"Paying Your Dues"

Where the right to a position or some other such good is concerned people often speak of having "paid their dues."

One might take this to mean their having earned the position through evident preparations for that position's tasks and demonstrations of the relevant competences gained thereby--as with an artisan who completed apprenticeship and wander year, produced a "masterpiece," and thus has shown their worthiness to stand with the other masters in a guild, with all the rights (and responsibilities) pertaining to that.

However, the demonstration of actual merit is not what the phrase "paying one's dues" calls to mind. Rather it makes one think of membership in an exclusive social club--but they are, of course, not usually looking to get into a social club per se, or paying money to do it. However, that word "pay" still seems relevant, calling to mind how people used to buy offices, and why they were prepared to do so, namely to make money out of that office, commonly by taking bribes.

As in that case, those who speak of having "paid their dues" have let others exploit them in the past so that they can be in the privileged position where they get to exploit others later in their turn.

It is an essentially nasty concept--the kind of nastiness quite natural to the mediocre conformist mind that believes in "playing the game."