Preliminary Comments: WIkipedia on "wage slavery"

The opening line of the article blunts the force of the criticsm through its use of the indefinite article, thereby suggesting that the condition may or may not be realized in reality--whilst the criticism is that this is the situation of MOST people in the world.

the WKPDIA author writes of "a condition in which...."

Presumably this is due to an attempt at "objectivity"....

The paragraph headed "WS in capitalist society" closes with an odd suggestion: that critics of capitalist work want freedom from "obligation" as well as bosses. But, as obligation is a general moral term, a characteristic of the human condition, it can hardly be that critics of capitalism wish to escape moral obligations. The criticisms of capitalism I am aware of say, for example, that it undermines natural moral ties between people (e.g., thus Chomsky or Alpert or Hahnel) and thereby weakens the power of moral obligations.

The author also speaks of "wage slavery" as a "rhetorical device". I suspect that it should be written as "a mere rhetorical device". Is it rhetoric to suggest, as I believe, that modern conditions of employment resemble historical slavery in more ways than employers or Presidents or Prime Ministers would care to admit? NO, it's not just rhetoric. Of course, it depends upon the truth of modern working conditions, a matter which the article doesn't seem to notice. The article is written using a style which attempts to suggest distance....