The wage system is the primary means by which the capitalists of the world, or those who possess the material wealth of the entire planet, wage class war on their fellow human beings. Just as the rifle might be regarded as the primary tool of conventional warfare, an instrument for attacking, maiming and killing, so the wage system is a similarly harmful invention, an outgrowth of all that is base and reprehensible in human nature. Anarcho-syndicalism is opposed to the wages system on the basis that it facilitates the exploitation of human beings, and because it reduces them to the status of slaves, in a very real sense of the word.

So, we start by defining our terms. What is the wages system? The wages system is a product of the capitalist system, which, founded on the principle of private property, elevates private ownership of the instruments of industrial production (or, to adopt the old Marxist phrase, means of production) to the level of unquestionable, unchallengable Holy Gospel. The wages system arises out of the fact that mere ownership of the means of production cannot alone make them productive; the vital element in the process of production, that which makes or breaks the production process, is human labour. Without the injection of human labour into the process of production, the entire capitalist system grinds to a halt. The hostility with which the masters of the production process greet any halt in production through strike action, for example, is ample evidence of this.

Needing human labour to fertilise their tools and machinery, the masters of production, the capitalist class, are forced to hire workers. They do not work themselves. The capitalist hires workers precisely because their own role is to manage and direct, not to engage in productive activity, activity that directly results in the creation of goods and services. Since the workers do not own any means of production themselves, they hire themselves and their capacity for work out to those who do, which is the aforementioned capitalist class. For the period that the worker undertakes productive activity, she or he and her or his capacity to work is the properly of the buyer of labour, the non-working, managerial capitalist.

In order to fully appreciate why Anarcho-Syndicalists are hostile enough to this system to want to devote their lives to its abolition, sacrificing time to the Anarcho-Syndicalist movement at the expense of more leisurely pursuits, it is first necessary to examine a number of their basic assumptions about the world. In pausing for a moment to understand what Anarcho-Syndicalists are for, we can better appeciate the reasoning behind what they are against.

At a very basic level, Anarcho-Syndicalists regard individual autonomy as the basis and the necessary precondition for the enjoyment of a truly human existence, one based in the development of a strong individual self, complete with a distinctive character and personality and pursuits which bring spiritual fulfillment, happiness and pleasure. In other words, in the eyes of Anarcho-Syndicalism, autonomy and humanity are synonymous, and the lack of one presupposes the non-existence of the other. The basis of this reasoning lies in the supposition that what separates people from machines is their capacity for self-actualising behaviour, for individual thought and action -- in other words, for the exercise of individual will. To argue that one who does not exercise individual will is an automaton or a machine would be fairly obvious. To argue that a human is not a machine, similarly, would be somewhat tautological. Both nevertheless illustrate the point.

If, then, individual autonomy is the precondition for self-actualisation and the development of indivdiual consciousness and character, then, according to Anarcho-Syndicalism, the precondition of individual autonomy is material independence. As self-actualisation (as opposed to mechanical submission to a higher will) stands no chance of existing without autonomy and the capacity to exercise indiviudual will, so autonomy stands no chance of existing without it.

The basis of individual material independence, so the Anarcho-Syndicalist argument continues, and one which guarantees the same rights and privileges for every member of the human race, is that every individual must have free and equal access to the means of production, and through that free and equal access receive the full product of her or his labour. Free and equal access to the instruments of industrial production is the sole hallmark of a socially equitable form of material independence, and by extension a social form of individual autonomy, one which can be shared equally by all. It stands in stark contrast to the capitalist individualism, a form of appropriation which knows no boundaries and which is carried out at the expense of others.

If autonomy and the ability to exercise individual will on a daily basis are the prerequisites of individual self-actualisation, and if a socially equitable standard of material independence is the precondition for and the foundation of individual autonomy, then the only form of economic and social organisation that will be acceptable in an Anarcho-Syndicalist sense will be one that consists of the latter and thereby guarantees the former.

It can be argued, and Anarcho-Syndicalists do argue, that the wages system does not guarantee material independence and individual freedom. On the contrary, Anarcho-Syndicalists contend, the wages system stifles individual autonomy and degrades and perverts human nature.

The wages system is grounded in the capitalist system of private property and private monopolies over social resources and the means of production, as we have already noted. Being rooted in a system which facilitates and in fact encourages monopoly, it follows logically that the system of private property which forms the basis for the capitalist system implies dispossession and material dependence for the majority; in other words, a death sentence for their freedom.

Opponents of this point of view could at this stage contend that in capitalist society anyone can become a capitalist, that the social heirarchy is not set in concrete, and that opportunities to rise up the economic ladder are available for those with the initiative, skill and committment to hard work to climb. Obviously this is true to a point, although the observation that one needs money to make money is not without some basis in truth either.

The fact of the matter is that the wages system exists for one reason, and one reason only: to exploit the labour of human beings for the benefit of a small minority of economic elites. A profit is made by paying a worker less in wages than the value of the products she or he creates. This is unqualified exploitation, pure and simple. If the wages system turns wage earners into wage-slaves, then it also takes from them the fruits of their labour, for the benefit of others who do not work, and for which nothing is given in return.

Here we find ourselves at the crux of the issue. The capitalist system requires a large pool of individuals who are compelled to sell their capacity for work in order to live, individuals who have been denied their human right to material independence from birth, the basis of all their freedom and opportunity for development and achivement. It is true that a very small minority of people can rise up the economic ladder, just as others can fall down it. At all times, however, the ladder itself remains, the system of exploitation whereby some profit from the labour of others. That particular individuals can swap places in the cycle of exploitation and wage-slavery is completely immaterial.

Anarcho-Syndicalists are opposed to the wages system because it signifies material dispossession and economic compulsion. What the wages system means for the average person is a life spent in submission to goals and desires other than one's own, and a life of poverty and economic hardship, all in the name of a life of opulence, decadence and luxury and more wealth than they know what to do with for the owners of capital. The primary goal of Anarcho-Syndicalist activism is to abolish the wages system through the abolition of the insitution of private property and the class-divided society it creates, with all the oppression, cheating and exploitation that that implies.

Clearly then, in response to the wages system, Anarcho-Syndicalists advocate class war. When Anarcho-Syndicalists talk about class war, however, what they refer to is the class war which is forced on them by the economic elites who, in every move they take, attempt to destroy the freedom of the working people of the world in the name of the almighty profit. The class war, therefore, is not an aggressive war of conquest, unlike the imperialist capitalist wars which have been necessary to subdue the entire planet and to institute the system of private property which makes exploitation and the creation of profit possible, but rather a defensive war in the name of social autonomy and a decent human existence.

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