Watching Marxist videos has ruined my mind.

[Anarcho Nihilist]

I used to want to be successful and take part in material pleasures. But now I see that that glamour, that dream is not possible without exploitation of others. And it's not something that can be controlled by altruistic policies. It's inherent to the system. Just fundamentally evil.

Yes, but capitalism corresponds to human nature. Communism is alien to human nature, so any communism sooner or later degenerates. In recent decades, the party nomenklatura and the KGB secret police in the USSR were actually an aristocracy, they could travel abroad, they could get an apartment or a car out of turn, and their children could enroll in the best universities in the country. Communism in the USSR died on the third generation of the first communists, when they wanted a luxurious life, so the USSR collapsed, the nomenklatura of the CPSU and the KGB wanted to own factories and factories in order to have even more luxury. Communism does not work because it is alien to human nature. The best you can achieve is a relatively functioning social democracy and that's it.

 

[ButterNoParsnips]

Yeah man capitalism is inherently predatory, It's the fault of liberal democracy, to think I have to surrender my rights every four years through a ballot for bourgeois management

They even has an elaborate state apparatus specially designed to oppress the Proletariat, whether they are majority or minority it doesn't matter. There will be no ‘democratic revolution’ because the capitalists have the means to suppress it and any rights/reform are concessions from a dictatorship of ruling class (i.e. the bourgeoisie)

 

[Anarcho Nihilist]

I used to want to be successful and take part in material pleasures. But now I see that that glamour, that dream is not possible without exploitation of others. And it's not something that can be controlled by altruistic policies. It's inherent to the system. Just fundamentally evil.

Communism also exploits people. In the USSR, it was forbidden to be unemployed, you had to work. In the USSR there was a tax on childlessness, in the USSR you could only read and watch what the party allowed you. In the USSR, slave labor was actively used by prisoners. In the USSR under Stalin in 1937-1938, 1,000 people per day were shot per day. Communism also exploits people, just like capitalism. The Communists were able to take all livestock and all agricultural machinery from the peasants during collectivization, and in 1933 they took crops from farmers in Ukraine, which caused famine and death of millions of Ukrainians. The generals of the Red army, the highest party nomenklatura of the party, the KGB/Cheka/NKVD lived in luxury, compared to ordinary workers.

 

[Caesercel]

Yes, but capitalism corresponds to human nature. Communism is alien to human nature, so any communism sooner or later degenerates. In recent decades, the party nomenklatura and the KGB secret police in the USSR were actually an aristocracy, they could travel abroad, they could get an apartment or a car out of turn, and their children could enroll in the best universities in the country. Communism in the USSR died on the third generation of the first communists, when they wanted a luxurious life, so the USSR collapsed, the nomenklatura of the CPSU and the KGB wanted to own factories and factories in order to have even more luxury. Communism does not work because it is alien to human nature. The best you can achieve is a relatively functioning social democracy and that's it.

Capitalism is not human nature. It's a recent phenomena. But yes, exploitation certainly is and capitalism is juts another face of it.

Yeah man capitalism is inherently predatory, It's the fault of liberal democracy, to think I have to surrender my rights every four years through a ballot for bourgeois management

They even has an elaborate state apparatus specially designed to oppress the Proletariat, whether they are majority or minority it doesn't matter. There will be no ‘democratic revolution’ because the capitalists have the means to suppress it and any rights/reform are concessions from a dictatorship of ruling class (i.e. the bourgeoisie)

I haven't bothered with voting in a long time. In my shithole the ruling party can quite literally arrest and detain opposition. It's a joke

 

[Caesercel]

Communism also exploits people. In the USSR, it was forbidden to be unemployed,

On this topic marx believed that people would work not because they were forced to by a system but to achieve their species being. But I am skeptical if he was right about this. USSR never really became anything more than a dictatorship of the party. Far better than capitalism under the same financial circumstances but still not what was promised

 

[Anarcho Nihilist]

On this topic marx believed that people would work not because they were forced to by a system but to achieve their species being. But I am skeptical if he was right about this. USSR never really became anything more than a dictatorship of the party. Far better than capitalism under the same financial circumstances but still not what was promised

Communism will make you work. If you don't work, then in the eyes of the Communists you are a parasite and a parasite, so you can be sent to the GULAG. Half of the neets from this forum would have been recognized as criminals under the law of the USSR and sent to prison, where they would have been forced to work, because if they had not done their job, they simply would not have been fed.

 

[Caesercel]

Communism will make you work.

The way I see it is that human beings have to work, period. Marx believed that this is what defines us and seperates us from other species.

But what he does argues for is work in a way such that the worker has real autonomy over his body, over his work and a sense of ownership with the product of his work. (A hegelian sense of dialectical self reflection). Like a baker who sells the cake he bakes. If what you describe in USSR is true then it's pretty fucking far from that ideal.

 

[ButterNoParsnips]

I haven't bothered with voting in a long time. In my shithole the ruling party can quite literally arrest and detain opposition. It's a joke

Damn it, even the secret police, this is just another proof that liberals are fascist with a mask

 

[nice_try]

I will repeat what I wrote to a similar contention before

Well it's a philosophical question to ask if risk should demand recompense at all. Because at the end we don't pay people for taking risks otherwise gamblers would be the richest people. We pay people for actual commodities we buy from them. So what is the risk anyway? The risk would be losing capital right? Because no one buys your stuff

I assume that the Marxist response would be that capital is evil and ill-gotten in and of itself. How many working class people have access to capital to risk in the first place. Infact they don't have that capital precisely because they are not paid a fair wage for work.

Further, even if we were to recompense the capitalists for risking their capital, that amount is still coming from the worker's pocket if you assume that work creates value. And since the pre condition of risking capital is owning capital, in the end this really boils down to rewarding capitalists for the virtue of owning capital, at the expense of the working class. Which is what is being criticized in the first place

What do you mean with "we pay people" and "if we were to recompense the capilatists for risking their capital"? Who is we?

The employer pays the employee. And as with anything you pay for, you make a calculation in your head if the investment is worth it. Risk is always a factor in how much you're willing (or able) to pay.

Imagine you want to buy a car. One car has a high risk of breaking down while the other car is reliable. Of course you would pay less for the car that has a higher risk of failing.

An employer has to calculate the factor risk into how much he is able pay. That's also the reason why a gender pay gap is based and rational, because women have a higher risk of falling out of the job due to a potential pregnancy.

Capitalism is a perfectly fair system.
The argument "you have to have money to make money" is wrong.
Everybody can take a loan as long as he has a good business plan.
Most don't do it because they're afraid of the risk of being in life-long debt.
Enterpreneurs take that risk and therefore either get richer than the average low risk worker, or end up with lifelong debt.


Leftists want to have the risk-free, care-free life of a worker, but the pay of a high-risk, high-stress CEO.
They only see the multi-billion dollar company CEO, but they completely ignore how BRUTAL the life of small company CEO is.

 

[Caesercel]

Value vs Price

The difference between value and price with examples.

simplicable.com

Just lmfao.

This article presents the difference between price and value but under the hidden assumption that they are homogenous entities.

In the second paragraph it literally goes

Value >= Price

Almost as if *gasp* Value can be quantified and numerically compared to Price on a scale. Or that Price itself can be thought of as a unit of value and compared to another unit of value.

You cannot possibly claim that:

10KM >= 10 days because both these measures are not homogeneous. But claiming gravitational force > electrical force is perfectly fine because the quantities are homogenous. Your pedantic argument boils down to "but electricity and gravity are different" , well yes but they are still both measures of forces.

Well that's exactly what LTV is arguing by differentiating between Use Value and Exchange Value (price) . Both are different but homogenous measures of value and your article pretty much assumes that for its own definition of price. But this is not something I would need an article for

Even as a 13 year old I understood that my cheap Chinese knock off gameboy might be more valuable to me than my mom's jewellery. But the loss of that jewellery would be a worse outcome than loss of my Gameboy. Not because I value the jewellery but because I value the price tag (exchange value) behind it

I guess I did not lose out on much by not having internet search access as a 12 year old

A business might have something like $100,000 worth in assets, but be valued at much higher during sale, because of its history of yearly operating income. The final price of selling the business would likely hover in the ballpark estimate of those figures.

If a business is valued much higher during a sale then that IS the Price of that business. Which you just called Value. The cost of assets is irrelevant here (or semi relevant since they are factored into it).

And this goes for all exchanges. Surplus value can only ever arise out of undervaluing the costs compared to the real market value or price. Simple 5th grade math says Profit = Selling Price - Cost Price

The problem is that surplus exists in each step of the process. From the mines to the Walmart shelf. So when you look at the system whollisticaly instead of individual elements in the supply chain and you add in the fact that money is something that is only earned by humans (and not consumed by raw material , machinery or land because even when you buy those you are paying another human and not the machine itself) , you can come to the conclusion that it's ALL coming from underpaying labour since it cannot come from "underpaying land" and the owners always make profit every step even when they are undercut by another owner further down the line

As I said above, the price factors in the manufacturing cost, but the market value changes that price. If demands dips the price too low to the point where it's not profitable (close to breakeven or operating at a slight loss to weather the market storm), then obviously it will could cease being a product. That simply means that people don't value the prodcut as much as the price point.

I don't see how the theory of demand and supply is incompatible with LTV. If the market determines that a particular commodity is invaluable then by default the labour that went into making that commodity is invaluable as well. Useless labour does exist. I can run 5 Km daily and gain no economic value from it (except losing my belly). But those are not the kind of labour we are discussing here, are we? We are discussing economic activities that do create value in the market. Something which does have a demand. Your last sentence regarding price points can literally be translated in terms of LTV. Without demand, useful labour becomes useless labour. Marx's core argument is that labour value should be reverse engineered from the market value and not vice versa because without labour that commodity with that particular market value (or price if you wanna call it that) wouldn't even exist. No matter where the forces of demand/supply place it exactly

Another factor here is Supply and LTV peers into why certain commodities have lower supply and hence higher price. Because it takes greater labour to create them. Here are 3 facts for you.

1. More cakes are sold every year than cars
2. Making a cake takes way less labour than a car
3. A car costs more than a cake in the market

These are not mutually exclusive data points but closely linked facts .

.


I don't know if you're arguing as a Marxist or on behalf of Marxism, but regardless, the entire LTV rests on this one premise that labor is a commodity. It needs it to be true, else the whole thing crumbles like Jenga.

Anyway, the difference matters because products are not services and vice versa, and in economics the definition of a commodity includes "fungible" (tradeable with equal value) goods and does not include labor (it's still a service, but is not classified as a commodity).

Apples and oranges are both the same thing: fruit product. Two things being under the same influences does not make them the same category of things.

If your critique of LTV rests on pedantics and semantics then it's not a very good critique. Labour costs are pretty much determined by the same factors of demand and supply and cost of upkeep as any other commodity. Only a socialist/communist/Marxist argues otherwise.

You keep on insisting on pedantic differences between different entities that work under the same underlying economic/market principles and to which same arguments could be applied. And then expect it to critique LTV.

But you cannot even point out exactly why the differences even matter to the argument at hand

Of course you can't. Because it doesn't matter.

Unless you have a good argument for why labour cost is determined by something more than forces of demand/supply and upkeep costs (food/shelter) , just like any other fungible commodity, you don't have an argument.

When I write a book of accounts, labour costs go write up there with raw material cost and other expenses of the business in the "Debit" column. No financial distinction is made because NONE EXISTS

. The criticisms are in how Marx classifies labor and rests his entire thesis (of worker exploitation) on that. I don't need to reinvent that wheel. If you're geniunely interested, there's practically libraries of texts on just that.

I'm sure there are good critiques of LTV. I can probably think of some. But I see none in this thread. There are some right wing ones in my mind rn

.


Your example was silly. I was telling you that I'd just sell it for the market value, which means that it would be the equivalent of if you gifted me the dollar amount of the gold brick. To me, it's the same shit in that instance, because I don't value the gold any differently than the going market rate of a gold brick.

So the price tag does impart a sense of value onto the commodity. Hmmm. Not a big leap from here to conclude that this value is created by the labour which was essential for creating that commodity. Sure you might argue that "noooo that value is muh subjective to everyone" but even you don't deny here that things are inherently valuable beyond how useful they are to you. That's what my example shows. And this notion of value is UNDENIABLE

>Commodities have value (if not for you then for someone else which then makes it valuable to you as well, atleast valuable enough to take it for free just to sell it with a big smile, as the gold example shows. Humans are not isolated islands of consciousness, things that are valuable to others become valuable to us by sheer virtue of social relations, in this case you selling the gold to someone)
>Labour creates commodity
>Labour creates value



See?

I'm interested in hearing your own personal arguments, if possible.

Personally I live in one of the most unregulated and corrupt capitalist shitholes on the planet. I've seen people from all kinds of profession, from psychologists to bill clerks to book keeping people to field labour get paid the same or in the same range. The bare minimum needed to survive.

I have seen how certain people have got rich and fat off of unemployment and surplus labour. I've seen people sell off their land and assets because they needed an expensive surgery which their paltry wage couldn't cover. I've seen them beg their owners for money and go into debt slavery which they can never get out of through their wages. I've seen wages not keep up with inflation or not even rise at all for 20 years straight

I've seen the other side as well. The sheer ignorance at best and callousness at worst of Capital owners towards those whose work they stand on. Abuses that go beyond the usual robbery of labour value. The sheer entitlement at play. I can give you so many personal examples. I've also seen the benefits of GDP growth being concentrated in a few hands. It's so bad that my business running friend is speaking Marxist language now (even though he would never call himself one).

I've so seen how badly Socialism could be mishandled if fallen into the wrong hands

This is not some theory one reads in a book. These are actual lives people are living. Marx saw it in 19th century and I'm just seeing it now.

 

[Ahnfeltia]

Because at the end we don't pay people for taking risks otherwise gamblers would be the richest people. We pay people for actual commodities we buy from them. So what is the risk anyway? The risk would be losing capital right? Because no one buys your stuff

If you don't pay people for security, then what are you paying your insurance company for? Just because we don't pay gamblers for gambling in general (some Twitch streamers surely get paid to gamba) doesn't mean we don't ever pay people for taking risks -- e.g., scientists. Sometimes acquiring the commodities consumers buy comes at a risk -- e.g., farming.

I assume that the Marxist response would be that capital is evil and ill-gotten in and of itself

I sincerely doubt Marx would ever say that.

Well it's a philosophical question to ask if risk should demand recompense at all

Au contraire, I posit it's a practical question. Not recompensing risk means running risks becomes a net negative, so why would anyone do so? And you want farmers to be farming. then again, it might just makes wars a thing of the past, because no one will fight on the front lines if they don't get paid handsomely for risking their literal fucking lives.

Further, even if we were to recompense the capitalists for risking their capital, that amount is still coming from the worker's pocket if you assume that work creates value. And since the pre condition of risking capital is owning capital, in the end this really boils down to rewarding capitalists for the virtue of owning capital, at the expense of the working class. Which is what is being criticized in the first place

Some rich people got rich by working hard, but I get your point here. But would you rather they not use their capital to finance meritorious endeavors and instead find other ways to make their money work for them (maybe bribes)? Or would you rather an all-powerful government gets to decide which start-ups are worth financing?

 

[Anarcho Nihilist]

Just lmfao.

This article presents the difference between price and value but under the hidden assumption that they are homogenous entities.

In the second paragraph it literally goes

Value >= Price

Almost as if *gasp* Value can be quantified and numerically compared to Price on a scale. Or that Price itself can be thought of as a unit of value and compared to another unit of value.

You cannot possibly claim that:

10KM >= 10 days because both these measures are not homogeneous. But claiming gravitational force > electrical force is perfectly fine because the quantities are homogenous. Your pedantic argument boils down to "but electricity and gravity are different" , well yes but they are still both measures of forces.

Well that's exactly what LTV is arguing by differentiating between Use Value and Exchange Value (price) . Both are different but homogenous measures of value and your article pretty much assumes that for its own definition of price. But this is not something I would need an article for

Even as a 13 year old I understood that my cheap Chinese knock off gameboy might be more valuable to me than my mom's jewellery. But the loss of that jewellery would be a worse outcome than loss of my Gameboy. Not because I value the jewellery but because I value the price tag (exchange value) behind it

I guess I did not lose out on much by not having internet search access as a 12 year old


If a business is valued much higher during a sale then that IS the Price of that business. Which you just called Value. The cost of assets is irrelevant here (or semi relevant since they are factored into it).

And this goes for all exchanges. Surplus value can only ever arise out of undervaluing the costs compared to the real market value or price. Simple 5th grade math says Profit = Selling Price - Cost Price

The problem is that surplus exists in each step of the process. From the mines to the Walmart shelf. So when you look at the system whollisticaly instead of individual elements in the supply chain and you add in the fact that money is something that is only earned by humans (and not consumed by raw material , machinery or land because even when you buy those you are paying another human and not the machine itself) , you can come to the conclusion that it's ALL coming from underpaying labour since it cannot come from "underpaying land" and the owners always make profit every step even when they are undercut by another owner further down the line






I don't see how the theory of demand and supply is incompatible with LTV. If the market determines that a particular commodity is invaluable then by default the labour that went into making that commodity is invaluable as well. Useless labour does exist. I can run 5 Km daily and gain no economic value from it (except losing my belly). But those are not the kind of labour we are discussing here, are we? We are discussing economic activities that do create value in the market. Something which does have a demand. Your last sentence regarding price points can literally be translated in terms of LTV. Without demand, useful labour becomes useless labour. Marx's core argument is that labour value should be reverse engineered from the market value and not vice versa because without labour that commodity with that particular market value (or price if you wanna call it that) wouldn't even exist. No matter where the forces of demand/supply place it exactly

Another factor here is Supply and LTV peers into why certain commodities have lower supply and hence higher price. Because it takes greater labour to create them. Here are 3 facts for you.

1. More cakes are sold every year than cars
2. Making a cake takes way less labour than a car
3. A car costs more than a cake in the market

These are not mutually exclusive data points but closely linked facts .


If your critique of LTV rests on pedantics and semantics then it's not a very good critique. Labour costs are pretty much determined by the same factors of demand and supply and cost of upkeep as any other commodity. Only a socialist/communist/Marxist argues otherwise.

You keep on insisting on pedantic differences between different entities that work under the same underlying economic/market principles and to which same arguments could be applied. And then expect it to critique LTV.

But you cannot even point out exactly why the differences even matter to the argument at hand

Of course you can't. Because it doesn't matter.

Unless you have a good argument for why labour cost is determined by something more than forces of demand/supply and upkeep costs (food/shelter) , just like any other fungible commodity, you don't have an argument.

When I write a book of accounts, labour costs go write up there with raw material cost and other expenses of the business in the "Debit" column. No financial distinction is made because NONE EXISTS



I'm sure there are good critiques of LTV. I can probably think of some. But I see none in this thread. There are some right wing ones in my mind rn



So the price tag does impart a sense of value onto the commodity. Hmmm. Not a big leap from here to conclude that this value is created by the labour which was essential for creating that commodity. Sure you might argue that "noooo that value is muh subjective to everyone" but even you don't deny here that things are inherently valuable beyond how useful they are to you. That's what my example shows. And this notion of value is UNDENIABLE

>Commodities have value (if not for you then for someone else which then makes it valuable to you as well, atleast valuable enough to take it for free just to sell it with a big smile, as the gold example shows. Humans are not isolated islands of consciousness, things that are valuable to others become valuable to us by sheer virtue of social relations, in this case you selling the gold to someone)
>Labour creates commodity
>Labour creates value



See?


View attachment 1407956



Personally I live in one of the most unregulated and corrupt capitalist shitholes on the planet. I've seen people from all kinds of profession, from psychologists to bill clerks to book keeping people to field labour get paid the same or in the same range. The bare minimum needed to survive.

I have seen how certain people have got rich and fat off of unemployment and surplus labour. I've seen people sell off their land and assets because they needed an expensive surgery which their paltry wage couldn't cover. I've seen them beg their owners for money and go into debt slavery which they can never get out of through their wages. I've seen wages not keep up with inflation or not even rise at all for 20 years straight

I've seen the other side as well. The sheer ignorance at best and callousness at worst of Capital owners towards those whose work they stand on. Abuses that go beyond the usual robbery of labour value. The sheer entitlement at play. I can give you so many personal examples. I've also seen the benefits of GDP growth being concentrated in a few hands. It's so bad that my business running friend is speaking Marxist language now (even though he would never call himself one).

I've so seen how badly Socialism could be mishandled if fallen into the wrong hands

This is not some theory one reads in a book. These are actual lives people are living. Marx saw it in 19th century and I'm just seeing it now.

Capitalism, like socialism, is multifaceted. Capitalism from 1945-1970 in the West is not the same as capitalism in the West now. Capitalism can have a human face, as in North America and Western Europe 1945-1970, when the majority wins from it, where the majority is the middle class, and the rich and corporations pay a lot of taxes, and this is considered the norm, since there were many living witnesses of the great depression as a demonstration of the failure of the free market.In the USA of the 1950s and 1970s, you needed the income of one man to provide for a wife and several children, but now this is impossible. Capitalism changed a lot in the late 1970s and early 1980s for the worse, towards globalization and neoliberalism.

 

[Caesercel]

The employer pays the employee.

Well that's the point that is being criticized isn't it.

.

Imagine you want to buy a car. One car has a high risk of breaking down while the other car is reliable. Of course you would pay less for the car that has a higher risk of failing.

An employer has to calculate the factor risk into how much he is able pay. That's also the reason why a gender pay gap is based and rational, because women have a higher risk of falling out of the job due to a potential pregnancy.

This is entirely irrelevant to your original argument. Which was that the idea that capitalists deserves to make more money because they take risk.

.
Everybody can take a loan as long as he has a good business plan.

Everybody can take a loan but not everybody HAS TO. This argument can of course only come from someone who has never applied for a loan before. Let alone someone who has any idea into the inner workings of a bank.

What does the "risk" mean for an upper middle class millionare who would stay upper middle class even if he fails. And what does "risk" mean for a wage labour with no connections, no networks into the market, and no savings who has to take a big loan just to set up. And would go into lifelong debt or even jail if he fails.

.
Enterpreneurs take that risk and therefore either get richer than the average low risk worker, or end up with lifelong debt.

So they gamble with other people's money. I.e. capitalist money instead of their own. I still don't see how gambling justifies greater access to society's wealth and resources. Let alone stealing the fruit of someone else's work

.


Leftists want to have the risk-free, care-free life of a worker, but the pay of a high-risk, high-stress CEO.
They only see the multi-billion dollar company CEO, but they completely ignore how BRUTAL the life of small company CEO is.

I don't know about leftists but I wouldn't argue for the pay of a CEO. Just fair livable wage compatible with the revenue their work is creating.

 

[based_meme]

If your critique of LTV rests on pedantics and semantics then it's not a very good critique. Labour costs are pretty much determined by the same factors of demand and supply and cost of upkeep as any other commodity. Only a socialist/communist/Marxist argues otherwise.

You keep on insisting on pedantic differences between different entities that work under the same underlying economic/market principles and to which same arguments could be applied. And then expect it to critique LTV.

But you cannot even point out exactly why the differences even matter to the argument at hand

Of course you can't. Because it doesn't matter.

Unless you have a good argument for why labour cost is determined by something more than forces of demand/supply and upkeep costs (food/shelter) , just like any other fungible commodity, you don't have an argument.



I'm sure there are good critiques of LTV. I can probably think of some. But I see none in this thread. There are some right wing ones in my mind rn

As I said, all of the critiques start from challenging the truth of the premise that labor is a commodity. Marx almost takes it an axiom and goes from there. The difference matters, because in doing so he puts labor in a special class of its own and says that the values of goods comes from the input value of labor. We know this to be obviously false, because (example from before) the input labor into mining things gold and silver (and most other similar metals), for exmaple, is the same (or very close to the same), but their market values are very different.

This easily gets very messy and muddied, once you realize that many labors don't easily map and translate to their economic value in the market. For example, there are many minimum wage jobs, but some are much easier and less demanding on the worker than others, even though they're both in the category of "low skilled jobs" (the skills required to stock shelves and those required to be the face of your business are different). But if we went by the LTV, how do you measure the output value between a merchandiser at the back of the store behind where the customers are and the cashier at the front?

This is a very common and sensible critique (not mine, mind you) that illustrates the glaring flaw that stems from the LTV's central premise. Everything in the market - every good and service - is affected by its forces (supply/demand). In actuality it's the Marxist position that tries to argue that labor is somehow exempted from this market force and deserves a special standing, because evil capitalists 'n stuff.

I don't mean to be condescending, but I get the sense that you either just don't get it or you developed a taste for the communist Kool-Aid. I don't personally care either way (debating communists is ironically unproductive), but if you honestly do, then you should look into this on your own time, for your own sake, instead of passively engaging with the subject here.

Personally I live in one of the most unregulated and corrupt capitalist shitholes on the planet. I've seen people from all kinds of profession, from psychologists to bill clerks to book keeping people to field labour get paid the same or in the same range. The bare minimum needed to survive.

I have seen how certain people have got rich and fat off of unemployment and surplus labour. I've seen people sell off their land and assets because they needed an expensive surgery which their paltry wage couldn't cover. I've seen them beg their owners for money and go into debt slavery which they can never get out of through their wages. I've seen wages not keep up with inflation or not even rise at all for 20 years straight

I've seen the other side as well. The sheer ignorance at best and callousness at worst of Capital owners towards those whose work they stand on. Abuses that go beyond the usual robbery of labour value. The sheer entitlement at play. I can give you so many personal examples. I've also seen the benefits of GDP growth being concentrated in a few hands. It's so bad that my business running friend is speaking Marxist language now (even though he would never call himself one).

I've so seen how badly Socialism could be mishandled if fallen into the wrong hands

This is not some theory one reads in a book. These are actual lives people are living. Marx saw it in 19th century and I'm just seeing it now.

You haven't made any arguments here to support your ethical claims. All I'm seeing is ego and emotion. If you don't want to, then OK, whatever, but then I can't take your claims that it's theft and evil seriously.

 

[based_meme]

Leftists want to have the risk-free, care-free life of a worker, but the pay of a high-risk, high-stress CEO.

This is one of the many reasons why I and most of the rest of the world don't take communists and the philosophy of communism seriously. They want to have their cake and eat it too. It's delusional fantasy that, as @Anarcho Nihilist noted, doesn't match human nature.

We can talk about if and why that nature is good or bad, but we can't deny that it's there and plays the biggest role in all of this.

 

[Anarcho Nihilist]

This is one of the many reasons why I and most of the rest of the world don't take communists and the philosophy of communism seriously. They want to have their cake and eat it too. It's delusional fantasy that, as @Anarcho Nihilist noted, doesn't match human nature.

We can talk about if and why that nature is good or bad, but we can't deny that it's there and plays the biggest role in all of this.

Capitalism has been around for several centuries, starting in 18th century England, where feudalism had already given way to capitalism while feudalism still dominated the rest of Europe. Capitalism has lived for several centuries, but capitalism is not the same: there is capitalism with a human face, and there is capitalism with an animal face. Compare capitalism in Latin America and capitalism in Sweden/Norway or Germany. The difference is on the face. But any capitalism works solely on greed and the desire to make money, it is greed that is the spark that makes people come up with something to create something new, it is the desire to patent it later and get paid for it. Money and the desire to earn it drive people to achieve things: writing great works of art, creating scientific discoveries, and so on. In the USSR or any other country where there is only a planned economy, where there is no market, there is always a shortage, since no one wants to create a product without getting rich. Greed is the engine of capitalism, and greed is human nature.

 

[Anarcho Nihilist]

This is one of the many reasons why I and most of the rest of the world don't take communists and the philosophy of communism seriously. They want to have their cake and eat it too. It's delusional fantasy that, as @Anarcho Nihilist noted, doesn't match human nature.

We can talk about if and why that nature is good or bad, but we can't deny that it's there and plays the biggest role in all of this.

Communism does not work because it is impossible to overcome human nature, namely the thirst for enrichment. The first Bolshevik elites disliked luxury, and Stalin only wore army jackets, but over time, with the advent of the second and third generation of Bolsheviks (communist leaders) they wanted luxury, they wanted wealth, like the Western capitalists. Therefore, the USSR collapsed, like any communist project, communism can be created by romantics umercenary , but the grandchildren of these romantics and dreamers will want luxury and destroy the work of their grandfathers, which happened in the USSR. When the party elites themselves destroyed the USSR in the 1980s, they wanted to privatize state-owned factories into private ownership and become oligarchs.

 

[Caesercel]

If you don't pay people for security, then what are you paying your insurance company for? Just because we don't pay gamblers for gambling in general (some Twitch streamers surely get paid to gamba) doesn't mean we don't ever pay people for taking risks -- e.g., scientists. Sometimes acquiring the commodities consumers buy comes at a risk -- e.g., farming.

If a business wants to protect against risks then they can pay an insurance company as well. The profit and subsequent accumulation of capital is NOT that. It's neither a protection against risk not a reward for taking risk and succeeding. As if economic activity is a slot machine.

If you look at global economic activity whollisticaly you will realise that at the end of the day humans are going to work, create stuff, buy stuff, sell stuff, use stuff. So on a whole there will always be a profit and an accumulation of Capital under Capitalism even if individual businesses try and fail.

So risk taking cannot be a valid justification for skewed income. The system is built for Capital to create more Capital

.

I sincerely doubt Marx would ever say that.

His very argument is that Capitalists have capital because they underpay labour to create profit. In our example, if the revenue of the store was equally distributed among the workers including the "owner" then the owner would make much less money and the business would essentially become a collectively owned co-operative.

In this case it would be impossible for individual members to pay for the daily running of the store themselves unless they pool their wealth. And it would be impossible for individual members to, say , buy another shop and then another one and create a franchise, thus growing their capital.

But in a capitalist system where the social and legal distinction between "owner" and "worker" is presumed. The owner can pay everyone else minimum wage by the virtue of having the capital to buy that shop. Then he can use the surplus he has in this system compared to cooperative one to grow his capital and then buy another shop, then another and build a franchise. While paying all the workers minimum wage in all the shops. Meanwhile all of those workers live in squalor.

One could even argue that the capital that was used to buy the very first shop was also ill-gotten in the same way. From another business or from family wealth.

.

Au contraire, I posit it's a practical question. Not recompensing risk means running risks becomes a net negative, so why would anyone do so? And you want farmers to be farming. then again, it might just makes wars a thing of the past, because no one will fight on the front lines if they don't get paid handsomely for risking their literal fucking lives.

Alluding to what I just said on risk/reward I would again repeat that at the end of the day if you work to create something someone else wants, then they will buy it for a fair price. Sure farmers take a risk when they farm, but can the world survive without farmers and farming activity? And I see nothing wrong with farmers getting paid a surplus for the work they put in because they did put in the work that went into creating that food.

Risk is a factor but that's not what economic activity is about. The world is not a giant gamble floor.

Some rich people got rich by working hard,

Sure they do. I'm sure Bill Gates works hard af. But does he really work all that hard compared to a miner in Congo? Whatever the difference is, it's not coming from work.

. But would you rather they not use their capital to finance meritorious endeavors and instead find other ways to make their money work for them (maybe bribes)? Or would you rather an all-powerful government gets to decide which start-ups are worth financing?

They are already using bribes anyway. Even if they were to invest in Meritorious endeavours, those endeavours would only be as Meritorious as the capitalist system deems them to be. And the criteria here is generating as much profit as possible by underpaying as much as possible. So you see the problem remains. This wouldn't change if the said investment is done by a government if the end goal is profiteering anyway.

 

[pizzamaxxer]

nationalist socialism is peak form of governing literally, preserve your culture and shit and enjoy the fruits of your labour. Just one more thing, no rights for women and every man gets a virgin woman regardless of him being chad or sub5.

 

[Caesercel]

. We know this to be obviously false, because (example from before) the input labor into mining things gold and silver (and most other similar metals), for exmaple, is the same (or very close to the same), but their market values are very different.

Gold is literally scarcer in earth's crust therefore more work goes into finding it. Wth

As my cake and car example showed (which I'm sure you must have read) labour and scarcity is interlinked.

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This easily gets very messy and muddied, once you realize that many labors don't easily map and translate to their economic value in the market. For example, there are many minimum wage jobs, but some are much easier and less demanding on the worker than others, even though they're both in the category of "low skilled jobs" (the skills required to stock shelves and those required to be the face of your business are different). But if we went by the LTV, how do you measure the output value between a merchandiser at the back of the store behind where the customers are and the cashier at the front?

Now this seems like an good argument even though it's tangential to the main issue. I could already see this problem when I read about this. I don't know how the Marxists or communists do it. But instead of trying to do the messy job of measuring output value and determining wages based on that. I would take the output of the business itself and work backwards towards paying everyone fairly based on that. I guess doing this on a national scale would lead to some kind of socialist or communist state. But I think recognising that all kinds of work is essential would be a good start

Of course this side argument has nothing to do with the fact that the economic output is still coming from the work that people do. And the commodities that cost more usually have more labour power out into them. So you are essentially not critiquing LTV at all but pointing out an issue with implementing socialism . Which is something I wasn't even arguing for.

is affected by its forces (supply/demand). In actuality it's the Marxist position that tries to argue that labor is somehow exempted from this market force and deserves a special standing, because evil capitalists 'n stuff.

So now you do agree that labour acts just like any other commodity under capitalism and its cost is determined by same forces
Why do you keep on changing your position? I think a lot of your confusion stems from the fact that you do not understand the difference between labour as a commodity that can be paid for and bought, whose cost is determined by forces of demand/supply
and the labour itself as source of value by virtue of the economic output it creates in the factory. The former is what you call wages in monetary terms, the latter is revenue. And the difference is surplus value. And I've already shown how LTV is not incompatible with demand/supply forces in my previous post. Infact required labour power directly affects supply.

Yes they argue labour should be treated differently and I wholeheartedly agree. I do take some issue with treating a man's work like buying and using a machine.

I don't mean to be condescending, but I get the sense that you either just don't get it or you developed a taste for the communist Kool-Aid

These value judgements would hit harder if they were backed by good argumentation. I would prefer to not have to repeat preteen tier common sense again and again. Or have to hear something like "LTV is wrong because I don't like the word Value" Or "LTV is wrong because labour isn't a commodity "(while admitting two posts later that it does behave like one in the capitalist market) or "LTV is wrong because muh demand and supply" (even though they are demonstrably compatible) or "LTV is wrong because manufacture costs apparantly don't matter in the market" (just lol)

Let's forget about labour for a minute. You unironically argued that manufacturing costs do not matter and market prices are determined entirely by demand/supply forces. But you cannot even see that the reason certain commodities have a lower supply and hence a higher price is BECAUSE they cost more to make. It's an interlinked dynamic system that goes beyond your eco 101 argument. It's what happens when you argue from a position of theory alone without much original thought or reflection put into it.

This is what I have to work with here

.


You haven't made any arguments here to support your ethical claims. All I'm seeing is ego and emotion. If you don't want to, then OK, whatever, but then I can't take your claims that it's theft and evil seriously.

Ah, I see. I misunderstood actually. I thought you wanted a man to man but instead you wanted me to tickle your autism. Sometimes I forget that I'm posting on .is and start acting like I'm talking to one of my normie friends. (sometimes I need my autism tickled too lol)

Anyway, my moral position is on the OP. And frankly your claim that it rests on shaky grounds hasn't been adequately demonstrated so far.

 

[Caesercel]

This is one of the many reasons why I and most of the rest of the world don't take communists and the philosophy of communism seriously. They want to have their cake and eat it too. It's delusional fantasy that, as @Anarcho Nihilist noted, doesn't match human nature.

We can talk about if and why that nature is good or bad, but we can't deny that it's there and plays the biggest role in all of this.

Communism does not work because it is impossible to overcome human nature, namely the thirst for enrichment. The first Bolshevik elites disliked luxury, and Stalin only wore army jackets, but over time, with the advent of the second and third generation of Bolsheviks (communist leaders) they wanted luxury, they wanted wealth, like the Western capitalists. Therefore, the USSR collapsed, like any communist project, communism can be created by romantics umercenary , but the grandchildren of these romantics and dreamers will want luxury and destroy the work of their grandfathers, which happened in the USSR. When the party elites themselves destroyed the USSR in the 1980s, they wanted to privatize state-owned factories into private ownership and become oligarchs.

This is nothing new tbh. Lords exploited serfs. Plantation owners exploited slaves and now the same is happening under capitalism. I can't claim that this will ever change.

But I'd rather call out the truth for what it is instead of some bs like "capitalism is fair" when there's obvious stealing going on

 

[based_meme]

Gold is literally scarcer in earth's crust therefore more work goes into finding it. Wth

Yes, and that's one of the reasons why it's valued more. It's valued more, because the geologist you contracted to conduct mineral scans and the miners you hired to dig more have to work extra hours. The Marxist would say both should get paid more, based on the value of the good itself (gold). The Marxist would say that laborer A who puts in x amount of work for both goods m and n should be paid p for m and q for n (because m and n are valued differently, not because you worked more hours), when in reality you're doing the same job for both and are paid only as functions of time and skill.

Laborers and capitalists who employ them do so on the agreement that they are paid for the skills that they offer and the work that they do. That's the agreement that exists virtually everywhere. If they're paid based on the market value of the goods they produce, then they must assume the same risk in return. That's what makes it fair. They wouldn't be employees in that case, but some kind of business partner.

Communists are like women. They want the rewards, but don't want to accept the responsibility and be accountable for the risks and failures. It's no surprise a lot of women seem to love the theories of communism.

As my cake and car example showed (which I'm sure you must have read) labour and scarcity is interlinked.

I didn't read it. Which post?

Now this seems like an good argument even though it's tangential to the main issue. I could already see this problem when I read about this. I don't know how the Marxists or communists do it. But instead of trying to do the messy job of measuring output value and determining wages based on that. I would take the output of the business itself and work backwards towards paying everyone fairly based on that. I guess doing this on a national scale would lead to some kind of socialist or communist state. But I think recognising that all kinds of work is essential would be a good start

Of course this side argument has nothing to do with the fact that the economic output is still coming from the work that people do. And the commodities that cost more usually have more labour power out into them. So you are essentially not critiquing LTV at all but pointing out an issue with implementing socialism . Which is something I wasn't even arguing for.

Again, those backwards valuations rest on the premises that labor is a commodity and that the value of goods is tied directly with that labor. This isn't true anywhere in the world. People don't buy things because of the work that goes into it (maybe some rich, trust fund hipsters do, I don't know). They buy them because the price matches (or closely approximates) their needs/wants (utility). Nobody really cares about the laborer in the business chain that results with the consumer receiving their goods and services. Nobody really gives a shit that their Louis Vuitton handbag was probably cobbled together by a team of Congolese children in sweat shops. I mean, they pretend to publicly on social media for political and social reasons (and maybe financial too), but let's be real here.

So now you do agree that labour acts just like any other commodity under capitalism and its cost is determined by same forces
Why do you keep on changing your position? I think a lot of your confusion stems from the fact that you do not understand the difference between labour as a commodity that can be paid for and bought, whose cost is determined by forces of demand/supply
and the labour itself as source of value by virtue of the economic output it creates in the factory. The former is what you call wages in monetary terms, the latter is revenue. And the difference is surplus value. And I've already shown how LTV is not incompatible with demand/supply forces in my previous post. Infact required labour power directly affects supply.

Yes they argue labour should be treated differently and I wholeheartedly agree. I do take some issue with treating a man's work like buying and using a machine.

It's the massive bolded part that everybody (myself and most others against the communist LTV position) has a problem with. This is the whole reason why you and I are even arguing about this.

Ah, I see. I misunderstood actually. I thought you wanted a man to man but instead you wanted me to tickle your autism. Sometimes I forget that I'm posting on .is and start acting like I'm talking to one of my normie friends. (sometimes I need my autism tickled too lol)

What is this? Are you just posturing to cop out of doing some work to back up your claims? You don't need to save face. Swallow your pride and put in the effort. Trust me, nobody cares how will look when you take the risk and make yourself vulnerable to people attacking your arguments, should you make them.

Anyway, my moral position is on the OP. And frankly your claim that it rests on shaky grounds hasn't been adequately demonstrated so far.

Yes, your position is loosely stated in the OP, but it hasn't been fleshed out, let alone defended.

 

[based_meme]

Capitalism has been around for several centuries, starting in 18th century England, where feudalism had already given way to capitalism while feudalism still dominated the rest of Europe. Capitalism has lived for several centuries, but capitalism is not the same: there is capitalism with a human face, and there is capitalism with an animal face. Compare capitalism in Latin America and capitalism in Sweden/Norway or Germany. The difference is on the face. But any capitalism works solely on greed and the desire to make money, it is greed that is the spark that makes people come up with something to create something new, it is the desire to patent it later and get paid for it. Money and the desire to earn it drive people to achieve things: writing great works of art, creating scientific discoveries, and so on. In the USSR or any other country where there is only a planned economy, where there is no market, there is always a shortage, since no one wants to create a product without getting rich. Greed is the engine of capitalism, and greed is human nature.

Greed is the negative aspect of the human motivation for ambition and the desire for greatness (or to want something more). The reasons for wanting more could be good or bad. When they're bad it basically boils down to greed. When they're good they usually serve another purpose than more for its own sake.

 

[Caesercel]

Yes, and that's one of the reasons why it's valued more. It's valued more, because the geologist you contracted to conduct mineral scans and the miners you hired to dig more have to work extra hours. The Marxist would say both should get paid more, based on the value of the good itself (gold). The Marxist would say that laborer A who puts in x amount of work for both goods m and n should be paid p for m and q for n (because m and n are valued differently, not because you worked more hours), when in reality you're doing the same job for both and are paid only as functions of time and skill.

What makes you presume that the x amount of work that the labourer does is same for m & n when it's obviously not true for your own example of gold vs silver?

. If they're paid based on the market value of the goods they produce, then they must assume the same risk in return. That's what makes it fair. They wouldn't be employees in that case, but some kind of business partner.

Well from what I've seen so far this is exactly the kind of arrangement Marxism favours.

.

Communists are like women. They want the rewards, but don't want to accept the responsibility and be accountable for the risks and failures. It's no surprise a lot of women seem to love the theories of communism.

Lol this is devolving into redneck tiers of cringe

I didn't read it. Which post?

Another factor here is Supply and LTV peers into why certain commodities have lower supply and hence higher price. Because it takes greater labour to create them. Here are 3 facts for you.

1. More cakes are sold every year than cars
2. Making a cake takes way less labour than a car
3. A car costs more than a cake in the market

These are not mutually exclusive data points but closely linked facts . We can see both the logic of your "low supply high cost" and Marx's "high labour high cost" here. Because they are sides of the same coin.

......

. Nobody really cares about the laborer in the business chain that results with the consumer receiving their goods and services. Nobody really gives a shit that their Louis Vuitton handbag was probably cobbled together by a team of Congolese children in sweat shops. I mean, they pretend to publicly on social media for political and social reasons (and maybe financial too), but let's be real here.

Marx calls this exact phenomena commodity fetishism. He takes issues with this too because he sees economic activity, work and exchange as part of broader human relations. A human wholeness so to speak. Like if you were a medieval peasant and you exchanged your wheat for your neighbour barley, a part of that exchange will always be your friendship, your relation, you both knowing each other's condition and the condition in which you grew that produce. All that will factor into the exact exchange.

Modern commodity hides that relation and alienates the consumer from everything else. Reducing it to nothing more than a monetary relation with the commodity itself "I give money to buy this". You don't see the exploitative relationship between the capitalist and it's worker. You don't see how one of those workers' is in huge debt because of a medical condition, close to homelessness or how the Capitalist's daughter is going on her fifth euro trip to fuck Chad.

It's the massive bolded part that everybody (myself and most others against the communist LTV position) has a problem with. This is the whole reason why you and I are even arguing about this.

Without labour the commodity couldn't exist. That's like the starting premise here and I still can't see why it's wrong. The rest follows from it logically. To me it's very clear that since labour creates the commodity therefore it also creates the value in that commodity. This is not incompatible with demand/supply forces determining price as I've argued elsewhere. Sure, people value things differently and that will factor into how much they are willing to pay for it but that also factors into if the worker or the capitalist will deem it's creation to be worthwhile at all. No company wants to sell stuff no one will buy and no worker wants to work in such a company. So to say value is a direct consequence of labour remains true because the commodity indeed has a high enough demand in the market to justify the labour put into it, and it's value manifests itself as both an expression of that demand and an expression of labour done to fulfill that demand


Though I must admit that I do agree with certain critiques of LTV that I've read. One of them being that it's hard to quantify a unit of labour let alone map it to unit of pricing. And Marx's solution basically turns it from a microeconomic to macroeconomic theory. But then again I always understood it as a macroeconomic system anyway. This is inconsequential to the critique of capitalism. Another good critique could be that it needs be updated to keep up with modern economic and market realities.

But I remain even more skeptical of modern economic theory which I always understood to be propaganda of the ruling class even before reading all this Marxist nonsense. It's also clear to me after looking at communist and socialist nations that market indeed can be managed and empirical economic theory is a posteriori to human decisions. Modern economic theories may describe the markets better BECAUSE certain people want the market to be that way instead of that being a scientific observation on eternal nature of humans and economy. This market is a result of active decisions that capitalist governments make to favour capitalists in the economy. In that sense one can see these criticisms as less of a statement on why LTV is scientifically incorrect or outdated and more of a justification for why the current market system is the best and a more fair and just system is to be avoided. It's like the plantation owner telling their slave about how they have three less dimples on the back of their skull

You were right in positing that the ethical question here is more important than details of economic theory. But it is you who insists on the latter with ridiculous statements like "nuh uh labour isn't a commodity" instead of looking at the broader problem, as if these redundant tidbits would somehow make the robbery of commodity and revenue created by labour go away. My starting premise wouldn't budge unless robots and AI put EVERYONE out of work.

.


Yes, your position is loosely stated in the OP, but it hasn't been fleshed out,

Idek what you want from me in this anymore. Capitalist steal value via profit, simple as. Calling it something other that "value" or debating economic theory won't change this fact or change the underlying theft, no matter how much you may pretend otherwise. The worker produces and the capitalist takes. Do you want me to explicitly say it's wrong?. Do you want me to say it's justified? Do you want me to say that since by capitalist logic labour is worth no more that it's commodity price to the capitalist(i.e. wage) therefore the theft is no theft at all and labour value doesn't actually exist? Do you want me to say capital breeding itself inorder to enrich few at the expense of many, whose work is essential to create that capital, is just and fair? I can only give my personal opinion which you reject as "ego and emotion". This isn't the 18th century anymore. No one believes that ethical positions can come out of pure reason. You want to claim that workers don't have an inherent claim on the products of their labour just because they don't (and in most cases can't) access the means of production and capital , be my guest. To me this is "divine right to rule" tier logic and I can't pretend that it's ethical. (I'm sure some medieval Lord would disagree and call it "Republican koolaid")

Let alone defended

There hasn't been much to defend against so far

 

[based_meme]

What makes you presume that the x amount of work that the labourer does is same for m & n when it's obviously not true for your own example of gold vs silver?

Miner A does x hours of mining for gold on Monday and x hours of mining for silver on Tuesday. Buddy Karl says he should get paid more mining the gold.

Well from what I've seen so far this is exactly the kind of arrangement Marxism favours.

There is nothing in capitalism that is inherently against this. You don't need a separate economic philosophy. You just need to have all parties agree to the terms.

Idek what you want from me in this anymore. Capitalist steal value via profit, simple as. Calling it something other that "value" won't change this fact or change the underlying theft. The worker produces and the capitalist takes. Do you want me to explicitly say it's wrong?. Do you want me to say it's justified? Do you want me to say that since by capitalist logic labour is worth no more that it's commodity price to the capitalist(i.e. wage) therefore the theft is no theft at all and labour value doesn't actually exist? Do you want me to say capital breeding itself inorder to enrich few at the expense of many, whose work is essential to create that capital, is just and fair?

I disagree. It's not stealing when two parties agree to the terms. There's nothing unethical about an employer agreeing to pay the employee whatever amount they agreed to prior to the business relationship. The employer negotiates with the potential employee to get the best deal for himself out of the other guy's labor, and the prospective employee does the same to get the most out of the employer for the same amount of work and duties. There's a labor market and potential employees compete with each other. Employers are not ethically responsible for one employee willing to work less than another and competing the others out of employment in the labor market.

I can only give my personal opinion which you reject as "ego and emotion"

Everything I quoted from the previous comment you made that this is referencing was just you retelling what you've seen in an emotionally charged and indignant manner, as if you were on some higher moral ground lamenting the suffering of others at the hands of evil capitalists.

There hasn't been much to defend against so far

"Defend" in this context simply means that you when you make a claim you have to present arguments in favor of it. You don't simply say the thing and expect others to assume that it's true and fill in the gaps of reasoning for you. I mean, you could do that, but you started the thread - in the philosophy section, no less - and made a lazy opening post (low effort). It doesn't mean others have to critique it and then you respond, because without providing reasons, there's nothing to pick apart and critique.

Btw, when I said "personal argument" earlier I didn't mean for you to tell me anecdotes about what you've personally seen and experienced. I meant to construct your own arguments and give your own reasons. But if that's not what you want to do or don't have any of your own, it's enough to reference existing arguments that others have made in support of the claims you're making or as rebuttals to objections. In that case any responses I'd have would effectively be to that person and not to you. We may as well just use AI chatbots to do the arguing, if it comes to that JFL.

 

[Ahnfeltia]

If a business wants to protect against risks then they can pay an insurance company as well

for common and large business risks they surely do have insurance. Insurance companies are great because they leverage the central limit theorem to combat variance (of the mean). However, for small risks, the costs of bringing in a third party outweigh the possible loss due to variance, and for niche risks, insurance companies have to charge steeply because their golden goose -- the central limit theorem -- ain't impactful for a small number of instances, making insurance a poor choice again.

The profit and subsequent accumulation of capital is NOT that

I wasn't talking about profit there.

His very argument is that Capitalists have capital because they underpay labour to create profit

there's a big difference between claiming capitalists are bad (what you're doing now) vs claiming capital per se is bad (what you said before)

In our example, if the revenue of the store was equally distributed among the workers including the "owner" then the owner would make much less money and the business would essentially become a collectively owned co-operative.

Sure, but that'd only be fair if they share equal responsibility for the store. Many people want stable income. If we were to launch a joint venture as equal partners (each doing half the work and receiving half the profits) then how would we pay our rent or mortgage if business is bad?

Alluding to what I just said on risk/reward I would again repeat that at the end of the day if you work to create something someone else wants, then they will buy it for a fair price. Sure farmers take a risk when they farm, but can the world survive without farmers and farming activity? And I see nothing wrong with farmers getting paid a surplus for the work they put in because they did put in the work that went into creating that food.

I fail to see how this addresses my point. Moreover, what do you mean by "I see nothing wrong with farmers getting paid a surplus for the work they put in". Surplus compared to what? there is no innate God-given value associated to any given type of labor.

But does he really work all that hard compared to a miner in Congo?

Indeed not all hard workers get rich unfortunately, but that doesn't mean no hard workers get rich.

They are already using bribes anyway

the ultrarich maybe, but your average barely a millionaire ain't bribing nobody (at least not in the Netherlands)

Even if they were to invest in Meritorious endeavours, those endeavours would only be as Meritorious as the capitalist system deems them to be. And the criteria here is generating as much profit as possible by underpaying as much as possible. So you see the problem remains. This wouldn't change if the said investment is done by a government if the end goal is profiteering anyway.

We don't live in la-la land buddy. even if it ain't ideal, all that really matters is whether it's better than the alternatives. So unless you have a better feasible alternative...

 

[Caesercel]

Miner A does x hours of mining for gold on Monday and x hours of mining for silver on Tuesday. Buddy Karl says he should get paid more mining the gold.

No. This would've been true if they were producing same quantity of gold and silver in a single day. But that would mean gold is just as scarce as silver and consequently it takes as much labour to extract 1g of Gold as it does to extract 1g of Silver. That obviously doesn't happen. 1g of Gold is more scarce, requires more effort to extract and is consequently more expensive. Gold being expensive because of more scarcity and Gold being expensive because of higher labour are a single unified concept. As I've said before labour and scarcity is interlinked since labour itself is scarce. There is only that many man hours of work that can be done in a day.

There is nothing in capitalism that is inherently against this. You don't need a separate economic philosophy. You just need to have all parties agree to the terms.

That sounds good in theory but in the real world capitalism ensures that the means of production and hence capital are always accumulated in the hands of a few. And the way wages work ensures that this particular system never comes to fruition since capital stays stubbornly concentrated at the top, and so does, land, factories, offices etc. Unless the workers take matter into their own hands. Using violence if required.

What does "all parties agree to terms" even mean when one of those parties has legally sanctified access to everything and the others are destitute.

This is what Marx argues for when he says that capitalism in his time (and in ours) is a result of specific historical material circumstances. And certainly not the expression of eternal human nature (unless you believe exploitation itself is eternal human nature since that has been constant throughout history.)

I disagree. It's not stealing when two parties agree to the terms.

Again, as I said, sounds good in theory books when you don't live in the real world.

In the real world material conditions and historical situations dictate much of it, since most of the land, resources and capital fell into the hands of few people. And the rest are relegated to be human cogs in that machine instead of active participants of economy. And because of this and the inherent nature of profit, this deal will always be skewed. In a negotiation you can always use your superior position to force deals upon another business with lesser leverage. Except for wage labour, they are perpetually at a disadvantage and the system is built to keep them there. They need money to live otherwise they will starve. They don't have an option but to agree no matter how much the capitalist screws them. It's called wage"SLAVERY" for a reason. And accumulation of capital to own the means of production themselves is impossible when they live paycheck to paycheck. The only reason middle class wage slaves make more is because their work is both scarce and essential to profits. But even then they'll be shortchanged wherever they can. The capitalist pays them enough to not starve and consoooom commodities (thus enriching the capitalist yet again). In an endless cycle where you forget you really are a slave.

To a Capitalist this is all fair of course. Since capitalist logic goes, "I own the means of production and Capital so I can do whatever I want"

There's a labor market and potential employees compete with each other.

Marx would rather have a world where human beings collaborate and work together to thrive instead of compete against each other and wageslave just to survive.

. Employers are not ethically responsible for one employee willing to work less than another and competing the others out of employment in the labor market.

Enjoy your jeets then lmao

.


Everything I quoted from the previous comment you made that this is referencing was just you retelling what you've seen in an emotionally charged and indignant manner,

And that is invalid because? I repeat, this isn't the 18th century anymore and no one important actually believes that ethical positions can mushroom out of cold hard reason. My experiences of exploitation are perfectly valid in shaping my ethics.

You want to claim that it is perfectly ethical for capitalists to take away the fruits of worker's work and be directly responsible for the spread of misery and pain that I've described, by the virtue of owning the Capital and means of production, be my guest. For me this is "divine right to rule" tier logic and I can't pretend it's ethical (Though some feudal lord might say that I've taken the "Republican koolaid")

if you were on some higher moral ground lamenting the suffering of others at the hands of evil capitalists.

There's no higher moral ground. Everyone , including me , is part of the system

, it's enough to reference existing arguments that others have made in support of the claims you're making or as rebuttals to objections. In that case any responses I'd have would effectively be to that person and not to you. We may as well just use AI chatbots to do the arguing, if it comes to that JFL.

Jfl. Let's not pretend that anything original is being argued by either side. You have been engaging with my ethical position this whole thread, trying (and not succeeding) to gnaw at its foundations.

 

[based_meme]

Jfl. Let's not pretend that anything original is being argued by either side. You have been engaging with my ethical position this whole thread, trying (and not succeeding) to gnaw at its foundations.

OK, so then you're not interested in honest discourse. I've already said you can use other people's arguments, if you're not using your own. You're not doing that with your ethical position. You're just stating things matter-of-factly and expecting us to accept them at face value, and then being wishy-washy and not committal with your stance when challenged on it. Arguing the differences between price and value from different economic perspectives for a full page is not "engaging with your ethical position."

I'm not playing that game with you.

 

[AsakangaHalo]

Communism doesn't work. Every PHD in economics tell you, that communists are undeveloped monkeys.

 

[Caesercel]

.

I wasn't talking about profit there.

Then I'm not sure what the argument is. It was posited that capitalists are justified in taking the bigger share of revenue (usually via profit) because they risk capital. I'm only retorting that risk by itself cannot be a justification for reward. We are used to think so because we already live under capitalism where the risk/reward equation already exists. But to me productivity is not a function of risk but a function of productive work.

there's a big difference between claiming capitalists are bad (what you're doing now) vs claiming capital per se is bad (what you said before)

Capital can only arise out of actions of the Capitalists. So it's an interlinked concept.

Sure, but that'd only be fair if they share equal responsibility for the store.

That much is presumed of course.

Many people want stable income. If we were to launch a joint venture as equal partners (each doing half the work and receiving half the profits) then how would we pay our rent or mortgage if business is bad?

Business close down. Employees are laid off all the time. If anything the worker stands to lose more than the capitalist when that happens.

So who is at greater "risk". The billionare Capitalist who could lose a few millions. Or a worker who is one missed paycheck away from homelessness. Looking at it in purely monetary terms will tell you that the former is taking the bigger "risk"

I fail to see how this addresses my point.

I am looking at this macro economically. A single farmer's crop might fail. But in an average people will need food. Farmer's will need to grow food and they'll certainly make money out of it. People don't pay farmers for taking risks. People pay farmers for providing them with actual food.

Apply this to any economic activity and you'll see that risk, on its own, is not a justification for greater reward. A correlation does exist but it's neither a causation nor a justification

". Surplus compared to what?

The cost of growing food. Fertilizers, seeds etc.

there is no innate God-given value associated to any given type of labor.

Correct. The value of labour comes from the utility of its product to someone else in the market

.

Indeed not all hard workers get rich unfortunately, but that doesn't mean no hard workers get rich.

I would say that most rich are hard workers. But it's not the "work" itself where the "rich" is coming from.

(at least not in the Netherlands)

Lucky enough to have a history of wealth as a colonial power. Lucky enough to have socialist policies for its own people and businesses. I can see why Indari couldn't stop crying and pissing about that country.

We don't live in la-la land buddy. even if it ain't ideal, all that really matters is whether it's better than the alternatives. So unless you have a better feasible alternative...

Oh boy. I wish I could solve societal problems in an incel subforum. Better than the alternatives FOR WHOM? Historical beneficiaries of colonialist economy? People making $2/day even in 2025?

I guess livable dignified wages. Affordable healthcare, housing and education would be a good start

 

[Caesercel]

OK, so then you're not interested in honest discourse. I've already said you can use other people's arguments, if you're not using your own. You're not doing that with your ethical position. You're just stating things matter-of-factly and expecting us to accept them at face value, and then being wishy-washy and not committal with your stance when challenged on it. Arguing the differences between price and value from different economic perspectives for a full page is not "engaging with your ethical position."

I'm not playing that game with you.

I'd be making excuses too after that horrible misunderstanding of the economics of gold vs silver mining.

>He thinks he can dismantle ethical positions with facts and logic
I guess we're still partying like it's 1705 and Hume, Kant, Wittgenstein et al. aren't even born yet

>He thinks that the capitalist ethical position, "dominance through capital" isn't arbitrary

>Muh "fair agreement" between a capitalist overlord and a subsistence wageslave

My ethical position is that exploitation is wrong. Go ahead, go full Ben Shapiro on this one I'm begging you

 

[turbosperg]

Marxism-Rodgerism addresses the issues we face, but pure Marxism and its other flavors (Leninism, Maoism etc.) were made for different times and situations that wouldn't work today, so there is no use in even entertaining those other Marxist systems.

We need to SEIZE THE MEANS OF REPRODUCTION.

 

[Caesercel]

Marxism-Rodgerism addresses the issues we face, but pure Marxism and its other flavors (Leninism, Maoism etc.) were made for different times and situations that wouldn't work today, so there is no use in even entertaining those other Marxist systems.

We need to SEIZE THE MEANS OF REPRODUCTION.

Some his ideas on capitalism are still valid even today and will remain so as long as capitalism exists

 

[turbosperg]

Some his ideas on capitalism are still valid even today and will remain so as long as capitalism exists

My boss profits 10% on top of my labor.

The government takes 80% of my income and gives most of it to foids.

We proletarians are obviously exploited, but capitalism is only the tip of the iceberg. Female exploitation of man is 10 times worse.

 

[SmhChan]

>Muh "fair agreement" between a capitalist overlord and a subsistence wageslave

Exactly. All his arguments boil down to 'this is the only true form of a fair agreement'. Like why shouldn't contracted workers continue to reap the benefits of a finished product that those fucking shareholders do? Those mfs are born in wealth and do nothing but decide how to cut loses with layoffs over lunch. That's one of the primary reasons why billionaires and millionaires exist. Because that money should be distributed to the workers who do actual fucking work.

Then I'm not sure what the argument is. It was posited that capitalists are justified in taking the bigger share of revenue (usually via profit) because they risk capital. I'm only retorting that risk by itself cannot be a justification for reward. We are used to think so because we already live under capitalism where the risk/reward equation already exists. But to me productivity is not a function of risk but a function of productive work.

Also, this. It's funny how he went ultra-autistic over price vs value. A shareholder investing their money isn't more valuable than the workers doing actual fucking work. Like an engineer coming up with an efficient design or a dev optimizing your slop game, those things are invaluable. You cannot just throw money at them to solve them. Yet, what is their compensation? A meagre bonus. Besides, the capitalists who "invest" their money shouldn't even have it in their hands in the first place.

I also don't like the idea of taxing the rich as a solution to this. It's like transferring the wealth from one retarded evil to an even greater retarded evil. I guess you're a curry, so you might understand what I'm talking about.

 

[based_meme]

My ethical position is that exploitation is wrong.

What is exploitation, where/how is it happening, and why is that exploitation?

Go ahead, go full Ben Shapiro on this one I'm begging you

I'm not wasting my time and effort replying to your posts for entertainment (mine, yours, or anyone else's - that's what the lounge and sewers is for). I'm trying to take you and your thread seriously and want to explore your moral reasoning to see your arguments, because A: you're not a retard, and B: this thread is in the philosophy section, so I expect you to at least do some philosophy when you make philosophical claims. But it seems that I'm also wasting time in that regard as well, since you seem to be more interested in drama. I'm still holding out a sliver of hope that you'll come around, though.

 

[Caesercel]

My boss profits 10% on top of my labor.

When I was in engineering school we had a saying that even if you get paid $100000 or even $200000 , the company will make sure to get back 5-10x via your work. It's just a light hearted maxim, a joke even, but it tells you that , at some level, people understand what is going on behind the scenes.

Exactly. All his arguments boil down to 'this is the only true form of a fair agreement'. Like why shouldn't contracted workers continue to reap the benefits of a finished product that those fucking shareholders do? Those mfs are born in wealth and do nothing but decide how to cut loses with layoffs over lunch. That's one of the primary reasons why billionaires and millionaires exist. Because that money should be distributed to the workers who do actual fucking work.

Making more than minimum wage in a comfortable white collar job will do that to you. You start believing , in great delusion , that the wage negotiation was actually fair. It's just ordinary classism. I don't care if my company is underpaying the minimum wage security guy so hard that he can barely pay his bills let alone save anything, as long as I get to sit in a comfortable office chair, do my work and get paid for my highly honed high iq skills.

I mean I deserve it right, my upper middle class parents paid for my college tution fee or I am into perpetual student debt and worked hard to gain the skills that I did. The security guard did none of that so he "deserves" to suffer.

But wait? now the coders are getting paid barely above minimum wage as well! But you see, those are sCrIpT kidDiEs. They don't have those niche essential skills in great demand and low supply. Why can't they keep up with the newer trends in the market? Don't they know that every idiot is going for the "learn to code" meme? They "deserve" it for having high supply skills. It's "fair". Who cares if their work is still essential to the company. As long as they are replaceable the capitalists are justified in screwing them inorder to increase their bottom line.


And on and on it goes. They will keep on coping like this until Capitalism eventually comes after then.

.

. It's funny how he went ultra-autistic over price vs value. A shareholder investing their money isn't more valuable than the workers doing actual fucking work.

I think that was an attempt to de construct the idea that workers have a right to the product of their labour by attacking the specific language and economic theories of Das Kapital. As if that would somehow change the situation at hand. And as if this idea is standing on the legs of such mere technicalities.

But this kind of myopic reasoning is to be expected when real lived experiences of pain, and suffering under capitalism are discredited as "ego and emotion". To me such "hot air" philosophy is useless.

What is exploitation, where/how is it happening, and why is that exploitation?

>Work is essential to production. Without it production can't happen.
>Therefore the people who actually do productive work have a right to the fruits of their labour. Economic output is created by humans and exists for humans to enjoy. So the question basically is who gets what
> Under current system most of that dough goes into the pockets of select capitalists
>This system believes that capitalists deserve the greater share of the output of production
>This belief is justified by nothing else but the virtue of capitalists owning the means of production.
>By not owning the means of production, workers must sell off their labour to the capitalist as a commodity in order to live
>By owning the means of production the capitalist has leverage over the worker, since the worker cannot produce on their own.
>So he pays the worker as low as possible (given the scarcity of that particular type of labour).
>Therefore despite that work being essential to the production, the worker is short changed. And through this mechanism the capitalist gains the most wealth from production
>This is exploitation. Because the relationship that decides the distribution of resources is skewed from the get go.
>Any worker or group of worker's will always earn more than their capitalist wages for the same amount of productive output if they had control of the means of production
>This exploitation is justified by reducing humans and their work to mere commodities or services that can be brought and sold on the market instead of the essential element that makes any productivity possible.
>This justification is inspired by the misguided belief that both parties agree to the arrangement. When the material conditions of both parties are perpetually diverse enough (and statically at that) to render any such agreement unfair.
>The capitalist basically justifies his loot of the productivity of the worker by the mere fact that the worker is replaceable and can be left to homelessness and starvation if he is unsatisfied with what the capitalist gives. This is not a fair arrangement, this is extortion. And is only possible because of sheer disadvantage in power on one side
>Means of production are essential to production. Work is essential to production. Capitalist ownership? maybe not so much.

I'm trying to take you and your thread seriously

I would take this more seriously too if my arguments and responses are directly addressed.

 

[based_meme]

I think that was an attempt to de construct the idea that workers have a right to the product of their labour by attacking the specific language and economic theories of Das Kapital. As if that would somehow change the situation at hand. And as if this idea is standing on the legs of such mere technicalities.

I didn't actually get to that part, because you were hung up on concepts and labels with Marxist tunnel vision. At first, you claimed that the source of profit in capitalism was purely from:

You cannot create profit without paying workers less than the economic value they create.

It was easily demonstrable how you can generate profit without any added labor, and that there are many sources of profit. But you were clinging to the assumption that the LTV is true and wanted to say that this doesn't change anything, because the "marked up price becomes the value of the labor generated." Except, you can markup any amount you wish (or even sell at cost/loss, if you would lose more by hanging on to the product because business is bad). The amount of labor that went into the product, from inception to the consumer's hands, stays the same, regardless of what you decide to price the product at differently.

Marx has got you and countless others believing that somehow changing the number on the sticker changes the value of the labor that went into it. Marxian economics are to the real world what astrology is to astronomy. It's for naive idealists.

Then it just degenerated from there in your loling and lmaoing at every opportunity.

But this kind of myopic reasoning is to be expected when real lived experiences of pain, and suffering under capitalism are discredited as "ego and emotion". To me such "hot air" philosophy is useless.

You're morally grandstanding again. That post you made before - all of it was just that. Marx himself likes to do a lot of the same thing, probably intentionally to tug at the right heart strings of the average person who looks upward socially in resentment and envy.

“Like a master, at once distinguished and barbarous, Capital drags with it into its grave the corpses of its slaves, whole hecatombs of workers, who perish in its economic crises.”

OK, so with all of the bullshit out of the way, let's get to the reason why you and I are still talking about this. (This is the part where you quip, "oh yes, on to more bullshit lmao.")

>Work is essential to production. Without it production can't happen.
>Therefore the people who actually do productive work have a right to the fruits of their labour. Economic output is created by humans and exists for humans to enjoy. So the question basically is who gets what

The conclusion here doesn't follow. Because production can't happen without "productive work" (redundant, just call it work), that in and of itself does not grant you the natural right to the outcome of your labor, if you don't own the means through which that labor (and its fruits) are made possible.

I guess this is where the famous Marxist line about "seizing the means of production" comes in. Marx just wanted people to chimp out and steal shit. He wanted everyone to be niggers, basically. What a fucking shit disturber, tbhngl.

If you own a piece of land and do work on it yourself, you have full rights to the fruits (literal and figurative) that bear from that. If you recruit a helping hand, then you have to compensate that laborer in some way - money, typically. They don't have the same rights to the full value of the labor output, because A) the land isn't theirs (obvious), and B) without your land they would have not been able to gain anything from that specific labor.

There are missing gaps in your reasoning here. You have to show how this full right to labor output supersedes the natural rights of ownership (to the land owner, or in more general terms, to the owner of the means that allow the faciliation of labor aka "means of production") that initially allows for the labor to take place when applied to external labor (defined as labor done by non-owners).

> Under current system most of that dough goes into the pockets of select capitalists

Along with all of the risks and responsibilities of total failure associated with that, but moving on the next bullet points...

>This system believes that capitalists deserve the greater share of the output of production

They do, because they're the owners of the means of production.

>This belief is justified by nothing else but the virtue of capitalists owning the means of production.

Almost correct. It's justified by ownership rights, which have been debated and discussed since the time of ancient Greek philosophers (maybe earlier, I don't know the exact history).

>By not owning the means of production, workers must sell off their labour to the capitalist as a commodity in order to live

Questionable premise. They can live and survive through other means (their own, for example). They are not bound and fated to be laborers. Many people do this by starting a business, for exactly this reason. They want to dictate their livelihoods and put that in their own hands and not the hands of others.

>By owning the means of production the capitalist has leverage over the worker, since the worker cannot produce on their own.

Leverage yes - a huge advantage even - but the worker can do the same, although they'd be starting off very far behind.

>So he pays the worker as low as possible (given the scarcity of that particular type of labour).

I think you've got this part backwards. If the labor is scarce, then it's worth more.

Yes, the idea is to get the best deal on everything, from your materials to the labor that uses those materials to produce your goods. This applies to both the capitalist employer and his prospective employees. But the labor market does exist, and along with it competitive wages that boast above market salaries to recruit the labor necessary. Negotiating your salary is a thing, and it's up to you to know your worth as a laborer.

>Therefore despite that work being essential to the production, the worker is short changed. And through this mechanism the capitalist gains the most wealth from production

Questionable premise. It's not evident that "most of the wealth" a capitalist gains is from undercutting their laborers. That's an empirical claim that must be checked.

>This is exploitation. Because the relationship that decides the distribution of resources is skewed from the get go.

An employer can't hire an employee, if they don't have more resources than the employee. If the employee had more resources, they wouldn't seek to be the employ of the employer. This assymetry must exist for the employer-employee relationship to take place. This necessary assymetry does not entail exploitation. It can, however, allow for it occur, just as any other power assymetry between two parties.

>Any worker or group of worker's will always earn more than their capitalist wages for the same amount of productive output if they had control of the means of production

Yes, but they don't. If they did, then they would be owners, and thus be reaping the entirety of the labor's output value.

>This exploitation is justified by reducing humans and their work to mere commodities or services that can be brought and sold on the market instead of the essential element that makes any productivity possible.

Questionable premise again. You're presupposing that there always exists exploitation in the capitalist-laborer relationship. If exploitation is occurring, then it is unethical (by definition), but it's not always the case that it is occurring.

I understand, though. The Marxist position pigeonholes this presupposition, before moving forward.

>This justification is inspired by the misguided belief that both parties agree to the arrangement. When the material conditions of both parties are perpetually diverse enough (and statically at that) to render any such agreement unfair.

"Unfair" is your own external value judgment. If the laborer agrees to the terms of employment, then he or she accepts that it is fair for them. If they didn't think it was fair, then they wouldn't accept the terms of employment. This is generally the case in any kind of deal-making, whether it's negotiating your salary, the price of the car you're buying/selling, or dealing with your sibling on who should do the chores this time. There obviously does exist cases where people accept shit deals because of their life circumstances warrant taking the deal or being in abject poverty, but the characterization this as the standard for all capitalist-laborer relations is as wrong as it is naive.

>The capitalist basically justifies his loot of the productivity of the worker by the mere fact that the worker is replaceable and can be left to homelessness and starvation if he is unsatisfied with what the capitalist gives. This is not a fair arrangement, this is extortion. And is only possible because of sheer disadvantage in power on one side

I can't get over how funny this emotionally-charged Marxian rhetoric is.

Yes, there is an obvious power difference between billionaire bigwig CEO and H1B applicants Chang Longwang and Pajeet Singh. But JFL @ "extortion."

Nobody is being forced to do anything. The capitalist is not engineering the circumstances of economically necessary labor for invididual survival. What you're implying is cabal corporatocracy. Just say that you think that there's collusion between the capitalist elites to keep everyone poor and dependent on them. I might even agree with you.

>Means of production are essential to production. Work is essential to production. Capitalist ownership? maybe not so much.

What do you suppose happens when the means the production fail? What will the laborers do then? Are they all going to shrug their shoulders, accept collective responsibility, and just sit on their asses picking flowers?

Someone has to put the pieces back together or recreate a new means of production for the laborers to busy themselves and reap more fruits. Are they all going to do it? Who becomes responsible for what? Where's the money coming from? How are they going to put Humpty Dumpty back together and get the labor train rolling again? Does everyone have to eat less everyday for months, because they need to sell food to get money to build a new factory?

In any case, thanks for indulging me and breaking down your argument for why you think that laborer exploitation is the default in capitalistm with capitalist-laborer relationships.

I used to appreciate communist ideals at one point, you know. Then I grew up. It's just not conducive to human nature.

 

[Ahnfeltia]

Then I'm not sure what the argument is. It was posited that capitalists are justified in taking the bigger share of revenue (usually via profit) because they risk capital. I'm only retorting that risk by itself cannot be a justification for reward. We are used to think so because we already live under capitalism where the risk/reward equation already exists. But to me productivity is not a function of risk but a function of productive work.

Maybe a toy example will help to illustrate my point. Suppose the service you offer involves a risk that's net neutral 90% of the time but loses you 100 dollars 10% of the time. I'm saying it's only fair customers pay at least 10 dollars to make sure you at least break even on average. that's all I'm saying. that's what I meant by recompense for risks. It's also why I used the word recompense instead of a word like reward.

Capital can only arise out of actions of the Capitalists. So it's an interlinked concept.

Maybe my understanding of what capital means is flawed then.

Business close down. Employees are laid off all the time. If anything the worker stands to lose more than the capitalist when that happens.

So who is at greater "risk". The billionare Capitalist who could lose a few millions. Or a worker who is one missed paycheck away from homelessness. Looking at it in purely monetary terms will tell you that the former is taking the bigger "risk"

Maybe my view is too Dutch, but in the Netherlands it's not easy or cheap to lay off employees. Case in point, employees with burnouts may only be fired after 2 years. More importantly though, not every business owner is a millionaire. Plenty of shops are run by small business owners. You think they can afford to pay 2 years of full salary in exchange for jack diddly squat? I'd say they run the biggest risks.

I am looking at this macro economically. A single farmer's crop might fail. But in an average people will need food. Farmer's will need to grow food and they'll certainly make money out of it. People don't pay farmers for taking risks. People pay farmers for providing them with actual food.

farming is innately riskful, so I'd argue that we do ipso facto pay farmers for taking risks. If we were to only pay farmers for their produce, how would they survive if harvests fails due to nationwide drought?

The cost of growing food. Fertilizers, seeds etc.

yeah ok well duh then

Oh boy. I wish I could solve societal problems in an incel subforum.

the ever unwelcome "unless you have a better alternative" card is still as unwelcome as always it seems. I understand, I was hesitant to post it, but I was trying to pivot toward less idealized, more realistic discourse.

Better than the alternatives FOR WHOM?

better according to you

I guess livable dignified wages. Affordable healthcare, housing and education would be a good start

these don't answer the question "where should money for investments come from?" I agree those thing would be great, but long-term feasibility is what I'm worried about.

 

[SmhChan]

If you own a piece of land and do work on it yourself, you have full rights to the fruits (literal and figurative) that bear from that. If you recruit a helping hand, then you have to compensate that laborer in some way - money, typically. They don't have the same rights to the full value of the labor output, because A) the land isn't theirs (obvious), and B) without your land they would have not been able to gain anything from that specific labor.

Don't records labels pay artists in Royalities? I believe artists also sometimes get a percentage of the profit even though the record labels or the movie production companies control the 'means of production'. It might range from miniscule pay to huge sum. So, this sort of thing does happen. Then why do capitalist simps chimp out at the thought of such contracts existing in other industries or workplaces.

Edit: Another glaring example would be Unreal Engine who charges devs (using their engine) 5% on their revenue (over 1 million dollars). Irony being Tim Sweeney pockets a huge percentage of that fee. It just proves every capitalist is a communist in disguise.

 

[wgm24]

I used to want to be successful and take part in material pleasures. But now I see that that glamour, that dream is not possible without exploitation of others. And it's not something that can be controlled by altruistic policies. It's inherent to the system. Just fundamentally evil.

Your material conditions determine your disposition towards money and wealth. If you are born into the bourgeoisie you will have that mentality. If your not then you will have a mindset of opposition to the state of things. Rich people done feel sorry for being rich

 

[wgm24]

Then where will the profit come from jfl.

Socialism is workers owning the means of production. Profit motive wouldn't exist

 

[based_meme]

Don't records labels pay artists in Royalities? I believe artists also sometimes get a percentage of the profit even though the record labels or the movie production companies control the 'means of production'. It might range from miniscule pay to huge sum. So, this sort of thing does happen. Then why do capitalist simps chimp out at the thought of such contracts existing in other industries or workplaces.

A musician is not required to go through a record label, though if one wants to do business with you, chances are high for both maximal exposure of your work, which generates the most revenue (highest likelihood), and also for being exploited for your work. The music business is quite rampant with the kind of exploitation OP is referring to. Budding artists do get taken advantage of financially in their contracts. They're like predatory loan sharks in a sense.

But there are plenty of independent artists who do get royalties without any production company or other middleman acting as their agent.

I'm not quite sure what you're objection is here. Could you elaborate? Are you trying to say that capitalists are silent when artists are exploited in their dealings with record labels, but then speak up when similar exploitation happens between companies and employees with their employment dealings?

Edit: Another glaring example would be Unreal Engine who charges devs (using their engine) 5% on their revenue (over 1 million dollars). Irony being Tim Sweeney pockets a huge percentage of that fee. It just proves every capitalist is a communist in disguise.

I don't understand what you mean when you say every capitalist is a communist in disguise.

 

[Caesercel]

The amount of labor that went into the product, from inception to the consumer's hands, stays the same, regardless of what you decide to price the product at differently.

Therefore, if the market is willing to pay a higher marked up price for the product of that labour which (as you correctly pointed out) stays the same. Then that IS what the labour and its subsequent product is worth to the market.

But irl the labour gets paid less and the capitalist earns the difference. Precisely for no other reason than the fact that he owns the machines, the land and shop.

somehow changing the number on the sticker changes the value of the labor that went into it.

Correct. If the price is higher in the market, then the worth of human effort that went into it is higher too because of the demand of that product which was created via that work.

But this relationship also works in reverse. Usually things that require more human labour are priced higher in the market. As long as people are willing to pay that much more for all that.

You seem to labour under the delusion that price is some completely arbitrary abstract entity than can be marked up or down however one likes. The fact that a car will never be as inexpensive as a cake proves otherwise. Even when sold as useless scrap, its higher price will be a testament to all the work and resources that went into extracting its steel if not anything else.

You're morally grandstanding again. That post you made before - all of it was just that. Marx himself likes to do a lot of the same thing, probably intentionally to tug at the right heart strings of the average person who looks upward socially in resentment and envy.


OK, so with all of the bullshit out of the way, let's get to the reason why you and I are still talking about this. (This is the part where you quip, "oh yes, on to more bullshit lmao.")

Exploitation is exploitation. Moral grandstanding only comes later when you start with the premise that it's wrong. Maybe people should stop having ethical positions then capitalism would make more sense (?)

The feudal lord logic that exploitation breeds envy and resentment is fine too. I'm sure there are people motivated by such emotions. Can't say I can blame them when their children are doing illegal wage labour in dingy factories for $34.5 a month, while their master's children are studying and vacationing in Canada. (I'm sure pointing out these facts is pointless "moral grandstanding" too because these things don't matter)

Real life suffering, pain, misery and exploitation under capitalism and as a direct consequence of capitalism, actually don't matter because......its moral grandstanding, am I right?

Though I can't speak for your morality. These are just facts, if one doesn't believe that there's nothing immoral about capitalist exploitation then it's a different story. The owners whom I meet sure seem to think it's all fair.

. You have to show how this full right to labor output supersedes the natural rights of ownership

To Marx, no such "natural right" exists to begin with. And I can kind of see the logic here. Land and natural resources exist naturally. They would exist even in absence of humans. Non natural human possessions (tools) are created by human labour using the former. And then using those tools combined with more labour we get final commodity. Ownership doesn't factor into any of this.

It's just a posteriori imposed supposition which says less about the possession (land/tool) itself and more about the social relation instrumental to how that possession is acted upon and deciding the course of production.

Under capitalism this social relation is that of exploitation whereby state force sanctioned ownership allows expropriation of productive output. Stealing it like a nigger as they say. And the direction of production is that of enriching yourself, usually at the detriment of others and the planet itself.

As someone who is bound to inherit farm land, even I can see that I only "own" that land insofar as the State "thinks" I own it. This State is not some nebulous perfect God who hands over natural land to his subjects (though feudal lords would argue that their right to land does comes from God). It's made of up real people, who act in their own self interest and (sometimes) against the interests of the worker who'll be forced to sell his labour for less than what he creates.

In my country the only reason the current generation of farmers have any land to begin with is because the government re-appropriated it from colonial era landlords and then redistributed to peasants.

At the end of the day nobody is born with wealth or possessions from the womb. And nobody takes it with them. So "ownership" becomes a matter of who controls what while they are alive. And any such system of ownership could be debated, on ethical or other grounds, and changed.

They do, because they're the owners of the means of production.

Well, I guess then it just comes down to a difference of opinion. Who naturally deserves more. The worker who creates or the extortionist who extorts with legal sanctity (threat of force).

I personally can't see why ownership should be the greater virtue than work. Especially when this system directly leads to so much misery (not via mismanagement but through its very structure and forces)

Questionable premise. They can live and survive through other means (their own, for example). They are not bound and fated to be laborers. Many people do this by starting a business, for exactly this reason. They want to dictate their livelihoods and put that in their own hands and not the hands of others.

That all sounds good for people like you and me who may have some access to capital. Not so much for half of the planet which has to worry about daily survival. People who have no land and no money. If everyone had access to these and the option to reap the fruits of their own labour then this debate wouldn't exist.

Plus the supposed labourer who may somehow end up with capital and a successful venture, would end up hiring labour anyway. Thus we circle back to capitalist theft.

That way you can have your hollywood rags to riches story. The exploited becomes the exploiter, what an inspiration.

I think you've got this part backwards. If the labor is scarce, then it's worth more.

I meant scarcity or lack thereof. It can go both ways.

.

Yes, the idea is to get the best deal on everything, from your materials to the labor that uses those materials to produce your goods. This applies to both the capitalist employer and his prospective employees. But the labor market does exist, and along with it competitive wages that boast above market salaries to recruit the labor necessary. Negotiating your salary is a thing, and it's up to you to know your worth as a laborer.

Yes, this is the thing being criticized here. Treatment of labour as a commodity. Using huge leverage to pay as little as possible, and take away the bigger share for yourself via a system of exploitation. This is like bargaigning in a flee market but you have the option to beat the fish seller to death with a stick if he doesn't agree to your price .

If workers knew their true worth they wouldn't be participating in this "market" at all , which is built to screw them. Their lack of resources to produce commodity by themselves used against them. Put into a competition with each other to the benefit of no one but the capitalist. And the subsequent extortion being justified as a right through ownership.

The rhetoric behind this "free and fair" market is. "Oh you have nothing and need money to live? Well I will buy your labour just like I buy an apple on the market. And since I know that you'll not be able to afford rent, groceries and bills without your next paycheck I'll pay you just enough to be able to afford that with the cheapest options available. And if you don't like this arrangement and want more I can always replace you with the next destitute who has no access to means of production and wants to survive. Btw this is entirely fair, free market you see."

It would be hilarious if it weren't sad watching the workers compete with each other , step on each other and participate in this rat race to be a bit more worthwhile to their capitalist overlords. To get a bigger piece of the crumb falling from the rich man's table for his loyalty and "relative irreplaceability". Which he can then use to buy the same Capitalist's commodity, for survival or luxury, thus enriching him further. While the capitalist laughs all the way to the bank secure in his "ownership" of Capital and all the fun it brings.

.


Questionable premise. It's not evident that "most of the wealth" a capitalist gains is from undercutting their laborers. That's an empirical claim that must be checked.

It follows directly from the premise that the first right to fruits of work lie with the worker. I know you reject this premise but here's the logic anyway. You cannot gain wealth by undercutting raw material, natural resources or tools/factory. Because you cannot pay money to non living entities, only to human beings. When a capitalist buys stuff for his business from another capitalist he can underpay him but (usually) the supplier will still operate under profit. Therefore it can only come from either undercutting labour at the end of the rope or undercutting supplier profits.

Infact from my first premise, ALL the capitalist wealth comes from undercutting labour because it should belong to workers in the first place.

An employer can't hire an employee, if they don't have more resources than the employee. If the employee had more resources, they wouldn't seek to be the employ of the employer. This assymetry must exist for the employer-employee relationship to take place. This necessary assymetry does not entail exploitation. It can, however, allow for it occur, just as any other power assymetry between two parties.

This is circular reasoning. One can't pre-suppose the capitalist relationship to justify itself. This assymetry is neither historically necessary nor non-exploitative. Power assymetries exist everywhere, the ethical question is, which ones are just and fair.

Yes, but they don't. If they did, then they would be owners, and thus be reaping the entirety of the labor's output value.

They'd be owners only if they had access to Capital which they don't because most can't save enough to build that kind of capital through their wages. They are deliberately kept out of ever reaping the full fruits of their labour via your "free and fair agreement labour market" which pays them as little as possible "fairly".

Questionable premise again. You're presupposing that there always exists exploitation in the capitalist-laborer relationship. If exploitation is occurring, then it is unethical (by definition), but it's not always the case that it is occurring.

I am less interested in your overall point and more interested that you said "exploitation is unethical by definition". I'm not too sure about that one. I know I said that I hold this position but only to challenge you because people usually believe that. But tbh I sometimes think that exploitation is just part of how humans work. Some who hold power over the system enjoy the work built on the back of others. This has been true throughout history. Across all systems including capitalism today. But if one were to hold that stated belief then capitalism indeed is unethical

I know you get around this by hand waving capitalist exploitation by saying that business owners have inherent rights to other people's work. But similar hand waving arguments could be used by plantation owners who say white people, being superior race have an inherent right to own slaves (subhumans, to whom "rights of man" don't apply). Or by feudal lords, who hand wave their exploitation via arguments of divine right over land and serfs.

Capitalism is exploitative , that is a matter of fact. The more interesting question is, "is exploitation unethical"?

"Unfair" is your own external value judgment.

And you make the opposite value judgement that this labour market is fair and free (it is neither of those). And that's what Marx criticizes with some very valid points.

. If they didn't think it was fair, then they wouldn't accept the terms of employment.

I think this is more of your own personal statement than some claim at truth. If we are leaving this to personal opinions of people then I'm sure many feel many times that they didn't get a fair deal yet still walked into it because of lack of alternatives and the requirements of the situation. A person like you may say that the deal is "fair" to the system as a whole but that particular individual might still disagree. So it's not entirely true that people only agree to a deal ONLY when they think it's fair.

. There obviously does exist cases where people accept shit deals because of their life circumstances warrant taking the deal or being in abject poverty, but the characterization this as the standard for all capitalist-laborer relations is as wrong as it is naive.

I would presume that globally, most workers are one or two paychecks away from total destitution. But I'll need some stats to check that. This presumption tho is nowhere near as naive as the idea that what goes on in the labour market is "fair and just".

But let's forget about that and talk about your average (upper) middle class white collar worker. He gets a bigger piece of the fallen bread crumb. Then he uses it to buy more commodity than your subsistence worker , which then again becomes a source of capitalist wealth. With higher pay come higher expenses , a better lifestyle. I'd say a good number of them too are 3 paychecks away from hitting the streets. The smarter ones save for a rainy day. Maybe take a loan and buy or mortgage some property.

This guy gets a better pay not because his services are any more essential than a subsistence worker but because there are less of him in the market. His only leverage is lies in his scarcity as a commodity and the inter-capitalist competition to acquire his services. But in essence still dependent on the capitalist for means of production which he doesn't have , to survive. He still cannot live on his own means.

Capitalism and the nature of your "fair" market always has the effect of putting downward pressure on wages. And that pressure will never go away. Just because the capitalist is paying you more doesn't mean he wants to. And one may think it's only fair until it's their turn to be screwed. This is where the Mexicans in America and the Arabs in europe come in. And all other capitalist tricks to undercut as much as possible.

You claim that exploitation is possible under capitalism but capitalism itself is not exploitative. But where do you even draw the line? Because of the very nature of how the labour market (that you so vehemently defend) works, there will always be a tendency towards lower wages. At what point do you think the line is crossed and we've stepped into exploitation territory? economic recession? layoffs? Illegal immigration? Child labour? Physical abuse? Debt slavery? Starvation? Malnutrition? Or none of this because all parties "agreed" to it.

The only reason people in wealthy western nations can live a decent life is because State regulation prevents the "free hand of the labour market" from ruining everyone's lives.

. But JFL @ "extortion."

"If you don't take what I give you, you'll go homeless and starve. And I'll take the rest because I own everything lol, thank you"

Sounds like extortion to me.

. The capitalist is not engineering the circumstances of economically necessary labor for invididual survival.

Not the individual capitalist but capitalism itself. This system IS the reason why the ownership of means of production is so heavily concentrated at the top.

"Economically necessary labour for survival" is a feature of the system

Someone has to put the pieces back together or recreate a new means of production for the laborers to busy themselves and reap more fruits. Are they all going to do it? Who becomes responsible for what? Where's the money coming from? How are they going to put Humpty Dumpty back together and get the labor train rolling again? Does everyone have to eat less everyday for months, because they need to sell food to get money to build a new factory?

In any case, thanks for indulging me and breaking down your argument for why you think that laborer exploitation is the default in capitalistm with capitalist-laborer relationships.

I don't presume to know or even care how a post capitalist society would work. That's not the point of the thread anyway. People already have a tough time getting their head around the fact that capitalism is inherently exploitative. They hand wave the exploitation with the claim that capitalists own everything so they deserve to take everything . Without questioning either the premise or the conclusion of this statement.

. It's just not conducive to human nature.

I don't take issue with this idea. Marx seems to think that fundamental human nature is to work and collaborate. Jordan Peterson tells us that humans are lobsters. I'm not sure about either.

 

[SlayerSlayer]

I used to want to be successful and take part in material pleasures. But now I see that that glamour, that dream is not possible without exploitation of others. And it's not something that can be controlled by altruistic policies. It's inherent to the system. Just fundamentally evil.

it took you video watchin to realize that?

 

[Caesercel]

it took you video watchin to realize that?

I mean I always knew that employees are perma screwed. Everyone knows that. But this give it structure

 

[SlayerSlayer]

IT ALL COMES BACK TO SEXUAL INEQUALITY FIRST

I WANT TO FUCK

I FEEL ENTITLED TO PUSSY, AS I DO FEEL ENTITLED TO BREATH AIR, AND SEE THE SKY, BECAUSE I WAS BORN, AND I HAVE A FUCKING DICK

 

[AsiaCel]

Marx was based in his predictions and understanding of capitalism. Its just that his solution is dogshit. It won't work unless people are spiritually selfless.

This.

 

[based_meme]

Therefore, if the market is willing to pay a higher marked up price for the product of that labour which (as you correctly pointed out) stays the same. Then that IS what the labour and its subsequent product is worth to the market.

But irl the labour gets paid less and the capitalist earns the difference. Precisely for no other reason than the fact that he owns the machines, the land and shop.

The laborer gets remunerated (fancy schmancy word for "paid") for his labor. That's why the laborer is there, and the capitalist agrees to pay him for that labor that needs doing for the capilist's business. The laborer, then, has a right (both legal and ethical) to the amount that they agreed to prior to the labor taking place. That right (to being remunerated for the labor provided) is not invalidated or overridden in the event that the capitalist does not turn a profit or even experiences a financial loss. This is the employment contract (and enforced, if necessary, by the guy with the guns and thugs with more guns). The laborer is paid less, because they have no stake in the business. They're paid for their service regardless of the level of success in the business.

Suppose you have a man who starts a business and hires no laborers. He bears all of the risk and bears all of the rewards. He labors and works to ensure his business is successful. Nobody has a problem saying that he has a right to the full fruits of his labor. Even Marx would be nodding along, though he'd still be probably be salty and harbor resentment for people being richer than him, despite the fact that he married a baronness and came from an upper class family, not to mention was funded by a richfag capitalist himself (Engel). But let's forget about all of that for a moment.

Now let's suppose that this man partners up with another who invests his share of capital and takes on 50% of the risk and workload. He labors just like his partner who, prior to their partnership, labored in the business and for its success just he's like doing now. Now everyone would say that they both have a right to half of the rewards (profits). Everyone (who is rational and reasonable) is still cool with this.

As the business grows and develops, the two partners decide to bring in a third partner who invests his share of proportional capital (adjusted for the necessary business valuations). Like the first partner, he now takes on his share of the labor as well, which is now 1/3. They now split the profits three ways. Nothing wrong so far - we're still just adding business owners and splitting up the risks and rewards proportionally.

Something different happens now. The three business owners decide that they want more time for themselves (family, personal projects, enjoying life, whatever). And so they all decide to hire a worker to do select tasks that are part of the running the business, but are the monotonous (though very easy) and time-consuming tasks. They have a meeting to formulate this job, what tasks the the worker will perform, what they think the labor should cost the three of them, and any training that may be required.

They put a job advert and find help. They offer a wage. This wage happens to be lower than the share the three businessmen equally split between themselves.

This is where Marx perks up and goes, "whoa nigga, what is this shit? Why you mfers doin' mah boi Emmaneul dirty like dat? 25%. He gets 25%."

"Uh no? He's not a partner. And who are you? Please fuck off, thx."

"Emmanuel, homes, you gotta kill these mfers and take all of their shit, cuh."

That's basically how that conversation would go down, niggerized for 2025.

Correct. If the price is higher in the market, then the worth of human effort that went into it is higher too because of the demand of that product which was created via that work.

"The worth of the human effort." What is that? Quite vague and nebulous that.

But this relationship also works in reverse. Usually things that require more human labour are priced higher in the market. As long as people are willing to pay that much more for all that.

You seem to labour under the delusion that price is some completely arbitrary abstract entity than can be marked up or down however one likes. The fact that a car will never be as inexpensive as a cake proves otherwise. Even when sold as useless scrap, its higher price will be a testament to all the work and resources that went into extracting its steel if not anything else.

As I've mentioned before, the price of things includes the manufacturing and labor costs, as well the storage, transportation, distribution and whatever other cost associated in the business chain that gets the product to the consumer's hands. That's why we all see that car costs more than a cake.

We're spinning our wheels here. There's no point in rehashing the same microecon talking points and retreading the same grounds.

Exploitation is exploitation. Moral grandstanding only comes later when you start with the premise that it's wrong. Maybe people should stop having ethical positions then capitalism would make more sense (?)

The feudal lord logic that exploitation breeds envy and resentment is fine too. I'm sure there are people motivated by such emotions. Can't say I can blame them when their children are doing illegal wage labour in dingy factories for $34.5 a month, while their master's children are studying and vacationing in Canada. (I'm sure pointing out these facts is pointless "moral grandstanding" too because these things don't matter)

Exploitation is a few things, and we have to be careful and precise with what is it that we're talking about, if we're making moral evaluations and coming to conclusions from that. One of the things that exploitation is in a strict sense is finding a weaknesses in your opponent's strategy and taking advantage of it. Remember that capitalism is an adversarial game, not a cooperative one. You're always in competition with others playing the same game as you.

The question which now arises is, "is this fair," or, "is there any unfairness here?" What do we mean by fairness? Is it unfair, if I see a move that you don't and then make that move to win? Most people would say no that's fair game.

But why? What is it that makes it fair in one case when a person outplays their opponent and wins, and unfair in another where they also win? The opponenet was exploited in both cases, but why is that exploitation fair in one instance but not the other? What changed is the rules of the game that both parties agree to. "Fairness" is a property that takes on an ethical value when applied to both cases where exploitation is happening. The second case, as you might have surmised, is cheating, and cheating is, of course, not playing by the rules.

Real life suffering, pain, misery and exploitation under capitalism and as a direct consequence of capitalism, actually don't matter because......its moral grandstanding, am I right?

That's just people being assholes doing their assholery using capitalism as the means. Evil, selfish people are going to be evil and selfish, regardless of the systems they operate in. They'll find a way.

"Oh, the humanity." You can keep crying about that, but don't misplace your blame on caplitalism when it's just evil people who happen to be capitalists. There is nothing ideologically inherent to capitalism that says you have to be a mustache-twirler. This is starkly contrasted with communism, which does in fact advocate for violence.

Though I can't speak for your morality. These are just facts, if one doesn't believe that there's nothing immoral about capitalist exploitation then it's a different story. The owners whom I meet sure seem to think it's all fair.

Feel free to make as many evaluative claims on facts as you like. Just make sure to back them appropriately.

To Marx, no such "natural right" exists to begin with. And I can kind of see the logic here. Land and natural resources exist naturally. They would exist even in absence of humans. Non natural human possessions (tools) are created by human labour using the former. And then using those tools combined with more labour we get final commodity. Ownership doesn't factor into any of this.

Yes, of course, they exist naturally. Because something is out in nature and exists naturally, that does not preclude it from the property of ownership. You can go out in nature, find something (usually land) that others have not laid claim to, put labor into that, and then you would be rightfully be able to say that you have ownership of that thing.

This is basically Locke's labor theory of property and isn't a complex or controversial idea.

Well, I guess then it just comes down to a difference of opinion. Who naturally deserves more. The worker who creates or the extortionist who extorts with legal sanctity (threat of force).

I personally can't see why ownership should be the greater virtue than work. Especially when this system directly leads to so much misery (not via mismanagement but through its very structure and forces)

Bro nobody is claiming that ownership is a virtue or a greater virtue than work. JFL

Hell, nobody is even claiming that work itself is a virtue.

That all sounds good for people like you and me who may have some access to capital. Not so much for half of the planet which has to worry about daily survival. People who have no land and no money. If everyone had access to these and the option to reap the fruits of their own labour then this debate wouldn't exist.

Marx was literally the bourgeoisie (fuck, I hate spelling this word). He was from a wealthy family and married into even more wealth, but decided to go full retard. The debate would most certainly exist, even had Marx decided not to spaz out.

I guess when you're rich and don't have to think about where you'll get your meal from you can afford to pontificate and criticize others for sport and leisure, probably to satisfy his own ego and insecurities, who the fuck really knows.

Plus the supposed labourer who may somehow end up with capital and a successful venture, would end up hiring labour anyway. Thus we circle back to capitalist theft.

No, we're not "circling back to capitalist theft." Only communists hold that as true, because they assume the truth of Marx's premise. Nice try.

That way you can have your hollywood rags to riches story. The exploited becomes the exploiter, what an inspiration.

Your quite welcome to cut your heart and let it bleed out for all of the lesser fortunate people. Just remember not to turn into a champagne socialist (read: hypocrite) when your principles experience friction with your wealth, status, and comfort in life.

Yes, this is the thing being criticized here. Treatment of labour as a commodity. Using huge leverage to pay as little as possible, and take away the bigger share for yourself via a system of exploitation. This is like bargaigning in a flee market but you have the option to beat the fish seller to death with a stick if he doesn't agree to your price .

If workers knew their true worth they wouldn't be participating in this "market" at all , which is built to screw them. Their lack of resources to produce commodity by themselves used against them. Put into a competition with each other to the benefit of no one but the capitalist. And the subsequent extortion being justified as a right through ownership.

The rhetoric behind this "free and fair" market is. "Oh you have nothing and need money to live? Well I will buy your labour just like I buy an apple on the market. And since I know that you'll not be able to afford rent, groceries and bills without your next paycheck I'll pay you just enough to be able to afford that with the cheapest options available. And if you don't like this arrangement and want more I can always replace you with the next destitute who has no access to means of production and wants to survive. Btw this is entirely fair, free market you see."

It would be hilarious if it weren't sad watching the workers compete with each other , step on each other and participate in this rat race to be a bit more worthwhile to their capitalist overlords. To get a bigger piece of the crumb falling from the rich man's table for his loyalty and "relative irreplaceability". Which he can then use to buy the same Capitalist's commodity, for survival or luxury, thus enriching him further. While the capitalist laughs all the way to the bank secure in his "ownership" of Capital and all the fun it brings.

You don't like it on principle. I get that. I wouldn't like it either, if I drew the short end of that stick. I can't imagine many who would.

It follows directly from the premise that the first right to fruits of work lie with the worker. I know you reject this premise but here's the logic anyway. You cannot gain wealth by undercutting raw material, natural resources or tools/factory. Because you cannot pay money to non living entities, only to human beings. When a capitalist buys stuff for his business from another capitalist he can underpay him but (usually) the supplier will still operate under profit. Therefore it can only come from either undercutting labour at the end of the rope or undercutting supplier profits.

Infact from my first premise, ALL the capitalist wealth comes from undercutting labour because it should belong to workers in the first place.

Well, I'm not a communist, so naturally I don't agree that the laborer has full rights to the fruits of their labor, only to the compensation that they agreed to beforehand.

We have different starting points and will not come to same conclusions. It's like trying to do math with non-Euclidean geometry by keeping in the fifth postulate. It just doesn't work.

This is circular reasoning. One can't pre-suppose the capitalist relationship to justify itself. This assymetry is neither historically necessary nor non-exploitative. Power assymetries exist everywhere, the ethical question is, which ones are just and fair.

Well, well. Look at that. I've seen this before somewhere. Hm.

They'd be owners only if they had access to Capital which they don't because most can't save enough to build that kind of capital through their wages. They are deliberately kept out of ever reaping the full fruits of their labour via your "free and fair agreement labour market" which pays them as little as possible "fairly".

That's the game, and yes, it is, in fact, fair. Nobody is cheating, but despite this, communists love to cry foul.

I am less interested in your overall point and more interested that you said "exploitation is unethical by definition". I'm not too sure about that one. I know I said that I hold this position but only to challenge you because people usually believe that. But tbh I sometimes think that exploitation is just part of how humans work. Some who hold power over the system enjoy the work built on the back of others. This has been true throughout history. Across all systems including capitalism today. But if one were to hold that stated belief then capitalism indeed is unethical

The definition does not include "unfair," but I was being charitable by including that qualifier (since I knew what you meant), because people colloquially stitch the concepts together (not unlike how people think "Nazi" when they hear the word eugenics and believe that the two ideas are interlinked).

Anyway, I elaborated on this finer point above in this post.

I know you get around this by hand waving capitalist exploitation by saying that business owners have inherent rights to other people's work. But similar hand waving arguments could be used by plantation owners who say white people, being superior race have an inherent right to own slaves (subhumans, to whom "rights of man" don't apply). Or by feudal lords, who hand wave their exploitation via arguments of divine right over land and serfs.

And you're hand waving by asserting the truth of Marx's premises and restating the same wild conclusions that they lead to.

If we're all waving our hands everywhere, then why are even discussing this? You're waving your hand in one way and I'm waving it in the other. If we're all just waving our hands everywhere and dancing to our own fucking tunes, then we're all taking turns pissing in the wind.

Capitalism is exploitative , that is a matter of fact. The more interesting question is, "is exploitation unethical"?

No, it's a matter of how you reach your conclusions.

And you make the opposite value judgement that this labour market is fair and free (it is neither of those). And that's what Marx criticizes with some very valid points.

I disagree. The validity of his points rests on assuming the truth of his specious premise that "profit is theft of labor value." He just takes this as a given (axiom) and rolls with it.

I think this is more of your own personal statement than some claim at truth. If we are leaving this to personal opinions of people then I'm sure many feel many times that they didn't get a fair deal yet still walked into it because of lack of alternatives and the requirements of the situation. A person like you may say that the deal is "fair" to the system as a whole but that particular individual might still disagree. So it's not entirely true that people only agree to a deal ONLY when they think it's fair.

What do you mean by own personal statement as opposed to some claim at truth? It's not about my personal feelings when two or more people agree to a contract and its terms. What I feel about that or how I feel about it has no bearing on the truth that there exist many contracts where an agreement is only reached when all parties involved in the contract believe that the deal is fair.

I'm simply stating some of the possible combinations of outcomes, one of which is, "it is true that both parties agree that the terms are fair, and thus an agreement is made." In the very next sentence I acknowledge other possibilities, like the case of agreeing to a deal that you know is unfair, but you make the deal anyway out of necessity.

I would presume that globally, most workers are one or two paychecks away from total destitution. But I'll need some stats to check that. This presumption tho is nowhere near as naive as the idea that what goes on in the labour market is "fair and just".

Probably, I don't know. What I do know is that what's a fair and just deal is not really for us to decide, unless we're the relevant parties and unless rules and laws are deliberately broken or circumvented in ways which make the arrangement dubious.

But let's forget about that and talk about your average (upper) middle class white collar worker. He gets a bigger piece of the fallen bread crumb. Then he uses it to buy more commodity than your subsistence worker , which then again becomes a source of capitalist wealth. With higher pay come higher expenses , a better lifestyle. I'd say a good number of them too are 3 paychecks away from hitting the streets. The smarter ones save for a rainy day. Maybe take a loan and buy or mortgage some property.

This guy gets a better pay not because his services are any more essential than a subsistence worker but because there are less of him in the market. His only leverage is lies in his scarcity as a commodity and the inter-capitalist competition to acquire his services. But in essence still dependent on the capitalist for means of production which he doesn't have , to survive. He still cannot live on his own means.

Maybe. Probably. I don't know and neither do you.

Capitalism and the nature of your "fair" market always has the effect of putting downward pressure on wages. And that pressure will never go away. Just because the capitalist is paying you more doesn't mean he wants to. And one may think it's only fair until it's their turn to be screwed. This is where the Mexicans in America and the Arabs in europe come in. And all other capitalist tricks to undercut as much as possible.

Of course, it'll never go away. You always want more for less and always want to give away the least amount for the most gain. That's the push and pull of the market.

This isn't just true in capitalist markets, but true in general. Everyone (generally) desires the path of least resistance. You can take a principled stand and claim a higher moral ground, but you'd be making losing, suboptimal plays, be it consciously or otherwise.

You claim that exploitation is possible under capitalism but capitalism itself is not exploitative. But where do you even draw the line? Because of the very nature of how the labour market (that you so vehemently defend) works, there will always be a tendency towards lower wages. At what point do you think the line is crossed and we've stepped into exploitation territory? economic recession? layoffs? Illegal immigration? Child labour? Physical abuse? Debt slavery? Starvation? Malnutrition? Or none of this because all parties "agreed" to it.

We're already there in many respects. There's a reason there's a massive influx of slaves from Arabia and India pouring into Europe and America, respectively. They don't have the same information and advantages that local laborers would and are more exploitable.

Those at the top are winning too hard. I'm not blaming them, because that's the game we agreed to play. We are simply being outplayed.

The only reason people in wealthy western nations can live a decent life is because State regulation prevents the "free hand of the labour market" from ruining everyone's lives.

The only reason? Really? The ONLY reason.

"If you don't take what I give you, you'll go homeless and starve. And I'll take the rest because I own everything lol, thank you"

Sounds like extortion to me.

More like, "this is the deal. Do you want it?... No? OK, then have a nice day."

Extortion is threatening someone with leverage over them to have them do what you want. There are no threats being made here. Stop being hyperbolic; it's bordering on histrionic.

Not the individual capitalist but capitalism itself. This system IS the reason why the ownership of means of production is so heavily concentrated at the top.

"Economically necessary labour for survival" is a feature of the system

Do you think that happened overnight with the stroke of an emperor's pen or king's seal?

Some capitalists powergamed early on and built empires that span centuries with the wealth being passed through the generations. Don't hate the player, hate the game, to use the trite aphorism.

I don't presume to know or even care how a post capitalist society would work. That's not the point of the thread anyway. People already have a tough time getting their head around the fact that capitalism is inherently exploitative. They hand wave the exploitation with the claim that capitalists own everything so they deserve to take everything . Without questioning either the premise or the conclusion of this statement.

People have a tougher time wrapping their head around a thing being exploitative and also fair at the same time. I'll let you think of some examples.

I don't take issue with this idea. Marx seems to think that fundamental human nature is to work and collaborate. Jordan Peterson tells us that humans are lobsters. I'm not sure about either.

I don't really care what Marx thinks about human nature, tbqh, but he does happen to be partially correct on that account. Humans are tribal, and prosocial behaviors promote intratribal growth and intertribal survival. It's in our nature to work and collaborate with people who are part of our group, but it's also in our nature to be wary of those who aren't and compete with them for our own survival.

Also, why are you bothering to mention Jordan Peterson? He's not relevant here. Or maybe he is and I need you explain it for me.

 

[Caesercel]

The laborer gets remunerated (fancy schmancy word for "paid") for his labor. That's why the laborer is there, and the capitalist agrees to pay him for that labor that needs doing for the capilist's business. The laborer, then, has a right (both legal and ethical) to the amount that they agreed to prior to the labor taking place. That right (to being remunerated for the labor provided) is not invalidated or overridden in the event that the capitalist does not turn a profit or even experiences a financial loss. This is the employment contract (and enforced, if necessary, by the guy with the guns and thugs with more guns). The laborer is paid less, because they have no stake in the business. They're paid for their service regardless of the level of success in the business.

It's untrue that the success or failure of a business is inconsequential to a worker. And them not having a stake in it is exactly what Marx takes issue with. The fundamental question is, where did this situation come from? The capitalist-labour relationship is a posteriori to human condition and recently came about due to historical circumstances which enriched one side at the expense of the other. Besides, I have already posted a break down of the labour market elsewhere. So moving on.

Something different happens now. The three business owners decide that they want more time for themselves (family, personal projects, enjoying life, whatever). And so they all decide to hire a worker to do select tasks that are part of the running the business, but are the monotonous (though very easy) and time-consuming tasks. They have a meeting to formulate this job, what tasks the the worker will perform, what they think the labor should cost the three of them, and any training that may be required.

Uhhhh. What even is this? So three guys who were born into the right economic class, to be able to start a business or invest in one, hire a fourth guy, who doesn't have that , and now get to exploit him by deciding "what they think the labour shoul cost"?

If Emmanuel had the capital, he would start his own business and become competition. Or he would invest in the business himself and become a fourth partner. Thus taking his rightful 25% . He would never let them steal his work. Why is it that in this hypothetical only one guy doesn't possess Capital. It is the answer to these questions where Marxist critique takes off.


You seem to be under the impression that by rephrasing the situation with words like "agreement" and pretending that the capitalist and worker come from equal footing, you can make the exploitation disappear. I mean, you can go full clasisst and say that there's nothing unfair about the starkly unequal footing between those two. That it's perfectly fine that few people have all the access to the means of production (abstracted as Capital) while the rest don't.

But isn't that what Marx is criticising about Capitalism in the first place? Oppression and exploitation under a class system. In all your arguments you run into the fallacy of presupposing the Capitalist system to justify itself. No deeper investigation needed. Why is it that most of the wealth and capital is concentrated in the hands of 5% of people? Why is it that workers don't have the Capital to get full output from their work, and have to agree to someone else's labour market who rob them. Why is it that even if all the workers pooled all of their wealth it still wouldn't be enough to buy out the very businesses that survive
off their back. Why is it that among 4 guys, it was Emmanuel who didn't own a cobble shop or couldn't invest in one

Every exploitative system can be justified by its own internal logic. And if everyone thought like this we'd still be living under some form of feudalism or colonialism (makes little difference to me but that's the position Marx is coming from in 1848, half a century after french revolution and right in the middle of european one)

"The worth of the human effort." What is that? Quite vague and nebulous that.

There's nothing "vague" or "nebulous" about it. Read it as the "price" of the product, as decided by the market, if you want. That'll save your breath on another one of those pointless autistic fixation on semantics (as if me not using the words "value" or "worth" will make exploitation go away)

Marx believed that labour should get paid with the full price of their product in the market anyway, and I'm sure you've criticised this elsewhere. So fine by me.

Is it unfair, if I see a move that you don't and then make that move to win? Most people would say no that's fair game.

And one of those power moves could be workers realising that the product that enriches the Capitalist cannot exist without their work, and natural resources which exist despite the Capitalist, and using that to take over the means of production (or its softer version in Unionisation, which is still anti-thetical to capitalist free market, if not capitalist ownership). But to capitalism this would be "unfair" because you cannot steal someone's property.

Therefore, Capitalism insists upon its own ideas of fairness-

Keep entire generations of workers in destitution and dependent on wageslavery for survival, while taking the biggest share of humanity's output - fair

Stealing a Capitalist's property - unfair

I am not arguing in favour of stealing but according to Marx, the former too entails a form of stealing, but not defined to be so under Capitalism's own "rules of the game"(the rules that you speak of). Which exist to serve no one but the capitalist himself.

That's just people being assholes doing their assholery using capitalism as the means. Evil, selfish people are going to be evil and selfish, regardless of the systems they operate in. They'll find a way.

As long as it's true that-

A. Capitalist have all the leverage in deciding wages as the owners of means of production (Capital).

B. The Capitalist labour market puts a downward pressure on wages, as everyone wants to get the best deal (as you so aptly pointed out)...

Misery and Pain, will always exist under capitalism. You can have the sweetest most benevolent Capitalist on the planet and he'll still pay his workers no more than the market average. (Usually just enough so that their destitute lives can trod along in the slums of Mumbai). If the Capitalist doesn't do that he'll be undercut by competition and go out of business. If cheap child labour or 12 hour work day is the new trend in the market he'll have to adjust to it.

The evil and selfishness does not exist despite the system. It's a core feature of it. There's a reason why so many CEOs are psychopaths. Capitalism rewards this behaviour.

This is starkly contrasted with communism, which does in fact advocate for violence.

Capitalism is maintained by a system of state violence or atleast a threat of it. Which the Capitalists hand waves away as "laws and rules" of market. And as I pointed out before, they are built to favour the capitalists in the guise of fairness and free market.

Though that doesn't mean capitalists don't practice direct violence all the time wherever they can get away with it. Maybe not in western nations where they delegate the violence to the State. All communism asks for is for workers to strike back.

This is just a case of those in power sanctifying their use of force on those without it. To keep hold onto the means of production. Using the police, the army and the bureaucratic apparatus. American jails are filled with working class criminals and not wall street frauds, who still walk free. And the worst , most criminal aspects of capitalism are "legal" anyway.

. You can go out in nature, find something (usually land) that others have not laid claim to, put labor into that, and then you would be rightfully be able to say that you have ownership of that thing.

This is basically Locke's labor theory of property and isn't a complex or controversial idea.

Huh. So worker's who put in labour on a property do have the right of ownership to that property.

Didn't know Locke was based like that.

Bro nobody is claiming that ownership is a virtue or a greater virtue than work. JFL

Hell, nobody is even claiming that work itself is a virtue.

The "virtue" here is a specific statement on who gets what from the productive output, by the virtue of their place in the capitalist class system. And you yourself claim that the owner class should get most of it. Thus making a financial evaluation of that virtue. Don't confuse this with the general sense of ethical virtue.

Marx was literally the bourgeoisie (fuck, I hate spelling this word). He was from a wealthy family and married into even more wealth, but decided to go full retard. The debate would most certainly exist, even had Marx decided not to spaz out.

I guess when you're rich and don't have to think about where you'll get your meal from you can afford to pontificate and criticize others for sport and leisure, probably to satisfy his own ego and insecurities, who the fuck really knows.

Idc if Marx was the King of France. As long as Capitalism exists, his critique of it will ring true. These are nothing but observations into the situation at hand. Which requires nothing more than a single honest look at the state of the modern world.

when your principles experience friction with your wealth, status, and comfort in life.

Isn't that what the thread is about? In our society getting rich through a successful venture is considered the greatest personal achievement. So exploitation becomes the holy grail. Everybody wants to do what one of those guys did. Be the one in a million who crawls out and joins the elite.

The thing is, it is indeed possible for everyone to have a certain degree of wealth and comfort in life. The only force blocking the path is Capitalism.

You don't like it on principle. I get that. I wouldn't like it either, if I drew the short end of that stick. I can't imagine many who would.

Irrelevant. I don't have to hate Capitalism to point out the fact that the labour markets are exploitative. I don't even have to hate exploitation as a concept.

I know that most Capitalists are hypocrites who would turn their heads to what they cause and proceed to live in oblioviousness. But I don't work that way. In any situation I'd rather admit (atleast to myself or anonymous forums) that I'm evil rather than engaging in fallacious rhetoric to save face.

This is some "muh envy" tier response and this discussion is poorer for it. It's ironic you'd go there just after pointing out that Marx and Engels were both bourgeois

That's the game, and yes, it is, in fact, fair. Nobody is cheating, but despite this, communists love to cry foul.

>It's fair because I said so

It's funny how one literally can't justify this.

I guess, I can set up a CS:GO match where one team is 50% slower by design. Has access to shittier weapons choices and forced to play on laggy computers and then call it a "fair" match because none of the teams are using cheat bots.

And you're hand waving by asserting the truth of Marx's premises and restating the same wild conclusions that they lead to.

If we're all waving our hands everywhere, then why are even discussing this? You're waving your hand in one way and I'm waving it in the other. If we're all just waving our hands everywhere and dancing to our own fucking tunes, then we're all taking turns pissing in the wind.

Marx's critique of capitalism flows directly from his premise. And his premise comes directly from the natural relationship between human work and it's product. The fact that human work creates commodity for humans to use is immutable, whether you live under communism, capitalism, socialism ,feudalism, tribal commune, rural commune or any other system. This fundamental fact precludes the system of governance or economy. So deciding the system becomes a matter of exactly what is to be produced how this fruit of human work is distributed.

Capitalism,like other classist positions argues that most of it should land in the hands of few. Marxism holds the ethical position, born from egalitarianism, that it should benefit everyone. You can reject the latter if you want. It's your choice


But in doing so you are also arguing for the opposite capitalist position. Which is essentially a classist position in disguise. The idea that certain lucky ones should have control over all of the products of human effort , while the rest should make do with whatever the elite class throws at them. (the exact mechanism through which this situation is reached is irrelevant, labour market or whatever. Added this part in case you go "muh fair labour market" on me again.) That classist exploitation is A-ok and there's nothing unethical, unjust or unfair about it. Or it's not exploitation at all

If you believe that a feudal Lord taking away most of the agricultural produce of the peasants toiling on his fields is fair, sure.

If you believe that plantation owners buying and using slaves as property and not paying them wages is ethical, be my guest

If you believe a colonialist has the right to cut off some native's hands because he didn't produce the required output that day. K.

If you disagree with all of these systems, but are favourable to capitalism then it becomes a matter of what flavour of classism you like. Though you won't find many takers for this position, even among the (hypocritical) capitalists of today.

I'd personally put any system that deliberately and by design spreads misery to many for the luxuries of the few as exploitative and unethical. That a system of dealership which permanently puts one side at a stark disadvantage, by design, is unfair. But since you start with the position of defending classism, you'd just reject any such definition for any of these words. And call any criticism "muh envy" . Further, pointing out the real unethical consequences of these systems (like misery and pain) would be met with pointless rhetoric ("moral grandstanding", "champagne socialist") instead of real argumentation.

In which case Marx would be justified to tell workers to use direct action since talking to Capitalists would be fruitless. They'll never admit anything wrong is going on, since the entire thing benefits them. And all their selective usage of words and definitions like "exploitation" or "fairness" will reflect that they think elitism is ok and these words don't apply to it. That any destitution caused by a system which benefits them is "fair". And any subsequent misery and pain is "ethical". Go ahead, call it moral grandstanding. That's what you usually do when faced with the unethical consequences of capitalism, that go beyond economic theft(which you reject as an concept), and into the misery and poverty brought about as a direct result of that theft.

unless rules and laws are deliberately broken or circumvented in ways which make the arrangement dubious.

I should comment on this. Every rule or law that benefits the workers in any way shape or form (limited working hours etc) is fundamentally anti-capitalist and anti-free market by nature.

Of course, it'll never go away. You always want more for less and always want to give away the least amount for the most gain. That's the push and pull of the market.

This is true. The problem occurs when you add this to the concentration of Capital and means of production in the hands of a few elites. And so they hold all the power AND make deals by the incentive that you just mentioned

.

. You can take a principled stand and claim a higher moral ground, but you'd be making losing, suboptimal plays, be it consciously or otherwise.

So basically people will screw each other to their own benefit. I mean, that's true. But Capitalism has turned this into its central tenet. I'd rather prefer a system that atleast pretends to not be evil. A representation of worst human tendencies.

. They don't have the same information and advantages that local laborers would and are more exploitable.

Those at the top are winning too hard. I'm not blaming them, because that's the game we agreed to play. We are simply being outplayed.

Well I must applaud you for being somewhat intellectually honest here. But according to the Capitalist logic that you champion, the immigrants are not being exploited at all. The Capitalist is just getting the "best deal", and all parties "agree" to the terms. The only advantage I can think of for local labours is that they are better aware of their rights and better equipped with socialist/Marxist rhetoric regarding worker's rights to demand fair wages and dignified livable conditions . Even if they believe in capitalist ownership of private property.

If the world was left entirely to Capitalists, we'd be seeing white people shitting on train tracks in the slums of Vancouver. Since fundamentally anti-capitalist, anti-'free labour market' policies prevented that, Capitalists can now have Indians shit the streets instead. God knows they are used to it.

The only reason? Really? The ONLY reason.

Oh let me correct myself. Historical advantages of colonialism do factor into it.

More like, "this is the deal. Do you want it?... No? OK, then have a nice day."

Extortion is threatening someone with leverage over them to have them do what you want. There are no threats being made here. Stop being hyperbolic; it's bordering on histrionic.

It's implicit in the system. Naivety won't serve your point. And attempts at reframing the situation to hide underlying material realities won't make them go away.

Just like "exploitation" and "fairness" , a Capitalist might selectively use (or rather selectively omit) the word extortion to his advantage. "Oh its not real extortion". "The worker can simply reject the wage if he thinks it's unfair, and starve to death. It's his choice"

, hate the game,

Exactly what Marx is doing.

.


People have a tougher time wrapping their head around a thing being exploitative and also fair at the same time. I'll let you think of some examples.

People usually just accept things for how they are. Black slaves, in the end, did not free themselves. That's why Marx argues for workers to develop class consciousness.

. Humans are tribal, and prosocial behaviors promote intratribal growth and intertribal survival. It's in our nature to work and collaborate with people who are part of our group, but it's also in our nature to be wary of those who aren't and compete with them for our own survival.

Nice. But Capitalism in itself is an alienating force. Under Capitalism, it's every man for himself. And the only thing binding them into any kind of collaboration or solidarity is money.

Sure you may argue that any man who collaborates in a tribe has selfish goals for doing so too. But there's also a sense of genuine camaraderie, which is missing in Capitalism. Even when there are heirarchies one can have loyalty towards their master and benevolence towards their subject. But Capitalism pits capitalist against capitalist, worker against worker, capitalist against worker. It's a genuinely bleak miserable system, even for the Capitalist , and I can see why people living under capitalism cope with alienated commodities, notwithstanding where they lie on the class scale.

You can observe that alienating lonely misery in this very forum.

.

Also, why are you bothering to mention Jordan Peterson? He's not relevant here. Or maybe he is and I need you explain it for me.

Jordan Peterson, like you, hates Marxism. But unlike you, he recognises it as a class system (actually I'm not sure what your position here is. But you do talk all the typical classist talking points). So he justifies capitalist classism by saying that all animals have some heirarchies and it is inherent to our nature. He shows that even lobsters have heirarchies.

That's what I'm referring to. I thought you'd be aware of this meme.