What is a ?Wage Slave??

"Have you ever noticed how many of us seem to live ?lives of quiet desperation?, as Henry David Thoreau puts it? We feel trapped by forces beyond our control, trapped in a mindless job, for the sake of money, status or recognition. We complain that we never seem to have the time for what's really important to us, because our jobs take so much energy and focus that we hardly have anything left over. We plod along day to day; sometimes we even dread getting out of bed in the morning." Never mind the neo-Marxist rhetoric; if you really want to understand the soul-crushing aspect of wage slavery, read Thoreau's Walden.