The Worker´s Plight

[the last donut of the night]

OK. I believe I´ve started some threads on this, but I never got a good answer. Maybe because I haven´t been asking the right question. Who knows? Anyways, my question pretty much is this: capitalism is fundamentally wrong because it exploits the workers. We all know that. So could anybody give me an answer saying how workers are exploited economically through commodity production? Is it that they can never be paid enough for their work?

[FreeFocus]

Capitalists don't make money if workers were paid the full value of their labor (so basically, yeah, workers will never be "paid enough" for their labor, although another goal of ours is to abolish money). Moreover, it's illogical for labor to be done, whether using land or machines, and not have those laboring also owning what they work and determining what happens to what they produce. Most capitalists are not involved in the work, all they have is a piece of paper or bourgeois law that says they own the land, the building or the machine. Thus they rely on the state, which is based on illegitimate violence.

[the last donut of the night]

Capitalists don't make money if workers were paid the full value of their labor.

Yes, but how exactly?

[New Tet]

[...]Anyways, my question pretty much is this: capitalism is fundamentally wrong because it exploits the workers. We all know that. So could anybody give me an answer saying how workers are exploited economically through commodity production? Is it that they can never be paid enough for their work?

Capitalism is not fundamentally wrong because it exploits workers; It is wrong because it is obsolete.

The exploitation of wage labor is an indispensable component of capitalism, accomplished by extracting from workers in the first few hours of labor the equivalent in product of their wages. After that, the employee works for free.

[FreeFocus]

Yes, but how exactly?

Well, what do you mean? How can a worker be paid the full value of their labor? For example, a worker produces an item that will be sold for $100, but they work 8 hours a day and get paid $7.50 an hour. Let's say the worker makes 3 of these items each day, totaling $300. However, in a day, they are only paid $60. What happens to the other $240? The capitalist pockets it or reinvests it to buy more equipment and expand his exploitation venture. For a worker to be paid the full value of their labor, they'd have to pocket all $300. Basically this is what you'll see market anarchists argue for, worker co-ops or independent workers that compete in a market. They get the full value of their labor because no one exploits their labor.