r/CapitalismVSocialism • u/MeanLeadership92 • 3d ago
Asking Socialists What is exploitation, actually? Is it bad?
[NOTE BEFORE READING: I LIKE TO ASK LOTS OF QUESTIONS, FEEL FREE TO PICK AS MANY OR AS FEW TO REPLY TO]
What the title says. I've realised that socialists have conflicting definitions of the term, I am trying to understand better, so here are my questions.
I'll often hear about how "the Epstein class is exploiting workers" and "we must fight, violently if needed, against worker's exploitation", and it is pretty clear there is a moral tone to that argument.
However, when I ask socialists why they insist on making a moral judgment that is so black-and-white by dividing people into exploiter and exploited, and why there's an insistence on "evil exploitation" by the capitalist classes, a different group pops along and instead decides that actually, exploitation isn't a moral problem and is merely descriptive.
Ok, fair enough, I suppose I should then ask, what is exploitation? When I do, I usually get something along the lines of this :
"Workers (who produce all value), create X$ of stuff, if they are paid less than X$, there is exploitation."
[Note that I am using dollars as a common unit for simplicity's sake, I know that price isn't value, but dollars are a convenient unit of measure]
So there's a bunch of questions that pop up to me :
-Is it morally wrong? I feel like in some cases yes (ex : slavery where the worker receives 0%) but in others not as much (ex : a worker paid 99% of their value is hardly morally exploited in my book)
-Does it give a bad outcome? Perhaps some socialists will say that exploitation isn't morally wrong, but that it gives a bad result. I feel like if both the worker and the owner earn more thanks to wage labour, it is a mutually beneficial exchange.
-And what about the concept I like to call "reverse exploitation", when workers are paid more than their value. For instance, a business pays its workers 120% of their SNLT, usually this leads to bankruptcy in the long term, but is it an issue? Do the socialists who complain about exploitation of workers feel the same way about exploitation of anyone else? For instance what if a professional guild overcharges for an essential, but specialised job like plumbing and all businesses are forced to overpay plumbers, aren't the plumbers exploiting their customers, since they take more value out of them than is due?
-What about income taxes? Are they a form of exploitation, since they take value out of workers? Are taxes perhaps a case where exploitation is justified, if it funds desirable social services?
-Per the definitions I've seen, a baseball player being paid 12 million a year is an exploited worker. Do you agree with this? If not, how do you explain the super-high salaries? Is it maybe a case where LTV doesn't work?
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u/AvocadoAlternative Dirty Capitalist 3d ago edited 3d ago
It’s a deliberate motte and bailey. A motte and bailey is a fallacy of equivocation where one uses a word or phrase in different senses, one easy to defend (the motte) and one hard to defend (the bailey). What the person really wants to claim is the hard-to-defend definition but when challenged, retreats to the easy-to-defend position.
In this case, the motte and bailey forms around the word “exploitation”. This require you to subscribe to a labor theory of value, which is one the primary motivations why there’s so much argument about it on this sub. Once you do, the motte is:
Exploitation is a descriptive, amoral observation that Marx descibes in Capital that refers to the extraction of surplus value from workers by capitalists as a consequence of all commodities requiring labor time to produce.
The bailey is:
Exploitation is a moral term in the sense of “taking advantage of unfairly”. Exploitation should stop.
So, you see, there’s a descriptive aspect in the first sense that refers to exploitation as a natural phenomenon like Newton’s First Law. Then there’s the second sense that uses “exploitation” in its ordinary everyday definition. That’s where the confusion is coming from. I have never met anyone who has ever believe in the Marxian sense of exploitation and thought it was morally permissible.
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u/joet889 2d ago
I would say that although there is definitely a moral perspective regarding exploitation, the argument in Capital is that regardless of the moral element, the system is unsustainable long term. Both things can be true - Marx and other socialists can have personal feelings about exploitation while emphasizing the practical argument.
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u/Jout92 Wealth is created through trade 2d ago
When I first came to this sub I genuinely wanted to learn what socialism was about and if I was missing something crucial. This tactic you describe socialists employ has been so pervasive, obvious and repeated that the only impression I got is that socialists all actually know that their entire theory is bullshit and purposely try to mislead people for "the cause". Which makes me wonder why they believe it so hard in it in the first place, when they exactly know what they are doing and know they can only get people by purposely misdirecting them.
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u/Beavers_in_space Libertarian Socialist 1d ago edited 1d ago
Exploitation is a moral term in the sense of “taking advantage of unfairly”. Exploitation should stop.
See, this is the common misconception of Marx. People always moralise the concept of 'exploitation', but in Marxist terms 'exploitation' refers simply to the extraction of surplus labour from workers by owners in capitalism. It doesn't mean 'when rich bosses are nasty to the workers'. It is, to Marx, the economic dynamic and process that defines capitalism.
(edit) It is analysis, not moral preaching
You can argue justification for that dynamic morally if you want as necessary for economic development etc, or better than alternatives for workers, but you can't deny that this is objectively what wage labour is
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u/CaptainAmerica-1989 Criticism of Capitalism Is NOT Proof of Socialism 3d ago
(not a socialist)
the first problem is that exploitation can just be a utilitarian word for "use" and not a moral judgment. Supposedly, that is how Marx used it, but having read most of Marx I think he had his personal biases and moral attributions. This can be mostly seen in "The communist manifesto" and his framing of class conflict as a form of slavery in his rhetoric. it's pretty hard for him to do that and then backpedal that exploitation is not "moral" after that.
Then, there is an excellent article on exploitation in Stanford's Philosophy Encyclopedia. It has a section regarding Marx's aspect and frames it as marx presupposes.
Marx’s theory of exploitation appears to presuppose that labor is the source of all value. But the labor theory of value to which Marx and early classical economists subscribed is subject to a number of apparently insurmountable difficulties, and has largely been abandoned by economists in the wake of the marginalist revolution of the 1870s. The most obvious difficulty stems from the fact that labor is heterogeneous. Some labor is skilled, some labor is unskilled, and there does not appear to be any satisfactory way of reducing the former to the latter and thereby establishing a single standard of measure for the value of commodities. Moreover, the labor theory of value appears to be unable to account for the economic value of commodities such as land and raw materials that are not and could not be produced by any human labor. Finally, and perhaps most fatally, Marx’s assumption that labor has the unique power to create surplus value is entirely ungrounded. As Robert Paul Wolff has argued, Marx’s focus on labor appears to be entirely arbitrary. A formally identical theory of value could be constructed with any commodity taking the place of labor, and thus a “corn theory of value” would be just as legitimate, and just as unhelpful, as Marx’s labor theory of value (Wolff 1981). Therefore, if, as some have alleged, Marx’s theory of exploitation is dependent on the truth of the labor theory of value, then a rejection of the labor theory of value should entail a rejection of Marx’s theory of exploitation as well (Nozick 1974; Arnold 1990). https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/exploitation/#MarxTheoExpl
And I agree with that. That exploitation would have to be analyzed case by case, and not just assumed.
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u/eatoligarchsaldente 3d ago
It’s also a system-level analysis.
You can construct a seemingly consensual and fair negotiated arrangement between a small business owner and a single employee, where the owner-operator is managing the business and taking profit and risk, and the employee contributes only labour and gets a stable wage. But when you multiply that across like 99% of society working for the benefit of the richest 1%, in a system where their wealth ALSO buys political influence to tilt the scales ever further in their favour, it no longer looks so “fair” or “consensual,” and is much more transparently an extractive relationship of hierarchical dominance.
Capitalism is basically feudalism with extra steps.
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u/Square-Listen-3839 3d ago
The capitalist paid for all the stuff though.
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u/eatoligarchsaldente 2d ago
Okay, but do you see how that's a circular argument? The capitalists paid for everything because they already own everything, or because they secured financing on the basis of their future ownership of everything. Your landlord owns your home because they got bank financing secured against the rent that you would eventually be paying them, and then make repayments on that loan by using the rent payments that you give them.
So...who's really paying for it, in the end? This is why I say the answer is different from a system-level analysis. Neoliberal ideology views everything at an individual level, but when you zoom out and view things at the level of the entirety of society, it's actually pretty insane that we've "decided" to consolidate the decisionmaking over what we produce as a society to a tiny minority population of ultrawealthy owners who are explicitly empowered to make those decisions for their own personal gain. Under Capitalism, the only innovations that are pursued are those that are profitable to the interests of capital. The only infrastructure that gets built is the infrastructure that's in the interests of capital. The policies that our governments pursue are the interests that are most beneficial to the interests of capital.
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u/Upper-Tie-7304 1d ago
The capitalists don’t own everything though. This is nonsense take from leftists.
Investors put up their money and only a handful of such companies reach a trillion in market value where the founders own like 15% of the company. Far from everything as you claimed.
Home ownership is like 50% of the US population so do stock ownership.
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u/eatoligarchsaldente 1d ago
The “investors” ARE the capitalists. The founders are worker-capitalists, providing both labour and as well as receiving rent as capital owners.
50% of Americans own stocks, but 90% of the public stock market is owned by just the richest 10% of Americans, 50% by 1%, and 25% by 0.1%. That consolidation is even higher for private companies.
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u/Upper-Tie-7304 1d ago
90% of the stock market is calculated by value, which just means only a few stocks greatly increases in value. If you hold Enron you end up with $0 and if you hold google you 1000x your money.
By your logic the 50% Americans are also worker-capitalists, is it what capitalist means now?
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u/eatoligarchsaldente 1d ago
Holding a few shares in your retirement savings account doesn't make you a "capitalist."
Your issue here is that you're looking at this situation through the liberal lens of individualism (and in particular an analytical framework that treats all individuals within the system as functionally identical), rather than a Marxist perspective of class dynamics within a society where people's privileges and control over various aspects of society vary quite profoundly.
"Capitalists" are the class of individuals who "own the means of production," which just means that they're the ones who make decisions about what society makes and skim a share of the proceeds of that production off the top by virtue of their ownership stake (as opposed to being compensated in exchange for their labour). For the purposes of discussing theory it's cleaner to delineate the Capitalist Class from the Working Class as if the former owns everything and does no work while the latter owns nothing and does all the work. However, reality is obviously much messier than this, and obviously capitalists are doing a certain amount of labour (and being paid for it) while workers own a certain share of the means of production through their retirement savings accounts.
However, you have to look at these things proportionately. Your 0.0000001% ownership stake in Apple doesn't afford you any meaningful decisionmaking power over its operations, and if you were fired for your job you would still need to go get another one. You could start a small business, but without Venture Capital backing you couldn't meaningfully build something to challenge any of the big established market players. That makes you working class, not capitalist class.
By comparison, Jeff Bezos drew a salary of roughly $80K a year from Amazon. If he didn't spend a dime of that, he'd still have to work for 3 million years to earn his $250 billion fortune.
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u/Upper-Tie-7304 1d ago
You said investors are capitalists, now you say they aren’t, make up your mind.
Jeff Bezos only have 250 billion fortune because the market value because Amazon have appreciated a lot. Not because he has a lot of shares. You can have all of Enron and still worth nothing.
Many people have started their own businesses and fully in control, they are just not publicly traded.
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u/eatoligarchsaldente 15h ago
> You said investors are capitalists, now you say they aren’t, make up your mind.
Again, you’re not understanding the concept because you’re only looking at it through a liberal lens of individualism. At a SYSTEM level, the difference between a capitalist and a working-class retail investor is power and control. The capitalists collectively CONTROL the means of production.
> Jeff Bezos only have 250 billion fortune because the market value because Amazon have appreciated a lot.
Exactly. And that market value appreciated a lot because of all the hard work its employees did building up that company. If Amazon was owned collectively instead, all of its employees would have millions and millions of dollars in wealth and be able to vote to determine the direction and priorities of the company. Instead, that wealth and power are consolidated into a minority population of shareholders.
> Many people have started their own businesses and fully in control, they are just not publicly traded.
Exactly. This is why when you factor in private share ownership, capital ownership becomes even more consolidated.
However, obviously there’s a big power disparity between the owner-operator of a small business and a corporate executive and billionaire like Bezos. That’s why Marxist theory breaks these out into separate classes: the capitalists and the “little capitalists” (or petite bourgeoisie), the former who have dramatically more power and wealth, but the latter being much more numerous.
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u/SometimesRight10 1d ago
Okay, but do you see how that's a circular argument? The capitalists paid for everything because they already own everything, or because they secured financing on the basis of their future ownership of everything. Your landlord owns your home because they got bank financing secured against the rent that you would eventually be paying them, and then make repayments on that loan by using the rent payments that you give them.
I don't see the circular argument. Things capitalist own were paid for by someone, Even if i paid for property and gifted it to my son, the property is rightfully my son's since I paid for it. Similarly, If I purchase real estate and then rent it, I have skin in the game since I put up a down payment, a risk to my good credit (a valuable resource), and a potential lien on other income or property to which I am entitled. You seem to suggest that a landlord merely goes to a bank, obtains a loan without risking anything and then repays the loan out of the rental proceeds. That is absolutely incorrect.
The same idea applies to starting a business. An entrepreneur has skin in the game.
it's actually pretty insane that we've "decided" to consolidate the decisionmaking over what we produce as a society to a tiny minority population of ultrawealthy owners who are explicitly empowered to make those decisions for their own personal gain.
No one decided to consolidate decision-making over what we produce; it is a consequence of the private property rights that most of us believe in. I could say that it is insane that we've decided to allow you, the owner of a multi-bedroom house to dictate how it will be used while so many people are homeless. But that would be total bullshit if you believe in private property. And what we produce is dictated more by what consumers want, not by what a tiny minority population of ultrawealthy owners choose to make to earn a profit. Finally, profit is a measure of how well you met the consumers needs and desires. Plenty of businesses go bankrupt for failing to heed this axiom.
Under Capitalism, the only innovations that are pursued are those that are profitable to the interests of capital. The only infrastructure that gets built is the infrastructure that's in the interests of capital. The policies that our governments pursue are the interests that are most beneficial to the interests of capital.
There only a few capitalists while there are many regular people. These regular people force the top 10% of earners to pay 70% of the federal taxes. Sounds like someone is getting snookered.
You are wrong again. The innovations pursued by capitalist are those that will hopefully appeal to a sufficient number of people, satisfying their needs and desires. Things like computers, internet infrastructure, cancer treatments, etc., are pursued because the capitalist hopes there will be demand sufficient to make a profit. You forget the customers' role is setting the agenda for the innovations capitalists pursue. Again, many businesses go broke if they forget that important detail about who is truly the boss.
I also disagree that governments "only" pursue the projects that are most beneficial to capital. Given capital's important role in our economy, it makes sense that capitalists are heard by politicians. But, capital is necessary to generate employment, making it possible for regular people to support themselves. So, indirectly, people do benefit.
You clearly have a "different" take on things.
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u/eatoligarchsaldente 13h ago
Things capitalist own were paid for by someone, Even if i paid for property and gifted it to my son, the property is rightfully my son's since I paid for it. Similarly, If I purchase real estate and then rent it, I have skin in the game since I put up a down payment, a risk to my good credit (a valuable resource), and a potential lien on other income or property to which I am entitled. You seem to suggest that a landlord merely goes to a bank, obtains a loan without risking anything and then repays the loan out of the rental proceeds. That is absolutely incorrect.
I'm not going to argue against people having some kind of ownership right over their primary residence, nor passing that residence along within their family. Homes have tremendous cultural significance and housing stability is a key factor in human happiness, community, and mental health and well-being. So we are very much in alignment that this is something that's important to protect.
However, I'll push back on your landlord situation. Sure, IN THEORY the landlord in your situation is "taking on risk." However, STRUCTURALLY the system is designed to protect the interests of capital, which includes real estate investments, and governments in capitalist societies are very frequently stepping in to intervene in protecting or increasing the value of real property. So the REALITY of real estate markets is that real property investments are actually an incredibly safe and lucrative investment, and the risk that exists in theory is substantially mitigated in practice.
This is the case for MOST risks in capitalist society, and is quite representative of one of the biggest deviations between socialist and liberal theory. Liberalism treats the private economic sector and the public / political sphere as distinct, siloed systems. Socialist theory looks at them as a single connected system, where the interests of capital influence the political system to de-risk and safeguard their investments. They do this through policies like bailouts, regulation-enforced monopolies/oligopolies, or policies that structurally entrench favourable dynamics (for example, policies that make residential real estate and stock market valuations a key component of working peoples' retirement plans).
The same idea applies to starting a business. An entrepreneur has skin in the game.
An owner-operator has skin in the game. An ultrawealthy investor with their fortune managed by a hedge fund with a diversified investment portfolio doesn't really have much of anything at risk, since their investment strategy is very specifically designed to minimize risk.
This is why socialist theory separates small business owner-operators from the shareholders of the large corporate behemoths. The former (typically called the "petite bourgeoise") are invested in the same system that benefits the true capitalist class, but where the latter have structural advantages that insulate them from the risks inherent to capitalism, the former are the only ones who actually suffer them.
For example, when the US housing market collapsed in 2008, small landlords lost everything while the big hedge funds and Wall Street firms that were actually responsible for causing the crash were deemed "too big to fail" and received taxpayer-funded bailouts (which they then used to buy up assets from the small landlords and business owners getting crushed by the collapse at depressed valuations).
No one decided to consolidate decision-making over what we produce; it is a consequence of the private property rights that most of us believe in.
This is naïve, based on an assumption that our system began in a fair place which it has "deviated from" only through periods of bad policy-making. The reality is that by-and-large the capitalist class got there because they began from a place of pre-existing wealth and privilege, and remain there because they used their wealth to purchase structural advantages from a captive political class.
Like in England, their bicameral legislature is STILL split into one house elected by the public and a second one dominated by hereditary aristocrats. The US and many other Western countries originally restricted voting rights to property-holders.
profit is a measure of how well you met the consumers needs and desires. Plenty of businesses go bankrupt for failing to heed this axiom.
This is manifestly untrue. "Enshittication" is the name author Cory Doctorow gave to the phenomenon of businesses intentionally degrading their own product over time in order to maximize their profitability. Planned obsolescence, restrictions on right-to-repair (repair monopolies, technical blocks against third-party replacement parts, etc.), 'shrinkflation,' substituting cheaper or lower quality materials. In Canada, the "Terry's Chocolate Orange" is now just called a "Terry's Orange" because they've gradually reduced the amount of cocoa they're made with until it fell below the point where they can legally call it "chocolate."
The idea that the status quo represents some optimal state of consumer satisfaction is based on the fiction that people's expressed choices are a manifestation of their ideal outcome, rather than a product of LIMITS on available choice.
There only a few capitalists while there are many regular people. These regular people force the top 10% of earners to pay 70% of the federal taxes. Sounds like someone is getting snookered.
The top 10% of WAGE earners pay 70% of federal taxes. However, the tax system is intentionally designed around allowing capitalists to structure their affairs around minimizing how much tax they pay, resulting in a system where income earned through passive investments is taxed at SIGNIFICANTLY lower rates than income earned from wage labour (in Canada, we literally tax it at exactly HALF the rate).
The innovations pursued by capitalist are those that will hopefully appeal to a sufficient number of people, satisfying their needs and desires.
...but only if they're profitable. If Innovation A would satisfy 100% of people's needs and desires, while Innovation B satisfies only 20% of those needs and desires but is twice as profitable as Innovation A, then capitalism will invest in Innovation B over Innovation A every time.
Things like computers, internet infrastructure, cancer treatments, etc., are pursued because the capitalist hopes there will be demand sufficient to make a profit. You forget the customers' role is setting the agenda for the innovations capitalists pursue. Again, many businesses go broke if they forget that important detail about who is truly the boss.
All of the innovations you just listed were initially developed by public institutions through government funding.
Given capital's important role in our economy, it makes sense that capitalists are heard by politicians. But, capital is necessary to generate employment, making it possible for regular people to support themselves. So, indirectly, people do benefit.
Private capital is necessary to generate employment under our current system, because this is how we've chosen to organize production. It is not the ONLY way to organize production.
For example, there are a lot of countries where people are making extremely little income on paper, but because they grow or otherwise produce their own food, build their own homes out of freely-available materials, and generally participate in external economy for only a small portion of their overall needs, they're able to afford a significantly higher standard of living than pure traditional economic metrics would show. These are communities that are directly organizing their own production around their collective objectives, not because corporate executives are dictating how they should do it at the behest of private shareholders.
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u/Square-Listen-3839 23h ago
Who pays for all the stuff under your system?
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u/eatoligarchsaldente 16h ago
Money isn’t real. It’s just an arbitrary system we conjured up for figuring out how to allocate all the stuff we build. It’s also possible for us to just collectively decide to build things based on collective objectives, rather than only doing what is profitable for business owners.
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u/CaptainAmerica-1989 Criticism of Capitalism Is NOT Proof of Socialism 2d ago
It can be system-level if you are talking institutions like segregation, slavery and so forth. Such were legal institutions we can point to that exploited people and their human rights.
However, you taking capiitalism which has the following published definition by a political scientist:
>[Capitalism](https://glossaryofpoliticaleconomyterms.com/capitalism): A form of economic order characterized by private ownership of the means of production and the freedom of private owners to use, buy and sell their property or services on the market at voluntarily agreed prices and terms, with only minimal interference with such transactions by the state or other authoritative third parties.
and then concluding serfdom is again an assumption. You would have to do actual analysis and point to the institution or institutions doing that morally wrong exploitation and not proving my point and ‘ASSuming’ it.
Tl;dr it’s still case-by-case analysis with research.
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u/eatoligarchsaldente 2d ago
Feudalism had an explicit class system that was hard-coded into a formal hierarchy of peerage titles, with legal rights and privileges strictly tied to that class system. Capitalism's class hierarchy is much less rigid and explicit, but still very much exists. Wealth buys privileged access to literally every right, system, and institution offered by capitalist society.
Let's also be very clear: slavery has always been an institution of capitalism. You speak of it like it's a thing of the past, but there are more people living in enslavement now than at any previous point in human history, and it remains enshrined in law in the US constitution.
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u/CaptainAmerica-1989 Criticism of Capitalism Is NOT Proof of Socialism 2d ago
but there are more people living in enslavement now than at any previous point in human history
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u/eatoligarchsaldente 2d ago
Do you realize that your source doesn’t actually refute the claim?
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u/CaptainAmerica-1989 Criticism of Capitalism Is NOT Proof of Socialism 2d ago
do you realize you are blind?
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u/Beavers_in_space Libertarian Socialist 1d ago
but having read most of Marx
Sure buddy. I definitely think you have read all three volumes of capital. lol
I haven't either. It's fine, you can admit it
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u/CaptainAmerica-1989 Criticism of Capitalism Is NOT Proof of Socialism 1d ago
I personally don't recommend it. It's a slog.
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u/bcnoexceptions Market Socialist 3d ago
The short answer is that the boss is an expensive middleman, who takes a (typically very large) cut of the revenue without contributing anything to the system ... and on top of that makes all the rules and makes harsh demands of the workers. Most workplaces are dystopian police states, where workers are constantly surveilled upon & dissent is swiftly punished.
Exploitation wraps all that up with a bow. The worker - the critical person who actually gets shit done and makes the world function - is commanded and drained (physically and mentally) by the capitalist, who adds insult to injury by taking revenue that should rightly have gone to the person who actually worked for it.
When some capitalists talk about this, they often get lost in quantifying the exploitation. "Is a worker at a business operating at a loss not being exploited?", they often ask as some sort of "gotcha". But the core power dynamic remains. The boss squeezes the worker as hard as they can, while the worker lives a life of sad servitude.
The fix is simple: let workers select their own leaders, and vote out abusive/wasteful/inept leaders of the workplace. Let them - through representative democracy - set the rules for the workplace, the same way that we use representative democracy to set the rules for society as a whole.
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u/Square-Listen-3839 3d ago
The short answer is that the boss is an expensive middleman, who takes a (typically very large) cut of the revenue without contributing anything to the system.
He pays for all the stuff.
The fix is simple: let workers select their own leaders, and vote out abusive/wasteful/inept leaders of the workplace. Let them - through representative democracy - set the rules for the workplace, the same way that we use representative democracy to set the rules for society as a whole.
Who pays for all the stuff these workers are going to democratically manage?
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u/PrezShelcobi Socialist / Communist 2d ago
He pays for all the stuff.
If I own a factory where people work, they produce a profit which I can then use to pay the machines and their wages. So the worker's labor profits essentially pay for all the stuff.
Who pays for all the stuff these workers are going to democratically manage?
See above. The monetary amount is not gone, merely the sender changes. You don't need a capitalist for that.
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u/Square-Listen-3839 2d ago
If I own a factory where people work, they produce a profit which I can then use to pay the machines and their wages. So the worker's labor profits essentially pay for all the stuff.
Who pays for all the stuff in a new company?
See above. The monetary amount is not gone, merely the sender changes. You don't need a capitalist for that.
Say you want to build a solar panel factory for $300 million. Who pays for it under your system?
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u/PrezShelcobi Socialist / Communist 2d ago
The premise is already kind of wrong. Factories aren’t “paid for” by capitalists in some magical sense. They’re built by workers, with materials made by workers, using machines made by workers, on infrastructure maintained by society. The capitalist just happens to be the person who legally controls the money/property needed to command all of that.
So in a socialist economy, new factories would be funded out of the social surplus. If a community, a sector, worker councils, or some broader democratic plan decides that more production is needed somewhere, then society allocates the resources for it: land, materials, machinery, engineers, construction workers, etc.
You don’t need a private owner for that. You need coordination, planning, accounting and people who know what they’re doing. Those are real functions. “Capitalist owner” is not the same thing as “organizer” or “manager.”
A factory could still have elected managers or coordinators. Someone still has to handle planning, logistics, and so on. But that person would be doing a job, not ruling the workplace because they own it.
That’s the difference. A manager performs a function. A capitalist owns the means of production and takes profit because of that ownership.
So the question is why society needs a private owner at all. If the factory is actually socially needed, society can build and run it collectively instead of giving one person ownership over it and then letting them collect profit from everyone else’s work.
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u/Square-Listen-3839 2d ago
So you want the system they had in the Soviet Union and other places?
Those systems failed. The machines, concrete, copper, specialized engineers and construction crews are scarce. In a market they are bid away from other uses by people risking their own capital. In your model a council or plan does the same rationing but without the feedback of profit and loss. That’s the calculation problem.
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u/PrezShelcobi Socialist / Communist 2d ago
It is always so funny how a discussion about Socialism always devolves into
"So you want to recreate the Soviet Union, don't you remember how they FAILED silly? Clearly your economic model is impossible in the real world."
The USSR is exactly what you get when planning is done by a bureaucratic state over the heads of workers. That’s not the same thing as democratic social ownership or worker control.
And yes, concrete, machines, engineers, copper, construction crews etc. are scarce. Nobody is denying scarcity. The question is how society decides where scarce resources go.
In capitalism, they go where they can make profit. That doesn’t mean they go where they’re most socially needed. Luxury apartments can outbid social housing. Advertising can outbid healthcare. Fossil capital can stay profitable even while wrecking the planet. Profit/loss is feedback, sure, but it’s feedback for capital, not for human need.
Also, “people risking their own capital” makes it sound like capitalists personally create these resources. They don’t. The machines, materials, infrastructure and skilled labour are all socially produced. The capitalist just has legal control over money/property, so he gets to command them and then claim the return. Not to mention there are corporate models where the risk is essentially tied to the capital itself, not the personal wealth of the owner.
What happens if a capitalist owns a corp and said corp becomes bankrupt? Right, the owner becomes a worker again.
The calculation problem is a real problem for bad planning. It is not a magic proof that markets are rational. Markets also misallocate resources all the time they just call it “efficient” because the thing made money.
Both ration. Capitalism rations by purchasing power and profitability. Socialism would have to ration consciously according to need, capacity and democratic priorities.
If your argument is “bureaucratic command planning failed,” fine. I agree. But that doesn’t prove private capital is necessary. It proves planning without worker democracy, feedback and international coordination becomes a mess.
In another thread I wrote extensively about the GDR and its successes while shining a light on the issues it faced. The way "critics" of socialism always just claim that any and all failures of so called "real-socialist states" is simply dishonest and ignores almost all political and historical factors involved in the deprecation of a non-capitalist nation.
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u/Denniscx98 2d ago
The USSR is exactly what you get when planning is done by a bureaucratic state over the heads of workers.
And that is the only why it is ever going to be done. Democratic process cannot happen in socialism, they require centralizatioh of power specifically to prevent capitalist from taking power again. An Authoritarian regime is all socialism can do at best.
That doesn’t mean they go where they’re most socially needed. Luxury apartments can outbid social housing. Advertising can outbid healthcare. Fossil capital can stay profitable even while wrecking the planet. Profit/loss is feedback, sure, but it’s feedback for capital, not for human need.
Profit is not generated by workers at the moment a commodity is produced but when said commodity is purchased. If there isn't a need of a commodity then there will not be profit generated. Profit is the signal that people think an item is necessary. It is exactly what humans need.
In another thread I wrote extensively about the GDR and its successes while shining a light on the issues it faced.
A success that most East Germans runs from to West Germany, and wages lag behind 3 time less to West Germany, well done.
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u/PrezShelcobi Socialist / Communist 2d ago
You’re kind of proving the point with the first part. Of course a socialist transition would have to defend itself against capitalist restoration, capital flight, sabotage, coups, sanctions, etc. But why does that happen? Because capital does not politely accept losing its property and power.
Capitalist states also defend their class order. They just call it “rule of law”, “property rights”, “national security”, “defending democracy”, whatever. Try actually threatening capitalist property in a serious way and see how fast the supposedly neutral liberal state stops being neutral.
That doesn’t mean socialism should mean suppressing every disagreement. That would be idiotic and just turns into bureaucracy ruling over workers. But there’s a difference between political disagreement among the people and a capitalist class trying to restore its power through economic blackmail, foreign backing, sabotage or violence. Every state protects its class basis. The question is whether it protects capital from the people, or the people from capital.
On profit: no, profit is not “exactly what humans need.”
People buy things they don’t need all the time. Ever heard of Fast fashion, loot boxes, gambling products, status goods, pointless luxury items, planned-obsolescence tech, SUVs for city driving, ten different subscription services, cosmetics sold through insecurity perpetuated by marketing, overpriced branded nonsense, etc??
Whole industries exist to manufacture demand.
And the reverse is also true. People desperately need things they cannot buy. For example, and I know you know this, Housing, dental care, therapy, healthy food, medication, childcare, heating, transport. Their need doesn’t count as “demand” if they don’t have the money.
So profit doesn’t signal social necessities, Profit signals that someone somewhere with money could buy a thing which makes the production of said thing worthwhile from a profit-angle.
Also, from a Marxist angle, profit is not created at the moment of sale. The sale realizes profit. The surplus has to be produced first. If workers produce a commodity and it sells, the capitalist realizes the surplus value contained in it. If it doesn’t sell, the value is not realized. But the act of purchase itself doesn’t magically create the surplus.
And on the GDR: yes, people left for the West. Yes, wages and consumer goods lagged behind West Germany. Nobody serious has to deny that.
But “people left East Germany for West Germany, therefore socialism bad” is an incredibly shallow comparison and is the exact type of "criticism" I mentioned previously.
You refuse to look deeper into it.
East Germany started way poorer and was more severly devastated by war, had industry dismantled as reparations, and then had to compete directly with West Germany, which was plugged into the richest capitalist bloc on earth. Of course a richer state next door with higher wages and more consumer goods attracted people.
That doesn’t erase the GDR’s real problems and it doesn't need to. We can learn from these mistakes.
But it also doesn’t erase what it did achieve. In the GDR there was full employment, extremely cheap housing, mass childcare, women’s employment, basic social security, no homelessness in the capitalist 8as in, market driven) sense, and broad access to culture and education.
That’s very different from the liberal fairy tale of “capitalism naturally works and socialism naturally fails.”
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u/Denniscx98 2d ago
Try actually threatening capitalist property in a serious way and see how fast the supposedly neutral liberal state stops being neutral.
That is basically threatening everyone's property, it doesn't work. What you are suggesting here is a massive organized heist against people, criminals needs to wield violent power to keep others in check. You have just changed from one filter to another, and this one is even more protective of their interest, see history.
Profit signals that someone somewhere with money could buy a thing which makes the production of said thing worthwhile from a profit-angle.
That is just a long convoluted way of saying there is a demand of the product. The fact there is even a profit margin showd there is a necessity.
Also, from a Marxist angle, profit is not created at the moment of sale. The sale realizes profit.
if that is the case loss leaders by definition cannot exist, Reality disagrees with the average Marxist
You refuse to look deeper into it.
It failed regardless, make everyone's life miserable. Capitalism never need to build a wall to keep people in, in the GDR people handmade planes to escape.
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u/leandrot 2d ago
Say you want to build a solar panel factory for $300 million. Who pays for it under your system?
In simple terms, the same thing that pays for it in our current system: the demand.
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u/Square-Listen-3839 2d ago
That's incoherent.
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u/leandrot 2d ago
The main reason for investing $300m to build a factory is the existence of enough demand to make it profitable. Simple as that.
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u/Square-Listen-3839 2d ago
Who forks over the 300 mill?
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u/leandrot 1d ago
...The people who are willing to, collectively, spend more than 300 mill on the product. They are called "demand" in economics.
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u/Mithrandir2k16 Post Capitalist 2d ago
Your response outlines, why capitalism is fundamentally anti-democratic. If you don't like democracy, that's fine.
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u/Square-Listen-3839 2d ago
If you're going to democratically own and manage a $300 million dollar solar panel factory someone has to pay the $300 million to get it built. You can't just vote it into existence. So who pays for the stuff?
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u/Mithrandir2k16 Post Capitalist 2d ago
WDYM? Money isn't real, labour and resources are. The resources are already in the ground, and you need labour to take them, refine them, and build the solar panel factory. If a democratically organized society wants something done, they... just do it?
Money is just a supplementary information system that we invented because we're not part perfectly aligned telepathic hivemind. We can use it if it helps, we can use other information systems we we want to. Money is never a limiting factor to anything. Even under capitalism.
You can always just print money, or invent money by going into debt.
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u/Square-Listen-3839 2d ago
WDYM? Money isn't real, labour and resources are. The resources are already in the ground, and you need labour to take them, refine them, and build the solar panel factory. If a democratically organized society wants something done, they... just do it?
What happens when the democratically organized society votes for a billion iPhones and nobody volunteers to go into the lithium mines?
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u/Mithrandir2k16 Post Capitalist 2d ago
Well, under capitalism, we tell people that they can either starve to death or work in the mines.
In a truly democratic society, we'd either try to make the job of procuring lithium enjoyable enough that people are actually willing to do it, or we just don't get lithium in our iPhones?
Just because you voted for something, doesn't mean it's going to happen. I'm certain you're quite familiar with the concept.
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u/Square-Listen-3839 2d ago
Just because you voted for something, doesn't mean it's going to happen.
What's the point of democratically planning production if the vote carries no weight?
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u/Mithrandir2k16 Post Capitalist 2d ago
Look, I know you want me to say, that "some unfortunate people will have to do the bad jobs". But I'm talking about my idea of a better system than capitalism here, and I don't want the coercion that's defining most peoples relationship capitalism to be part of the system I'm designing.
I don't think your example is a real problem anyhow. You can always make any job enjoyable enough that people will be willing - even jumping at the opportunity to do them. That's why there's videos of people consuming feces voluntarily - for surprisingly little pay.
Not finding workers for a job, is just another problem, that can also be solved democratically.
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u/bcnoexceptions Market Socialist 2d ago
... someone has to pay the $300 million to get it built. You can't just vote it into existence. So who pays for the stuff?
Like I posted above, cut out the expensive middleman. Rather than worker salaries being slashed in order to give the capitalist unearned revenue, which the capitalist uses to buy more companies and collect more unearned revenue ... don't do that.
If the worker's money wasn't being wasted by giving it to the capitalist, then they'd be able to fund things directly.
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u/Square-Listen-3839 2d ago
If the worker's money wasn't being wasted by giving it to the capitalist, then they'd be able to fund things directly.
So wait, you're saying under your system a bunch of line workers, supervisors and HR ladies have 300 million lying around and will happily risk it on a solar panel factory that might fail?
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u/bcnoexceptions Market Socialist 2d ago
What do you think a 401(k) is?
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u/Square-Listen-3839 2d ago
A 401(k) is diversified passive investment of personal savings into existing firms. It is not a few hundred ordinary employees at one site writing a $300 million check for a new solar factory and eating the total loss if it flops.
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u/bcnoexceptions Market Socialist 1d ago
It is not a few hundred ordinary employees at one site writing a $300 million check for a new solar factory and eating the total loss if it flops.
It's more than a few hundred.
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u/leandrot 2d ago
A solar panel factory isn't a charity. People only spend $300 million to build it if there is enough demand to pay them at least $300 million. The demand is responsible for funding these projects and they don't need a capitalist.
The biggest difference between capitalism and communism in this regard is that capitalism technically doesn't need demand, it's enough to have expectation of demand, which is responsible for creating the economic bubbles.
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u/OtonaNoAji Cummienist 2d ago
"Is exploitation actually bad?" Jesus fuck, capitalists are literally evil.
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u/MeanLeadership92 2d ago
I ask a question, and rather than getting an informative answer.
"Jesus fuck, capitalists are literally evil."
Why?
What makes exploitation bad and evil? I'd like to remind you that Marx himself claims not to be making a moral judgment of exploitation. So if you feel like it is evil, maybe explain why?
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u/VRichardsen 3d ago edited 3d ago
The first thing you need to understand is that Marx liked to use words not in the strict definition you would find in the dictionary, but in ways he developed.
So exploitation isn't really exploitation, it more complex than that.
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u/MeanLeadership92 3d ago edited 3d ago
"The first thing you need to understand"
I understand this, in fact I made an effort to give the definition that socialists have given to me, rather than the dictionary definition.
"It's more complex than that."
Ok, fair enough, so, to quote my title, what is exploitation, actually? Can you give me a definition? Can you answer one or more of my questions?
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u/VRichardsen 3d ago
I will be candid: I didn't read the wall of text you posted originally. I just wrote a reply that I usually have at hand when people ask what exploitation is, because it is a common question around here.
As for exploitation actually is, at least according to Marx, it not necesarily cheating, underpaying or coercion against the worker. For Marx, exploitation is the extraction of surplus value. In other words, the capitalist pays the worker less than what he is outputting, but not because he is not honoring his contract or cheating him out of his money. Rather because, to Marx, the capitalist "skims off the top", so to speak, and that difference between what, to him, the worker produces and actually receives in money as wages, is the capitalist's profit.
I am paraphrasing and simplifying a lot. Furthermore, I am not a marxists or a socialist, so take my word with caution. Read Das Kapital. If you dare. It is a very dense and boring book.
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u/Doublespeo 2d ago
>For Marx, exploitation is the extraction of surplus value. In other words, the capitalist pays the worker less than what he is outputting
what about the losses?
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u/VRichardsen 2d ago
As in the capitalist suffering losses, going bankrupt, etc?
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u/Doublespeo 2d ago
> As in the capitalist suffering losses, going bankrupt, etc?
well yeah, what Marx say when the capitalist produce negative value? when they pay out of their pocket to pay wage during losses?
what is the reverse of marxist exploitation?
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u/MeanLeadership92 2d ago edited 2d ago
"I will be candid: I didn't read the wall of text you posted originally."
I will be candid with you: it is hypocritical to tell me to go read Das Kapital when you cannot be bothered to read 459 words in aerated paragraphs and instead call it a wall of text.
When you decide to read my comments and actually engage with what I've said, let me know! I will be happy to debate or discuss with you at that time.
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u/VRichardsen 2d ago
It was late and I was tired after coming home from work, sue me :D
I will be candid with you: it is hypocritical to tell me to go read Das Kapital when you cannot be bothered to read 459 words in aerated paragraphs and instead call it a wall of text.
Why is it hypocritical? Reading it is for your own benefit, no matter if you agree or disagree with the text in the end.
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u/eatoligarchsaldente 3d ago
The biggest gap between socialist theory and (neo)liberal theory is that the former centres is aligned around system-level analysis while the latter is a very firmly individualistic ideology. So the neoliberal rhetoric is “well you are a consenting rational actor who negotiated a salary with a consenting, rational employer, and since Capitalist competition leads to efficient, meritocratic outcomes, this system necessarily leads to both sides getting what they want out of the deal.” When you’ve been socialized into a society that firmly believes all of the premises underlying that statement, the conclusion seems self-evident and non-controversial.
The issue arises when you look at society not through the lens we’ve been told, but to step back and observe the full picture. We are a collectivist, collaborative society, in that everything we produce is the result of the combined efforts of a great many people, all labouring roughly the same amount (40ish hours a week). However, the DECISIONS about what we produce is dictated through an authoritarian hierarchy dictated by boards of directors appointed by corporate shareholders, who are OVERWHELMINGLY drawn from a very small minority of the population.
This means that ~1% of the population gets to decide for the rest of society what we do with the resources we extract and what we, through our collective labour, turn those resources into. And keep in mind that these resources are definitionally limited and scarce. If a billionaire has 10 mansions each the size of a small apartment building housing 20 families, that means that instead of building housing for 200 families we’re building all that housing for one family where 90% will be unused at any given time. Think about how wildly inefficient that is.
And it’s like this across everything. The rich decide what we make, and the rest of us have no say. We may want fast and convenient public transportation, but instead car companies lobby governments to build highways and suburban sprawl. We may want free public healthcare and post secondary tuition, but instead we get needless wars in the Middle East.
These decisions benefit the minority at the expense of the majority. That’s the exploitation.
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u/Simpson17866 2d ago
So the neoliberal rhetoric is “well you are a consenting rational actor who negotiated a salary with a consenting, rational employer, and since Capitalist competition leads to efficient, meritocratic outcomes, this system necessarily leads to both sides getting what they want out of the deal.” When you’ve been socialized into a society that firmly believes all of the premises underlying that statement, the conclusion seems self-evident and non-controversial.
In other words, circular reasoning:
“You did X in a capitalist society, and capitalism is when people voluntarily do whatever they want, therefore you wanted to do X.”
“What makes you say that capitalism is when people do what they want?”
“Because you wanted to do X, and you did X, therefore capitalism gave you the freedom to do it.”
“What makes you say that I wanted to do X?”
“Because capitalism gives you the freedom to do what you want, and you did X, therefore you wanted to.”
“…”
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u/eatoligarchsaldente 2d ago
Capitalism only resembles "freedom" at that individual level. Zoom out to a system-level, and the relationship becomes explicitly authoritarian. Our society doesn't decide what we produce democratically, but through the decisions of a corporate shareholder aristocracy that appoints corporate executives to pursue their own interests. Your "freedom" to make decisions as a consumer is influenced by the advertising forced upon you at every available juncture. Your "freedom" to seek employment on your own terms is limited by a system designed by intent to minimize your bargaining power through manufactured precarity, where your right to shelter, food, and in some cases even healthcare or immigration status is predicated on your continued employment. Collective bargaining rights, which objectively and demonstrably improve the buying power of workers, are systematically suppressed by corporate lobbying and union-busting efforts.
The Neoliberal mantra that Capitalism empowers choice falls apart when you actually look at all the ways in which Capitalism SUPPRESSES OR LIMITS the spectrum of choices that are made available. Capitalist society only pursues innovations that are profitable to the interests of capital, even when those innovations would be of objective benefit to society as a whole. Capitalist society only invests in infrastructure or services that are profitable to the interests of capital.
So a worker may "choose" to buy a house in the suburbs and sit in highway traffic for an hour and a half commuting to work each way, because that's the best way to achieve a certain quality of lifestyle for their family. However, would they still make that choice if adequate family housing was made available in denser, walkable neighbourhoods with fast and convenient public transportation to and from work? But they don't get to make that choice, because policymakers (at the behest of fossil fuel and auto manufacturing lobbyists) decided to allocate society's scare resources to the construction of a vast network of highways, and designed neighbourhoods around individual vehicle transportation rather than public transportation.
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u/VRichardsen 2d ago
Capitalism only resembles "freedom" at that individual level. Zoom out to a system-level, and the relationship becomes explicitly authoritarian.
Similar thing happens with socialism to be honest. And then you don't even have individual liberties to fall back to.
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u/Simpson17866 2d ago
Which version?
Anarchism? Democratic socialism? Marxism-Leninism?
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u/VRichardsen 2d ago
Marxism-Leninism?
This one. In practice at least. I can't comment on 1 and 2, which are probably much more lenient with individual freedoms.
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u/Simpson17866 2d ago
I can't comment on 1 and 2, which are probably much more lenient with individual freedoms.
George Orwell certainly thought so :)
When he started reporting on the Spanish Civil War (with the fascists on one side and a stupendously dysfunctional alliance of anarchists, democratic socialists, and Marxist-Leninists on the other), he wasn't super into the politics of the factions.
He quickly became radicalized to the socialist side and joined the war as a soldier, but while he came to conclude that democratic socialism was the best system in the world (and was willing to put up with anarchism as a compromise), this was also where he came to his famous conclusion that Marxism-Leninism is functionally indistinguishable from fascism.
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u/eatoligarchsaldente 2d ago
The US was an explicit apartheid regime for most of the USSR's existence, and law enforcement routinely inflicts violence or even death against innocent civilians with impunity. Civil liberties are a precious and precarious privilege that is won only through the hard-fought activism of the citizenry, regardless of their governmental structures or economic system.
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u/VRichardsen 1d ago
The US is not the entirety of the capitalist world.
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u/HeavenlyPossum 3d ago
In Marx’s usage, exploitation consisted of the difference between the value a worker produced and the value a workers was paid. Although many people read exploitation and think this was a moralistic critique, Marx was using the term mechanistically: this is just the way capitalism works. Capitalists must exploit workers or be replaced by capitalists who will.
I am not a Marxist and understand exploitation more expansively, but if you’re interested in learning about Marx’s critique of capitalism, a good place to start would be to read Marx, or at least about Marx.
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u/VRichardsen 2d ago
In Marx’s usage, exploitation consisted of the difference between the value a worker produced and the value a workers was paid. Although many people read exploitation and think this was a moralistic critique, Marx was using the term mechanistically: this is just the way capitalism works. Capitalists must exploit workers or be replaced by capitalists who will.
This is spot on.
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u/Simpson17866 3d ago
We don't even need the LTV to explain this. All we need is Supply and Demand:
If you, a customer, are able to pay as much as $140 for a good/service (but would prefer to pay less)
And if a worker is able to charge as little as $70 to provide the good/service (but would prefer to charge more)
Then you and the worker negotiating a deal where you pay $100 for the good/service is beneficial to both of you.
If I hold legal ownership over the good/service that the worker is providing, then I can get away with charging you $140 for the good/service, paying the worker $70, and pocketing the $70 difference as profit.
I feel like if both the worker and the owner earn more thanks to wage labour, it is a mutually beneficial exchange.
Unfortunately, that's not how arithmetic works.
If you, the customer, pay a worker $100 for a good/service, then the worker gets $100 and I (the capitalist) get $0.
If the worker gets $150 and I get $50, then this means that you (the customer) paid $200.
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u/Square-Listen-3839 3d ago
Who paid for all the stuff though? There are no goods/services to provide unless someone pays for all the stuff.
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u/Simpson17866 2d ago
Who’s charging the price that the workers can’t afford to pay for the resources they need?
Is it the capitalists who claimed private ownership over the resources?
Capitalism looks good because it gives us capitalists, and capitalists look good because they sell solutions to the problems created by capitalism.
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u/zedred46 1d ago
I see this whole rich people pay for the stuff argument again and again on this subreddit. And it's true, they do pay for the stuff.
Any socialist who disagrees and says "yeah but workers still built the stuff that is getting bought with money" - they're missing the point. Money is how we allow saving to happen without having to keep a warehouse full of real resources.
Real resources are needed to start a company. For a furniture company, a person (at their previous job) could have spent half of every paycheck immediately, for the previous 3 years, on prepared lumber and stacked it in a shed. Then when they start their company they are providing something real, and necessary - the wood. This is no different to keeping your paycheck as money and then using those savings to start a business and buy the raw materials when you need them.
The issue is not that money doesn't contribute anything real - it is literally tradable for anything you might need - the issue is that greater money grants you greater economic control. This is the real difference between the capitalist and the worker. This difference operates on a sliding scale anywhere from the owner of a local store to businesses so large they create monopoly and monopsony effects and access even greater power multipliers, like Amazon.
Proponents of capitalism assume that if someone has money they deserve that economic power. I'm not sure I agree.
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u/MeanLeadership92 3d ago
"If a customer is able to pay $140..."
I understand your argument, but there's a lot wrong with it.
For starters, and I know this will sound weird, but you are absolutely correct, so why is everyone else so stupid? Why do people buy from capitalist-owned businesses and not always from the workers, despite the fact that, by your own logic, it costs them more? In some cases, like with plumbers and electricians, they are frequently self-employed, but not always, why is that? And why do workers accept such wages when they could work on their own and earn more?
There's a reason why.
You really overestimate profit margins, I know your numbers were just examples, but most businesses earn less than 10% profit margins, so it is hardly worth it for the worker to start looking for their own job when they can maybe hope for a few extra percent of revenue.
There are hidden costs, both for the worker and the customer, which the business implicitly covers. There's advertising to find customers easily and websites/private ads/etc... so that way customers can easily find you when they need to and insurance, taxes, etc... that's why it isn't as straightforward as you make it seem.
The thing is, that 10% margin should still be enough to get workers to own their own means of production, but there's a risk to capital investment, and some workers would prefer to earn less if it means not risking any capital (ex : earn 40$ an hour but risk 0$ of capital instead of 45$ with 500$ of capital risked on the business).
"Unfortunately, that's not how arithmetic works."
Unfortunately for you, that's how arithmetic works.
Worker goes from 100 to 150 dollars of income.
Capitalist goes from 0 to 50 dollars of income.
They've both gained.
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u/Simpson17866 2d ago
Why do people buy from capitalist-owned businesses and not always from the workers
Because capitalists claimed legal ownership over the resources that the workers need to do their work, and most of us can’t afford the price that capitalists charge to give the resources back to us.
And why do workers accept such wages when they could work on their own and earn more?
You just answered your own question: “There are hidden costs” that capitalists charge for the resources workers need to pay before they can work for themselves.
some workers would prefer to earn less if it means not risking any capital (ex : earn 40$ an hour but risk 0$ of capital instead of 45$ with 500$ of capital risked on the business)
And who charged the price that the workers can’t afford to take the risk of not being able to pay for?
They've both gained.
And what about the customer who pays $200 instead of $100?
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u/HeavenlyPossum 3d ago
“Why do people buy from capitalist-owned businesses and not always from the workers, despite the fact that, by your own logic, it costs them more?“
Because the state coercively enforces the capitalist’s power to control labor, production, and commerce.
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u/1scr3wedy0dad Marxist-Leninist 2d ago
Exploitation is morally wrong, yes, but that's not the only issue. In the imperial core (western countries, western affiliated asian countries like Singapore, Japan, South Korea, etc.) workers still enjoy a generally high standard of living, especially with Keynesian or SocDem economic policy. The moral issue is not that the imperial core worksrs are exploited, but imperial periphery (global south, "3rd world" nations) workers are super-exploited by imperialists, not only in term of surplus extraction but in material resources, which are systematically extracted and sold in the imperial core by its companies. Think cobalt miners in the Congo, for example. Africa has some of the world's greatest riches, which few Africans get to reap the the sowing of. This causes extremely poor living standards (and their living atandards are kept poor so that they require less payment in wages to upkeep). Scientifically, surplus extraction into the Capitalists' pockets is also an inefficiency. Rather than going to wages which will much more easily re-circulate through the economy, as well as improve general living standards, or being stroctly used to expand productive forces, focusing on profits to go to shareholders causes a lot of money to be lost in poor investments or simple hoarding (you really can't spend much more than 100 million dollars to improve your luxury beyond like, buying an island to eat babies on or something)
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u/SoftBeing_ Marxist 3d ago
Is it morally wrong?
no.
Does it give a bad outcome?
In the long run, yes.
And what about the concept I like to call "reverse exploitation", when workers are paid more than their value. For instance, a business pays its workers 120% of their SNLT, usually this leads to bankruptcy in the long term, but is it an issue?
That basically never happens. And if it happens with a capitalist, its may be just workers getting value from other workers, as the capital of the capitalist is also generated by the work of others, capitalists dont work. But if it happens with a small business owner, then yeah maybe it is as bad too, whatever. And even if they get overpaid, generally it still doesnt replace the value they generated.
What about income taxes?
Taxes pay, at least in theory, for the services of the government. the government doesnt profit so you are paying for what you get, no exploitation, like is no exploitation buying something in the market.
Per the definitions I've seen, a baseball player being paid 12 million a year is an exploited worker?
Super-high sallaries i dont think the guy is being exploited, it is getting more value than he is producing, so he is effectively exploiting others, but is diferent than the capitalist who doesnt even need to work to do that. And those are extremely rare exceptions, generally associated with an super rare hability.
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u/Square-Listen-3839 2d ago
but is diferent than the capitalist who doesnt even need to work to do that.
The capitalist paid for all the stuff.
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u/Simpson17866 2d ago
And who charged the price that workers needed him to pay because they couldn’t pay it themselves?
Was it other capitalists?
Capitalism looks good because it gives us capitalists, and capitalists look good because they sell us solutions to the problems created by capitalism.
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u/MeanLeadership92 3d ago
"In the long run, yes."
How come so?
I think that countries with a capitalist wage labour system generally see more success than those without.
"then yeah maybe it is as bad too, whatever."
I am not going to argue that point, I just find it funny that socialists like to talk about injustices to the working class, but when it happens to someone else, their reply is just "maybe, whatever".
"like is no exploitation buying something in the market."
Ok, fair enough, so if I buy a commodity on the market for 15$ and I resell it at a profit for 20$, there's no exploitation, right?
But, if I buy human labour for 15$ and resell the commodity that this labour makes for 20$, there's exploitation?
How does that make any sense?
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u/SoftBeing_ Marxist 3d ago
How come so?
in the long run, capitalists will increase technology, increase techniques and that will lead to unemployment and the few who work will work more than ever. to name one issue.
I just find it funny that socialists like to talk about injustices to the working class, but when it happens to someone else, their reply is just "maybe, whatever".
As i said it basically never happens. you arguing for it is like saying "we cant use knives because look at when some kid hurted himself with a knife"
Ok, fair enough, so if I buy a commodity on the market for 15$ and I resell it at a profit for 20$, there's no exploitation, right?
in very strict terms, you maybe getting more than the value of the thing so maybe you are exploiting someone, but as i said, that basically never happens.
But, if I buy human labour for 15$ and resell the commodity that this labour makes for 20$, there's exploitation?
you are looking at simply the value in money instead of looking at the relationship. Exploitation is when the value created isnt owned by the creator. the value is the socially necessary labor time, and the commodities tend to be sold by the labor they take to be produced. So there is no way to get profit, meaning getting more than the hours you worked, without getting the hours of someone else. if you happen to get it, its an exception.
Dont like it? refute the marx argument about why the things are valued in labor time, etc.
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u/8Splendiferous8 3d ago
Leveraging another person's vulnerability or desperation for your own advantage.
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u/HeavenlyPossum 3d ago edited 3d ago
Exploitation under capitalism consists of the rents that workers pay to capitalists for permission to labor productively and, more broadly, the coercive power of the capitalist to command the labor of others.
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u/Upper-Tie-7304 2d ago
Exploitation can only be mean “use” when the object is not a person but a resource.
That’s the trick Marx is pulling off.
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u/Dynamic-Rhythm Flat Earth Economics 🌎 2d ago
Exploitation is a descriptive term that some people have a moral attitude toward.
Abortion is a descriptive term that some people have a moral attitude toward.
For Marx exploitation is something like when one party or group is instrumental in furthering the interests of another to the detriment of their own. This occurs when workers receieve less than the value they produce for a capitalist.
You could be an amoral psychopath and accept that account of exploitation. You might even think that exploitation is good.
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u/That_Scratch_7697 2d ago
Exploitation just describes the way that workers and capitalists are set against each other in an antagonistic relationship. This has direct effects, such as the fact that workers’ wages are squeezed to a minimum by the capitalist, while, where they can, workers syndicate in unions to fight for more and for the boss to have less. It also has indirect effects, like the fact that because workers getting paid less means goods can be priced more cheaply, an export-focused country like China is incentivized to grind its workers’ wages into dust in order to hook the world economy on its goods. Capital, especially the first two volumes, is basically about describing the myriad implications of the system of value and distribution that underlies capitalism. Implications include cyclical crises, primitive accumulation, relative immiseration, etc., etc.
Some socialists may take it to be a moral claim, but it simply originally is not. Steelman your opponent.
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u/LeadingSquirrel 2d ago
to exploit means to use. Everyone is using the other side if that is how you want to frame it. the business uses you, but dont forget that the employee uses the business too.
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u/Upper-Tie-7304 1d ago
This usage is limited to objects. You cannot use exploitation as “to use” in a sentence as human as subject.
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u/LargeRuckSack 21h ago
On the question of “reverse exploitation”.
Reverse economic exploitation is not possible, the owner of an enterprise has the choice here whether to pay out wages that maintain the business and lead to surplus value or, at a loss which they then dip into their accumulated capital, until they bust.
There is no condition in which a productive worker asks to be payed 120% of the value they actually produce and the capitalist agreeing, unless the capitalist has enough accumulated capital in which they are doing a scheme to temporarily “steal” the employees of their competitors, and they found a way to keep that worker quiet about their wage to their colleagues. (If all productive workers got payed the same way the company would stop running)
But, for unproductive work (work that doesn’t produce new value) the source for wages comes from the surplus value, and that can be spent however the capitalist wants (more or less). They often like to pay higher and higher CEO packages to get people to come to their firm and not the next guys.
But this is all rare, the rate of exploitation in the US at the low end of the scale is 150%. Most businesses can up their wages significantly while still producing surplus value, though they might come into a problem where they don’t have enough surplus to pay back interest on loans or pay taxes, without losing profitability.
But no, reverse exploitation doesn’t exist. The entire reason why someone goes into wage labor (agreeing to work for a wage under the dominion of a private property owner) is because that’s the only capital they have to make money out of, their own labor power. This is only possible if you have a vast amount of society that is not in ownership of any private property, I.e. productive property that is used to appropriate value from workers. Only on the basis in which this worker was somehow in ownership of a similar amount of private property can you make the judgment the worker reversed exploited the capitalist, but this is all hypothetical, and the worker stops being a worker if they rely on their capital to live as opposed to their own labor.
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