The first visualized idea was thousands of remote factories in India, Bangladesh, China, Thailand, etc., where even kids must work to make a living. Backbreaking labor for global companies makes those people slaves of capitalism.
Can we change that somehow? I am afraid that we are not able to do that. Probably, we can only reduce the number of such people, but the fact is that inequalities were, are, and will be with human civilization until the end of this world.
Polish science-fiction writer and philosopher Stanislaw Lem was the one who gave me a hint regarding all these facts.
But why do I have doubts about being also a wage slave? I often wonder whether all corporate people sitting in front of the monitors for eight hours a day, five times a week (or even more) are also slaves of capitalism. For me, it is some slavery. But, the fact is that such office workers possess many more possibilities to change their work than previously mentioned Asian children. Office workers are usually better educated and have many more opportunities to improve and change their jobs. In today’s Poland, unemployment is the lowest since the Communist regime collapsed in 1989.
A lot of educated people can change their profession during their lifetime. By switching their work, they adapt their broadly defined existence. Thus, I do not think I am a wage slave, but there were some moments in my accounting career when I felt so.
