Lecture 3: Lapon/Marx Exploitation Flashcards
1.
What is exploitation according to Marx
marx said that exploitation is the appropriation of the unpaid labor of workers.
he said that exploitation can be measured relatively precisely
Labor vs Labor Power
DEFINE LABOR AND LABOR POWER!!
LABOR: Marx said that labor is an action. It is a process of conscious transformation of the material (and/or) symbolic world.
Marx said that what differs us from the work that animals is that we do it consciously and that we have an idea of it. It is objectified.
LABOR POWER: This refers to the capacity to work. This is the skills and knowledge that is embedded in your consciousness that enables you to accomplish certain tasks.
when capitalists pay you they pay for the labor power but they get labor/
they want to buy your set of skills but what they get is a process of production.
Labor:
A construction worker building a house.
A chef cooking a meal in a restaurant.
A teacher giving a lecture in a classroom.
A programmer writing code for software development.
A farmer planting and harvesting crops in the field.
Labor Power:
The construction worker’s physical strength and skills to handle tools and materials.
The chef’s culinary skills, creativity, and ability to work efficiently in a kitchen.
The teacher’s knowledge, communication skills, and ability to engage students in learning.
The programmer’s technical expertise, problem-solving skills, and proficiency in coding languages.
The farmer’s agricultural knowledge, ability to operate machinery, and skills in managing crops and livestock.
In each of these examples, labor refers to the actual work being done, while labor power represents the capacity or ability of individuals to perform that work effectively.
Reproduction of labor power
from a workers perspective, what you are getting from working is the ability to sustain life; these are:
1. bodily upkeep
2. education
3. skills
for capitalists what they are getting is how they can reproduce the labor power. this is the:
* Intergenerational regeneration: this basically refers to the idea of how you need new workers eventually. where do they come from: current workers children.
there is a basket of things that are required to reproduce labor (but these are not necessarily constant overtime):
* wage is a thing that allows you to buy these goods in the basket
* capitalists provide u with enough money to do this in exchange for their capabilities.
so how does exploitation play out here?
if the value of what workers produce is 200$ but they are paid 100$. the extra 100$ that the boss gets to keep is surplus labor
define surplus labor
additional labor that a worker accomplishes that is appropriated by capitalists
Rate of Exploitation
surplus labor/value produced * 100
surplus labor is value produced - necessary labor (reproducing labor power)
in other words necessary labor is the wage given to labor.
Trend between productivity and workers wage
has increased dramatically since 1970s
why is waged labor so important in showing exploitation
why cant capitalists just pay the value of labor in wages?
according to marx: if you do this, you are not a capitalist, because u have competition and u will therefore reinvest in technology or something to improve
??
Concept of class society
Exploitation in the workplace is linked to a social structure:
There is a connection between rates of exploitation and increased inequality
if all workplaces were okay with exploitation, the aggregation of individual workplaces revealing a pattern evolves into a social structure called class.
reading
worker giving credit to employer
allowing buyer (employer) to consumer labor before receiving payment of the price…allowing credit to the capitalist.
rentier class
good summary
marx’s theory of exploitation reveals that because the source of capitalists wealth is the unpaid labor of workers, the interests of workers and capitalists are diametrically opposed and are impossible to reconcile. the two will always come into conflcit since capitalists can only increase their share of the wealth at the expense of workers and vice versa.
thus, marx concluded that the only way for workers to control the wealth they create and use it to meet their needs was under a diff system altogrther…. abolition of wage systems (need to confurm this)
Acc to marxy boy, only when workers control the means of production for their own benefit can exploitation be abolished— only then will the expropriation be expropriated
