Human Capital Argument

[Mr. Piccolo]

I was wondering if comrades here could help me with an argument I have come across from both conservatives and liberals. This is the argument that workers own a form of capital in the skills they bring to the marketplace. When workers enter the job market they bring their relevant skills to the table and this determines their just remuneration.

The human capital argument contends that those workers who fail to properly invest in their own human capital deserve whatever unfortunate position they find themselves in. So those who do not perform well in school or do not study the right subjects in school deserve their fate. Capitalism just rewards smart human capitalists (workers) and punishes dumb ones in just the same way it does more conventional capitalists.

What would be some good responses to this line of argument?

[Delusional Kid]

How does capitalism objectively reward "hard work"?
How is it right for somebody from let's say Germany, who was born into a stable family did well in school and went to university to get a business degree, and then runs a successful company that makes money off of practically slave labour in the third world to makes its products, while providing the majority of its employees back in Germany with a dull stressful and unfulfilling job taking over them for the rest of their lives. This is supposedly okay according to them all because the guy at the top put in work to build this.

[Creative Destruction]

Well, workers do bring a commodity into the workplace: their labor-power (which is strength, skills, etc.) They're right about that much. What they're wrong about is that they assume labor has a level negotiation field with capitalists to get their "just" remuneration. Also, if you believe that the market automatically bestows the correct and proper price for something, there's really nothing you can do to argue someone from that position.

[AdLeft]

Tell them that their argument is upside down.

Jobs that require the most intensive and dangerous work tend to pay the least. For instance, construction, fishing and factory work. And the jobs that require less work tend to pay the most. For instance, CEO positions, higher government jobs etc.

Also, the more wealthy you are, the more able you are to obtain a high quality education. So if you're poor, it's a catch 22 unless you're a genius.

There are exceptions to this rule but as a whole, it's all a pyramid scheme.

If they don't understand that argument, just walk away.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

All this demonstrates is that the people making the argument don't understand capitalism (so no surprise there). Labour-power is a commodity, but even that is sold, not invested. The worker receives wages, not a return on investment.

As for whether it's "just", it's silly to talk about things being "just" without specifying what standards we're assuming. Undoubtedly capitalism is "just" according to many standards. That's not the point. We don't care if capitalism is just, we're opposed to the immiseration, squalor, hunger, discrimination and death it brings. Likewise what we oppose is not the fact that workers own no capital but the existence of capital and ownership relations in the first place.

[ckaihatsu]

[11] Labor & Capital, Wages & Dividends

http://s6.postimg.org/nzhxfqy9d/11_Labor_Capital_Wages_Dividends.jpg (http://postimg.org/image/f4h3589gt/full/)

[Sewer Socialist]

Well, this is an ideological argument constructed to justify capitalism.

This argument focuses on investment, insisting that investment be rewarded, and that successful investments are a sign of intelligence; failures to invest are a sign of a lack thereof.

Even if we ignore the fact that most of the bourgeois class inherit their wealth, and that most of the proletariat do not possess enough wealth to invest a significant portion of it, there remains a fundamental unanswered question: why is investment important? Why should investors be the wealthiest members of society? Does successful investment provide something useful for society?