But if we look at America, it has more billionaires than Africa and the Middle-east combined, yet the standard of living and incomes of average americans dwarf those in Africa or the middle-east. So this simple test really makes you think.
Marxism, is it true? Ben and Jerry Edition
Blake Rodriguez
Eli Gray
Because American capitalists exploit the working class in other countries. Come on, this isn't really that hard to grasp.
Luke Long
say it with me.
conservatives aren't smart.
Jack Powell
Actually, no.
The labor theory of value is actually not that complicated - workers generate value, wages are a portion of that value, the bourgeois (factory owners, and the practical factory owners who line executive shareholder boards) take most of the value for themselves and decide how the product of the workers' labor is used.
Now, to add - because the value created by many, many laborers ends up mostly in the pockets of those who own the means of production, it creates entrenched power for the bosses. This means that workers lose even more control over how much of their value they get, and lose control over bargaining power in general. It becomes more and more rigged in favor of the bosses, with the end result of the rich levying taxes on the rest without offering representation.
Even in conventional American politics, this was once considered a problem worthy of revolution.
Noah Morris
Imagine actually believing this. Holy shit.
Michael Foster
What a miserable view of life these people must have! They think the only reason to do anything is for the sake of money. They have no conception in their minds of labour as the living, form-giving fire. To them, work is an unpleasant thing forced onto them from above, that they must do in order to pay for their various means of escapism. The idea that someone could have passion, dreams, and drive is completely lost to them. These people are not living, they are already dead and gone.
Landon Powell
No, not necessarily. Just worse off than they would otherwise be.
Adam Murphy
so who do 200 million american workers work for? the Dutch?
how many rations the people (government) give you is really unclear under marxism. Some say it doesn't matter what work you do only the time matters, in catalonia people who did easy work for 1hour got the same amount of rations as people who did very intense work for 1hour, so resentiment grew and motivation was a problem
Adam Diaz
They also work for American capitalists, doofus. The imperialist countries get the benefit of exploiting their own working class and that of the working classes of other countries.
Jeremiah Young
I know, it was rhetorical. I think you missed the point. The native population of capitalists should be in poverty as well since the majority of exploited labor is happening at home, not abroad, similar to the industrial revolution where people in cities were broke and lived in horrible conditions because of the greedy capitalists taking their surplus labor.
But why isn't that still the case now? Why do the millions of average Canadians and Americans experience extremely comfortable and stable qualities of life and are not living in poverty, yet North America contains massive amounts of billionair fatcats and giant corporations.
The foreign labour they hire is only a fraction.
And if you compare the incomes of those foreign "exploited workers" you'll see they are probably doing better than the workers who aren't being exploited. Compare the incomes of a chinese guy working in a factory versus what they would be making on the family farm in the provinces…
Carson Brown
Because you don't go to the other side of town?
Xavier White
Imagine believing this. The sentiment is retarded anyway even if it was the case, nicer exploitation doesn't negate that exploitation is occurring.
And millions aren't living comfortable lives and are in poverty. 65% of people born in poverty will die in it. Only 8% will ever make 6 figures. And this is with an increase in productivity combined with stagnant wages.
The examples you gave were both still exploitation and income again doesn't negate exploitation.
Luis Morris
I had a good chuckle at this one:
America is literally the only developed country I know of that is experiencing where large chunks of the population are experiencing declining life expectancy during peacetime. Only the USSR experienced something similar during its collapse…
You know, while everyone agrees the plight of the Western proletariat in the 19th century was harsh in comparison today, it should be said that it wasn't as bad as the plight as workers in colonial countries or slaves. In fact, if we look at wages in Western countries in gold terms, it often wasn't that bad; it was pretty low in terms of what it would actually buy at the time but not always as low as people think…still most people today would not find living like a 19th century laborer comfortable.
This is a sad argument, you can always look backwards and say things are better now. Life was generally better for workers at the end of the 19th century than it was during the beginning of it; life was generally better at the start of the Industrial Revolution then it generally was for a lowly medieval serf, or a Roman slave, I don't see how this makes a difference. It could have justly been said that workers during the Great Depression had it much better than they did in the late 19th century but few would venture to claim that they were having a dandy time.
Our conceptions of poverty is relative, its true American workers live better than many (but not all) Third Worlders but by the same token their elites live much better than ruling classes elsewhere as you said. The source of this is to be found in higher productivity and imperial control.
But that is not the only way to exploit another country, there is also financial exploitation, monopoly rents, resource control, and monetary imperialism. This serves as a break (though not a wholly succesful one) on the fall of the rate of profit and the need of American capitalists to squeeze their population harder–that is always a risky endeavor.
Gavin Flores
at what level of income/rations/handouts is a worker not being exploited? give me some metrics
Brody Stewart
Really the PRC is just about the only place in the Third World where poverty is actually declining on a significant scale. WorldBank economists fabricated the data that showed poverty reduction by failing to account for inflation.
Now, a simple test for you, if LTV is wrong then why is labor the most accurate predictor of prices there is? No other factor even fucking compares.
Being a marginalist in 2018 is like being a flat-earther.
youtube.com
Sowell is a retard
James Ortiz
Joshua Price
Technically we're still in Afghanistan, tho.
100% control over the value produced by their own labor. IE, the profit goes to them instead of bosses.
Luke Lopez
You don't really understand how Marxist's define exploitation or anything relating to class analysis, do you?
I'm going to be lazy and repost what I stated before
Jordan Bailey
True enough, but only a rather small part of the population is directly involved. This isn't like the effects of a world war, an invasion, or a civil war on a country–which is where we would expect to see this type of decline.
I saw a headline today that said more Americans have died in mass shootings then on the battle field this year.
Ryan Campbell
okay
Christian Robinson
it's funny to think that liberals consider this sad because "we're killing each other more than our enemies do!"
and i'm just sad because there isn't a war that has turned into a nice meatgrinder to kill americans in masses
Jaxon Kelly
They are.
Jason Powell
Because of the New Deal and the Great Society you fucking brainlet. ND transformed almost over night some of the poorest regions in the country. The Tennessee River Valley might as well have been in the third world, but the TRVAuthority's massive project of damming it up, building dikes and levees, and electrifying the region completely transformed it.
The period after WW2 saw a massive shift in wealth to the working class, who enjoyed the benefits into the 70s, and then it's all downhill from there as business conspires to sheer America of its "excessive democracy."
Huge swathes of the US are basically in ruins, and the only reason you aren't seeing people in massive Hoovervilles is because of the spread of issuing credit cards to literally anyone and everyone, whether they need them or use them or pay them off or even understand them.
Wew, a nation of debt slaves, great success‼
Jaxson Hill
I don't want vague theory I want metrics and specifics. Ever thought of that?
David Flores
???
so you're still using money as a means of exchange and earning profits and you can do this without exploitation or friction? Explain give me specifics/metrics.
Jeremiah Adams
Most American workers are good, it is the ruling class that is bad. Maybe that's not edgy enough for some people around here. All in all, I hope for the defeat of American imperialism but have no desire to see me or my fellow coworkers get sacrificed for capitalism.
Samuel Morris
I have though. What are you confused about?
Jackson Rivera
The massive increase in poppy production has contributed majorly to the growing heroin epidemic in the US. That's aside from the trillions of dollars wasted not just on the wars, but incompetently trying to rebuild these countries, knowing nothing about them or the circumstances of the people living there. The US builds bridges and schools just to bomb them and rebuild them again. Their "plan" to move Afghan farmers off of poppy production has been an unmitigated failure, with the incompetent American military and intelligence forces basically working as hit men for regional drug cartels.
You'd have to look awfully hard to find an American removed from the effects of their presence in Afghanistan and Iraq, and now that Iraq is electing Communists again, I'm sure Cheney is getting hard at the thought of all the money he's going to make flattening it again, and how much more he's going to steal when he has to "rebuild" it.
Samuel Foster
You're a fucking idiot.
Read Marx and fuck off.
Caleb Lewis
Marx also states that industrialization increases both the quality of life of the proletariat and the bourg. But that latter increases at a faster rate, this can be proved by the always increasing global wealth inequality. Guess who is more industrialized? Africa or the US?
"A house may be large or small; as long as the neighboring houses are likewise small, it satisfies all social requirement for a residence. But let there arise next to the little house a palace, and the little house shrinks to a hut. The little house now makes it clear that its inmate has no social position at all to maintain, or but a very insignificant one; and however high it may shoot up in the course of civilization, if the neighboring palace rises in equal or even in greater measure, the occupant of the relatively little house will always find himself more uncomfortable, more dissatisfied, more cramped within his four walls." - Wage labour and capital chapter 6
The american bourgeoisie is way richer than the african one and as said there is comonly no african bougeoisie just the first world one.
Besides many if not most of the QOL advanteges first world countries were hard fought by the working class and socialist movementes of late 19th and early 20th century
Parker Robinson
Very true, but let's not overestimate this. Much of the opiate epidemic has to do with legal opiates, heroin merely adds a significant part to this vicious cocktail of capitalism. I've heard that a lot of Afghanistan's heroin is going into Russia btw not at all different from the 90s when heroin was flooding the market in the former USSR and devastating the youth population.
The social depression caused by losing these wars, the social austerity they drive and the health crisis of returning vetreans shouldn't be overlooked either.
Even so, I don't think these wars can explain these declines. Similar quagmires like Vietnam and Korea did not produce this effect in the domestic population.
Adrian Anderson
Do you own a means of production and engage in the exploitation of wage labour to extract surplus-value then reinvest that capital into further commodity production?
Then your a bourgeoisie
Do you not have control over an industrial means of production and have to work for wage using your own labour for someone else of which you sacrifice a surplus of the value of your labour to?
Then your a prole
Why is this so difficult?
Bentley Cox
No. Your premise is wrong and no one should bother with the rest of your comment.
Nathaniel Murphy
The capitalist will sell us the Ben and Jerry's bucket to preach from
Ryder Thompson
It's surplus value. Look it up and read.
It's impossible for that capitalist not to exploit, because it's a mechanism that's built into the system itself.
Hudson Williams
Because they already know this and they're being purposely obtuse.
Parker Russell
The fact that the average worker becomes richer under capitalism doesn't contradict Marx' theory. The gap between the capitalist and exploited classes keeps growing. Read Wage Labour and Capital, it's only 20-30 pages.
Also as others have pointed out western capitalism thrives simply because it exploits workers in the third world.
William Martinez
but third world workers are also getting improved living conditions and wages, compared to past generations, China is booming, many 3rd world countries are experiencing the "catch up effect"