What is the refutation of Marxian exploitation?
AnalyticalAnarchism.net - The Positive Political Economy of Anarchism
It's the refutation of the labor theory of value. The Marxist conception of exploitation depends on the idea that all of the value of a product comes from the labor that went into its use. Thus, a factory owner who sells the goods made in his factory for a profit is "stealing" the money from the workers. This idea completly falls apart when it is realized that value is marginal and agent-relative, and has nothing to do with the amount of labor put into it.
I do wonder how well that critique fares against the latest iteration of the LTV, a la Carson. Any ideas?
Market anarchist, Linux geek, aspiring Perl hacker, and student of the neo-Aristotelians, the classical individualist anarchists, and the Austrian school.
wombatron:It's the refutation of the labor theory of value. The Marxist conception of exploitation depends on the idea that all of the value of a product comes from the labor that went into its use. Thus, a factory owner who sells the goods made in his factory for a profit is "stealing" the money from the workers. This idea completly falls apart when it is realized that value is marginal and agent-relative, and has nothing to do with the amount of labor put into it.
The Marxist take value as absolute labor content of a good. Value is actually subjective. The workers prefer the wages more then having to release labor to the factory owner. I remember it from a sociology class. They also use other lingo something like subsumption of labor. Later I realized that there are many flaws of that theory.
1.) Assume the factory owner has to pay $800 for the labour and he gains a revenue of $1000. He makes a profit of $200. Now who gets exploited the workers or the customers that paid the $1000 for the goods.
2.) Imagine the (bread) factory owner won't pay the workers with all the bread they baked and not the wages in the form of money. Would they be happy about it?
So one could continue. In fact the workers accept the employment, because it is more beneficial to them then just leisure to them - So they are actually making a profit as well. Both sides, workers and factory owners benefit from social cooperation. The question would rather be whether the profits are "justly" distributed and how something like that is actually regulated (functioning - again this is about how we value goods). In fact the wages and income parity of workers did do increase during history. They got richer, while other people might have gotten even more richer.
wombatron:The Marxist conception of exploitation depends on the idea that all of the value of a product comes from the labor that went into its use.
To be more clear, what happened was that Adam Smith tried to tackle how prices came to be by how much labor was put into them. For many decades, prices were explained by labor theories of value. Guided with these theories, Marx saw exploitation because he thought consumers were paying in proportion to the labor input, yet the labor didn't seem to be getting its share -- instead the capitalists were absorving this price attributed to labor and would only pay workers their biological needs and the rest was explained by generosity (which he saw would be constantly diminishing because the permanent recessions and reductions of profits).
Someone that says that workers are exploited is a dummy in this day and age. With all the free enterprise and prosperity that even countries like mine here have, it's absolutely ridiculous this kind of communist rethoric. Anyway, there's still a lot of misunderstanding on how wages are set, and worse that government is a necessary force to "balance" them. I think a lot of people, see the employer as the too powerful party and that wages are set in part by generosity -- some business men are guilty of this view as well. They have no idea how the price of labor tends to occur, and no clue on the effects of tampering with it, or introducing labor regulations. They just figure somehow employers will deal with them -- maybe this steams from the fact people don't understand profits in the first place -- and don't see the effects on wages and employability.
Equality before the law and material equality are not only different but are in conflict with each other; and we can achieve either one or the other, but not both at the same time. -- F. A. Hayek in The Constitution of Liberty
Hoppe's article on this (Austrian and Marxist Class Theory IIRC) contains the answers to the question you ask.
-Jon
Freedom of markets is positively correlated with the degree of evolution in any society...
The Marxist conception of exploitation depends on the idea that all of the value of a product comes from the labor that went into its use.
instead the capitalists were absorving this price attributed to labor and would only pay workers their biological needs
February 17 - 1600 - Giordano Bruno is burnt alive by the catholic church. Aquinas : "much more reason is there for heretics, as soon as they are convicted of heresy, to be not only excommunicated but even put to death."
Rather than focusing on LTV vs STV, another way to look at the Marxian view of exploitation is through Class Stratification, which Marx delineates as the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, the labor/working class and the capitalist/owners respectively. From the Marx point of view, it is the bourgeoisie that exploits the proletariat.
Do we accept or reject the definitions outlined in Marx's view of Class Stratification?
I would contend that we reject the notion. From the Austrian perspective, people are treated as subjective individuals rather than lumped into a group.
ViennaSausage: Rather than focusing on LTV vs STV, another way to look at the Marxian view of exploitation is through Class Stratification, which Marx delineates as the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, the labor/working class and the capitalist/owners respectively. From the Marx point of view, it is the bourgeoisie that exploits the proletariat. Do we accept or reject the definitions outlined in Marx's view of Class Stratification? I would contend that we reject the notion. From the Austrian perspective, people are treated as subjective individuals rather than lumped into a group.
In the context of economics, yes, it is subjective and individual, but in the context of political philosophy and institutional analysis there most certainly is a class analysis to make. Marx's just happens to be wrong.
Brainpolice:in the context of political philosophy and institutional analysis there most certainly is a class analysis to make. Marx's just happens to be wrong.
How would an Austrian view class analysis with respect to institutional analysis and political philosophy?
ViennaSausage:How would an Austrian view class analysis with respect to institutional analysis and political philosophy?
There are two classes, the aggressor and the victim.
In the political sense that translates to the Government (parasites) and the Market (producers).
But I would say as far as societies go, anyone who intentially initiates force is in a class (they believe they are more elite/ entitled to scarce resources), and anyone who acts peacefully is in a class (they believe people all have equal rights to self determination and private ownership)
Not to forget this beauty...
Brainpolice:In the context of economics, yes, it is subjective and individual, but in the context of political philosophy and institutional analysis there most certainly is a class analysis to make. Marx's just happens to be wrong.
Marx did not simply misidenity the classes. Classes, in the marxist sense, do not exist.
In a specific relationship we can identify one person as the exploiter and one person as the exploited. However, society is not two classes at war with each other.
Politics is war of all against all.
Labor seeks to exploit capital, while capital seeks to exploit labor. Industry seeks to exploit agriculture, while agriculture seeks to exploit industry. Debtors seeks to exploit lenders, while lenders seek to exploit debtors.
Peace
Also Agorist Class Theory and Class Struggle Rightly Conceived.
Thanks for the link Juan and Jon. It seems as thought Sheldon Richman, suggests that the class distinction in the Marx sense does not exist, yet alludes to the the taxer and the taxee with respect to the exploiter and the expoited. Hoppe, strangely enough, accepts the Marx definitions but turns them upside down. Hoppe is quite a fascinating read.
JonBostwick:Marx did not simply misidenity the classes. Classes, in the marxist sense, do not exist.
Karl Marx draw the line between workers and owners of firms. According to him the workers are exploited by the owners (capitalist). I do not know about a society where that is really true. Class distinction is often more about education, income and status. So you will find that the engineer (who is worker in the sense of getting paid for his work.) and the large business owner show more class proximity. Then i.e. the large business owner and the owner of a small plumbing company.
Social distinction has existed everywhere and at any time. There is a book/essay by Joseph Schumpeter on Social Classes in an ethnically homogenous environment. One can get it from the mises online library. Another book of interest is "The Theory of the leasure class" by Thorstein Veblen.
JonBostwick:In a specific relationship we can identify one person as the exploiter and one person as the exploited. However, society is not two classes at war with each other.
JonBostwick:Politics is war of all against all.
JonBostwick:Labor seeks to exploit capital, while capital seeks to exploit labor. Industry seeks to exploit agriculture, while agriculture seeks to exploit industry. Debtors seeks to exploit lenders, while lenders seek to exploit debtors.
Torsten: JonBostwick:Politics is war of all against all.No, that's anarchy.
You(and most people) have it backwards. Anarchy is defined as the absense of the political means. Anarchy would be cooperation towards common ends.
Politics is benefitting at other's expenses. War of all against all is especially true in a country with an open political class, like the USA.
Those people who thought that anarchy would be all against all, envisioned a break down of of government would cause the opening of the political class. Which, again, is exactly what democracy seeks.
JonBostwick: You(and most people) have it backwards. Anarchy is defined as the absense of the political means. Anarchy would be cooperation towards common ends.
People take up (or submit to) political means because they believe this action to be beneficial to them.
Juan:Great. So tyranny is actually voluntary.
Torsten:People take up (or submit to) political means because they believe this action to be beneficial to them.
However, if people were knowledgable of the fact that all government functions are unnecessary and can be provided more efficiently by the market, they would abandon statism in an instant. You are wrong to say it is an impossibility.
Torsten:Absense of political means is an impossibility.
Correct. Private crime will always exist. However, it is possible to end the institutionalization of politics.
Governments do not create themselves. People tear down governments with the intention of putting a new one in its place. Once people realize it is politics itself that is defectice, not just that particular administration of it, then this cycle will end.
Juan:I'm not sure I understand. You are saying that people 'submit' to political means because they believe this action [submitting] to be beneficial to them ?
Juan:When people here say 'political means' they(we) usually are talking about coercion and violence at the hand of the state against peaceful citizens. Are you saying that people are agreeing to being robbed by the state ? So it's actually not robbery ? People jailed for victimless crimes are actually enjoying a holiday ? I'm confused.
People do chose from the options they perceive as real and achievable.
Sage:However, if people were knowledgable of the fact that all government functions are unnecessary and can be provided more efficiently by the market, they would abandon statism in an instant. You are wrong to say it is an impossibility.
There you have a real problem. People do not only have to know the option, they also need to believe it to be desirable for them. This maybe a question of critical mass as well. You will need a substantial number of people within that society that believes in stateless society. The rest mustn't resent this setting to much. So again it is a question of quantity and quality of support. These balances of support can of course change over time and the real question would be how long a stateless society would remain like that.
Torsten: I recommend voluntary servitude by de la Boetie. http://mises.org/rothbard/boetie.pdf
The modern state doesn't "rob peaceful people", they "tax" them.
People prefer paying these moneys over facing the consequences of not paying.
People jailed for supposedly victimless crimes, will prefer the risk of being jailed over being treated as outlaws,
The majority of people prefer even the punishment of deeds they don't see as crimes over having no governmental system in place at all. I think there is lots of performatory evidence for what I am saying.
Juan:Really ? People prefer paying these moneys over facing the consequences of not paying. Yes, that's called robbery.
Yet people choose to pay taxes even when they there is no chance of direct violence from the government. Like my grandfather writing the full amount he paid for his RV when registering it.
Is the idea that not everyone is anarchist really that crazy?
Juan:Are you saying taxes are voluntary?
Obviously not.
Juan:Well, no. But what has that got to do with the fact that politicians collect taxes at the point of a gun, and that such an action is known as robbery?
"People prefer paying these moneys over facing the consequences of not paying."
The negative consequence that people prefer paying taxes to is not necessarily violence from the tax man. They attribute taxation with holding up society. In other words, they prefer taxation to anarchy.
The state is built on more than violence, there is a reason it fields an army of intellectual supporters.
Jon: The negative consequence that people prefer paying taxes to is not necessarily violence from the tax man.
They attribute taxation with holding up society.
Marxists don't recognize the natural power balance between employer and employee. Employees are looking to "exploit" just as much as the employer. How many employees do a cost/benefit analysis to determine if they're a net benefit to the company? Would a grocery bagger turn down $1,000,000 salary?
In a free market, an exploitive company always represents an opportunity for another company to come along and steal away their employees with higher wages and better treatment. Ironically, it's often the government intervention designed to "protect" workers that can slow down this process (through high barriers to entry created by regulations).
I also came across this, and this, recently.
It is of course wrong to believe that values are somehow "objective" and the people are "wrong" for not using the LToValue. However, there are several people who derive their own values in things from the labor put into them (and don't claim them to be objective), and using the LToV this way seems to me compatible with the Austrian view.
I don't see how you can "disprove" the entire LToV, however the claim that it is some sort of objective fact is of course false.
BlackSheep:Someone that says that workers are exploited is a dummy in this day and age. With all the free enterprise and prosperity that even countries like mine here have, it's absolutely ridiculous this kind of communist rethoric.
Well, of course the workers are being exploited. They are not getting paid what they would have been paid in a freed market.
Well, while the common arguements for the existance of wage slavery (in particular, the broad claim that wage labor by its very nature always is or must be "wage slavery") have been completely refuted over and over again, there is a sense in which it is a very real phenomenon to the extent that the alternatives are legally barred. To the extent that genuine competition in the labor market is restricted, that there are massive barriers to entry to becoming an enteprenuer oneself or to forming alternative forms of buisiness organization, workers are indeed "wage slaves".
Of course, the common libertarian response to the claim of "wage slavery" is that the worker can quit and pursue another job or become self-employed or become an enterprenuer themselves. At face value, this makes perfect sense, but it doesn't entirely apply to the current unfree market in which one doesn't have much of a real option to do so due to government intervention. I'm not convinced that a genuine free market would have the same degree of wage-labor that we have today. I'd assert that there would be more oppurtunity for people to become enterprenuers, individual proprietors and to form alternative forms of buisiness.
I'm not convinced that a genuine free market would have the same degree of wage-labor that we have today. I'd assert that there would be more oppurtunity for people to become enterprenuers, individual proprietors and to form alternative forms of buisiness.
This certainly seems likely but I think it is worth pointing out, especially for our ocassionaly overzealous mutalist friends, that most employers are not actively or willingly involved in created these conditions. An employer giving less to his employees than he would on a free market is perfectly rational and acceptable. They can't even know what a 'market' wage would be, and they would also go out of business if they paid it (which helps nobody, least of all his employees). The problem is the system that allows wages to be held down by an abundance of unemployed and inflationary finance that overcapitalizes industries.
Brainpolice:Well, while the common arguements for the existance of wage slavery (in particular, the broad claim that wage labor by its very nature always is or must be "wage slavery") have been completely refuted over and over again, there is a sense in which it is a very real phenomenon to the extent that the alternatives are legally barred.
Well of course the marxist exploitation crap is utterly useless. In order to refute it you need only understand that labor is itself a good. After that it comes down to whether or not the current system is usury or not. And of course it is - usury created by the state with its privileges.
I think Tucker has it right when he says
"If the men who oppose wages - that is, the purchase and sale of labor - were capable of analyzing their thought and feelings, they would see that what really excites their anger is not the fact that labor is bought and sold, but the fact that one class of men are dependent for their living upon the sale of their labor, while another class of men are relieved of the necessity of labor by being legally privileged to sell something that is not labor, and that, but for the privilege, would be enjoyed by all gratuitously. And to such a state of things I am as much opposed as any one. But the minute you remove privilege, the class that now enjoy it will be forced to sell their labor, and then, when there will be nothing but labor with which to buy labor, the distinction between wage-payers and wage-receivers will be wiped out, and every man will be a laborer exchanging with fellow-laborers. Not to abolish wages, but to make every man dependent upon wages and secure to every man his whole wages is the aim of Anarchistic Socialism. What Anarchistic Socialism aims to abolish is usury. It does not want to deprive labor of its reward; it wants to deprive capital of its reward. It does not hold that labor should not be sold; it holds that capital should not be hired at usury."
About the freed market, I wonder if anyone would choose not to become an entrepreneur or join some sort of worker cooperation. I think the organisational structure in which you have one or a few people supplying the capital for new means of production and whatnot, and then living off of the rent, would be quite rare.
They attribute taxation with holding up society. Maybe some 'progressives' do...so for them government is voluntary. How nice.
Its not voluntary for anyone because no one is given the chance to opt out. However, if people were given the choice most would choose to remain subjugated, at least at first.
There is little chance of people getting the chance to opt out of the state until a large number of people actively want to.
R.J. Moore II: I'm not convinced that a genuine free market would have the same degree of wage-labor that we have today. I'd assert that there would be more oppurtunity for people to become enterprenuers, individual proprietors and to form alternative forms of buisiness. This certainly seems likely but I think it is worth pointing out, especially for our ocassionaly overzealous mutalist friends, that most employers are not actively or willingly involved in created these conditions. An employer giving less to his employees than he would on a free market is perfectly rational and acceptable. They can't even know what a 'market' wage would be, and they would also go out of business if they paid it (which helps nobody, least of all his employees). The problem is the system that allows wages to be held down by an abundance of unemployed and inflationary finance that overcapitalizes industries.
As was recently made clear to me, the real problem is not that people don't have options, but that they have fewer options than they would under a truly free market. This coincides perfectly with the idea that liberal democracies (such as the U.S.) are "comparatively" free, but clearly not totally free, as mixed economies.
It's much more fun to say that all government is evil and all government intervention is wrong, but to be persuasive, we must clearly delineate what is wrong, and why it limits people's options, as well as fairly recognized the degree of freedom that currently exists.
JonBostwick:Its not voluntary for anyone because no one is given the chance to opt out. However, if people were given the choice most would choose to remain subjugated, at least at first.
Torsten:No, that chance is given, since the US is not restricting emmigration.
Alright. I'm going to come and kill you and your family unless you move out. You've got a free choice to avoid murder, it's totally voluntary.
Torsten: JonBostwick:Its not voluntary for anyone because no one is given the chance to opt out. However, if people were given the choice most would choose to remain subjugated, at least at first. No, that chance is given, since the US is not restricting emmigration. On the other hand this "chance to opt out" comes at a price. You will have to sell your property, pack and leave for somewhere else for a new start. Seemingly many people don't opt for that option right now.
The chance to opt out does not necessarily require you to move, since that presumes that the government may control such property to begin with. All it really means is that you don't have to patronize or associated with the institution or make use of its services or pay for it. This does not require you to give up your property, merely to have it be left alone.