Understanding Exploitation...

[RadioRaheem84]

I just counted down the til at this part time job I picked up at a local bookstore to pick up some extra cash. It seems like the bookstore made enough money off of one til to pay for the salaries of all the employees in the store for one month. One til, one day. At least more than half for sure. Since its a small bookstore thats a part of a huge chain I know they can pay their employees more. Am i being exploited?

[which doctor]

Of course. You're being exploited because you don't receive in wages a full equivalent of the value that you produce while working. The wages you are paid represent only a fraction of the value you produce via your labour power. The rest of the value you produce is called surplus value and goes to the capitalists.

For instance, if you work an 8 hour day, 4 of those 8 hours will go to your wages and for the other 4 hours you will be essentially working for 'free' and all the value you create in this time period is surplus value and is absorbed by capital.

[RadioRaheem84]

Of course. You're being exploited because you don't receive in wages a full equivalent of the value that you produce while working. The wages you are paid represent only a fraction of the value you produce via your labour power. The rest of the value you produce is called surplus value and goes to the capitalists.

For instance, if you work an 8 hour day, 4 of those 8 hours will go to your wages and for the other 4 hours you will be essentially working for 'free' and all the value you create in this time period is surplus value and is absorbed by capital.

I have no idea just how capitalists explain away that with their marginal productivity theory. It seems logical and to the point. So essentially the working class is wasting their life potential away working for free? Not only is the worker paid a fraction of what his labor power is worth in terms of production but he gives the capitalist free work too?

[Die Neue Zeit]

Not all "surplus value" is exploitation, which doctor. Divide this into five parts, and you'll see what I mean:

1) Wage funds for the retirees, disabled, unemployed, and some public-sector jobs (treated as an expense or long-term liability via deferred expense i.e. pensions);
2) Capital replacement;
3) Capital expansion;
4) Chronic overproduction, wastage, and even planned obsolescence (expensed as a downward valuation of inventory via lower-of-cost-or-market); and
5) Enrichment of the capitalists ("dividends payable" or withdrawal/debit of proprietary capital, and also executive salaries).

Also: http://www.rabble.ca/comment/1060433/Erik-Redburn-wrote-Im-not


I didn't express disagreement with reinvestment, explicitly mentioned in Marx's 1875 Gothakritik as a rebuttal of "full proceeds of labour." The saying "under capitalism man exploits man, under communism it's the other way around" is right for all the wrong reasons.

Surplus value is three parts good, two parts bad: replacement, expansion, social goods and services (retirees, disabled, etc.), overproduction, and capitalist profits.

[AK]

When you think about it... the work hours in a day under socialism and communism could be drastically reduced...

[RadioRaheem84]

I was just thinking about that. By how much do you figure? In France I assumed their social democratic structure reduced their work week to 35 hours.

[AK]

Hmm... but what about the millions of dollars in profits that could instead go to the workers? Wouldn't they have to work the same hours, then?

[syndicat]

1) Wage funds for the retirees, disabled, unemployed, and some public-sector jobs (treated as an expense or long-term liability via deferred expense i.e. pensions);
2) Capital replacement;
3) Capital expansion;
4) Chronic overproduction, wastage, and even planned obsolescence (expensed as a downward valuation of inventory via lower-of-cost-or-market); and
5) Enrichment of the capitalists ("dividends payable" or withdrawal/debit of proprietary capital).


But 3 and 4 are not really separable. Expansion of productive capacity through investment generates excess capacity. Also various forms of capital expansion are speculative forms of investment. It's about distribution and benefits and costs from social production. Moreover, exploitation presupposes the ability to exploit workers, in capitalism this is thru workers being forced to work for capitalists, through the relative monopolization of ownership of means of production by capitalists. In other words, exploitation is grounded in -- presupposes -- class domination.

Exploitation lies not only in the income of the capitalist parasites but also the form of investment, such as investment in equipment, managers and software to intensify the pace of work, control and surveillance of workers. Any form of investment that increases human costs to workers is a form of exploitation. So you can't really differentiate 3 and 4 from exploitation. Exploitation isn't just the personal consumption income of the capitalists.

Exploitation presupposes a vulnerability to being exploited. That is, it is in virtue of the proletarians being forced to work for employers through the capitalists' monopolization of ownership of means of production that exploitation is possible. In other words, exploitation presupposes class domination.

Another problem with your account of exploitation is that it leaves out the unwarranted high salaries of the bureaucratic class...managers and high end professionals in public and private sector. Their situation is different than capitalists since some of the work they do is socially necessary. But a lot of it is a policing function, that is, sheer control over the working class, to ensure the exploitation of the latter. Also, the size of their salaries is unwarranted based on the socially necessary work they do. They are able to receive their high incomes only because the working class is a subordinate and exploited class. So the bureaucratic class also participates in the exploitation of the working class, but not all of their income is exploitative.

[Die Neue Zeit]

But 3 and 4 are not really separable. Expansion of productive capacity through investment generates excess capacity.

What about the Soviet industrialization drive, which emphasized capital expansion?


Also various forms of capital expansion are speculative forms of investment.

Just as there is fictitious capital, there is also fictitious surplus value. I didn't include derivative trading as "capital expansion."


Another problem with your account of exploitation is that it leaves out the unwarranted high salaries of the bureaucratic class...managers and high end professionals in public and private sector.

I included executive salaries just now, thanks.

[syndicat]

What about the Soviet industrialization drive, which emphasized capital expansion?


There wasn't capital in the USSR at that time as it wasn't a capitalist economy. That is, there weren't capital owners going out onto factor markets to buy or rent workers, managers, equipment and then selling commodities.

Moreover, Stalin's industrialization drive under the early 5 year plans was highly exploitative of both peasants and workers. Wages declined, a new bureaucratic elite of engineers & managers was created thru a crash program putting party members thru university. Income for peasants also declined, and more intense control of them was implemented, through state farms. This was analogous to primitive accumulation, in that a dominating class was racheting up the level of exploitation to build up productive capacity, and thus the collective wealth controlled by the bureaucratic class.

[FSL]

There wasn't capital in the USSR at that time as it wasn't a capitalist economy. That is, there weren't capital owners going out onto factor markets to buy or rent workers, managers, equipment and then selling commodities.

Moreover, Stalin's industrialization drive under the early 5 year plans was highly exploitative of both peasants and workers. Wages declined, a new bureaucratic elite of engineers & managers was created thru a crash program putting party members thru university. Income for peasants also declined, and more intense control of them was implemented, through state farms. This was analogous to primitive accumulation, in that a dominating class was racheting up the level of exploitation to build up productive capacity, and thus the collective wealth controlled by the bureaucratic class.


You know you can't have the economy expanding by more than 50% (very consevative estimation) and have everyone be poorer at the same time right? Unless you think 50% of the economy ended up in the pockets of the polit bureau members.

Productivity in industry declined or stayed roughly the same since millions of inexperienced new laborers entered it, who were previously peasants or unempoyed. These people saw a significant rise in their income and standard of living compared to where they were before.

Agricultural production in general had a decline but again I can't see how the average person's income declined. The number of peasants also showed a similar (if not greater) decline and it is noone's fault if the livestock was slaughtered by those that owned it instead of them having to see it "lost" to collectives. In class struggle you'll have to deal with the struggle.

There is nothing spesifically elitist with putting people in universities (of course it wasn't just party members). I have no idea how to build a hudro-electric plant. I'm guessing you don't either. In the Soviet Union very few people had the slightest idea as well. For the country to have hydro-electric plants someone would need to learn how. Since it is pretty impossible to raise everyone's cultural and educational level to the sky in the blink of an eye, those that get there first will get a directing role. You have there an antagonism between different kinds of labor but not a case of class exploitation. As more people went to university and knowledge was accumulated, the relative importance of engineers would decrease as long as the state didn't stray off its course.

There is nothing exploitative with modernizing the worker's economy, raising life expectancy, lowering mortality rates and expanding access to knowledge and recreation. That's pretty much what socialism is.

[syndicat]

There is nothing spesifically elitist with putting people in universities (of course it wasn't just party members). I have no idea how to build a hudro-electric plant. I'm guessing you don't either. In the Soviet Union very few people had the slightest idea as well. For the country to have hydro-electric plants someone would need to learn how. Since it is pretty impossible to raise everyone's cultural and educational level to the sky in the blink of an eye, those that get there first will get a directing role. You have there an antagonism between different kinds of labor but not a case of class exploitation. As more people went to university and knowledge was accumulated, the relative importance of engineers would decrease as long as the state didn't stray off its course.

There is nothing exploitative with modernizing the worker's economy, raising life expectancy, lowering mortality rates and expanding access to knowledge and recreation. That's pretty much what socialism is.


They could have tried to democratize knowledge so that workers could effectively participate in the making of decisions. This is essential for genuine socialism, which requires that workers become masters and mistresses of social production. But the Stalin regime was interested in educating a loyal bureaucratic class, who were paid substantially more than workers.

Exploitation occurs when a group of people gain an unwarranted income due to their domination of workers in social production. The bureaucratic class performed often a policing function, as management does in capitalism...keeping the workers working hard to fulfill the goals set, not by the workers themselves, but by their bosses. And the managers, army and navy and police officials, elite Gosplan planners and party apparatchiks all got significant benefits from their power over workers. That system was exploitative both because top-down decisions about production imposed personal costs on workers by their bosses and scarfed up much higher incomes and privileges for the bureaucratic class.

This is definitely class exploitation. the working class in the USSR were a subjugated and exploited class.