Thoughts.com Blogs

View Blog

Thoughts

In the Dictionary of Theories, by Jennifer Bothamley, Ronald Barker defines the theory
of exploitation: "Exploitation occurs where a person or institution systematically gives
to another rewards or services or goods disproportionately smaller than that other
person's efforts or contribution would justify, and retains for themself a correspondingly
greater amount."

The problem with "marketable skills" is that, if there are too many people with the same
marketable skills, those marketable skills cease to be marketable, and so one may not
do better after one has spent time and funds trying to improve one's marketable skills.

Whether, or not one "feels exploited" is more of a subjective-awareness issue, but not
much of a grasp of objective reality. The theory of exploitation is an abstractly/theoretically
measurable theory. Surplus value is a generalized and conceptualized theory which
calls attention to the unaccountable, and thus ambiguous, routine practice of value
expropriation, which is what the exploitation of labor is about. A wage-worker may not feel
used by an employer, but every wage-worker that is useless to an employer's objective
purpose is going to be unemployed. To be useful to an employer is to be employed. And,
to be useful to an employer means to be exploited by an employer. In capitalism, every
business has the need to stay in business, and this requires the maximization of profit,
especially to survive those leaner times when income/earnings are more exiguous. The
strong survive, and strength is a function of profit.

Capitalism has been around for so long now that it has come to feel like freedom.
Labor has been exploited for so long now that it has come to seem like a very normal
arrangement to most of us, a very natural framework to those who look at the wage-
contract system as necessary and essential to a vital and vigorous economy.

And yet, there is still so much poverty. There is so much that is wrong with the existing
system. And so, what is needed is theoretical clarity, an explanatory and theoretical
structure, and that is what marxism offers. It is a theoretical picture of capitalism, as well
as a theoretical project for the construction of socialism, as a solution to capitalism's
stubborn and intractable problems. Marxist theory is a philosophic-scientific attempt
to explain the unmanageable problems, and the uncontrollable contradictions of
modern-day, really-existing capitalism. The marxist believes that the problems and
contradictions in capitalism indicate and prefigure the socialist solutions to those very
same predicaments and antagonisms which capitalism cannot get under control. Not
everything about capitalism is in need of change; but those aspects of capitalism that
are exploitative and authoritarian must be abolished, preferably by democratic and
peaceful methods of protest and of progress.

Leadership per se (by itself or in itself) has nothing whatsoever to do with exploitation.
There can be leadership without exploitation, just as there can be exploitation without
leadership.

Leadership is often used to justify exploitation, but not everyone buys into the justification.

Also, management per se has nothing at all to do with exploitation. There can be
management without exploitation.

Management is frequently used to legitimize exploitation, but some people do not agree
with the opinion that management duties somehow validate exploitation.

Organized collaboration in production does, perhaps, require leadership skills and
management roles, leadership duties and management functions; but, leaders do
not have to be the private proprietors of the production resources and facilities, and
managers can be elected from and by the associated producers who are employed
together in a production facility, or in a cooperative productive enterprise. Leaders
and managers do not have to receive an exploitative income from their work.

Machines do not exploit workers; only people exploit people. When it is said that capital
exploits labor, what is meant is that the private proprietors of capital exploit the class of
propertyless producers. It is the existence of private property in capital that generates the
two linked abuses of labor: labor's exploitation and labor's oppression.

It may be out of fashion these days, but the iron law of wages, the subsistence theory
of wages, is still a relevant principle. The classical theories of political-economy still
have factual and forceful relevance to modern-day economics, in spite of what the
modern theoretical and professional economists like to declare. Today's orthodoxy is
just too contrived, too engineered, to justify what the classical economists subjected
to a rigorous and intricate analysis. The classical-liberal economists were also
dedicated students of serious common-sense philosophy, and of a judicious and
rational form of utilitarian morality. The modern theorists of political-economy no longer
concern themselves with prescriptive considerations; but limit themselves to an
undeviating concern only for descriptive analyses of what actually exists. The classical
economists were interested in both the normative and empirical attributes of what they
were analyzing and investigating. They did not limit their inquiry to a descriptive
examination of political-economy; they also engaged in prescriptive evaluations of what
they studied and observed. The discipline of economics has changed only because the
modern theorists of economics have changed.

Concerning the classical principle of the iron law of wages, there is a tendency for wages
in general to be pressured downward. This classical principle is not as controversial as
today's doctrinaire political-economic theoriests like to believe. The iron law of wages is
not some silly contrivance orchestrated by the modern critics of the wage-contract system.
The iron law of wages is a theoretical examination of, and a theoretical explanation of what
is very often observed concerning wages. The iron law of wages is a particular aspect, or
expression of the categorical law of supply and demand.

There is a tendency of employers to reduce the costs of wages. This tendency just cannot
be as controversial as the professional theoretical economists would have us to believe.
The theory of the downward movement of wages to a subsistence level is not a theory of
what always happens, or of what will always appear. A tendency does not always transpire.

No theorist addresses every possible concern. Karl Marx, for example, focused on far less
than can be fully addressed concerning all the multitude of facts and factors involved in the
empirical and practical activities of really-existing political-economy.

For a correct reading of Marx's conceptual understanding of labor, one must differentiate
between Marx's very abstract analysis of labor, and Marx's more particularized breakdown
of real labor. In other words, labor is an abstract and ideational generalization in most
theoretical constructs/models of political-economy. It is just too complex to attempt a
theoretical ideal or model, on a lot of multifarious instances and miscellaneous particulars.

Those who defend capitalism believe that the only effective, operative, productive incentive
is the profit motive. However, this incentive is only effective, operative, productive, etc. when
we actually live in a competitive and profiteering environment.

"To understand oneself is the classic form of consolation; to elude oneself is the romantic."
-- George Santayana

Whatever is produced by solitary labor is rightly solitary property.

Whatever is produced by associated labor is rightfully associated property.

"The idea that individuals are 'free and equal' in contemporary liberal democracies is
questioned by the New Left figures. As Carole Pateman put it, 'the "free and equal
individual" is, in practice, a person found much more rarely than liberal theory suggests'
(C. Pateman, The Problem of Political Obligation). Liberal theory generally assumes what
has, in fact, to be carefully examined: namely, whether the existing relationships between
men and women, blacks and whites, working, middle and upper classes, and various
ethnic groups allow formally recognized rights actually to be realized. The formal existence
of certain rights is, while not unimportant, of very limited value if they cannot be genuinely
enjoyed. An assessment of freedom must be made on the basis of liberties that are
tangible, and capable of being deployed within the realms of both state and civil society.
If freedom does not have a concrete content -- as particular freedoms -- it can scarcely be
said to have profound consequences for everyday life.

"From Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) to Friedrich August von Hayek (1899-1992), liberals
have all too often failed to examine these issues. While theorists of developmental
democracy are among the exceptions to this generalization, even they failed to explore
systematically the ways asymmetries of power and resource impinge upon the meaning
of liberty and equality in daily relations. If liberals were to take such an inquiry seriously,
they would discover that massive numbers of individuals are restricted systematically --
for want of a complex mix of resources and opportunities -- from participating actively in
political and civil life. . . . Vicious circles of limited or non-participation directly illustrate
this point. Inequalities of class, sex and race substantially hinder the extent to which it
can legitimately be claimed that individuals are 'free and equal'.

"Furthermore, the very liberal conception of a clear separation between 'civil society' and
'the state' is, Pateman argued, flawed, with fundamental consequences for key liberal
tenets. If the state is separate from the associations and practices of everyday life, then
it is plausible to see it as a special kind of apparatus -- a 'protective knight', 'umpire' or
'judge' -- which the citizen ought to respect and obey. But if the state is enmeshed in these
associations and practices, then the claim that the state is an 'independent authority' or
'circumscribed impartial power' is radically compromised. In Pateman's judgement (like
that of many Marxists and neo-pluralists), the state is inescapably locked into the
maintenance and reproduction of the inequalities of everyday life and, accordingly, the
whole basis of its claim to distinct allegiance is in doubt. This is unsettling for the whole
spectrum of questions concerning the nature of public power, the relation between the
'public' and the 'private', the proper scope of politics and the appropriate reach of democratic
governments."
-- David Held, Models of Democracy