ABSTRACT
The upheavals at the end of the eighteenth century liberated access to labor, but they did nothing, or at least precious little, to improve the conditions of wage labor. The worker must subsequently, in the passionate words of Turgot, “sell his suffering to others,” for what precious little goodwill it will bring him. The commodification of the relationship of labor does not remedy the indignity of wage-labor so much as to lower it even further, such that if it is not the lowest status in society, then at least it ranks among the very lowest. In truth, there does exist beneath it an even more despised class of people, who live by their wits and crimes alone, but the line separating them is difficult to draw: we will speak presently of these “dangerous classes,” as one segment of the laboring classes comes to be known. The birth of a new status of wage-labor, beginning with the commodification of work, must therefore be seen as the absolute ground zero in terms of the condition of wage-labor, at least if one understands by this the acknowledgement of a status to which rights and guarantees are attached. Deprived of these tutelary supports, the condition of wage-labor is not only one of vulnerability. Indeed it will rapidly become altogether unlivable.
