The capitalists explain that the wage-earners are free because the wage-earners have the privilege of making a contract, a contract to work for wages; that the wage-earners being thus at last free to make a contract, they have reached their final status, an ideal status; and that thus (Blessed be the Lord!) evolution has finally finished its great work—the work is done and well done.
Capitalists and the intellectual flunkies of the capitalist class do all possible to have the world believe the following proposition:
The evolution of human relations is finished—perfect—in industry; and, therefore, the wage-earners are foolish and ungrateful to be discontented, after having developed to their present stage of industrial freedom.
Following is a sample of the familiar soothing congratulation on our having reached the present noble form of industrial freedom and civilization. Professor Fairbanks (Yale University) writes thus:[[352]]
“When captives taken in war could be utilized for work instead of being destroyed or eaten, a genuine means of production was secured.... Feudalism marked a decided advance on slavery.... The serf had certain interests of his own, not wholly identical with his lord’s.... Then masters gradually learned that hired labor [the wage-system] was more profitable than forced labor, and the principle of serfdom, like that of slavery before it, had to give way to a higher form of organization for production [the wage-system]....
“The laborer [at present under the wage-system] is bound to his master by no tie except such as he voluntarily assumes.”
How frankly profits are admitted to have been the motive inspiring the origin of the wage-system.
And how entertainingly ridiculous is the last proposition quoted above. What cheap palavering about freedom. What clownish antics pleasing to the kings—the industrial kings. It certainly pleases the industrial Caesars to have the Professor turn intellectual somersaults to induce the wage-slave to smile sweetly and admire the slave-bands on his own wrists. Are not those bands plainly marked “Free”?
Notice that Professor Fairbanks uses the words “master” and “bound” in referring to the relation between the employer and the “free-contracting” wage-earner.
A free man does not voluntarily BIND himself to a master.