Questions

[Night Ripper]

1. The term "exploitation" is a bullshit term much like "need". I exploit someone simply by benefiting from their existence but that's the whole point of society in the first place. What they are really trying to say is that they object to the profit made by capitalists but that profit isn't somehow stolen from the value of the worker's labor. The worker's labor is worth whatever the market value is. If you want to work at $10 an hour but someone is willing to work at $5 an hour, your labor is worth $5 an hour, regardless of what you want, regardless of what the final product is sold for.

2. You are right that being a farmer is possible assuming that homesteading is respected which it currently isn't. However, the people ranting about wage slavery aren't upset that they could starve. Virtually no one in the first world is starving. The number of calories Americans consume is largely independent of income. They are ranting because they want the luxuries that capitalism brings for nothing.

[Prometeo liberado]

Pretty sure the first 100 pages of Capital could explain part one if not part two as well.
But I'll try to give a basic run down. When you say surplus what this entails is the surplus labor that a worker has sold via her/his wage.So, if I remember correctly, any use or accumulation of this "surplus" is a form of exploitation as the workers do not have democratic control over it. Without the workers controlling the means of production any and all surplus is concentrated, undemocratically, into fewer and fewer hands. I may be wrong.

[roy]

1) So what if surplus is used for expansion? Why is expansion necessarily a good thing? It doesn't mean the workers will be treated any better. In fact, one of the biggest problems with capitalism is that it relies on constant accumulation in a world of finite resources.

2) So your solution is to become a subsistence farmer? That's easier said than done. What if I want to work without having the surplus value of my labour extracted so that someone in an arbitrary managerial position can line his pockets?

Capitalism necessitates suffering. It relies upon and results in it. It is a fundamental feature of capitalism that the many must be exploited for the benefit of the few. I'm not sure how to make this any clearer.

[Revolution starts with U]

1 is an obvious strawman. Of course money must br reinvested for expansion. We are using a more classical definition of profit, as in monies gained by ownership of stock; not merely positive reveneus.

It id exploitation because it is an undemocratic, dictatorial relationship between worker and owner, wherein one side uses the legal system, and its enforceability, to leverage heavily in its favor

[CommunityBeliever]

Surplus is used for investment and expansion of the business. It is still exploitation because the worker doesn't get to decide where to invest the money or how to expand the business. If there is democratic control over the workplace and common ownership of the means of production, then there is no exploitation.


Wage slavery does not exist. You do not have to starve if you do not work. You can provide for yourself without a wage. Unlike small poor islands like Cuba that are suffering from an embargo, the US has a terrible private health care system. As such, if you aren't employed in the US, you should be really about problems that may arise from poor sanitation and a lack of health care services. In some other first world countries you probably don't have to starve if you don't work, but you do have to succumb to homeless, which is far from desirable.


They are ranting because they want the luxuries that capitalism brings for nothing. Can capitalism produce a computer for me with an instruction set architecture that doesn't suck? That is a luxury I want to have some day before I die.

[#FF0000]

They are ranting because they want the luxuries that capitalism brings for nothing.

luxuries like autonomy and the ability to basically get the most out of our limited time on earth.

and for such a stickler for rules and regulations in discussion, you sure do like to resort to ad-hom a lot.

[RGacky3]

1. Re-investment is not profit, surplus exists no matter what, the exploitation is the control over the surplus and the taking of profit.

2. Thats a semantics argument, in the big picture its either work or live a misserable and short life, unless you have access to real capital.

[Franz Fanonipants]

the best part is


1) Surplus is used for investment and expansion of the business. This is not exploitation. If it is then workers want to exploit their bosses too.

liberalism is a funny system because it pretends like any kind of power struggle makes people involved in the power struggle "less good" because well why can't we all just respect our natural rights to profit.

p.s. i think socialjusticeactivist is a pretty funny name for a reactionary fuck

[Night Ripper]

and for such a stickler for rules and regulations in discussion, you sure do like to resort to ad-hom a lot.

There was no ad hominem made by me in this thread and even if there were, once isn't "a lot".

[Revolution starts with U]

. They are ranting because they want the luxuries that capitalism brings for nothing.

This isn't an ad home? We're always so quick to judge others, and even quicker to forget our own transgressions.

[Night Ripper]

This isn't an ad home? We're always so quick to judge others, and even quicker to forget our own transgressions.

No, it's not. I'm simply pointing out that his question about wage slavery is irrelevant.

[Revolution starts with U]

I don't think you know what an ad hom, is, to be honest.

[Thirsty Crow]

What is wrong with this line of thinking..?
1) Surplus is used for investment and expansion of the business. This is not exploitation. If it is then workers want to exploit their bosses too.
2) Wage slavery does not exist. You do not have to starve if you do not work. You can provide for yourself without a wage.

1) This is mere assertion. Exploitation has a precise content, it refers to a precise part of social reality, and merely denying it won't help. I don't even understand the last sentence. You mean that workers want to be exploited? Well, if a social revolution is not on the agenda and people want to eat, then yes, exploitation is the only way they can manage to do so.

2) Again, mere assertion. How does one provide for themselves without a wage if they have no access to arable land? By self-employment? Sure, that's an option, though far from the majority of the unemployed for instance can reintegrate themselves into economic activity via self-employment, because of competition in the first place.

[Jimmie Higgins]

1) Surplus is used for investment and expansion of the business. This is not exploitation. If it is then workers want to exploit their bosses too.
2) Wage slavery does not exist. You do not have to starve if you do not work. You can provide for yourself without a wage.

What is wrong with this line of thinking..?
I'm not sure I follow the logic of these arguments at all, so I'll try and explain exploitation and maybe that will clarify things.

1) Peasants or Slaves are exploited right? They work and their master directly takes some of their labor by either forcing them to work for the master or by taking a percentage of what the laborer produces. Marx said that exploitation in capitalism while just as real as exploitation in slave and feudal relations, is more invisible and hidden because it is more indirect.

Rather than directly take our labor, capitalism pays us a wage. When we work we are adding value to the finished commodity through our labor. So if I work making wooden mailboxes, my labor in putting the wood together and sanding it and painting it makes the mailbox have a value greater than the raw materials were originally. The value of the finished commodity is crudely based on the value of the materials plus the general average value of the labor it takes to create the commodity given the prevailing production methods. But workers are not paid an equal amount to the actual value they put in, if this were the case, then there'd be no surplus created ever: capitalist could try and buy low and sell high, but that doesn't create new money it just moves money from one capitalist to another like a group of kids were trading a set amount of collectable baseball cards amongst each-other (maybe you could make a good deal and get a better card for yourself, but overall it would be a zero sum type situation). Instead, capitalists pay workers, sell commodities produced based on the materials plus the abstracted average labor value, but not the actual value of the labor actually done.

So as I worker I work and at a certain point in the day the value my work has created is greater than the actual wages I am paid and after that point I am creating new value without getting paid just as a serf works for their master for free part of the month. But again this is an indirect form of exploitation compared to the direct exploitation of forced labor or stolen labor.

2) Wage-slavery exists and is necessary for capitalism's existence. Capitalism couldn't have surpassed feudal systems without closing off peasant land and forcing people off of collective farming lands and into the wage workforce. In England the enclosure of peasant lands was accompanied by laws against vagrancy - after being kicked off the land, the punishment for not having a job or home was often forced labor or imprisonment. When industry was taking hold in the early US, the first industrial workers were most often young women effectivly contracted by their poor-farmer parents (fathers actually) to work in mills and the like - as young women they had no rights and couldn't just go off on their own to survive unless they were married-off or became prostitutes or beggars. So again, a much more obvious wage-based but nearly forced labor was necissary for the growth of capitalism. Now that capitalism has fully established itself in the US and UK and much of the rest of the world, there is simply no way for someone to (legally) find some land to farm to support themselves. Wage-slavery doesn't need as much direct repression to keep people working because people simply don't have any realistic alternatives to selling their labor for a wage if they want to eat and have a home. Additionally the cuts to welfare and restrictions on the homeless in urban areas (and constant harassment by police as well as vigilante attacks by thugs) such as sit-lie ordinances show that the old vagrancy laws are more or less still there, even if they are less obvious.