On the Parasitic Character of Wage Labor

The ruthless critique of the welfare state and the renewed epos of the market have taken center stage in the political debate, to the point where a modern “dictionary of commonplaces” would necessarily have to begin with the concepts that inspire the polemic on welfare, intervention after intervention. In fact, these concepts are characterized by the somewhat phantasmagoric rigidity of commedia dell’arte character masks; to comment on each of them individually would be not just tedious, but also futile. It seems more worthwhile to concentrate on a single aspect of the debate, the one most helpful in terms of deciphering the new forms of social conflict—namely, the problem of how labor has become an excessive social liability between the decline of the welfare state and the new wave of economic liberalism.