Kavekk wrote:
Under capitalism, slave labour and machine runtime both have monetary value. When sold, the price of these commodities is fixed in exactly the same way as that of a free person's labour - supply and demand. Capitalists will pay as little as possible for any of these things. Slave labour might be cheaper or more expensive than the labour of a free person, but the assignation of value itself does not distinguish them in any way. The distinction between the two, under capitalism, is that a free person sells their own labour, whereas a slave's labour is sold or consumed by their master.
As a quick aside, I don't know that's it's really accurate to say "capitalism" does this. IMO, that's just a function of human nature in any sort of economic system. Every system we've ever tried ultimately includes humans and human choices, and humans are innately greedy. I'd argue that all economic systems involve people attempting to gain as much as possible for themselves or their families while expending the least amount of cost/effort.
Capitalism is more about the idea of utilizing capital investments as a means of increasing total productivity of the economy, thus increasing the total size of the economic pie. It attempts to actually use human "greed" as a means of growing the economy. And yes, as a result "the rich" get richer relative to "the poor". But the poor tend to do better than any alternative system that attempts to ignore human greed when setting the rules. A system based on wishful thinking isn't going to work. It might sound good in some kind of altruistic way to pretend that an entire society of people would just all magically choose of their own free wills to engage in exactly the right ratio of labor needed for society to thrive, but in the real world we live in something has to make people do what is needed. Ultimately there are two ways to do this:
1. Allow the market (and human greed) to solve the problem. If things are needed at a quantity greater than they are available, the price will rise. If a profit motive is allowed and encouraged, this will result in profit seekers filling that demand. Thus, human greed is used to ensure that the needs of the society are met. The same forces work in the labor market. Different types of labor aren't valued differently because there's some evil people making it so, but because the actual ratio of need to availability of that particular labor makes it so. While not perfect, it's much better than the alternative IMO.
2. Force people to do the labor that is needed (command style economy). This is basically the alternative to a free market. You may trick people into adopting this sort of system by making them think that you're eliminating greed/profit/whatever, but someone has to build the houses you live in, and grow the food, stock the shelves, transport the goods, mine the ore, etc, etc, etc. And they have to do that in the correct amounts needed. In the absence of a free market with supply/demand forces incentivizing people to do whatever work is needed you must have an authoritarian system that forces people to do those things.
I tend to prefer option 1. I think most (all?) of us do. But sometimes we get so caught up in demonizing profits and/or greed that we forget that these are not necessarily bad things. We have to compare an imperfect economic system to other equally (more IMO) imperfect ones and make a decision. It's a terrible mistake to only look at the flaws of a free market because you run the risk of choosing the non-free alternative without even realizing that you're making a choice. Don't just fight against something. Fight *for* an alternative. And know what that alternative is.
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Capitalism does result (or 'require') in the assignation of an exchange value to labour, but there is nothing in this valuation that humanises the labourer or differentiates them from a machine.
Yup. I don't want you to think I'm disagreeing with your sentiment here. Just trying to clarify something. Human greed is not a feature of capitalism. It exists just as much in any economic system we might devise. The difference is how that greed manifests, and whether it results in positive or negative outcomes.
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Labour's true value is determined solely by the labourer? That's not an economic theory that gbaji would have ran into in school or much of anywhere else.
I'm well aware of the theory. I just disagree with it vehemently. Actually, it's more than that. It's a theory that is basically a lie. The laborer is *never* the sole determiner of his wages. Ever. It's a lie to think that if we eliminate the employers role in determining wages that this means that the laborer will make that determination. The correct choice is between opposing supply/demand forces of worker and employer in a free labor market on one hand, versus an authoritarian force imposing costs for labor on the other. The worker doesn't set his wages in the second case. The government (or whatever authority we empower to do this) does. The union worker doesn't set his wages. The union does. He's not empowered at all. It's a dreadful mistake (or lie to gain support I suppose) to think or argue differently.
You cannot eliminate the free market method of determining wages and retain the laborers power to influence his own wage. One is part of the other. The laborer is half of the free market methodology. If you eliminate the other half, you must eliminate his power as well. I don't think I can emphasize this enough. You're not fighting to free the workers here (I'm using "you" broadly here btw). You're fighting to eliminate both workers influence and power and the employers and hand that power to some other authority. There's a whole range of different outcomes we can imagine would or could result from that, and I don't want to get bogged down arguing all of those, but specifics aside what you accomplish when you attempt to impose labor costs different than what the market will generate, you are empowering whomever makes that decision and *not* the workers.
So now, instead of the value others place on your labor determining what you get paid, the government makes that decision. It will decide the relative value of a burger flipper and a dressmaker, or a firefighter and a teacher. Nothing in that process results in greater power or freedom for the workers. That's the big lie to this whole thing.
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And, if you'll forgive me, 'businesses pay people less than they think they're worth' packs a good deal less rhetorical force than 'businesses pay people less than they're worth'.
/shrug. I'd say that while there will always be specific anomalies within the economy, when looked at as a whole, the amount businesses pay their workers is exactly the right amount. It has to be. As long as there are market forces pressuring businesses to keep costs down, and forces pressuring workers to attempt to earn as high a wages as possible, the results will on average be correct. Obviously, that doesn't mean that that guy right there is being paid a fair wage. Lots of people are underpaid at any given time, and lots of people are overpaid at any given time. But on balance, the labor market as a whole (actually in any given sector of the market) must be correctly valued. Because a free market automatically accounts for imbalance. A labor sector which is overpaid will result in more workers seeking those jobs. Increased supply of labor in that sector will reduce the wages paid. Similarly, if a sector is underpaid, people will leave it and work in other sectors, resulting in decreased supply and increased wages. If the wages in a given sector settle at a given rate, it's because that's what the market has settled on as the "true relative value" of that labor. That's not wrong. It's exactly right.
And, as I've tried to explain many times, while it's not absolutely perfect in all cases, it is still by far the best way to do this.
Yeah, veered far far off the "contribution to society" bit, but I do feel that this is an important point to make. You can't reject one half of a free market and think that the other half can remain intact and "free". It just doesn't work that way.