Open letter to students (2000)

From the October 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

Welcome to higher education: just another few years before you have to put yourselves up for sale on the labour market

When you finish your university studies, the time will come to put yourself up for sale on the labour market. This means becoming a wage slave (or, if you’re a snob, a salary slave), working for other human beings who happen to own or control enough wealth to be able to be an employer of labour.

A not very dignified position, but something all those whose fathers who are not millionaires (whether great landowners or City crooks) have to do at some stage. Most people have to try to sell themselves at a much earlier age—at 16 or 17—and many fail to find a buyer.

Some, like yourselves, put off the evil day for another five or so years while acquiring additional skills that will, hopefully, enable you to command a higher price on the labour market. In fact, what you will be doing over the next three years is enhancing the value of what you will be selling—your mental and intellectual skills.

Some of you, too, won’t find a buyer, at least not for a few years. But then that’s the lot of the wage slave: to be dependent on finding an employer in order to have anything other than a miserable standard of living on some hand-out from the State.

The best-paid jobs available to university graduates—lawyers, accountants, advertisers—tend to be those which are the most useless from the point of view of serving human needs. Even those of you who will have useful skills—such as scientists and computer experts—will find that the best-paid jobs are doing research connected with military or commercial ends. But that’s the fault of the system and nothing can be done about it till the whole money-wages-profit set-up is done away with.