Source: The UnPopulist
by Brink Lindsey
“Every Labor Day, Americans participate in a holiday whose meaning has gradually thinned out—stripped down to a three-day weekend, end-of-summer sales, and only a passing nod to ‘workers.’ American thinking about work and freedom used to run much deeper than that. At the Founding, and for the decades that followed, working for wages wasn’t seen as a normal fact of economic life. Rather, it was widely regarded as a form of dependence, a glorified form of servitude. That suspicion of wage labor shaped one of the 19th century’s defining political movements. Today, on Labor Day, its logic is worth closer examination. I’m proposing that we go back to the future, reviving the ‘free labor’ vision of Abraham Lincoln and fellow early Republicans.” (09/07/26)
https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/is-wage-labor-freedom-or-servitude