*Labor* has existed in every economic system, both in capitalism and in earlier times, but the concept of a “job”–that is, a form of labor mediated by an employer/employee relationship–didn’t exist prior to the rise of capital.
A lot of this just depends on how broad of a definition of the word we want to use–if you mean it broadly, that is, having a job is doing any form of labor at all, then yes, of course you’re right. I don’t think that’s a good definition (after all, I don’t think people would consider slave labor to be a “job”) but I also assume that isn’t the meaning you meant. On the other hand, you can define the term so narrowly that it becomes circular, and I wouldn’t want that either.
So let me meet you halfway. In previous economic systems, people had things that we would describe as jobs, sure. But, I would argue in reply, that the relationship those people had between their labor, their “employer” and the economic structures of the time, were vastly different than our own, and so, not really at all comparable to our general use of the term job.
In fact, if you look at the etymology of the term, it’s actually fairly young: (http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=job). The first use only dates back to the 1600′s, which is after the last major economic system, Feaudalism, is generally considered to have ended. Even then, it wasn’t used as we use it now–it simply meant “a task” or “a thing that needed to be done.” It took on the meaning of “work for pay” around 1650, and didn’t mean a “paid position” until the mid 1800′s, that is, well within the Capitalist Era. The much older word, which would have been used in the Feudal Era was simply work, and it’s earlier etymologies, since the term ‘job’ didn’t yet exist.
In any case, “jobs” very much are a construct of the dominant capitalist system, regardless of whether something like a job existed in prior economic systems. It’s an aspect of alienation, a way of disguising the relationship a worker has with their own labor–and the means of production.
tl;dr – Economic and social oppression doesn’t really give a fuck about semantics. It’s still there whether you want to argue like a pedant or not.
Bracken's Corner 