Are bosses also "workers" in a sense?

[Jacob Cliff]

No boss doesn't not work, every boss contributes some part to production. Doesn't this debunk that labor is the source of value? Labor doesn't create all value, it seems, since nature and machines do as well. So do CEOs and managers. Or is there something I'm missing?

[#FF0000]

No boss doesn't not work, every boss contributes some part to production. Doesn't this debunk that labor is the source of value? Labor doesn't create all value, it seems, since nature and machines do as well. So do CEOs and managers. Or is there something I'm missing?

A CEOs job is the maximize the value of their company by organizing how production is carried out. They don't carry out labor so much as they organize production.

And Marx never said that labor creates all value. He brings up Nature specifically, in fact.

[tuwix]

No boss doesn't not work, every boss contributes some part to production. Doesn't this debunk that labor is the source of value? Labor doesn't create all value, it seems, since nature and machines do as well. So do CEOs and managers. Or is there something I'm missing?

It's pretty curious phenomenon that wasn't elaborated by Marx because it was virtually non-existent in his times.
Indeed bosses are workers who are employed by owners as well as normal prols. But due to his ties an dependencies from owners he's representative of them and their class interests. His own class antagonisms (salary issues, for example) he solves individually but externally he's just a bourgeois tool who likely will never get a class consciousness...

[Tim Cornelis]

It's pretty curious phenomenon that wasn't elaborated by Marx because it was virtually non-existent in his times.

It did exist and they did recognise it.

"If the crises demonstrate the incapacity of the bourgeoisie for managing any longer modern productive forces, the transformation of the great establishments for production and distribution into joint-stock companies and state property shows how unnecessary the bourgeoisie are for that purpose. All the social functions of the capitalist are now performed by salaried employees. The capitalist has no further social function than that of pocketing dividends, tearing off coupons, and gambling on the Stock Exchange, where the different capitalists despoil one another of their capital. At first the capitalist mode of production forces out the workers. Now it forces out the capitalists, and reduces them, just as it reduced the workers, to the ranks of the surplus population, although not immediately into those of the industrial reserve army."

Engels, Anti-Dühring.

[Slavic]

I am curious how salaried employees fit into this equation since it seems to be argued that salaried bosses, while laboring, have similair interests with the bourgeois class due to his dependency on the profitability of the company.

How would one regard the class nature of a salaried worker at a manufacturing plant? They clearly are laboring in order to keep their job, but they theoretically have an interested in the profitability of the company as a whole due to the nature of their compensation, salary.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

It seems that a salaried worker and a hourly worker would both have an interest in a companies profitability to the same extent. Any company without profits is going to lay off workers and eventually close, regardless of whether they were salaried or hourly. A real split might be between employees and temps at the same firm, as the temp has no guaranteed future regardless of profitability

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

No boss doesn't not work, every boss contributes some part to production. Doesn't this debunk that labor is the source of value? Labor doesn't create all value, it seems, since nature and machines do as well. So do CEOs and managers. Or is there something I'm missing?

It's important here to note the difference between use value, which is corresponds somewhat to a more casual use of the term value, and exchange value, which concerns specifically a commodity's relationship to the market. Neither nature nor machines produce exchange value - only the action of human labour upon them produces (exchange) value - eg the mushrooms only have exchange value by virtue of the social arrangement in which there is labour to pick them; the robot only appears to produce value because a) it transfers the value of the labour invested in its own production, and b) the labour of its operator.
Admittedly, the "value" of supervisory labour is more complicated, but, as per Tuwix in their above post, the role of such labour is still inimical to the interests of workers as a class. Plus - talk about unnecessary much? I know of few instances in which managers aren't just in the way of the actual work in a given workplace. They tend to be leeches - standing around and making more than anyone else to say shit like, "If you have time to lean, you have time to clean." *barf*

[PhoenixAsh]

There is a huge array of job descriptions of people with a management title designation. Some are directly responsible for income to the company by managing accounts/clients...others generate income indirectly by managing others who actually have to do the work.

The first group can be called workers in some sense. They are directly dependent on their own labour production and the value they create for the company.

For this last group however....

The productive value of managers is the delta between maximizing production and the unmanaged production value when workers are left to their own design. The benefit for the company of the specific manager is measured in that delta. Their job is to see to it that workers can do their job, do their job efficiently, see to coaching/motivation and education (if applicable) and above all maximize the income creating productivity of the workers either directly or indirectly (process efficiency)....within the confines of what is in the best interest for the specific company they work for (these can be counter intuitive or directly opposed to the first part of my statement). (Some aspects of the job also involve managing the client, their expectation and finding value in additional income creating hours/products with the specific client and do not really involve workers. But that is a side note.)

This means that they are on a level between workers and bosses. They manage the workers, their efficiency and the company interests. They are dependent on their own boss/CEO for their income. And they sell their "expertise".

Within capitalism especially the managerial "class" is essential to the smooth running of production and the maximization of profit. It is entirely dependent on the personality of the individual manager and the way they "manage" if that works in the interests of the workers or not. That is really extremely subjective and context dependent. As a class or step on the ladder...their interests are generally only in line with the employees if that means they will reach their goal...and directly opposed to the interests of the employees as long as the employees form a barrier for the execution of their job. For example. Managers fire unproductive employees regardless of the reason for their level of productivity if it is required for them to do so. And will subjectively only tolerate periods of lessened production if they believe the level of production can be restored within an acceptable time frame. Regardless of their emotional or personal attachment or bond with that employee/worker.

So no. Managers are not workers. Some of their interests align with those of the workers. But most of their interests align with the interests of the CEO/Company.

NEVER trust your manager...except in very, very, very rare individual cases. Also...if you are a manager...NEVER trust your colleagues...unless you have dirt on them that could get them fired or ruin their reputation.

[JohnnyD]

"Management" isn't a relationship to the means of production, but boss imposed category. The working class has to coordinate its efforts in the modern industrial production process for it to be the modern industrial process. Some "Management" types are more experienced or higher skilled workers who coordinate there own productive efforts with that of a larger heterogeneous labour force. Drawing from my own career, many sous chef's and even some executive s I've worked with fit this bill. Even after the revolution, there will be varying degrees of skills among workers and the need for industrial coordination.

Relationship to the means of production and role in the production process determine class, not boss anointed titles. Again bourgeois sociological prepositions mystify simple objective reality.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

By that standard cops would be workers as well. To take my job for instance, my manager has no experience or knowledge relevant to my responsibility. She's not able to coach me and since she doesn't know what I'm actually doing she can't catch mistakes I make because she is incapable of recognizing them. She is superfluous to production, in fact her attempts to manage me in spite of her ignorance actually tend to reduce production as I end up spending more time jumping through management hoops than actually performing my duties.

[Subversive]

No boss doesn't not work, every boss contributes some part to production. Doesn't this debunk that labor is the source of value? Labor doesn't create all value, it seems, since nature and machines do as well. So do CEOs and managers. Or is there something I'm missing?
You're missing quite a bit there. A massive amount, even.

"Bosses" would be known as the "petit bourgeois". They are considered to be workers, because they work, but bourgeois because they hold some amount of power and influence over the workers. They are both oppressed and oppressive.
Most importantly: They are also not likely to join a Proletarian movement, due to the fact that they have some incentives and reasons for maintaining Capitalism, due to their current position. (Though it would depend on personal interests and how low/high they are on the "corporate ladder".)

Due to their arbitrary alignment in the revolution, they were not often referenced, much like the lumenproletariat. They are often ignored because they never realize their true class-interests. Though, Marx and Engels did condemn the petit bourgeois several times.

None of this has anything to do with labor-value. You are misplacing and confusing subjects.

More than one person can certainly participate in the creation of a commodity. The math is very simple, one's labor adds to the value of a commodity.
For example, if two workers both do something to a resource to turn it into a commodity, why would their labor not be added together to the final product?
And what if only one worker has finished? Is that product not 'more ready' to be turned into a commodity and therefore has a greater value than a raw resource? The labor of the one worker is added to that product.

When you get to "management", it is often considered unnecessary in a Socialist society. Workers are expected to self-manage.
But when a "manager" or some other influence on the commodity becomes necessary than their labor-value would also be added to the product, because they took part in creating that product.

Eventually, in the end, the product's true value would result in the socially necessary labor time.
For example, if two factories make the exact same product but one requires a manager, the two values of the commodities made are also exactly the same. However, it is likely that the manager-requiring factory's products are priced-higher due to the labor-value involved. Therefore consumers will result in purchasing the cheaper-produced products when available, lowering the true-value of the product towards the cheaper-produced commodity.
If the cheaper-factory could produce enough units to satisfy demand, then the manager-factory would therefore become obsolete and therefore eliminating the necessity for the manager.

The same could apply the other way around: A manager-less product may be inferior and consumers purchase only the quality-product. Therefore the cheaper-factory closes due to lack of demand and manager-requirements are therefore proven necessary.

Do understand, that "price" is different than "value". A price is determined only by exchange between producer and consumer. A value is what something is worth on the whole-market.

Also understand that in later-phase Socialism, also known as Communism, commodities are over-produced and therefore become 'free' because their price-value eliminates itself, meanwhile the value (labor) is kept by the worker whom produced it for commodities which may not yet be over-produced. (Though, many propose systems where no labor-value is kept and commodities which are still scarce are removed from the market and given as incentives for remarkable work, or things along those lines.)

On the topic of "Nature" and "machines":
Machines have a labor-value because it required labor to create them. Their values will diminish over time and it can be determined what value the machines add to each individual part of the final product (just as they do in Capitalism today). So this is not an issue, maintenance and machine costs are added-in. These are labor-values, like everything else.

"Nature" has no inherent value because to consider it to have a value you must arbitrarily define that value. No one can arbitrarily define a value without making the whole system arbitrary - like Capitalism.
Therefore, it is not nature that requires possessing a value but the labor-time required to extract that part of nature - the resource. Thus we extinguish the concept of 'inherent value in nature'. We exchange it for the true labor-value of the resource: a commodity, which holds the value of socially necessary labor time.

Does this explain all of your questions?

Edit: I briefly summarized several different topics at once, so if anyone sees any errors or wants to make any corrections in regards to Communist theory then please let me know.

[Rudolf]

Labor doesn't create all value, it seems, since nature and machines do as well. So do CEOs and managers. Or is there something I'm missing?


It seems you're confusing use-value with value.

Paraphrasing from Vol1,chapter1 of Capital:

The usefulness of a thing makes it a use-value. This utility isn't a thing of air but springs from the physical properties of the particular object, it cannot exist separately from it. The usefulness of a thing exists regardless of the amount of labour used to bring forth its useful properties. In capitalist society a use-value is also the material bearer of exchange value.

Exchange value at first appears as a quantitative relation that is as the proportion at which useful things of one sort are exchanged for another, this is a relation that is constantly changing in time and place. Thus the notion of exchange value being inherent seems a contradiction in terms.

Commodities are exchanged with one another in various different proportions so instead of one exchange value a given commodity has many. But since each commodity can be exchanged with another they must all, as exchange values, be replaceable or equal to each other. We get from this the following two conclusions: (1) that exchange values express something equal and (2) that it is merely the phenomenon expression of something contained in it yet distinguishable from it. This common substance is what we call value.

This common substance to commodities can't be any physical property of a given commodity as such properties gain our attention only in so far as they affect a commodity's given use-value. But it's evident that exchange value is a total abstraction from use-value.

If we abstract away from the use-values of commodities all we have left is what is common to them all: being a product of labour. But if we abstract away from a given commodity's use-value we must also abstract away from the concrete process used to create this thus we have only one substance left that is common to them all: human labour in the abstract.

[VivalaCuarta]

The "labor theory of value" is that in the system of commodity production, the value of a commodity is determined by the socially necessary labor time required to produce it.

For all but the simplest of commodities, some part of that time is time spent coordinating the various movements of production. This is work that managers, foremen, etc. do.

None of this invalidates the labor theory of value. Nor does the fact that managers do some productive (i.e. productive of commodities) work place them in the working class. Their primary relation to production, the ability that they sell to the capitalist in exchange for their wages or salaries, is not their labor power (their ability to do productive work for a certain amount of time) but their power over the laborers as front-line enforcers for capital. Their labor of coordination is not unique or essential to their caste -- some managers do more or less, some managers do none at all -- but their wielding of the club of firing/discipline, their gatekeeping as hire-ers, is.

[JohnnyD]

No one respond to my post, or my real life example of sous chefs being related to capital the same way as I, the common cook. Unless manager are getting a cut of the profit's from speed ups, there probably worker. Manager is a term, like" middle class ", used to confuse us.

[Jacob Cliff]

Thank you for the answers, but how do workplaces operate under self management? How would it function without managers?

[Creative Destruction]

Thank you for the answers, but how do workplaces operate under self management? How would it function without managers?

well, for that, you could look at the way worker cooperatives run things. that is only half the picture of "worker self management," the other half of it being that they should operate under an atmosphere of freely associative labor (which can't happen in capitalism.) but, at least, if you want to see the inner mechanics of a worker run shop under a capitalist society, you look at worker cooperatives or worker collectives. of which there are numerous examples.

[VivalaCuarta]

Thank you for the answers, but how do workplaces operate under self management? How would it function without managers?

It depends what you mean by management. Certainly Marxists don't advocate "self-management," which is incompatible with the social control of production. The coordination of the various aspects and tasks of production will be increased under the workers rule, and removed from the anarchistic tendencies of private ownership. So in this sense management will continue. But the "manager" as hired overseer for the exploiter will go away with the exploiters as a class.

Having had the privilege of observing this species for at least eight hours a day most of my life, I expect most managers will either go over to the side of the counterrevolution or make themselves scarce when the workers take power. Those willing to accept the workers rule and contribute their skills at technical coordination, if they have any, should be welcomed.

[#FF0000]

Thank you for the answers, but how do workplaces operate under self management? How would it function without managers?

The USSR's not a good example for a lot of things, but after the Russian Revolution most factories had councils of workers, a manager assigned by the Party, or a manager who was elected by the workers.

[Jacob Cliff]

But is there any difference in a socialist manager and a capitalist one? Don't both leech off the labor of workers?

[Comrade #138672]

What is a "socialist manager"?

[VivalaCuarta]

A "manager" in socialism, or more accurately the person(s) taking on management tasks, since the separation of mental and physical labor will be overcome along with the one-sided development of people, will no more "leech off the labor of workers" than a spotter or flagger "leeches" off the labor of a welder or a carpenter, or a cook "leeches" off the labor of the farmer, the truck driver, and the refrigeration technician. They are all performing tasks necessary for production and they will all share in the social product.

[consuming negativity]

they perform two separate roles. on one hand, they contribute to the production process through organizing it and performing administrative tasks. on the other hand, they maintain an antagonistic relationship to the other workers - it is their job to give us a hard time, and most of them don't see anything wrong with functioning as profit maximizers. in a worker-administered production process, there would be no antagonistic relationship. the amount of bureaucracy involved in the production process would be at least halved as a result.

[cyu]

The slave owner, if he's not rich enough to hire an accountant, has to keep track of purchases and sales, and inventory of his "human resources." The overseer has to work hard whipping the insubordinate - that can get pretty sweaty on a hot day.

Are they not workers in a sense?

Not sure what the point of the question is though. It's just semantics. If the real question you want to ask is, should all bosses be executed by the workers, then the definition of these terms would be more important.

[Loony Le Fist]

All workers are exploited except the executives. However, even they are exploited by the system itself. An executive that wishes to be benevolent is forced under threat of legal tort to execute decisions that lead to company profits. An executive that chooses to help workers could be sued and their shares confiscated by other executives for being ineffective. The rules of the game essentially work to reinforce this exploitation. Under capitalism the concept of exploitation extends even to how small businesses are exploited by larger businesses which control the political system and regulatory system.

Of course, this isn't orthodox Marxism. :grin:

[Comrade Jacob]

A manager is different from a CEO, for example.
A worker who is the organiser is not a capitalist. They may be used for capitalist purposes but yes they are still technically a worker.