Untitled Document
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Favorite media :3 |
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Poorly Planned Comics |
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BoJack Horseman |
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Xavier: Renegade Angel |
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Tamala 2010 |
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WWIII |
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The House That Jack Built |
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Cows (Stokoe) |
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GutterLove |
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Gezebelle Gaburgably |
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Steakfry |
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AJJ |
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Dayz N Daze |
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DNI if you're... |
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British |
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Stupid |
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Profit is Theft
Imagine you work in a fridge factory. You work for 8 hours a day, and get paid 80 dollars a day for your labor. This labor creates some value, which is why the capitalist is paying for it (were it not for your labor, the fridge would not exist, and would simply be a pile of materials). Now, imagine the capitalist pays for some new fancy machine that can make fridges twice as fast. Amazing! Now you can produce the same product in half the time, so that what used to be 8 hours of labor can now be done in 4. But you don't get half the hours or double the pay. Your pay remains 80 dollars and you do 8 hours of labor. So if you're producing more but didn't get more money, where did the money go? The answer is that the capitalist extracted it from you. You see, what the capitalist does is purchase your labor for the exchange-value. He pays you the 80 dollars, a price determined by the market prices of labor (and minimum wages laws), for your labor. He then orders you to exert your labor in the fridge factory. Let's say that you build 8 fridges in one day. The materials that make up the fridge cost $200, the electricity to run the machines cost $10, and the cost of distribution (the cost to get the fridge to consumers) is $90. The cost of the machines used was $20,000, and the capitalist knows that they will need to be replaced eventually, so he sets aside $100 per fridge sold for the eventual purpose of replacing the machinery necessary to build the fridges. This brings the total non-labor cost to $500, and if we add in the wages the capitalist pays to you, it's $580. However, the capitalist then goes to sell the fridges on the market, and he sells them for $1,000 each. The capitalist pockets $420 (heh) dollars from doing... what exactly? You are the one who created the value. You have been paid, not according to the value you created, but according to the market value of your labor. Had you been paid according to the value you created, you would have been rewarded with $500. You turned a pile of materials and resources worth $500 and turned them into something worth $1,000. You have clearly created this value, and yet you are not paid for it. The capitalist steals this value from you by paying you a flat wage. This is illustrated in the example of the labor-saving machine. Despite becoming more productive, and therefore producing more value, you are paid the exact same. Profits are the unpaid wages of the working class. (For a non-rant version of this concept, read "Wage Labor and Capital" by Karl Marx).
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People I Like |
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| Stirner |
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| Kaczynski |
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| Marx |
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| Cioran |
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