It's untrue that the success or failure of a business is inconsequential to a worker.
Insofar as the business is concerned, it is inconsequential. I don't know why you're saying otherwise. If you want to argue that they'd be out of a job, yes, they might get laid off, but that's a comparably minor setback relative to going bankrupt.
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.
How exactly is that relationship
a posteriori to the human condition? What does that sentence even mean?
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"?
Wait, what are you doing? Why are you injecting your own biased assumptions into the example? Why are you assuming that they're all rich and born into wealth? You know that people can take business loans or work to save up capital, right?
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.
The "why" doesn't matter, it's irrelevant. He simply doesn't have the money to partner up, even if the other three were open to taking on a fourth partner. I just happened to arbitrarily pick the fourth guy as the (external) laborer and not a business partner.
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.
I didn't say anything about "equal footing." I've made no claims that any such agreements between them means that the two parties are now equal. Remember that I explicitly mentioned before how a power asymmetry (resources in this case) needs to exist for such relationships to be occur, else the laborer would have no financial incentive to sell his labor and instead do business for himself.
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
I don't understand how can you sit there and say that I'm presupposing capitalism to justify itself when in order to argue the Marxist position you have to do the same thing, but with supposing that "all profit is theft of labor value" is true instead.
What did I presuppose about capitalism and what exactly did I justify with it?
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)
Did you understand from the previous post where I explained that exploitative does not automatically mean "unfair," and that "unfair" does not automatically mean that it's "unethical?"
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)
You introduced the phrase, so you need to define it and be specific. I'm not going to insert my own meaning into that.
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.
If that's what you meant by it, I don't know why you used the term effort. The effort of labor is not proportional to its value. A whore lying on her back and servicing men doesn't take much effort, but she sure as shit makes more money faking orgasms in the starfish position than some sand or curry grinding a work shift at a store or restaurant.
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.
How is unionisation stealing 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
Drop the word captalism/capitalist and you have "stealing is 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.
You're talking as though a group of rich people conspired to create this rigged system with broken rules. The basic tenets of capitalism™ (private property, profit, wage labor) has existed for as long as people have been doing commerce. The kind of unfair things you're alluding to and witnessing in the current day (leverage through capital) is not an intrinsic feature of things like owning private property and making profit.
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)...
But it's not true that the ones holding the capital have all of the leverage in deciding wages. They're subject to the same market forces as well, unless you're implying that they control that by virtue of having capital.
This is probably a large part of the reason why there's so much immigration being pushed into Western countries. The corporations need to flood the market with cheap labor to depress wages. In a roundabout way, I guess you could say that they're using their capital to manipulate the labor market, but not directly (they're getting their cronies in governments to do it for them).
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.
Misery and pain aren't functions of capitalism (nor is it the goal), but they can be consequences of it. However, it's not necessarily true that it "will always exist."
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.
Selfishness is a core feature of it, yes, because it's an adversarial game where the object is to get more points than the other guy. In order to be competitive you need to be selfish. Note that selfishness is not intrinsically a bad or evil thing. Evil is a moral valuation and doesn't factor into the game. It's not a part of it at all. That isn't to say that evil doesn't happen, but to say that it's a feature is incorrect.
Morality is not inherent to capitalism, because it's an economic system, not a moral one. (It's ridiculous that that sentence needs to be written.)
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.
This is a disingenuous point. Everything under the state's law is maintained by the threat of violence and supervenes on any system and set of rules beneath it. The economic system of capitalism is not a special case.
I'm not sure if you realize it, but the third paragraph is actually an argument against government. Just change "means of production" to "monopoly on force" and you're practically there.
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.
That's not how that works, but go ahead and enjoy the witty moment.
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 (I can sense that you might go into another one of those semantic diversions instead of sticking to the point at hand)
If you don't care for the semantics, then don't use a word that's also commonly used for the ethical meaning when your position (or the one you're advocating for) is motivated by ethical reasons.
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.
If you say so.
Many things can ring true, if you hold other parts of it or preceding it to be true.
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.
Forget the thread, I don't even know what this part of the reply is supposed to be about or where you're going with it. Looks like just another excuse to bring up exploitation again.
I was making commentary about how this particular flavor of moral outrage frequently takes a back seat when personal sacrifices have to be made when the principles that are championed are put to the test. This is common with pro-communist types who ironically live comfortable and relatively prosperous lives under capitalist systems.
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
Oh wow, you really outdid yourself here. Not only did you level up your moral grandstanding, but you projected your own "fallacious rhetoric to save face" (which I didn't do) and passive-aggressively called me an evil hypocrite, all in one fell swoop.
Then you have the gall to talk about how my commentary on Marx's status in life makes the discussion poorer when you're insulting me directly. JFL
>It's fair because I said so
It's funny how one literally can't justify this.
I get the sense you have this preconceived notion that capitalism was concocted by rich people who got together and decided what's fair and what isn't.
More importantly, the fairness in question is about the rules of the game, not any natural or material advantages. You're crying about the latter when it's the former that principally matters.
You will always have Bobby Fischers and Michael Jordans emerge. You want to sit there and cry about how that's unfair to their opponents? Really?
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.
Terrible analogy. Here you're
intentionally handicapping one side and changing the rules of the competition.
Marx's critique of capitalism flows directly from his premise.
Of course, it does. That's by design.
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.
Yes, and the most sensible way to distribute that fruit is based on economic concepts in capitalism that involve things like risk share.
This is probably a good time to mention something that I'm surprised wasn't obvious to you from the get-go. You can have exactly the kind of distributional arrangement that you're a proponent of. There is literally nothing in capitalism that says, "no, you can't distribute the fruits of labor equally to all laborers." That option is technically open, IFF all parties agree to it. They probably won't in reality, because the people taking the risk would be correct in saying they deserve a bigger share. But still, the possibility is there.
And there we are again. Fairness. They all decide between themselves what's fair for them, just like they always have. You can enter into any kind of business contract you so wish to choose, provided it's within the legal boundaries, of course (goes without saying).
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
Now you're assuming the moral goodness of communism - a politico-economic ideology that advocates for theft and violence. Amazing. Utterly and stupefyingly amazing.
It's quite something how Marx put a spell on so many people the world over and charmed them with his nonsense (this tracks, if you accept the satanic roots of Marxism). I have to think you're fully on board with it yourself, else you wouln't be so fervently and staunchly advocating for it.
Is it true? Are you a full-blown communist at heart now?
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
Classism? Now you're just throwing shit out there and hoping something will stick. It wont, but the smell will still be there.
Class differences are emergent in capitalism (not a feature), but that remains a farcry from
classism, which is active prejudice and discrimination based on class.
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.
You just implied that being pro-capitalist means you're pro-feudalist, pro-slavery, and pro-colonialism. You truly went full-retard here.
Or are you merely resorting to attempts at character assassination now? I don't believe in any of those things. But you already knew that and wanted to try and put me on the defensive backpedal with those insinuations.
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.
If by classism you're referring to the fact that there exists classes in societies, then this will be true in all economic and political systems. If you by classism, you mean the primary definition - prejudice and discrimination based on class - then you're inserting your own assumption of prejudice and discrimination where (by default) there is none.
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.
I don't, but I'd like to see where you take these strawmans.
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.
tl;dr: Be violent and steal shit, because you think it's unfair that others have more than you. Then turn around and claim that it was morally justfied, because unfair advantage 'n stuff.
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.
Yes, but not quite. Rules and laws imposed on the free market (regulation) do intentionally stifle and restrict it. This is always true, by definition, but also by the simple observation that the free market would be less free as a result (no shit, right?).
However, the rules are for the benefit of all (both in theory and in practice), black pilled cynicism on the realities of business and politics notwithstanding.
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're talking about crony capitalism there. The economic system is supposed to be subordinate to the political system, which is where things like the labor and consumer protection laws enter the picture to prevent the very thing you're mentioning, namely holding all of the power. You're forgetting that governments can and do put pressure on businesses quite frequently and do things like increase the minimum wage (before you say it, I'm already aware that it's not a livable in many cases).
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.
Being in competition to win is not intrinsically evil. You can win by being good, evil, or morally neutral. Morality is irrelevant within the confines of the game. Making the best decisions to win (within the rules of the game, it must be especially noted) shouldn't be morally apologetic, as morality has no right to demand an answer from it, but people (yourself and many others) continue to insist on superimposing moral valuations on game-theoretical utility maximization.
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.
Oh no, they are most definitely being exploited and not just in the way I've been conveying it. In this particular instance the exploitation would be unfair, and thus unethical. The way in which the exploitation remains fair is if the employers respect the workers' rights and don't take advantage of the workers' ignorance of their own worker's rights.
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.
Top fucking KEK, but just so we're clear, White people poor and Brown people poor are very much not the same. That absolutely includes street shitting.
Oh let me correct myself. Historical advantages of colonialism do factor into it.
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"
OK, but we're talking about words here. Words contain concepts, traits, and descriptions, which make up their definitions. When you use the word "extortion" that word has a very specific meaning, which involves criminal use of force to take people's property against their will (kind of - no, a
LOT like taxes).
You can't just make up your own definitions for existing words and use them as you see fit. That's what these woke, SJW, gender bender faggots do. Don't be like them.
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.
Black slaves is your other example of exploitative and fair? Is that your final answer? You can phone a friend or ask the audience.
Thank you.
But Capitalism in itself is an alienating force.
Yes.
Under Capitalism, it's every man for himself. And the only thing binding them into any kind of collaboration or solidarity is money.
Yes.
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.
Yes.
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.
Perhaps.
You can observe that alienating lonely misery in this very forum.
Yes, there's a very interesting parallel between the wealth accumulation and relative wealth disparity between the ultra rich and the middle/poor class compared to the accumulation of sexual interest and attraction disparity between chads and us here.
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.
I see. Well, just so we're clear, for the record, let it be known, as God is my witness, I'm not a classist. I don't believe that rich people are superior for being rich and should be treated better by virtue of being rich, and I don't believe that poor people are inferior for being poor and should be treated worse by virtue of being poor.
That is classism.
It's always better to ask questions than load up the assumption gun and fire away.
