Disguised Wage-workers

Disguised Wage-Workers Definition

Disguised wage-workers are workers who appear to be independent or self-employed but who are in fact contracted by capitalist firms on a piecework or commission basis. Examples include outworkers, commission salespersons, and share-cropping peasants.

Marxist Interpretation

Some Marxists argue that surplus value is expropriated from such workers just as it is from formally employed labor, despite the fact that they are not contracted as wage-workers in the conventional sense. On this view the apparent independence of disguised wage-workers conceals a relationship of exploitation essentially the same as that between capitalist and employee.