slow down a minute and think about what business essentially is. an agreement between two or more people involving an exchange of some kind of product or service. you have a chicken and i want one. i have some leather and you want some. i give you some leather and you give me a chicken. we just conducted a business transaction. now what’s wrong with that? nuthin.
what you mean - and this is something you can sense is sketchy without really knowing how and why - is that our particular kind of business in our particular kind of society has got some issues. but i’d not call it ‘slavery’, although the phrase ‘wage slavery’ is quite popular among centrists and leftists. the reason why it’s not technically slavery is because a wage earner can choose to deny a job. however, there are consequences for denying the job that if critically examined, reveal a whole nuther set of problems. check out the somewhat short-lived popular idea/movement among anarchists/leftists long ago called ‘refusal of work’.
so here’s some problems that would result from that… problems that cut through issues that are made trivial by comparison. they’re really meaty existential problems that say something about the very essence of society and bring the very foundation of ‘rights’ into question.
think about this. first, you didn’t ask to be born. next, you’re expected to follow the rules of your society and become either a wage worker or a capitalist. if you do neither, you go broke. your options then are to rely solely on social welfare assistance or become self sufficient in some way that doesn’t involve you participating in a legitimate job of some kind. your options are now narrowed down to two; hike out into the woods somewhere and become a grizzly adams or begin some kind of criminal activity to make money.
with the former, you’ll inevitably end up breaking the law; you can’t just plop down on a piece of land wherever you want because somebody owns it. with the latter, you’re willingly breaking the law.
now think about how absurd this situation really is. you don’t owe anybody anything, and yet if you don’t participate in a society you fundamentally disagree with (its business, i mean), you become a homeless bum or a criminal. so now where is your ‘right’ to refuse to participate here? oh you still have it, but to exercise it you have to forfeit all your dignity or become a renegade.
see what i mean by existential? one of those little nooks in human reality that everybody overlooks because they’re… well, they’re either a capitalist parasite or a working class dipshit.
so as you can see this refusal of work gig is a pretty radical and dangerous commitment, and yet it is essentially no violation of a civil contract. there is no contract, see, unless you sign it. otherwise, it’s coercive, and if it’s coercive, it’s instigating a state of war between you and the state. the state becomes your enemy, and you become a criminal anarchist, or a homeless bum, or a coward with a job, or a parasite with a company.
how many people have ever looked this far down into the real nooks and crannies of the civil contract? what was it rousseau said… born free, but everywhere in chains?