Wage Labor And Exploitation

[afrikaNOW]

This is an excerp from Ricardo's Santiago's The People's Revolution



An example of this would be the worker at a 'fast food' restaurant who sells sandwiches for one dollar and receives the wage of five dollars per hour. Generously assuming that it takes a worker five minutes to produce a sandwich, in one hour the worker could produce twelve sandwiches; prepared, packaged, and ready to sell. At the end of his shift, if the worker wished to purchase as many sandwiches as he had made in one hour, twelve, he would need to give his employer about two and a half hours worth of wages. The worker must make thirty hamburgers to receive twelve. This inequity is obviously unjust and exploitive, yet this is the exact way the capitalist system operates. The product of the worker's labor becomes the property of the capitalist owner, even though he had no part in it's creation, since the capitalist owner controls the means of production (grill, storefront, etc).

Is it trying to say it is unfair because the worker prepared 12 sandwiches and thus should be able to buy 12 sandwhiches?

[which doctor]

I think it's a really dumb analogy, since it was the owner who supplied the resources (bread, meat, etc.) to create the sandwich. Only if the worker supplied the resources and conducted the labor to create 12 sandwiches, should be be able purchase 12 sandwiches.

[afrikaNOW]

Same thing i was thinking.

[KC]

I think it's a really dumb analogy, since it was the owner who supplied the resources (bread, meat, etc.) to create the sandwich.

Workers created those resources. Workers shipped those resources. The owner did nothing. The management merely allocated those resources (something anyone could easily do).


Only if the worker supplied the resources and conducted the labor to create 12 sandwiches, should be be able purchase 12 sandwiches.


Quite an anti-marxist position you have there.

[afrikaNOW]

That's not anti marxist. t's completly marxist. Because you have to realize what gives a commodity value, it is not purely labor power. If it was soley based on labor power than the worker would be able to buy the 12 burgers he made. The commodity's value is made of constant capital and variable capital.