In what way is money and wage systems by their very means oppressive and exploitive?

[☭World Views]

1. In what ways is money and wage systems by their very means oppressive and exploitive?

2. I posted this in "High School Commie's Guide" and didn't get a response yet, is there an easy way to debunk the following myth: "Capitalism is the best system for generating wealth."

[SocialismOrBarbarism]

1. In what ways is money and wage systems by their very means oppressive and exploitive?

2. I posted this in "High School Commie's Guide" and didn't get a response yet, is there an easy way to debunk the following myth: "Capitalism is the best system for generating wealth."

Wage labor presupposes exploitation. It implies that part of the value created by the workers is still going to the capitalist class. If not, then it isn't wage labor.

How can a system that isn't capable of employing everyone who wants to work or utilizing all of our production capacity be the best system for generating wealth? At any one time capitalism only utilizes app. 70-80% of our total capacity. There are obviously many more examples of capitalism's inefficiency, but that alone is an "easy way to debunk" that.

[NecroCommie]

1. In what ways is money and wage systems by their very means oppressive and exploitive?
They are economically un-democratic. The one who holds the money holds the power. And wage system is just an elaborate excuse to have an ultimate power on your societal contribution.


2. I posted this in "High School Commie's Guide" and didn't get a response yet, is there an easy way to debunk the following myth: "Capitalism is the best system for generating wealth."
Capitalism holds production back intentionally/sub-consiously because too cheap and massive production would plummet all prizes. This is what has happened to digital media, and now it has burst out from all boundaries of private possession via piracy. If production were to increase in other trades the entire system of private possession would collapse.

Good examples of intentional decreasing of production are the products that are engineered to wear out after some time. Have you noticed how everything old seems to last for decades while modern stuff barely lasts few years. This is noticeable in cell phones and cars for example. Also alot of so called "market failures" classify as intentional sabotage of production.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_failures

Besides, in arguments you should start by debunking the myth of productive = good. Production can be high, but if it all goes to the hands of the few it cannot be good.

[☭World Views]

Cool.

How could anyone defend the market system when it is such a failure? How has the USA been able to stay afloat even though they are trillions in debt that wouldn't be able to get paid back?
Is it the economy based on credit that will eventually fall?

[Misanthrope]

Cool.

How could anyone defend the market system when it is such a failure? How has the USA been able to stay afloat even though they are trillions in debt that wouldn't be able to get paid back?
Is it the economy based on credit that will eventually fall?

Capitalism is decadent, it will eventually fall but it relies on imperialism to survive. America is basically an empire, that is how it is able to stay afloat and there are still periodic recessions and such.

http://en.internationalism.org/pamphlets/decadence/ch3

OP:

VDEx18aK-xk


http://marxists.org/reference/archive/kropotkin-peter/1920/wage.htm

[New Tet]

1. In what ways is money and wage systems by their very means oppressive and exploitive?

2. I posted this in "High School Commie's Guide" and didn't get a response yet, is there an easy way to debunk the following myth: "Capitalism is the best system for generating wealth."

As to question no.2: No, there is no way to 'debunk' the 'myth' that "capitalism is the best system for generating wealth".

It's not a myth, comrade; Capitalism is by far the best system for generating wealth.

But it's still not better than socialism. That's because socialism is not at all about creating 'wealth'; it's about abolishing wealth creation in favor of the sustainable, democratic management of our labor, its product and the natural resources that make it all possible.

[SocialismOrBarbarism]

As to question no.2: No, there is no way to 'debunk' the 'myth' that "capitalism is the best system for generating wealth".

It's not a myth, comrade; Capitalism is by far the best system for generating wealth.

But it's still not better than socialism. That's because socialism is not at all about creating 'wealth'; it's about abolishing wealth creation in favor of the sustainable, democratic management of our labor, its product and the natural resources that make it all possible.

Abolishing wealth creation? wat

[New Tet]

Abolishing wealth creation? wat

Yes. Abolish it in favor of a different way of producing and distributing goods and services. In other words, production for use and not for sale with a view to profit.

[New Tet]

wealth (wµlth) n. 1.a. An abundance of valuable material possessions or resources; riches. b. The state of being rich; affluence. 2. All goods and resources having value in terms of exchange or use. 3. A great amount; a profusion.

[SocialismOrBarbarism]

Yes. Abolish it in favor of a different way of producing and distributing goods and services. In other words, production for use and not for sale with a view to profit.

I think it's obvious that he meant more things/use-values. If wealth was reffering to things produced for profit then the question wouldn't even be raised. It's a pretty basic idea that goods will be more abundant in socialism.

[robbo203]

1. In what ways is money and wage systems by their very means oppressive and exploitive?
2. I posted this in "High School Commie's Guide" and didn't get a response yet, is there an easy way to debunk the following myth: "Capitalism is the best system for generating wealth."

It is actually a very inefficient system for generating wealth and becoming increasingly so..

One of the main productive advantages of a non-market socialist economy economy over capitalism is that a very large proportion of economic activities within the formal sector of the latter actually contributes nothing whatsoever to the welfare of human beings but simply arises from the functional needs of capitalism itself. By this I mean activities or occupations ranging from banking to retailing to payroll departments to tax inspectors and a thousand and one other occupations. All these jobs are socially useless and waste an enormous amount of material resoruces as well. Some estimates for an advanced country such as the USA or the UK put the proportion as high as 90% of total employment but I think a more reasonable figure is 50-60% which the bulk of estimates I have come across seem to settle upon.

The elimination of all this "structural waste" in socialism will effectively double the amount of manpower and resoruces available for socially useful production - one reason, and there are others, why socialism will be vastly more efficient than capitalism in directly satisfying human needs

There is a very good pamphlet detailing the productive advantages of a non-market socialist economy at
http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/pdf/saapa

[mikelepore]

This is somewhat semantical, but the history of language is important. The word "wage" doesn't simply mean a share of the total proceeds. The word "wage" includes the assumption that the worker isn't a co-owner, the worker is considered an outsider who has been brought in to serve the owner. You will notice that, when several partners own a business and divide the proceeds, they don't call their individual shares their wages. For this reason, the shares of the total received by individual workers in a classless society shouldn't be called wages. All workers will be partners in the ownership, therefore their incomes won't be wages.

[mikelepore]

I don't think money itself is "oppressive and exploitive." The problem is that money conceals its source. It doesn't comunicate anything about how its bearer acquired it. Is the person who has the money a mugger or a pickpocket? A kidnapper or a blackmailer? It is just as easily conceals whether the possessor of the money is an exploiter. Therefore, we can expect a system of exploitation to find money to be an adequate unit of measurement.

Even if everything were done truthfully and no one got mugged, money is uncorrelated with personal effort. There is no sense in which a movie star who gets paid $30 million per year has expended one thousand times as much effort as a school teacher who gets paid $30,000 per year. Money doesn't provide for such any such correlation to be established.

Society should use a new accounting unit that directly expresses work time and effort as directly as possible. When I say effort, I mean, for example, if it's estimated by a public policy that 20 minutes of work for a firefighter is about the same degree of personal sacrifice as an hour of work for someone with a relaxing desk job, then a three-to-one ratio in their hourly incomes would be rational.

However, in today's system, there is no attempt to make such an estimate. Under capitalism, application of any rational formula is not considered a requirement. The only plan is for people to get away with whatever they can get away with.

[BabylonHoruv]

1. In what ways is money and wage systems by their very means oppressive and exploitive?

2. I posted this in "High School Commie's Guide" and didn't get a response yet, is there an easy way to debunk the following myth: "Capitalism is the best system for generating wealth."

Capitalism IS the best system for generating wealth. And for concentrating wealth. A more important question is why a high level of concentrated wealth is a desirable thing.

[robbo203]

Capitalism IS the best system for generating wealth. And for concentrating wealth. A more important question is why a high level of concentrated wealth is a desirable thing.

If you think capitalism is the best system for generating wealth perhaps you would care to explain why then it is so massively wasteful in drawing resources and manpower AWAY from the production of socially useful goods and services and INTO activities that solely serve the functional needs of capitalism itself (see post 11) Capitalism is horrendously inefficient from the standpoint of meeting human needs and in fact is becoming ever more so