Is anyone here familiar with the Marxist argument that workers are entitled to a share of the employers' profits because they are being exploited, i.e. are not being properly compensated for their contribution?
Phaedros:Just because you say it's a non-sequitor
But it is a non-sequitur. Can you explain how it logically follows? If it's not a non-sequitur you might as well get started with an explanation. The car example makes no sense whatsoever. I already provided several examples of where a laborer can and often does share in the interest recieved in a given production period. How many ways do you want me to explode the fallacy?
Phaedros:The OP is asking whether or not the worker is exploited because they are not justly compensated
Correct. Please do some reading.
If your going to respond to me and critique me please first review the literature I provided you. It's not long.
I told you how it follows. You don't understand it at its most basic level.
Flic, you're loosing me. Aren't wages set by supply and demand?
Yes, money is money, so what?
If the owner of the capital wants to share his profit, he is free to do so, he has no obligation.
Worker get's payed to work on someone else's investment.He get's payed to do mediocre things, like cleaning shelves at walmart or being a cashier. He did not invest in walmart himself, if he did (via shares) then he would have gotten his return on investement. I don't think this should get complicated.
I have nothing againts co-ops, as long as it's voluntary where both parties agree on. I personally think that they are a useless and primitive form of wealth redistribution.
I think that article is dealing primarily with this thought experiment, "In other words, Böhm-Bawerk will now proceed to show that even if we restrict ourselves to cases where labor is the only scarce resource used in the production of a certain good, the exploitation theory is still faulty."
In other words, aside from the fact that the labor theory of value is incorrect and that wages are determined by supply and demand, etc. we can still show that the exploitation theory is wrong.
Flic: But it is a non-sequitur. Can you explain how it logically follows? If it's not a non-sequitur you might as well get started with an explanation. The car example makes no sense whatsoever. I already provided several examples of where a laborer can and often does share in the interest recieved in a given production period. How many ways do you want me to explode the fallacy?
No one was talking about stock options. The idea behind "workers owning the means of production" can be explained like this:
You (flic)Flic own a factory, you payed for everything, it is your property. I Drewie, Nero, Phaedros and hundreds of others are your personal "wage slaves". One day we all decide to do a revolution,mkay...., and take your property because you aren't working and earning more then us. Thus we all get EQUAL SHARES, no 5%, no10%, EQUAL. You also cannot sell your share. We all EQUALLY own the factory.lol.
This has nothing to do with co-ops in capitalism.
Drewie Brando: Flic, you're loosing me. Aren't wages set by supply and demand? Yes, money is money, so what?
As stated for the 3rd time now? THe point is it has nothing to do with the OP. Why are you going off on a side tangent? Who is arguing over how wage rates are set? (Not me)
My apologies then.
Phaedros: I told you how it follows. You don't understand it at its most basic level.
Where? In your Car analogy? I imagine publicly traded companies are very confusing for you then.
@ Everyone else. Look, I don't have time to bicker with everyone tonight and defend Bohm-Bawerks critique. If you think his arguments are inadequate please stop pestering me and make another post about it.
@the OP. This post is directed at the OP. You came to an Austrian Economics forum. If you want an actual Austrian Economists response to the Exploitation Theory as put forwarded by Marx please see Eugene von Bohm-Bawerk's Economics Capital and Interest, a Critical History of Economical Theory. This is as close to an official Austrian response you can get(Right from the economists own writing).
Otherwise your left with armchair theorizers fumbling through their own reasoning.
Given that you might not want to purchase the book and read the whole thing I would suggest googling him. You will find many Austrian Economists reflect on Bawerk's literature paraphrasing much of what he wrote. Bohm-Bawerk is popular enough amongst the Austrian community that he's pretty well known, understood, and written about.
You might also find some good stuff on his author page here on the Mises website. Bob Murphy has also occasionally written about exploitation theory, you can find many of his articles here as well.
There is also this.
Profts in the Marxist sense: "capitalist profit is the extraction of surplus value from the exploited proletariat", where the implied proper value I assume means what the product fetches on the market and where "surplus" means "more than that".
Not that this is the point, but I'd be interested to hear a Marxist's answer as to whether, then, workers should be entitled to share in the employer's losses as well. Or is it that they are only being--can only be--exploited if profits exist? If that is so: then when losses occur doesn't it then mean that the workers are exploiting the capitalist? Isn't the capitalist now entitled to share in the profits of the workers?
Profts in this sense: "proletarian profit is the extraction of surplus value from the exploited capitalist", where the proper value is what labor fetches on the market (and paid by the capitalist) and where "surplus" means "more than that".
Am I sitting on a logical fallacy here?
I don't know why I didn't respond to the response to me, in this thread. I must have lost it in time..
Either way; workers are not "entitled to a share in profits" according to Marxist, and general socialist, theory. In fact, profit cannot exist without the capitalist/worker relationship. "Profit" in the socialist sense is not simply a positive income/expense ratio for the business. "Profit" is the income claimed by the capitalist after such ratios have been established.
As long as the capitalist/worker framework exists, workers are entitled only to what they can bargain from their employer; which is why the capitalist system must be wholly abolished according to Marxism, and why mutualims, the USSR, and free market libertarianism are all just seperate forms of capitalism (Capitalism being defined by the rule of capital, or more specifically the holders of capital as a class; or generalized commodity production).
There can be no "proletarian profits" as the concept is wholly absurd... at least defined as it is by Marxists and general socialists. Surplus != profits.
A marketplace full of cooperatives, tho from a prole perspective would probably be far more accomodating than current capitalism, is still just capitalism. The workers are now the capitalists. Production is still based on exchangeability, not need. And whether or not specific workers run their workplace, workers as a class are still under the domination of capital.
So...
They're not being exploited because they recieve an unequal share in income. They are being exploited because they are alienated ; sort-of like how slaves aren't exploited because the slaver takes their wealth, they are exploited because they have no freedom to decide for themselves. Wage laborers are in a similar, if less extreme, situation, in which their entire livelihood and contribution are tied to their labor; having no "property" with which to claim as their own. (Of course, we are not defining property as possession and control (which a theif has, you wouldn't consider a thief's possessions as property tho), but as a specific legal title to monopoly status over the direction of that property).
First, did he not sign a contract, meaning voluntarily? [And I hope we agree the old "What should the poor worker do? Starve?" argument is fallacious. Symbiotic relationship is the way to look at it] Second, do not most people prefer it that way
It depends on how we're defining voluntarily. Slaves and serfs could often buy their way into free men. Were they, then, voluntary slaves and serfs? I would say it is easily apparent that most people do not want it that way, seeing as how the few that do almost universally stop being wage laborers the moment they are financially able to (and either retire, become salaried, or become capitalists).
The "sic" is about your "risk free" assertion. In reality he is at just as much if not greater risk than his boss. The capitalist loses $250k, and this is bad for him, sure. But he still has $x in his bank account, etc. I mean, some capitalist go belly up when their business fails, but not many. If the business goes under, the worker loses all his money (assuming he lives paycheck to paycheck), or at least his financial stability, and must now begin the long and greuling process of finding a job that provides for him as good or better than his last job.
i. Playing a game of chance with immediate payoff involves risk, but not getting paid earlier than one should. Meaning we have a case of the second concept [bird in the hand] and not the first [gimme now]. So that the worker, if he is in an industry that sells its product the moment it is produced, or not at all, has benefit the second even if he doesn't have the first. He gets paid win or lose.
i. Playing a game of chance with immediate payoff involves risk, but not getting paid earlier than one should. Meaning we have a case of the second concept [bird in the hand] and not the first [gimme now].
So that the worker, if he is in an industry that sells its product the moment it is produced, or not at all, has benefit the second even if he doesn't have the first. He gets paid win or lose.
He doesnt' get paid at all if the business goes under.
Regardless, this is more of a symptom than the illness itself. The illness is "capital:" private ownership (as opposed to reasonable and accountable possession and control). Capitalists are merely the beneficiaries of the real exploiter, which is the legal establishment of capital. Entrepreneur with ideas are not necessarily capitalists, and often just as exploited by capital as workers. Your whole reasoning for "why he is not exploited" rests on the assumption of the existence of capital, and therefore assumes its consequence (and is fallacious, but I'm sure I didn't need to explain that).
But... alas... now that I have read the thread further, I see that Nero and Filc have explained my position for me: that workers and capitalist don't "share profits," and that if they did the workers are just capitalists, not workers.
is that labor is a commodity whose price is determined on the market.
Labor cannot be a commodity. It cannot be produced simply for its aiblity to be explained (it can't really be produced or exchanged at all. It is, in fact, the producer and exchanger). The "price" that is determined on the market is a worker's labor time, not her labor.
So we can see that:
If labor is a commodity whose price is determined by supply and demand then whatever a laborer chooses to work for is the "just price" and therefore they are duly compensated.
Is not true. But again, exploitation theory is not about who gets paid what. It's about who controls what.
In States a fresh law is looked upon as a remedy for evil. Instead of themselves altering what is bad, people begin by demanding a law to alter it. ... In short, a law everywhere and for everything!
~Peter Kropotkin
There can be no "proletarian profits" as the concept is wholly absurd...at least defined as it is by Marxists and general socialists
Well that was the point of my post (because the concept is also completely absurd in non-Marxist circles). I was implying that something was gravely wrong with the formulation and terms of the original question.
On a second reading of the OP though, I wonder if maybe he was referring to a social-democrat as opposed to a full on socialist...
Marxism has a distorted concept of labour. However there is nothing stopping a company owner from offering such incentive schemes to their workers, if left to the free market these sorts of incentives can exist. They don't necessarily require a union or a government law or collective form of coercion for it to exist either. These sorts of incentive schemes can exist to give the employer a competitive advanage over the competition by enticing the most skilled workers to his company over another company that does not offer such a generous incentive scheme.
NEPHiLiX: There can be no "proletarian profits" as the concept is wholly absurd...at least defined as it is by Marxists and general socialists Well that was the point of my post (because the concept is also completely absurd in non-Marxist circles). I was implying that something was gravely wrong with the formulation and terms of the original question. On a second reading of the OP though, I wonder if maybe he was referring to a social-democrat as opposed to a full on socialist...
Alas, they almost always are
Wage laborers are in a similar, if less extreme, situation, in which their entire livelihood and contribution are tied to their labor; having no "property" with which to claim as their own.
1. ...having no property...
I don't get this. Wage laborers cannot and do not own houses and cars and clothing and shares of stock? We must be talking about different wage laborers than the ones I know. Those guys own plenty of stuff.
2. ...they are alienated...their entire livelihood and contribution are tied to their labor...
I imagine being "alienated" is bad thing. So that a capitalist, as opposed to a wage laborer, is in a good situation, one that the alienated wage laborers should aspire to so they can stop feeling alienated and being enslaved.
But socialists want everyone to be alienated and enslaved. They don't anyone to own anything.
3. Production is still based on exchangeability, not need.
Sadly, when I asked a prominent socialist here about my needs for a yacht to be hand washed every day by others and set aside for my exclusive use, [and I may as well add my need for a harem full of dancing girls and the Taj Mahal to live in, indeed my need for a continent, nay a planet, of my own], he got very emotional. He tried to explain that I have to grow up and that I don't really need all that stuff, that I am being [and i assume he meant this in the best possible way] a childish baby saying I need all that stuff. He recommended that I grow up.
I replied that he had earlier stipulated that under socialism, my needs will be self determined. Why is he now saying that my self determined needs are not needs at all?
For some reason, he did not reply to this, but left the forum in a huff, and by "huff" I mean a flood of insults aimed in my direction.
Who, in your version of socialism, decides what I need? Me? Will I get my planet then, all to myself? I need Earth, by the way.
Or will you decide for me? If so, will I also get to decide what you need? Can we do a deal here? You decide I need half of Earth, and i'll decide you need the other half, with everyone else needing nothing but to serve the two of us.
4. "Profit" in the socialist sense is not simply a positive income/expense ratio for the business. "Profit" is the income claimed by the capitalist after such ratios have been established.
I call BS. Where did Marx or anyone else, make this distinction? And given that this distinction exists, how do we know that what you call "profit in the socialist sense" exists at all? I claim that the only thing there is, is a positive income/expense ratio. What is your proof otherwise?
Not only that, where does the posistive income/expense ratio come from, according to the labor theory of value?
What I see here is a feeble attempt to rewrite a provenly false and absurd doctrine to fit the facts a little better. Socialist Russia was a disaster, in human as well as economic terms? Well, that's because it was capitalism running the show there. How ridiculous.
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