Against the background of the ongoing changes in the forms of employment, as well as the active automation and robotization of jobs, the value of hired labor in human life is being reconsidered, which, in turn, determines the relevance of research on hired labor. In this article, the author analyzes the development of an ethical attitude towards wage labor, from the antique period to the present. An explanation of the phenomenon of the antique attitude towards wage labor is given, according to which wage labor was considered a humiliating and unworthy occupation of a free person. It is concluded that negative attitude of free people to wage labor was characteristic of any slave-owning or feudal society. The author shows how ethical assessments of hired labor begin to change in a positive sense with capitalism, but how later, within the framework of Marxism, anti-work ideas are generated and formed. It is concluded that the emergence of anti-work ideas within the framework of Marxism is a response to the over-exploitation of the working class. At the end of the article, the author attempts to identify problems and contradictions in conflict with cultural attitudes that exist in the ethics of hired labor at present stages of society development. For the article, materials of Russian and foreign researchers were used.
