Wage Slave

A polemical term, originating in 19th-century socialist and labour-movement writing, for a worker whose dependence on a regular wage to survive is described as a form of bondage — the argument being that "freely" choosing between starvation and selling one's labour is not a meaningful choice. The phrase has been used by figures from anarchists and Marxists to Henry George and Mark Twain, and was central to Industrial Workers of the World pamphleteering. Online, "wage slave" is most often used self-deprecatingly by office workers venting on Reddit or X, rather than as a strict political claim. The term remains genuinely contested: some readers find it a sharp critique of capitalism, others find it minimises actual chattel slavery, so editorial use should stay neutral and contextual rather than endorsing either framing.