Surplus value

[cub1986]

Hello,

I hope that some of you intelligent people may help me :)

I have read about the theory of surplus value, that workers are not paid the full amount for their labour. However I tried to point this out to someone and he argued against it, giving me the example:

"Use a plumber as an example. He can earn £200 a day working for himself but it's risky because work might not always be guaranteed. Instead he joins a plumbing firm where he earns £170 a day with guaranteed work. This is because his boss spreads the risk by hiring more than one worker. He earns the £30 difference from each of them a day. Everyone is a winner. Scaling this up and you end up with bosses earning plenty (well deserved for what they have achieved) and a load of workers earning just a little under what they could earn by themselves but with less risk. What is the problem?"

How do I argue against this? How does the theory of surplus value work in such a situation?

Thank you :)

[ArrowLance]

This simply isn't at all true. Employers do not take risk in hiring employees they are not sure they have work for. I also don't see how simply working for an employer guarantees work, if there is not work available for you to complete you will become unemployed, the same as if you were working for yourself.

Also you can argue that risk is not a valuable substance.

[CommunityBeliever]

I don't think we he mentioned the control of the means of production (MoP) including the instruments of labor and the natural resources or the control of other forms of private propery. In capitalism exclusive control of the MoP is granted to the bourgeoisie, with minimal risk to their control of it.

For example, although the plumber provides a *service* by working on drainage/sewage infrastructure, that infrastructure is still owned by the bourgeoisie. Other sorts of workers, that work in *manufacturing* to produce commodities are directly dependent upon the bourgeoisie's means, which puts them in a worse condition.


Use a plumber as an example. He can earn £200 a day working for himself but it's risky because work might not always be guaranteed. Instead he joins a plumbing firm where he earns £170 a day with guaranteed work. This is because his boss spreads the risk by hiring more than one worker. He earns the £30 difference from each of them a day. Everyone is a winner. Scaling this up and you end up with bosses earning plenty (well deserved for what they have achieved) and a load of workers earning just a little under what they could earn by themselves but with less risk.First of all, that is a ridiculous example since employers do not take major risks and scaling that up is a nonsensical sweeping generalisation. The employers generally control the means of production and capital, with essentially no risk to their ownership of it (even at death their children inherit control) so they are in an unfair relationship to begin with.


What is the problem?The problem is the bourgeoisie's exclusive control of the means of production and their direction of production towards personal profit rather then use.

[citizen of industry]

Hello,

I hope that some of you intelligent people may help me :)

I have read about the theory of surplus value, that workers are not paid the full amount for their labour. However I tried to point this out to someone and he argued against it, giving me the example:

"Use a plumber as an example. He can earn £200 a day working for himself but it's risky because work might not always be guaranteed. Instead he joins a plumbing firm where he earns £170 a day with guaranteed work. This is because his boss spreads the risk by hiring more than one worker. He earns the £30 difference from each of them a day. Everyone is a winner. Scaling this up and you end up with bosses earning plenty (well deserved for what they have achieved) and a load of workers earning just a little under what they could earn by themselves but with less risk. What is the problem?"

How do I argue against this? How does the theory of surplus value work in such a situation?

Thank you :)

The plumber would probably make much less than 170, because the boss would have to pay for advertising, tools, vehicles, rent, utilities, etc. in addition to the money he took from the plumbers as profit. The advantages made from having the larger firm make it tougher for the independent plumber to get business, forcing them into a firm. So plumbing wages drop across the board and it becomes impossible to be an independent plumber. Competition between firms would lower wages further, and possibly put some of the firms out of business, meaning other firms would expand, there would be more plumbers looking for work (at a lower wage) and you would have more managers receiving salaries without doing any plumbing.

[Yugo45]

£170 per day? Pfft, yeah right.

[redtex]

Hello,

I hope that some of you intelligent people may help me :)

I have read about the theory of surplus value, that workers are not paid the full amount for their labour. However I tried to point this out to someone and he argued against it, giving me the example:

"Use a plumber as an example. He can earn £200 a day working for himself but it's risky because work might not always be guaranteed. Instead he joins a plumbing firm where he earns £170 a day with guaranteed work. This is because his boss spreads the risk by hiring more than one worker. He earns the £30 difference from each of them a day. Everyone is a winner. Scaling this up and you end up with bosses earning plenty (well deserved for what they have achieved) and a load of workers earning just a little under what they could earn by themselves but with less risk. What is the problem?"

How do I argue against this? How does the theory of surplus value work in such a situation?

Thank you :)

I work in a similar situation to your theoretical plumber, but it works out to the boss gets about 35% of what I earn. I'm not a plumber though.

The reason a plumber would go to work for someone like that is that, like you said, he gets more consistent work than if he worked alone. The boss advertizes, provides tools and trucks, customers call one big business, the plumbers share the work instead on some getting more and others getting less, instead of choosing between hundreds of independent plumbers customers call a big business, as a large group the plumbers get cheaper health insurance. In a capitalist society it seems like it even makes sense so let a guy have 35% of what you earn.

However, why do the plumbers need the boss? Why don't they fire the boss and just group up together and do what they were doing before and keep that 35%. After all, the boss never touches a wrench! He doesn't even have to know how to be a plumber to do what he does.

The plumbers themselves could handle advertizing, obtaining health insurance, answering the phone, dispatching and such. What on earth do they have to pay a boss 35% of their income for?

The could join together and accomplish the same thing without the boss.

[citizen of industry]

I work in a similar situation to your theoretical plumber, but it works out to the boss gets about 35% of what I earn. I'm not a plumber though.

The reason a plumber would go to work for someone like that is that, like you said, he gets more consistent work than if he worked alone. The boss advertizes, provides tools and trucks, customers call one big business, the plumbers share the work instead on some getting more and others getting less, instead of choosing between hundreds of independent plumbers customers call a big business, as a large group the plumbers get cheaper health insurance. In a capitalist society it seems like it even makes sense so let a guy have 35% of what you earn.

However, why do the plumbers need the boss? Why don't they fire the boss and just group up together and do what they were doing before and keep that 35%. After all, the boss never touches a wrench! He doesn't even have to know how to be a plumber to do what he does.

The plumbers themselves could handle advertizing, obtaining health insurance, answering the phone, dispatching and such. What on earth do they have to pay a boss 35% of their income for?

The could join together and accomplish the same thing without the boss.

Or in a capitalist society at the very least unionize and try to decrease the bosses 35% share and/or prevent him from decreasing the worker's 65%. I'm in a similar situation as well (more like 50%/50% for me). I could make more per lesson teaching privates, but then I'd have to take the train to different places and pay train fare, do more planning, scheduling, buy my own supplies and books etc. It's easier to work in one place, have students come to me and have all my materials provided for. But I try to organize the workplace. And there is way too much management that get big salaries for doing jack.

[cub1986]

I work in a similar situation to your theoretical plumber, but it works out to the boss gets about 35% of what I earn. I'm not a plumber though.

The reason a plumber would go to work for someone like that is that, like you said, he gets more consistent work than if he worked alone. The boss advertizes, provides tools and trucks, customers call one big business, the plumbers share the work instead on some getting more and others getting less, instead of choosing between hundreds of independent plumbers customers call a big business, as a large group the plumbers get cheaper health insurance. In a capitalist society it seems like it even makes sense so let a guy have 35% of what you earn.

However, why do the plumbers need the boss? Why don't they fire the boss and just group up together and do what they were doing before and keep that 35%. After all, the boss never touches a wrench! He doesn't even have to know how to be a plumber to do what he does.

The plumbers themselves could handle advertizing, obtaining health insurance, answering the phone, dispatching and such. What on earth do they have to pay a boss 35% of their income for?

The could join together and accomplish the same thing without the boss.

Thanks redtex for your reply (and everyone else for theirs too, most of them have been helpful).

Am I right in saying that the 35% is the surplus value?

[Rooster]

Generally, when you work as a wage labourer, what you earn is your subsistence (the amount of money you need to trade for things to live on; food, water, housing, etc). This is accomplished during the day under a certain amount of hours. The rest of the day is surplus value that you are creating for the capitalist. I'm not an expert on the plumbing business but I think a larger firm pays it's employees on salary or wage and independent plumbers are sort of like self employed people (they basically run their own company). Normally, the smaller firms/plumbing companies, have to charge more because they lack resources of the big company, forcing the lone plumber to lower his prices to compete and maybe go out of business. So I think in your example, it's more like a petite-bourgeois business going against a big bourgeois company, forcing the petite-bourgeois into the proletariat.