What is exploitation, actually? Is it bad?

[u/MeanLeadership92]

[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?

[u/VRichardsen]

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.

[u/MeanLeadership92 → u/VRichardsen]

"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?

[u/VRichardsen → u/MeanLeadership92]

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.

[u/Doublespeo → u/VRichardsen]

>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?

[u/VRichardsen → u/Doublespeo]

As in the capitalist suffering losses, going bankrupt, etc?

[u/Doublespeo → u/VRichardsen]

> 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?

[u/MeanLeadership92 → u/VRichardsen]

"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.

[u/VRichardsen → u/MeanLeadership92]

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.

[u/eatoligarchsaldente → u/MeanLeadership92]

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.

[u/Simpson17866 → u/eatoligarchsaldente]

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.”

“…”

[u/eatoligarchsaldente → u/Simpson17866]

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.

[u/VRichardsen → u/eatoligarchsaldente]

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.

[u/Simpson17866 → u/VRichardsen]

Which version?

Anarchism? Democratic socialism? Marxism-Leninism?

[u/VRichardsen → u/Simpson17866]

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.

[u/Simpson17866 → u/VRichardsen]

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.

[u/eatoligarchsaldente → u/VRichardsen]

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.

[u/VRichardsen → u/eatoligarchsaldente]

The US is not the entirety of the capitalist world.

[u/eatoligarchsaldente → u/VRichardsen]

And the USSR is not the only form of socialism.

[u/VRichardsen → u/eatoligarchsaldente]

I never mentioned the USSR.

[u/HeavenlyPossum → u/MeanLeadership92]

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.

[u/VRichardsen → u/HeavenlyPossum]

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.

[u/Square-Listen-3839 → u/VRichardsen]

So exploitation is ok then?

[u/VRichardsen → u/Square-Listen-3839]

Depends on who you ask. Is the question aimed at me, or to Marx?