Sad to see capitalist propaganda leaking in here. But remember the fundamentals my fellow workers.
Personally, I’m not a big fan of the “surplus value == theft” argument. At least not in every case.
The reason is that simply by being in the context of your employment, you can work more efficiently and produce more value than you could on your own. If your wage is between your ‘potential solo value’ and your ‘current value’, then the profit comes from the fact that you’re working in the context that your employer has provided.
This isn’t to say I’m against workers getting the full profit, but it’s not as bad as some people say it is.
That falls apart a bit when you consider that Capital, ie the tools and materials used to create Value by labor, is itself a combination of labor and natural resources. The context you speak of was not created by a Capitalist owning said tools, the act of arranging and managing labor is of course itself also labor, but that labor is not derived from Ownership, nor does said ownership provide labor nor value. It’s separate.
Your employer provides nothing that isn’t earned by the value of the labor of its employees
False, they front the non-labor costs.
The non-labor costs are still labor. A hammer is labor, wood, and metal, and imparts a portion of its embodied value onto that which is assists in creating.
Ownership does not provide value. Management does, it creates Value via labor, but ownership is not required for management, nor does management justify ownership.
…with capital they or their ancestors made off the backs of labor.
Great pretzel logic you’ve got going there.
True, but what would the employees’ labour be worth without the context of employment?
As an example of what I mean, I have a hobby similar to what I do for work (hobby: game dev, work: software dev), I can say for a fact that I am more productive at work. I can specialize more at work, can get second opinions, and I get free, realistic testing.
Still not saying wage labour is always good, just that there are cases where it’s not that bad. There are other things we should pick to be mad at.
I can specialize more at work, can get second opinions, and I get free, realistic testing.
All of those can exist without an employer skimming from the top, also none of it is free, as op mentioned in their previous comment - it’s all been paid for with money you made for them.
Idk why but it seems devs are incapable of comprehending theory.
Show me where that has worked?
Many places. A good, quick example is a Worker Co-op, which is more stable, with higher rates of employee satisfaction, than Capitalist businesses. FOSS is another example, the site you’re using is a rejection of Capitalism, which ruined Reddit with ads and horribly unpopular yet uncontestable changes like the API bullshit.
A Worker coop is in fact a Capitalist business. They produce goods sold for a profit to return that as wages. FOSS only exists because the folks coding it are sharing what they made for their own benefit and only able to do so as they are otherwise gainfully employed. Thus Capitalism is the engine which allows FOSS to exist. Well done disproving your theory. That is indeed the first step to discovery.
This might be a bit of a shock to you, but none of what you said is correct.
The definition of Capitalism is not selling goods for profits to pay wages. Capitalism specifically requires Capitalists. If, like a Worker Co-op, the Workers equally share ownership of the Means of Production, it is not Capitalism and in fact becomes closer to Market Socialism, or even Syndicalism.
Worker Co-operatives can compete with Capitalist businesses in a market, absolutely, but that doesn’t make the entity itself Capitalist.
Secondly, FOSS exists regardless of the employment status of those who contribute. FOSS can exist based on donations, a student hobbyist, someone who relies on their spouse, or so forth. To attribute FOSS to Capitalism is like attributing the Civil Rights movement to the KKK, because the KKK allowed for the horribly racist conditions that forced black Americans to March for justice.
You have done nothing to disprove anything, except perhaps the myth that you may know what you were talking about.
A Worker coop is in fact a Capitalist business.
Bullcrap. A worker co-op can easily exist outside a capitalist context.
Employment isn’t created by Capitalistic ownership, but via management of Capital and labor. Management is labor, and thus creates Value, but ownership does not.
Put another way: if you can replace a Capitalist owner with a worker-elected manager that owns the exact same amount of shares as every other worker, and is thus democratically accountable, and the value created is the same, then we can see that ownership itself does not create nor add value.
It therefore follows that you can specialize, get second opinions, and get free, realistic testing, with a worker-elected manager or a co-op structure.
Is any of this rubbing you the wrong way, or unclear?
produce more value than you could on your own
Sooo… more value that can be stolen by capitalists?
the context that your
employerfellow people doing all the actual work has provided.FTFY.
Your argument against "“surplus value = theft” is about as shit as it gets.
but it’s not as bad as some people say it is.
The only reason you can pretend that certain aspects of capitalism is “not as bad as some people say it is” is because of the fact that organized labor have spilt a lot of their own blood fighting to get it to the point of being “not as bad as some people say it is.”
Profit, rent, and private property are all forms of theft.
So no starting resources, no buildings, and no place to build a building if there were anyone with the means an intent. Brilliant, an even more disastrous utopia than the Libertarians. Well done.
No you idiot, the resources are all held collectively instead of individually. You are so stuck in your individualist world view that you seem to be entirely incapable of understanding the premise of collective ownership.
There are no resources as no one was paid to create them. Storage problem solved! Your intellect is truly inconceivable.
Are you stupid to think that profit motive is the only reason anything gets done?
There are no resources as no one was paid to create them.
Good thing nobody has to pay you to breathe oxygen, eh?
I’m all in on the labor theory of value. It’s gonna be a long haul to displace all the people who believe value is created by magic in the market, though.
What about keeping some revenue to reinvest in the business? For example, say I’m a business owner and I save some of my profits to open a second location someday. Does that count as stealing?
Yes, because for you to get those profits, you had to not pay your workers the full value of their labor power.
False. The full value of their labor plus the costs not tied directly to that labor is called Cost of Goods sold. The amount over that which the customer is charged is called Profit.
You’re using the liberal definition of labor value, which is the price the worker charges the capitalist for selling them their labor-power.
Marxist_Bear is using the marxist definition of labor value which is the value of a commodity measured in labor-time required to produce it.
Yeah, the the fantasy definition is not of any relevance. Only the real world actual observable outcome definition is of any importance. Much like they ignore the resources and building to perform said work in their “theft” argument, they ignore the actual definitions of most of the terms they flip on about.
That “fantasy” definition is a core building block behind the theory that drove the soviet union, the people’s republic of china and other socialist countries and revolutions that happened. I mean people were and are willing to go to war over it, I wouldn’t dismiss it as irrelevant.
Here is a quick read on marxism so you can judge for yourself whether marxist theory is a model of reality or not: https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Library:How_Marxism_works
The failed and gone USSR which became a Dictatorship within less than a generation isn’t the flex you think it is.
Ok? When do things start to get relevance in your opinion if multiple wars aren’t enough?
Yes. Because you get to have a second location and your worker who created the value with which you opened it doesn’t.
Lol that’s ridiculous. You wouldn’t have enough jobs if nobody could expand their businesses.
Well the communist idea is that the capital the workers generate is collectively owned. So it can be used to expand business, but since its not privately owned but instead by the people who generated the capital they get to reap the long term benefits of said capital as well.
How would/“should” this theoretically work in practice? Direct (presumably equal) payouts to every worker? I could get behind some version of that, at least.
That’s the crucial point isn’t it? The general idea is “from each according to their ability, to each according to their need”, but how that should be determined, how the capital the workers accumulate should be administrated, how the capital that has thus far been expropriated be taken back, how it should be redistributed and how any such attempt should be defended is the cause for a lot of leftist infighting. The answer ultimately depends on the material conditions and while theories might provide broad strokes any practicable theory will need to be adapted, which is why in my opinion the discussion of which theory is better or not is secondary to the study of history and actually attempted revolutions, whether they succeeded or failed. And, in my opinion, some of the more important are the Haitian revolution, the Paris commune, the October revolution, the November revolution, the Spanish civil war and the Chinese peoples revolution.
Completely forgot my literature recommendation as an example of such a study: “Blackshirts and Reds” by Michael Parenti. It’s a Marxist-Leninist view on the USSR, it’s shortcomings, it’s strengths, it’s fall and the effects of capitalist “reconstruction” on the lives of the workers.
This is where it gets fun! As a precursor, I’m a leftist that reads Marxist and Anarchist theory without dedicating to any specific tendency, as I feel that’s an issue for when we are further down the line.
Alright, step 1. We’ve decided to reject individual ownership of Capital. How do we go about replacing this, with a functional system?
The Marxist-Leninists would say that we would need to build up a network of Worker councils that ladder upward, that way everyone can have direct influence on their local situations, and anyone who moves up the chain must do so from the bottom upward, creating a form of meritocracy. The state owns everything, and the state is of and for the Workers, creating democratically controlled production.
The Anarchists take issue with this as it lacks direct influence on the top from the bottom, and prefer more decentralization. In more Anarchistic models, typically complex webs of Communes practice Mutual Aid, and operate off of gift economies. FOSS is an excellent example of this in practice, in the real world! People contribute what they can and want to, and recieve what others are willing to give. It’s a deceptively complex system to build, and isn’t as simple as just blowing up the state, despite what TV will have you believe.
The Syndicalists have yet another view. They see revolutionary pressure from Unionization, and wish to see mass union strikes gain control of various industries. Then, following successful revolution, each industry will form a syndicate in a federated system.
The Market Socialists have again another view. They wish to have a market economy, but owned and operated via Worker Co-operatives and other such structures. Usually this is combined with Democratic Socialism, and structured similar to a liberal democracy (imagine America but with worker co-ops entirely).
The Council Communists are generally an anti-Stalin, pro-Marx, pro-Lenin Tendency that wish to see less centralization than in a Soviet Republic, and have Worker councils themselves own and run everything, without the same structure of laddering.
You can see that there are many, many, many different arguments for how to structure a leftist society, but all boil down to democratization of industry in different forms.
And the guy with the armed thugs takes over and becomes dictator. Cool, cool…
How? Which version are you talking about? Legitimately.
So, like Taxation?
Please show on the map where that has worked out for the betterment of the workers.
If you look at the feudal society before the October revolution and then during the soviet era the change would seem miraculous.
Same for the chinese people casting off the brutal feudal society.
Really any communist revolution, can you show me one were the workers were worse off after the revolution?
Just look at the stats for the USSR for example: http://www.socialisteconomist.com/2017/10/how-ussr-radically-reduced-income.html
The actual paper I meant to link: https://wid.world/news-article/new-paper-inequality-series-russia/
Absolutely false. The workers were in no way the beneficiaries of either event. All you’ve done is prove my point that it won’t work. Reality is that outside of small Clan level groups, where Familial ties can in some cases prevent the most violent abuser from taking control, it is simply against Human Nature to cooperate equitably.
I mean if it’s not income disparity then how would you measure equitable distribution of capital in a society?
That’s not what people are advocating for. Yes, you’re correct, if you assume Capitalism is the only mode of production.
Since ownership does not create Value, and is merely used to exert power over non-owner workers, if Workers collectively share capital then they can own the value they create.
Imagine a factory. One version is owned and run by the Workers, the other version is owned by a Capitalist. The first one is what people advocate for, it gives the Workers the ability to vote and elect a manager, and democratizes production. The second option is what we currently have, and there’s no actual choice.
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Not everyone who wants better rights for workers is a Marxist; the horror.
Most people want better rights for Workers, yes, Marxism just provides a sound base for analyzing why Worker’s rights aren’t good in the first place. It’s a helpful lense of analysis.
You don’t need to be a Marxist to want better rights for Workers, not at all, but Marxism definitely helps. That’s why leftists are almost exclusively Marxists in some fashion, even Anarchists acknowledge Marxian analysis of Capitalism.
It’s crazy how much Marx u have in any people-related fields of study like sociology, economics n so on. Dude was hella smart!
Yep, for sure! You don’t even have to think he was 100% correct about literally everything to gain value from Materialist analysis and viewing conditions through a Marxian lense.
What?
So if I work and make a profit, that money is stolen from the value of my labour?
No, its just that you get to keep all of the profit.
When you work for a capitalist they pay you a portion of the profit your labor generated to cover your labor cost (food, shelter etc.) and keep the rest for themself.
It might be better understood in Marxist terms: you have the cost of your input materials and the cost of the labor-power needed to transform them. Subtract them from the output value of the labor and you get the surplus-value. The capitalist will keep the surplus-value the laborer created for themself and the laborer gets enough to cover the cost of maintaining their labor-power.
I get what ypu are saying, but I have a different oppinion on the subject, and it appears that I have found my way to the wrong community, so I won’t go into details here.
I wish you all the best!
That’s not how all of us here feel. Sorry to see you go.
To you as well. If you ever wonder what those Marxist are talking about here is a good read on it imo
https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Library:Wage_labour_and_capital
What difference in opinion do you have? Self-employed laborers get to keep all of their created Value, whereas Capitalists take value created by others.
Or it is the return for having fronted the expenses. One of those two.
Its not. No capitalist invests in a venture where the most they expect is a return of their expenses.
Oh, really? So you think the Utilities and rent wait until the clients show up and have paid do you?
No I don’t? What? I’m pointing out that the landlord expects the rent to be higher than the utilities, that the profit isn’t the return of the expenses but higher. If the landlord thought the rent would break even on the utilities he wouldn’t be investing in rental property.Misread your comment but my point still stands, the capitalist wouldn’t invest in a venture if all they expected was a return on the utilities and rent.
And the Worker expects a return on their labor. Your distinction is meaningless.
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