Theory Thursday

TT17@lemmygrad.ml · 1 year ago

Theory Thursday

TT17@lemmygrad.ml · 1 year ago

Answer:

As we’ve seen so far wages are determined by technology, the cost of labor/production, the cost of keeping the species alive, and the general prosperity of the capitalist.
It just means the general well being of the population of their respective country. I live in the imperial core, so yes the standard of living has risen pretty drastically over 100 years. This is mostly due to unequal exchange via the forced colonization/exploitation/extraction of colonized group’s labor/resources in both the imperial core and the global south.
The capitalist keeps workers busy for prolonged periods of time, well beyond the amount needed to cover their wages. This is the way capitalists squeeze every drop of labor-power out of it’s workers for maximum profits for the capitalist.
The gap between rich and poor has drastically widened since the implementation of Reaganomics of the 80’s. While this has always been the case, it’s gotten particularly bad since then. Differences among the ‘working class’ here has been amplified as well, with more people falling into desperation and poverty over the years. Basic necessities for survival are becoming more out of reach for your average person, including access to food, water, and shelter.
I’m going to let Marx answer this one: “The selling price of the commodities produced by the worker is divided, from the point of view of the capitalist, into three parts: First, the replacement of the price of the raw materials advanced by him, in addition to the replacement of the wear and tear of the tools, machines, and other instruments of labor likewise advanced by him; Second, the replacement of the wages advanced; and Third, the surplus leftover – i.e., the profit of the capitalist. While the first part merely replaces previously existing values, it is evident that the replacement of the wages and the surplus (the profit of capital) are as a whole taken out of the new value, which is produced by the labor of the worker and added to the raw materials. And in this sense we can view wages as well as profit, for the purpose of comparing them with each other, as shares in the product of the worker.” This answer explains why the capitalist gets surplus profit, and thus becomes rich via exploitation. It doesn’t cover bankers, landlords, or stock-brokers, who get rich via siphoning off and the swindling of the wages from the workers.
The cotton gin is a very tragic, but great example of this process. With the introduction of the cotton gin, it greatly lowered the labor-power necessary for production, and lowered the price of cotton on the market. Thereby increasing profits for the plantation owners, caused rapid expansion of the slave trade, and textile industry. The vast political/moral consequences and human devastation caused from this are ongoing.
I’m not entirely sure what this question has to do with the reading. Marx makes no distinction between ‘labor/capital intensive’ industries in the chapter. If I were to guess, I’d say that construction would be an example of a ‘labor intensive’ industry. While being a landlord or realtor would be an example of a ‘capital intensive’ industry. Automation of grocery store checkouts would be an example of a labor intensive industry switching into a more capital intensive industry. Meanwhile you could make the argument that the increase of automation has increased the need for workers to maintain the machines, thus turning it from a capital intensive industry into a labor intensive one. Might be a stretch but those were the best examples I could think of off of the top of my head.
Seizing the means of production and general redistribution under a worker run state.
I’d say ‘that’s interesting, please face the wall now’. Jokes aside, there is no correlation between rising wages and inflation. Nor will the capitalist pay a ton of money to move production somewhere else over a mild increase in wages. Capital flight will only happen if they fear losing everything, or if the cost of production is vastly cheaper somewhere else. Raising the minimum wage by a dollar won’t cause capital flight.
Socialism is about human empowerment, eliminating surplus profit from the capitalist and giving back the worker the value they created is directly related to socialism. I would chuckle and say that your status has nothing to do with how much money you posses. Rather it’s about your relationship to the means of production, and workers should be entitled to the value they create via their labor-power. If somebody robs me of my possessions, would it be greedy to take back what is rightfully yours?
It doesn’t, early on in the reading he makes this distinction between labor and labor-power. Using my answer from last time: Labor is when you do work in general. Labor-power is a commodity that you sell to a capitalist in exchange for wages. If I labor to make a pizza at home then sell that pizza to a buyer, that would be an example of me ‘selling my labor’. If I were to go to the capitalist pizza shop owner and agree to make pizza for them, for a certain amount of time, for a fixed wage. This would be an example of me ‘selling my labor power’ as a commodity to the capitalist.

Anarcho-Bolshevik@lemmygrad.ml · edit-2 1 year ago

Answer:

‘Prior to 1925, [Korean] public works offices within city and regional governments carried out their construction projects by contracting out to sub‐contractors. […] The more complex the division of labor and the network of primary and secondary sub‐contractors, the more the real wages fell below the nominal wage.’ — Ken C. Kawashima, The Proletarian Gamble: Korean Workers in Interwar Japan
Standard of living means the accessibility to goods and services that promote a healthier, happier life. Due to technology and some concessions to the lower classes, such as social security and the rarity of child labor, I’d say that overall there has been some increase in the standard of living for those of us in Imperial America.
Fewer hours reduces profits for the capitalists, whereas more hours increases profits for them. ‘Koreans […] did not work in capital‐intensive, large‐scale factories, but rather in labor‐intensive, small‐ and medium‐sized factories (chūshō kigyō) that employed fewer than 30 workers, and often in factories with fewer than 10 workers (reisai kigyō). These factories had little capital to invest in advanced technology; profits therefore stemmed from the workers’ long working hours and cheap wages.’ — Ken C. Kawashima, The Proletarian Gamble: Korean Workers in Interwar Japan
Yes, and so is the inequality between white and black proletarians.
Profits come from selling more and more crap while giving the workers less and less. For example, ‘[i]n May 1940 the ghetto governor Hans Biebow ordered that factories be set up, where the workers would be paid soup and bread. The Lódz ghetto turned a profit of about 350 million Reichsmarks ($140 million). It made so much money for the [Fascists] that it survived the longest of the ghettos under [Fascism], for even the [Fascists] were sometimes prepared to defer mass extermination of Jews as long as it remained profitable.’ — Adam LeBor, Schicklgruber’s Secret Bankers
See the introduction of the Krupp–Renn process in the Empire of Japan. ‘Sometime before the autumn of 1938, [Krupp] sent Voss, a chief engineer, to Chongjin, and his job was to guide facilities construction and the start of operations. He was followed by two fitters and one kiln foreman, whose job was to give guidance regarding the start of operations and the handling of equipment thereafter.³⁴ Separately, Remag, a German subsidiary of Österreichische Magnesitwerke, sent one bricklayer.³⁵ Remuneration for the fitters was based on a rate written into the technology introduction contract and was paid in accordance with the number of hours worked, while the wage for the kiln foreman was fixed at a daily rate of 4 pounds sterling (about 70 yen).’ — Kudō Akira, Japanese–German Business Relations
Labor‐intensive industries favor the use of manual or ‘blue collar’ workers, whereas capital‐intensive industries focus on finances and favor ‘white collar’ workers. ‘[T]he Mitteleuropäische Wirtschaftstag aimed to shift Southeastern Europe into more labor‐intensive cash crops for export, such as soybeans. […] German economists similarly saw Serbians, Croatians, and Romanians as capable of “bearing any burden,” perfectly suited for producing the labor‐intensive goods like soybeans and wheat that Germany’s capital‐intensive economy so desperately needed in the 1930s.¹³’ — Stephen G. Gross, Export Empire
Laborers striking en masse for better wages. Because they put a halt to production, eventually the capitalist must accede to their demands.
‘Although minimum wage increases are expected to increase prices, the magnitude of price increase depends on several factors such as the demand elasticity and competition degree (Aaronson 2001). A strong effect of minimum wages on inflation is not always found in empirical studies.’
The struggles for higher wages relates to socialism (that is, capitalism’s negation) in that the goal is to enhance the standard of living for ordinary people. Equating the struggle for higher wages with the accumulation of capital is a false equivalence because higher wages are necessary for living the modern world, whereas capital is doomed to disappear because it inhibits the lives of the proletariat.
For workers paid on the basis of products or services finished rather than time, their wages may be a little closer in value to the products or services, but still inferior. (I know that this is a simplistic and inadequate reply, but at this point I’m exhausted.)

I feel dissatisfied with this comment, but I hope that it is better than nothing.

afellowkid@lemmygrad.ml · 1 year ago

Regarding your announcement–thank you OP for starting up this project, I looked forward to it each week that it went on, and appreciated seeing everyone’s reflections on the texts. I also liked the simple format and gradual pace. I hope everything works out well with your IRL needs and commitments. Take care!

My study response–As last week I found myself unable to answer the study questions quickly enough, I am going to go with a bit more of a free-form response this time so I don’t end up taking too long to participate. And since I barely participated last thread, I’m just going to make my reply this time be about the text as a whole.

If anyone sees errors in my response, please let me know. I’m not trying to write authoritatively but rather to check my understanding and see whether I can summarize a few of the major points.

Response

I think a quote from early on in this work seems to summarize one of the major points Marx is making throughout the text. He writes: “If the silk-worm’s object in spinning were to prolong its existence as caterpillar, it would be a perfect example of a wage-worker.” (Ch. 2)

In other words, it’s as if a silk-worm is spinning not to become a moth, but to just keep spinning and spinning, generating silk indefinitely to remain a caterpillar indefinitely. I believe Marx is likening this to the process of the wage-worker surrendering their value-creating labor-power to the capitalist class, whose interest it is to make this relationship become only more deeply entrenched and prolonged, and therefore uses the value generated by the worker’s surrendered labor-power to deepen and expand the system of wage-labor under bourgeois dictatorship. As the silk-worm metaphor implies, this is not the most sensible way of doing things from a worker’s perspective. Normally, the silk worm would spin its silk to then use it to eventually undergo transformation into a moth. Likewise, it’s implied that a worker would use their labor-power to create value the worker themself can actually access and benefit from, bringing a transformation in the mode of production, bringing society to a new stage.

In Chapter 8, Marx talks about the implications of the worker’s real wages versus the worker’s relative wages. Speaking of rises in real wages over time, Marx writes: “the more speedily the worker augments the wealth of the capitalist, the larger will be the crumbs which fall to him”–however, even if real wages are rising with profits, when we look at relative wages, we see “a widening of the social chasm that divides the worker from the capitalist, and increase in the power of capital over labour, a greater dependence of labour upon capital.” (Ch. 8) As usual, Marx is calling our attention to the relationships between things. Rather than just look at a line representing real wages go up, we need to pay attention to the growing gap between wages and profits and the implication that this has for the relative social positions of workers and capitalists:

If capital grows rapidly, wages may rise, but the profit of capital rises disproportionately faster. The material position of the worker has improved, but at the cost of his social position. The social chasm that separates him from the capitalist has widened. (Ch. 8)

Toward the end of this work, in the end of Chapter 8 and throughout Chapter 9, Marx turns his attention to explaining the overall effects that the growth of productive capital has on wages, the need for expanded markets, and on causing the competition between workers to intensify:

This war [of capitalists among themselves] has the peculiarity that the battles in it are won less by recruiting than by discharging the army of workers. The generals [the capitalists] vie with one another as to who can discharge the greatest number of industrial soldiers.

[…] The more productive capital grows, the more it extends the division of labour and the application of machinery; the more the division of labour and the application of machinery extend, the more does competition extend among the workers, the more do their wages shrink together. […] the forest of outstretched arms, begging for work, grows ever thicker, while the arms themselves grow ever leaner.

…I have spent more time on this than I originally meant to, and so I need to end here. As I mentioned above, please point out any errors in my understanding, as this is just me writing to try and see whether I understood the text well or not and whether I could identify (some) of the text’s main points.

Thanks again OP, I’m glad you started this study group.