The Whole Labour Theory Thang

[The Grey Blur]

Ya know workers work is property according to communist thinking, right? How does that work? Always confused me that bit

[loveme4whoiam]

I suppose (dunno if this is right, this is just what I've picked up) that the time a person has is his, to do with what he will. By that I mean, a person can chose to spend his time working for the commune, giving his time, his property, to the commune. Whereas he (or she, of course) could chose to spend his (or her) time on themselves, keeping their property for themselves.

In capitalism a person (how's that?) gives their time to an employer in exchange for money - a basic financial transaction if you think about it. You keep your time for yourself - no money. However, the time that you give to your employer is used to create something that he can then sell at a profit, but still only paying you a ste amount for your time. Thus exploitation is created (wage slavery, but this might be me mixing my terms).

Now, let's wait a bit for someone who actually knows their Marx to explain it properly :D

[Storming Heaven]

Ya know workers work is property according to communist thinking, right? How does that work? Always confused me that bit

I assume you mean a person's labour?

Capitalism involves a worker selling his labour, i.e. his/her 'doing a task' for a particular amount of time, to a capitalist, who owns the means of production. This is because only labour can create wealth (i.e. added or 'surplus' value). Perhaps an exapmle will help.

Say some capitalist wishes to make a large profit. He might purchase the premises, machinery etc. needed to transform some raw material (e.g. flour) into something more useful, which has a value greater than the original raw material (e.g. bread). However, he needs labour in order to transform the flour into bread (i.e. someone needs to do the mixing, baking, operate machines etc.). He could attempt to do this all himself, but if he did the output (and thus the profit) would be small, perhaps even non-competative.

The solution? He gets many other people to provide the labour, which he pays them to do. These people are the workers. Since the labour in question comes from the worker himself, the worker (logically) 'owns' his labour - at least until he signs his contract.

In capitalist production, workers are nothing but machines, tools through which capitalists reaslise the value of the labour that they have purchased. All too often they are treated as such!