US Politics Feedback Thread - Page 289

On May 14 2020 15:28 Sermokala wrote:
Wow I really don't think anyone could describe the problems with the thread these days better then just showing this page and the one before.

I gotta be honest is there really any reason to keep it open at this point? Everyone is just so hateful and bitter towards even the approaches to discussion. What positive experience can anyone get at this point?

On May 14 2020 15:30 Nebuchad wrote:


You saw Jimmi answer 75% of my posts with bile and nonsense for months and you didn't speak up, none of you did. I'm allowing myself one night of answering his BS. Let me have this, then I'll go back to ignoring him (and not post in the thread for a while).

On May 14 2020 15:34 Sermokala wrote:

You are bargaining with indulging something that you clearly aren't getting a positive experience out of. I'm trying to save you and everyone else that's still posting in the thread from further harm.

On May 14 2020 15:40 JimmiC wrote:

No I'm not lying, you can be employed and not be exploited.

When he says "no point of working your ass off" he is talking about getting the capital to start his own shop. When he says" it won't be yours the moment you employ someone " he is talking about losing that capital he worked to hard to obtain.

He is stating that no one is going to Risk anything if there is not only very little chance of reward but also you are going to instantly lose a portion of it to each new employee.

On May 14 2020 16:09 Sermokala wrote:

The problem is that I don't think you're accepting that they have a different definition of the word exploit then you do. You need to accept that they have a non inherently negative definition for the term. Anything less then full value for their labor is "exploitation". Unless you meet the serious "eat the rich" people they're going to accept that some explotation is inevitable as people can't approach business relationships like that equally.

They aren't going to come out and say that they're political position ends at a compromise because that would be a show of weakness. You're never going to find the end of the rainbow in this discussion.

On May 14 2020 16:18 JimmiC wrote:

Full value of labour sounds like something very hard to define and even harder to get people to agree on. Which only gets more complicated once capital gets brought into the equation.

I have long since stopped searching for the pot of gold. No worries on that front.

On May 14 2020 18:54 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:

This is probably the biggest issue I have. A lot of us are arguing in good faith and are looking for workable solutions because it forces you to think hard about a lot of variables. And we're being met with derision. It's infuriating at times. But we've (mostly me I suppose) have come to accept it and ignore it.

I will say though. What an entertaining couple of pages. I had to skim most of it but shit...

On May 14 2020 19:44 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:

That's missing the entire point, but whatever. I said democratic socialism. That you infer I meant something different is on you.

On May 14 2020 20:33 farvacola wrote:
What is it I'm supposed to do, GH? Not clear on that point.

On May 14 2020 21:29 GreenHorizons wrote:

I think you are uniquely positioned to help bridge the communication gaps that are happening here and was hoping that excellent post from you was an indication that perhaps you could be cajoled into exerting that effort.

Otherwise I'd like to continue that discussion at our leisure in the thread but again fear it will trigger this kind of response (from others) again and don't want to needlessly antagonize the situation.

On May 14 2020 23:20 JimmiC wrote:

Exploitation has multiple definitions

1. the action or fact of treating someone unfairly in order to benefit from their work.
2. the action of making use of and benefiting from resources.

The reason I think he is using the first is because he also used the word parasite to describe this person.

Parasite - an organism that lives in or on an organism of another species (its host) and benefits by deriving nutrients at the other's expense.

If there is other definitions used then the ones commonly used it would helpful that people explained what the definition is.

Exploiters appropriate another's surplus labour, which is the amount of labour exceeding what is necessary for the reproduction of a worker's labour power and basic living conditions. In other terms, this entails the worker being able to maintain living conditions sufficient to be able to continue work. Marx does not attempt to tie this solely to capitalist institutions as he notes how historically, there are accounts of this appropriation of surplus labour in institutions with forced labour, like those based on slavery and feudal societies. However, the difference he emphasizes is the fact that when this appropriation of surplus labour occurs in societies like capitalist ones, it is occurring in institutions having abolished forced labour and resting on free labour.[1] This comes from Marx's labour theory of value which states that the exchange-value of a commodity is proportional to the socially necessary amount of labour time to produce the commodity.

Exploitation can be transactional or structural. In the former case, the unfairness is a property of a discrete transaction between two or more individuals. A sweatshop that pays low wages, for example, or a pharmaceutical research firm that tests drugs on poor subjects in the developing world, might be said to exploit others in this sense. But exploitation can also be structural—a property of institutions or systems in which the “rules of the game” unfairly benefit one group of people to the detriment of another. As we will see below, Karl Marx believed that the economic and political institutions of capitalism were exploitative in this sense.
[…]
By far the most influential theory of exploitation ever set forth is that of Karl Marx, who held that workers in a capitalist society are exploited insofar as they are forced to sell their labor power to capitalists for less than the full value of the commodities they produce with their labor.

For Marx, however, exploitation was a phenomenon that characterized all class-based societies, not only capitalism. Indeed, it is feudal society, not capitalism, where the exploitative nature of class relations is clearest. Under feudalism, it is readily apparent that serfs use some of their labor power for their own benefit, while another part (the corvée) is used for the benefit of the feudal lord. In contrast, under slavery workers appear to work entirely for the benefit of their masters (though in reality a part of their labor goes toward providing for their own subsistence). And under capitalism workers appear to work entirely for the benefit of themselves, selling their labor to capitalists as free independent contractors (Cohen 1978: 332–3).

In reality, Marx thought, workers’ labor under capitalism is neither truly voluntary nor entirely for the benefit of the workers themselves. It is not truly voluntary because workers are forced by their lack of ownership of the means of production to sell their labor power to capitalists or else starve. And workers are not laboring entirely for their own benefit because capitalists use their privileged position to exploit workers, appropriating for themselves some of the value created by workers’ labor.

Our capitalist stares in astonishment. The value of the product is exactly equal to the value of the capital advanced. The value so advanced has not expanded, no surplus-value has been created, and consequently money has not been converted into capital. The price of the yarn is fifteen shillings, and fifteen shillings were spent in the open market upon the constituent elements of the product, or, what amounts to the same thing, upon the factors of the labour-process; ten shillings were paid for the cotton, two shillings for the substance of the spindle worn away, and three shillings for the labour-power. The swollen value of the yarn is of no avail, for it is merely the sum of the values formerly existing in the cotton, the spindle, and the labour-power: out of such a simple addition of existing values, no surplus-value can possibly arise. [13] These separate values are now all concentrated in one thing; but so they were also in the sum of fifteen shillings, before it was split up into three parts, by the purchase of the commodities.

There is in reality nothing very strange in this result. The value of one pound of yarn being eighteenpence, if our capitalist buys 10 lbs. of yarn in the market, he must pay fifteen shillings for them. It is clear that, whether a man buys his house ready built, or gets it built for him, in neither case will the mode of acquisition increase the amount of money laid out on the house.

Our capitalist, who is at home in his vulgar economy, exclaims: “Oh! but I advanced my money for the express purpose of making more money.” The way to Hell is paved with good intentions, and he might just as easily have intended to make money, without producing at all. [14] He threatens all sorts of things. He won’t be caught napping again. In future he will buy the commodities in the market, instead of manufacturing them himself. But if all his brother capitalists were to do the same, where would he find his commodities in the market? And his money he cannot eat. He tries persuasion. “Consider my abstinence; I might have played ducks and drakes with the 15 shillings; but instead of that I consumed it productively, and made yarn with it.” Very well, and by way of reward he is now in possession of good yarn instead of a bad conscience; and as for playing the part of a miser, it would never do for him to relapse into such bad ways as that; we have seen before to what results such asceticism leads. Besides, where nothing is, the king has lost his rights; whatever may be the merit of his abstinence, there is nothing wherewith specially to remunerate it, because the value of the product is merely the sum of the values of the commodities that were thrown into the process of production. Let him therefore console himself with the reflection that virtue is its own reward. But no, he becomes importunate. He says: “The yarn is of no use to me: I produced it for sale.” In that case let him sell it, or, still better, let him for the future produce only things for satisfying his personal wants, a remedy that his physician MacCulloch has already prescribed as infallible against an epidemic of over-production. He now gets obstinate. “Can the labourer,” he asks, “merely with his arms and legs, produce commodities out of nothing? Did I not supply him with the materials, by means of which, and in which alone, his labour could be embodied? And as the greater part of society consists of such ne’er-do-wells, have I not rendered society incalculable service by my instruments of production, my cotton and my spindle, and not only society, but the labourer also, whom in addition I have provided with the necessaries of life? And am I to be allowed nothing in return for all this service?” Well, but has not the labourer rendered him the equivalent service of changing his cotton and spindle into yarn? Moreover, there is here no question of service. [15] A service is nothing more than the useful effect of a use-value, be it of a commodity, or be it of labour. [16] But here we are dealing with exchange-value. The capitalist paid to the labourer a value of 3 shillings, and the labourer gave him back an exact equivalent in the value of 3 shillings, added by him to the cotton: he gave him value for value. Our friend, up to this time so purse-proud, suddenly assumes the modest demeanour of his own workman, and exclaims: “Have I myself not worked? Have I not performed the labour of superintendence and of overlooking the spinner? And does not this labour, too, create value?” His overlooker and his manager try to hide their smiles. Meanwhile, after a hearty laugh, he re-assumes his usual mien. Though he chanted to us the whole creed of the economists, in reality, he says, he would not give a brass farthing for it. He leaves this and all such like subterfuges and juggling tricks to the professors of Political Economy, who are paid for it. He himself is a practical man; and though he does not always consider what he says outside his business, yet in his business he knows what he is about.

Let us examine the matter more closely. The value of a day’s labour-power amounts to 3 shillings, because on our assumption half a day’s labour is embodied in that quantity of labour-power, i.e., because the means of subsistence that are daily required for the production of labour-power, cost half a day’s labour. But the past labour that is embodied in the labour-power, and the living labour that it can call into action; the daily cost of maintaining it, and its daily expenditure in work, are two totally different things. The former determines the exchange-value of the labour-power, the latter is its use-value. The fact that half a day’s labour is necessary to keep the labourer alive during 24 hours, does not in any way prevent him from working a whole day. Therefore, the value of labour-power, and the value which that labour-power creates in the labour-process, are two entirely different magnitudes; and this difference of the two values was what the capitalist had in view, when he was purchasing the labour-power. The useful qualities that labour-power possesses, and by virtue of which it makes yarn or boots, were to him nothing more than a conditio sine qua non; for in order to create value, labour must be expended in a useful manner. What really influenced him was the specific use-value which this commodity possesses of being a source not only of value, but of more value than it has itself. This is the special service that the capitalist expects from labour-power, and in this transaction he acts in accordance with the “eternal laws” of the exchange of commodities. The seller of labour-power, like the seller of any other commodity, realises its exchange-value, and parts with its use-value. He cannot take the one without giving the other. The use-value of labour-power, or in other words, labour, belongs just as little to its seller, as the use-value of oil after it has been sold belongs to the dealer who has sold it. The owner of the money has paid the value of a day’s labour-power; his, therefore, is the use of it for a day; a day’s labour belongs to him. The circumstance, that on the one hand the daily sustenance of labour-power costs only half a day’s labour, while on the other hand the very same labour-power can work during a whole day, that consequently the value which its use during one day creates, is double what he pays for that use, this circumstance is, without doubt, a piece of good luck for the buyer, but by no means an injury to the seller.

On May 14 2020 21:41 iamthedave wrote:


I mean, it's mostly Jimmi who gets down your throat, but he'd likely do it if he spotted you saving cats from trees. "Look!" He'd proclaim, "GreenHorizons is advocating that cats should rise up and slaughter their owners!"

While you'd be all like "Nobody owns a cat dude. It was just... in a tree... and I thought I'd get it down."