I don't know whether a question similar to this has been asked before, but I wondered what your thoughts all are about the following:
Can companies not just raise prices in order to not have to exploit workers? On a similar line, can they not just advertise loads so demand is high enough that they don't really need to exploit anyone (hollywood films come to mind) How are the ridiculous salaries of actors, corporate lawyers etc explained? How can you meaningfully calculate the value of someones labour in the 21st century when most 1st world jobs do not involve physically making shit?
Whenever I'm trying to radicalise libtards smart enough to bother explaining theory to they always say these arguments and honestly I can answer them but not very well. I'm 300 pages into capital and have found no answers there.
The thing is that regardless of how high a worker's salary is, they will never receive the full value of their labour as long as they're forced to work under wage labour.
Kayden Bell
no, because inflation
that makes no sense, just because you market something doesn't mean sch product magically will satisfy a social need
the LTV is not as simple as you are interpretating, the whole economic cicle of a movie is not only the creation of the movie itself, you need both dead and living labour, think of just how many subprocesses are involved in financing, making, marketing, and selling movies. it's so specialized that even the guy who cleans the cinema plays a key role in the process needed for the movie to transform itself into a commodity. The way i see it, capitalists not only have to poroduce movies, but they have to market and sell it, and there is a lot of value generated in these processes, so there is a lot of value the ruling class can appropriate
You are not supposed to calculate it like that, abolishing capital doesn't mean we need to mantain commodification and then simply calculate who did what, we need to produce based on personal necessities
Cooper Jackson
Ok I get the first two points, but not sure about the other two. I understand dead labour etc, but what I mean is that technically actors and stinky rich lawyers are wage-labourers and thus 'exploited' (although they might own shares but I'm trying to keep it simple) according to the LTV (by my understanding). But this seems silly when they earn so much. Now the capitalist explanation would be about supply and demand but I cant really think of a communist explanation using the LTV - surely it can't be because of class struggle which is what I'd say normally for 1st world people being paid more. Also the point about calculating labour applies more to the labour vouchers system used to pay people under socialism - it's hard to calculate a fair wage using the LTV for 'mental' workers without resorting to arbitrariness.
Thomas Perez
It seems to me that some people are paid positively more than the full value of their labour such as in the cases I gave as examples. Unless I'm making a misunderstanding.
Also excuse the double post.
Isaiah Butler
Exploitation is in the act of extracting value, not in the quantity. Just like slavery would not be made non-exploitative by making the lives of slaves better. And note that exploitation here is in the economic sense: extracting value without compensation. Profit is a necessary component of the capitalist process, you cannot just wish it away. Advertisement is still labor, labor that is exploited to produce value for the owner. And the same point of before applies. High level actors are few enough in number that their cost is not really about their labor, they almost become speculative assets. Similarly for very high level lawyers and CEOs, they are valued less as capable men and more as carriers of prestigious names (and here the comparison to valuable speculative assets). You don't need to produce something physical to produce value.
Do remember that when we talk about exploitation in the LTV we are not making a moral statement. Exploitation is not necessarily right or wrong (as far as theory is concerned), it is not itself the issue, but rather what happens if things are brought to their natural conclusion (see the rate of profit and all the connected fun stuff).
Leo Perez
No, competition dictates that commodities will, on average, always be sold at approximately their true exchange value. But even if companies DID raise prices, they would still be exploiting workers because there is no way to raise workers' wages to accommodate the true value of their labor and still make a profit; this is, in fact, the primary contradiction of capitalism. Production, on average, always increases to meet demand so that companies can increase the volume of their profits. A general trend, across all industries, of demand exceeding supply is a signifier of profound economic illness. Lenin attributes this to super-profits of colonial exploitation and he is probably correct. Companies can afford to pay exorbitant salaries to certain segments of the working class in order to basically 'bribe' them and keep them happy with the status quo. Value is calculated by labor-time and even though most people in the first world do not physically create commodities, their labor-time still contributes to the production and distribution of various commodities.
Carson Brown
Ignore the second part of my first response, I wasn't thinking clearly.
Ryan Bell
What you are asking is essentially, can companies artificially inflate value to help their workers? I made recently a post about a similar question: let's imagine an isolated village with one chair maker, because of his position of monopoly, he takes 8 hours to make a chair. A younger fellow discovers he can make chairs at a much faster pace, 1 every 2 hours. If he then sells that chair, he will sell at just under the 8 hours worth of money, because he wants to maximize his profits, so in total he makes close to 6 hours worth of profit for each chair he sells. In other words he works 2 hours and he is paid as if he worked for 8.
The original artisan however will soon discover that his profits are going down, so he either closes his shop or adapts. Being a masterful craftsman he can easily match the younger seller, but he too does not want to loose too much money so he starts making a chair every two hours, putting his price just under the competitor, who in turn will have to lower his price to match the older competitor, until we reach the 2 hours mark.
Lucas Gonzalez
>Inflation
No you idiot it's because of competition, a monopoly can raise their prices to infinity without experiencing any inflation.
What the hell, this is the most bizarre question ever. You think companies exploit because they don't advertise enough or something? For a company to not exploit they would have to be breaking even, so additional advertising wouldn't make a difference. Unless this was about increasing market share but that's a marketing tactic
Can you give some examples of jobs like this?
John Gray
Exploitation for Marx is literally the appropriation of surplus value produced by workers. So paying them more doesn’t remove exploitation. It is conceivable that there could be a lower level of exploitation, or that one worker could be paid way above the value they produce, but that would have to come from the surplus value produced by other workers. So there’d be no way to replicate it for everybody.
As for lower levels of exploitation, that is basically what Social Democracy attempts. Keep the capital owner class, but regulate their property rights more vis a vis direct law or taxation. Direct law would be something like the German model of forcing companies of certain sizes (I think?) to have a certain proportion of their board made of workers. That is basically a regulation of the property rights of the large equity holders, who would probably prefer to buy an instrument which gave them total control of the board. Of course, taxation is what it is. You make a law that says property owners must have income taxes at such and such rate, and redistribute it in some way to decrease exploitation.
Eli Jackson
Yes, the economic system has never been a simple exploiter vs esploited thing, thats for romantics, capitalism allows people to both exploit and get exploited, the leverage by which people exploit other workers vs how exploited they are is what allows these labourers to become part ofthe labour aristocracy.
The ratio by which an actor, a director or a general manager in a movie studio are able to exploit other wokers vs the amount of exploitation they have to put up with is different than the one we would find in the case of the guy who sells you pop-corn is what allows them to appropriate as much value as they do.
Forget about the term "earn". Actors and investors appropriate all the value created within the economic cycle of the commodity we know as a "movie".
the physical "movie" and a commodity "movie" are different concepts, the physical movie can be just data on the internet, but think how many more elements you need to commodify (i.e sell the movie to be able to appropriate value.) such data, you need lawyers, marketing, logistics, salesmen, a place to display the movie, all of which are created with human labour, and as a result they are sources value. The ruling class is able to appropriate this value using the leverage i previously proposed.
yeah that's why working quotas, labour vouchers and other similar systems are fucking stupid and why the USSR turned out to be a totalitarian shithole. Now watch as this fact enrages the resident M-Ls.
Don't reply to me you disgusting ☭TANKIE☭s, go take a shower instead
brainlet. we are talking about the real world, not your fantasy land of monopolies
You dumb ass idiot, the reason companies don't arbitrarily raise their prices is because of price competition with other firms. Using an extreme example to illustrate the point goes over your head I guess
Elijah Baker
You are still a brainlet, many companies DO raise prices despite their competition, and pretend to add value to their commodity to justify their price increase, ever heard of a "luxury item"?
The reason why most companies can't raise the price to receive higher profits is that price is merely a number, and as a result the government and the banks will end up printing more cahs and giving out more loans, as to increase the supply of money, which as a result lowers it's demand, creating inflation.
stop falling for the "basic economics" meme, prices in most sectors are not determined by competition alone.
Matthew Flores
Such as? Advertisement is still labor that is adding value to the commodity. Not a value that is particularly useful to the buyer, but that never stopped a cappie before. You're not wrong, but really only a handful of companies can afford to inflate prices. Apple is not your average company. There is literally no correlation between this and competition influencing prices. And inflation is only tangentially influenced by the money supply, which is really a laughable concept in a world where moeny is wished into existence through loans. While you should stop falling for Keynesian traps.
Carter Cruz
While you could argue that "true" luxury items do involve labour that adds value to the commodity, you can market the very same good to two different groups of people, and if they are ignorant enough theywill buy it
Exmaple: My current pair of glasses cost me $5 bucks, yet I saw the same frame for $25 in another store, I know it is the same because the provider is the same person, he told me he sold the glasses to the guy who was selling them at a higher price.
The commodity itself doesn't have any added value (unless you want to arguee that marketing a cheap pair of glasses to unaware idiots is socially necessary.)
if every guy selling those $5 glasses decided to raisethe price to match the guy selling them at $25 you would have inflation because people REALLY need to buy a pair of glasses to be able to fucking see where they are going, which would result in people like me being forced to take a loan to be able to pay for them.
Yeah, but nowadays banks and governments know that money supply must follow actual value growth, or else we will face another 2008 recession.
I think we can agree that inlfation has multiple causes
Josiah White
No, because exploitation arises in production and not exchange. The only way to end exploitation in a workplace would be to make all workers co-owners and give them an equal share of the profits. Again, exploitation happens in production not exchange. I would explain it in terms of the cost of reproducing a very specialized & difficult to obtain labor, namely the labor which can only be done by a single person in order to obtain the results hoped for. The same way you calculate value in the 19th or 20th century.
The LTV is explained by Marx in detail in the first chapter. Maybe you skipped it.
Anthony Jenkins
'price is just a number' go read Marx you brain dead anarchist
Oliver Parker
DO go read Marx
Nicholas Reed
Yes, the capitalists. Nowadays, you can't even say honestly (on most cases, there are some exceptions) that the business owners even manage their own businesses, they have managers that do that for them. The guy at the top will almost always do fuck all and still get the most money. Meanwhile, regardless of if your wage is 1 million dollars, you won't get the full value of your labour, because what you create is worth more than that, and that surplus is extracted from you by your boss, hence why you have a wage in the first place.
Oliver Jenkins
The price of commodities does equal exchange value you dumb ass, only because price covers things without exchange value does this distinction even come up (like land). In Capital Vol 1, Price = Exchange value.
Jordan Kelly
Ok so thanks everyone, I think I understand this more now - hopefully I can indoctrinate libs a little more effectively…
I did read that chapter but honestly maybe not with the attention it deserves
We are not discussing if the price of commodities equal the exchange value asan aggregate of prices and exchange values, prices are not determined by the exchange values unless we are talking about aggregates.
Prices can be determined arbitrarely by the capitalist, and this is what allows him to make a profit.
I have two apples right now, and you want to buy one from me, both apples are very similar however I have decided that one on the left will be two times more expensive. if you are able to find another seller that doesn't rip you off, then the AGGREGATE of prices,the price of an apple equals it's exchange value, as it's exchange value is determined by the fact that you were able to find another apple supplier. If you are unable to find one, that means I have been able to price the apple ABOVE this aggregate.
Price of an individual commodity is not determined by it's exchange value. Prices are made up of exchange value + profit
Obviously this process couldn’t take place if there wasn’t some relation between the labor time that went into commodities and the prices of these commodities. But equally obvious is the fact that this labor time cannot exactly equal the price of commodities. If it did then there could be no price signals to punish or reward firms. Firms that are producing useless things or not producing efficiently are punished by the market. Better firms are be rewarded. So the simple picture of Marx’s value theory that we are sometimes given, that the labor that goes into production is exactly equal to the prices of commodities cannot be correct. There must be more to it if we are to understand the distinct way in which labor is distributed in a capitalist society.
Oliver James
please stop.
John Reed
I literally posted a link to kapitalism101 that explains how that is true
Gabriel Martinez
A blog.
Isaac Robinson
Ok, so I see the section you got that from. What Cooney (the author) was discussing was the possibility of capitalists to appropriate extra exchange-value by producing more efficiently than a commodity's SNLT. This has nothing to do with arbitrary prices, though. In standard Marxist theory profit does not come from prices or exchange. The creation of profit, in the Marxist sense, comes from production.
X+Y+Z = total time worked.
1. The laborer works X amount of time to produce enough value to cover the cost of his own labor-power. (i.e. wages) 2. The laborer then works Y amount of time to produce enough value to pay the cost of tools & machinery in depreciation and improvements. 3. The laborer then works Z amount of time to provide the capitalist with his profit.
So, for example, on a given day a worker could be spending 4 hours to pay for the cost of his wages, 3 hours to pay for operating costs, and 1 hour to provide profit to the capitalist.
Noah Allen
WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED TO THIS PLACE
I don't disagree with anything in this post, however I would like to add that a capitalist increasing price to increase profit is still a lgical conclusion within your description, as he would be simply appropriating more value in exchange.
If someone spends most of his money on good A, he won't have any money left to buy good B, The capitalist has not only appropriated the value of good A, but indirectly appropriated part of the value of good B. We assume good B also had value, but it was never realized as people could not buy it.
Nathaniel Morgan
that just raises the price of labor power in turn. inflation doesn't have to be part of that. see: taxes
Daniel Williams
Movie stars, by being paid 30 M for a film are still underpaid, when the film makes 800M at the boxoffice.
Aiden Diaz
...
Logan Watson
Is there something more bourgeois than K-pop?
Nolan Roberts
K-Pop is more like the embodiment of the spectacle more then anything else Nothing but fake personality flashing lights and plastic hiding a truly dark reality right under the surface
Austin Moore
They couldn't compete in the market if they did. Capitalism is a race to the bottom. Also, workers have to use their salary to pay for food/housing/etc. If all prices go up, it's basically just inflation and the workers are no better off.
Advertising is corrosive to democracy and increases inefficiency in the world. How can expending resources and time to create things that people don't need actually lead to workers having more of what they do need? The customers are the workers, so making them buy more useless shit like Hollywood movies just makes their lives worse.
Capitalism is universally inefficient, but not all workers lose out - just the vast majority.
That's the hardest question. You can put an upper bound on it by asking "how much time/energy/resources would it cost for everyone to do the work themselves?" but that ignores economies of scale. I don't really know enough economic theory to answer this properly.
How do you avoid the Potemkin projects that can bring about full employment without adding value to an economy?
Sebastian Clark
no they're not you tard, movie stars are profiting off the unpaid work of their fans.
Grayson James
That's not true at all the same logic could be applied to any payment transaction at all because all money results from labour and all labour is exploited.
Movie stars aren't bourgiouse. They do not own either the means of production, distribution or exchange.
Jack Bell
I would argue that their "image rights" constitute a form of private property. Profiting off those image rights is rent seeking, albeit a fairly mild form.
Grayson Cruz
That makes no sense and is very pseudy.
If they have a boss, they're not bourgiouse.
Jayden Mitchell
I strongly disagree with this. If you earn the majority of your money from private property rather than your own labor, you're bourgeois. They're only proles if they're paid a lump sum fee or hourly/yearly wage. Receiving royalties cannot possibly be considered wage labor.
Jordan Hill
The film itself is the product of their labour, you can't say that without the actors the film would still be made. Just because a prole is payed more doesn't make them any less of a prole.
Sebastian Evans
Let me explain more clearly: There are two ways people can be paid for their involvement in a film production:
1. Wage labor: they get paid a fixed sum for a certain quantity/duration of work. After that work is over, their income is $0 unless they find more work.
2. Royalties: they get paid a small fraction of the profit from each sale of the film. After their work is over they continue to receive income. They are effectively part-owners of the intellectual property rights.
If most of their income comes from #1, then they're proles. If most of their income comes from #2, they're bourgeois. It doesn't matter how large or small their income is, just as it doesn't matter how much or how little a factory owner steals from his employees. As a general rule low-tier actors and other production crew are paid only via wages, while A-list celebrities also receive royalties.
Furthermore, anyone who is getting paid millions is definitely investing that money. Investments are private property in exactly the same way a factory is.
Michael Jackson
Royalties are payments for using their image. Since you own your own image (or legally, your 'likeness') you determine what happens to it, in this case, you get paid for it. Which, anyone is in their right to do, by this logic, everyone is bourgiouse for owning their own fucking image.
Oliver Lewis
I've thought of a good example to illustrate my point.
Let's say I help to build a house. After the house is complete, it is rented out and I get a share of the rent. It's a very nice house, so I receive a healthy income and never have to work another day in my life.
In that situation, how am I different from any other bourgeois property owner profiting from their private property? Does the factory owner get to call himself a prole if he works an hour a day at one of the machines in his factory?
Cooper Wilson
Do you honestly think the majority of people earn the majority of their money from renting their image rights?
Cooper Powell
Because a house is not repeatedly sold to multiple people, a DVD is.
No.
Jason Russell
So… when paying wages for someone's labor-power the value of it is determined by the cost of reproducing that same labor-power.
In general, the theory goes like this: Unskilled labor - small cost, easy to reproduce. anyone can do it. (manual labor or an entry level job.) Skilled labor - medium cost, difficult to reproduce, requires training. (plumber, metalworker, etc) Specialist labor - high cost, difficult to reproduce, requires years of training. (doctor, engineer, etc)
The wages paid to different types of workers will depend on the cost of reproducing that labor, which will depend on many things, but it usually correlates with how much effort was required to attain the level of skill necessary to perform the labor.
So a movie star benefits from two things: their labor-power has a high cost of reproduction due to skill (at least, usually), and, like the other user mentioned, a movie star benefits from a kind of 'economic rent' resulting from the ability to sell not only their labor but also their image and name recognition. This itself is a valuable commodity to movie studios. So, if an actor has the ability to make money simply off their own name recognition and image then they aren't working class since this is, like the other user said, rent-seeking.
But most actors aren't millionaire movie stars. Just like most writers aren't best-selling novelists. A majority of these people, even with some skill, probably make very little if anything from their work.
Ethan Baker
A house is repeatedly rented to multiple people. A film is repeatedly licensed to multiple people. The situations are functionally identical. In fact, films can be duplicated even more than house rental contracts can.
I honestly never thought I'd meet a "leftist" who believes that copyright isn't private property. You disgust me.
Ayden Fisher
Also, if you want to argue that the DVDs are the items being sold, then the actors deserve nothing because they are not required to create the DVDs. If the actors were all killed, DVDs could still be produced.
Cameron Edwards
But some form od copyright must exist to some extent. What would stop anyone from shitting up the movie or not respect the intention of the author?
Nathaniel Sanchez
Why do we need to waste billions of dollars producing shitty movies? If workers want movies, they can directly fund the production themselves. Oh, and speaking of "respecting the intentions of the author", have you ever seen a single movie adaptation of a book? They almost universally piss all over the author's intentions.
Adam Howard
Because they sell and people are more happy to see it. I don't agree with it, but That would be still billions wasted on shitty movies because there would he no chance for an author to do anything that isn't for the mass This is bullshit. Cinema and books are two different things. Cinema is not a semplifications of a book. Plus it doesn't have nothing to do with what I was saying.
Brody Diaz
So you're fine with the bourgeoisie profiting from private property as long as workers enjoy the products they sell? How is that different from the current situation? Films are literally treated as an investment by Hollywood. That's a bare-faced lie. You raised the point yourself.
You sound like a complete liberal. Please fuck off back to reddit where you can bemoan the evil pirates stealing Hollywood's hard-earned profits.
Ayden Bailey
No it don't Nothing. What I was just pointing out is that yours wasn't a solution. That's why I finished with a "but" I wasn't defending hollywood my concern since the first post was the author intentions and you didn't offer a solution to it. I don't give a shit about the profits as long as there is no intermission from the one the put the money in. You are just saying that the workers will botch my shit instead of a porky. That doesn't make it better in anyway.
Daniel Phillips
Three simple yes-or-no questions:
1. Is intellectual property a form of property? 2. Is intellectual property "private" rather than "personal"? 3. Should private property be abolished?
If you answer "no" to 1 or 2 you're a moron. If you answer "no" to 3 you're not a communist. If you answer "yes" to all three, you agree that intellectual property should be abolished.
Jose Stewart
Intellectual property is a retarded term and to broad to be defined.
Dylan Myers
Intellectual property Dosent exist and is one of the spookiest of spooks lmao
Nicholas Rivera
I agree, but so is private property in general. Even though it's a spook, the law still acts like it's real. Thus it needs to be abolished.
Sebastian Howard
Intellectual property makes sense if you understand what makes it different from other forms of property. Ok abolish what you want but what would stop the average joe to totally botch my piece of art?
Gabriel Bell
You still have your piece of art. Who gives a fuck if someone else creates another piece of art which is very similar to yours but worse? What kind of an argument even is that?
Jack Hall
No I mean if he literally steals it. Say I make a movie, this guy take 30 minutes from it or cuts some scenes from it and then He puts his name on it. He's technically doing nothing illegal if there is no intellectual property
Parker Garcia
That isn't theft, it's plagiarism. You still have your movie. How much of a disgusting liberal can you be?
Brody Fisher
Tell that to cimino or wells
Jayden Price
And again. You didn't offer an alternative to this. You are telling me there is no fix? The studio system is doing this today and tommorow the workers will do it following your reasoning. Doesn't change shit.
Oliver Jackson
Look, I really don't give a fuck if someone copies your movie and puts their name on it. If that's the worst thing that ever happens to you, you've lived a life of luxury. The goal of communism is not to cater to the egos of the comfortably wealthy. There are real economic problems in the world, but yours isn't one of them.
If you want some ideas on how to deal with plagiarism, look at academia and the open source community. It's a social problem which can be solved through social pressure. Private property laws simply aren't needed.
Luis Cruz
Then go fuck yourself stemfag piece of shit. I know there are economic problems but don't treat a movie like it's tesla or someshit. Culture and art is important and you don't care about it. If communism means that I end up resembling the barbarianism of you americans you can all go fuck yourself, I'd sell you out to actual fascist for a fucking craker
Parker Ortiz
If it makes you feel any better, I oppose technology patents too. Sorry. Not American. I'd expect no less from capitalist scum. Even the ancaps at least recognize that intellectual property is pure rent-seeking corruption. You're more like the breed of capitalist who gives lots of nice "gifts" to their favorite politicians.
Asher Cox
You still didn't fucking tell me what's capitalist about recognozing that an art product belongs to the guy who made it.
Jaxon Ramirez
Exploiting it for profit makes it private property. It's that simple. If you just want to keep others from having access to it, nobody's forcing you to release it. You can keep it in a vault somewhere and gloat over your exclusive possession of it every day. The one thing we won't do is prevent others from sharing information.
