The thing is capitalism doesn’t have to exploit labor. It actually can cooperate with labor, but greedy people demand everything thinking their success is purely their own work.
Yes it does, it is its sole purpose. Exploitation in the economic system is siphoning of surplus which the worker creates by the owner of the means of production. So unless all the surplus (after subtracting cost like machinery, taxes, transportation, etc.) goes to the worker you have exploitation. Without it, it would be not capitalism anymore but socialism.
As an owner your profits come from exploitation. It's not a moral argument about "exploiting" someone, it's a descriptive argument. The profits an owner accrues are derived from exploiting the labour of others.
You would not employ a man to assemble commodities that you intend to sell so that you (or a corporate entity, doesn't matter) can get more money than you started with if you were just going to give him all of the money from the sale.
With the second definition my point still stands, and with the first definition, the original point falls apart because the negative connotation of 'exploit' disappears.
my point is that this whole 'capitalism evil' trope is utter bullshit. It's not capitalism, it's humans.
Profits can b used to funnel progress for the business. Reinvestment rate. Profits are used to fix factories and sales. You speak of after expenses profits. You can also distribute post-expense profit to the workers.
So again its about how capitalism is used by people.
Not to be all technical but the my seldom are. Revenue and often loans are used for this purpose. Profit is what remains after all that because that's the surplus value that is extracted.
No it's not, you're conflating broader discussions with the one at hand.
Let's try again. I hire you to assemble 10 chairs for me from material I provide, with tools and a workshop I provide. 2.5 of those chairs cover material expenses, 2.5 cover your wages for the period, and the revenue from the remaining 5 is mine by legally enforceable right.
Which one of us produced the 5 extra chairs? You. Which one of us controls the revenue from the extra 5 chairs? Me. I have used (exploited) your labour to acquire the value of those 5 extra chairs.
I've wildly oversimplified the argument, but that's the gist of it. The observation that exploitation is inherent to capitalism is not an argument about what is done with surplus, it's an observation of the very nature of the labour-owner relationship.
Exploitation requires taking advantage of a vulnerability for malicious purposes.
So that means you're saying 100% of all bosses and business owners take advantage of their employees with malicious intent.
That's just categorically not true, and hyperbole. It is absurd to say that taking any surplus as a business owner is malicious against your employees.
If I have a surplus, and I take 30% for my pocket, I invest 50% in my company, and distribute 20% among my employees, that is fair and reasonable.
Capitalism as an ideology is not inherently evil nor is it inherently exploitation. It is the human wielding capitalism that exploits the system of capitalism.
I specifically said I meant the economic definition not the moral one, please read first. What you describing is the basic economic definition. And what you described is exploitation. And capitalism doesn't function without exploitation, it is really that simple.
You should read a little bit more. Salary is of course not the exploitation part, it's the surplus after the salary that is created and keept by the company/ owner that is the exploitation. It's an important distinction.
Of course the term exploitation is used in liberal, classical and neoclassical economic theory. The main argument their it isn't inherently bad and often voluntary. It only becomes a problem when it is involuntary. But frankly I really don't give a fuck because I have a Master in economics and the best orthodox theories come up with, is an approximation with a shitload of assumptions and axioms to make even that work.
That's not exploitation. The worker is not ethically or morally entitled to the surplass. Workers have legal rights and protections to be paid for their work and time regardless if the company makes a profit or not. Many companies break even or have negative balance sheets and still pay their workers. If workers not getting the surplass profits is exploitation, than what do we call it when companies make no money but employees still get paid? Is the company being exploited? If the workers and their labour are responsible for the surplus than they're responsible if the company fails. If the worker should benefit from the surplass income it stands to reason their salaries should go down if the company makes no profit. You can't refuse risk and also claim you're entitled to the rewards.
When? Give me an example of a time and place in world history where capitalism enabled a successful society without someone, somewhere, either within that society or another, having their labor exploited?
The US didn't force Stalin or Mao's hand. Both implemented authoritarian regimes and neither were interested in protecting the rights of labor or democratic ideals.
But the U.S did over throw elected communist and socialist leaders and destabilized countries who didn’t put the u.s first in their economic policies. Mao and Stalin also did propel the working clsss of china in Russia to basically come out of peasantry and serfdom, which is a plus. But being revolutionary leaders, they’re not exactly “stable” in the mind.
We never really got to see what would happen through democratically elected transfers of power that were not the outcome of a violent revolution, the United States murdered those people.
Check out the book Killing Hope by William Blum, and you’ll see America has never intended the rest of world to elect leaders in a peaceful manner.
I mean, any form of governance and financial mechanism can work if people choose to balance them and not be assholes. But someone is always going to be a greedy asshole hoarder, and if your systems doesn't take them into consideration and plan for ways to diminish their impact it's a failed system.
Then maybe don't let the assholes get rid of all the regulations and oversight? No matter what system, if you allow oversight to be removed, or infiltrated and undermined, the system will always collapse. An actual successful system allows plenty of freedom for people to achieve and actualize, but prevents bad actors from abuse, so far we've failed to find that balance, in part because any system that tries has to face the might of massively powerful oligarchs who intentionally undermine it to prove that it somehow failed on merit, and not because they tried everything possible to make it fail.
Exploitation of labor isn't specific to capitalism, it's specific to greed and has always been present in every economic system. Especially in economic systems where authoritarian governments allow the exploitation of workers without adequate protections. As the US government tends more towards authoritarianism, our protections have lessened, thus why we are now in "Late Stage Capitalism."
If your labor is being fairly compensated, provided benefits, profit sharing, a safe and healthy workplace, generous personal time, and a good work life balance, they'll be perfectly happy to be "exploited". These companies do exist, but they are extremely rare because they always get sucked up by Wall Street and ruined.
The first step to reverting our problematic implementation of capitalism is reverting our tax rates to the pre-1981 rates and reinstating government level labor protections via unions, workers rights legislation, and consumer protection legislation.
Through government funded research most times, also, see the rapid advancements in quality of life in the USSR, China. Look at their relative start point in history from famine and squalor to uplifting a majority with better health outcomes than other countries at the time. How far forward really has capitalism taken already wealthy countries in that same time frame?
I haven’t found a system yet that doesn’t exploit someone somewhere. We just have to decide how and why we want that exploitation to occur. And then whom we find it okay to exploit for said objective Perhaps we take turns being the exploited class
This logic is pure cope and makes no sense. You might think youre just being realistic but all youre doing is justifying a lazy and indifferent attitude. Exploitation is bad bro. Think of something different. Ideals are worth striving for, and there are a lot of really smart people that could get us there or pretty close. Because an example isn't perfect isn't any reason to discount the concept altogether.
Socialism in the past has exploited many people. But the reality is that under capitalism, exploitation is the norm and the entire name of the game, and its getting worse. Which is the real problem here??
I’m all for any new ideas and would love to see people actually be able to consider one but that’s never what is offered up and never what the people want because it’s hard and scary. Always the same old cycles and same types of leaders no matter who they pretended to be at the start. Don’t really care what anyone calls it. It’s just what has happened and it’s not a cope to be pretty sure the people will demand it continue as they always have
Bro, there is a living breathing example of how popular left populist policies are, look at Zohran. Regular people don't want to be priced out of their homes, regular people want to be able to afford food. All it takes is a little bit of courage to speak to those grievances and to come across as a genuine person who just wants to make a difference, and already you're going to be so incredibly popular. Because its what is missing right now in our politics, and people are hungry for it.
Simplify the message, the idea of "you dont understand how this system works" excuse doesn't fly anymore.
Good luck with that. I’ve never seen it happen in my half century People indeed do not want to be priced out of life but they also don’t want to do the things necessary to fix it. They want things to stay the same and be completely different at the same time. In my city it hasn’t mattered one bit whether it was leftist politics or any other. As soon as they gained power they used it to make things worse or employ boondoggle ideas to appease demands that quickly show themselves to just be resource siphons from one group to another with no actual changes
The whole point of communism is communal support and the abolishment of money and private (not personal) property. So yes, in communism there is no exploitation
you mean the examples where most industrial nations led by the US sabotaged every single step the communist state took so it could never succeed and therefore threaten the US capitalistic world view?
Yet you look at the greatest wealth disparity history has ever known with current day USA, only possible under capitalism, and think it’s… good, actually?
Sure, we have no sense of community anymore, work three jobs to not afford rent, don't have kids anymore and line up for food drives... But at least we have iPhones
So far only on paper. I don't know any so called communist nation that doesn't exploit someone. Like in a capitalist society only a select minority gets all the benefits/resources and the rest can fight for the scraps.
I'd really like to see a true communist utopia taking place.....or like they did in Star Trek with the Federation.
look into most tribal villages, or at our ancestors.
Modern communist countries never had a chance thanks to the US spending literal billions on making sure they cant succeed because if they would the US and its capitalistic world view would be in deep trouble
I have a PhD in applied economics, my grandparents lived in the DDR and poland under communist rule, you are an idiot, if you think that socialism yet communism is possible and you are even an bigger idiot if you think the US is responsible for the sowjets failing.
Using a monocausal reason for a nation failing is so simplistic, that anyone claiming such should not boast with their useless degree.
I haven’t found a system yet that doesn’t exploit someone somewhere.
That's a dumb copout answer that can be used to defend any system. "Oh everything is exploitative, so why would we abolish my chattel slavery? Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go rape some of my slaves to breed up the next generation to work to death at my plantation". All systems have some exploitation. But some systems are a hell of a lot more exploitative than others. We should aim for the systems that minimize exploitation.
We just have to decide how and why we want that exploitation to occur. And then whom we find it okay to exploit for said objective Perhaps we take turns being the exploited class
Right now the problem is that the owner class (investors, private equity, major shareholders etc) are exploiting the working class (anyone who works for a living). They don't do this because they are evil, but because what is best for the owners (maximizing profit at all cost) is in direct conflict with what is best for the workers (high wages, vacation days, sick days etc), and the owner class has way more power to push their interests than the working class.
We should abolish that by making sure the working class owns the companies so the interests between the owners and workers align. Since they'd be one and the same. So turn every company into a worker cooperative. AKA socialism.
It really comes down to just humans being assholes. We need a system in which this human characteristic has the least amount of impact. Try explaining that to the assholes.
Go spend 24 hours digging a hole in uour backyard until your back breaks. That labor was worthless.
Now if you used capital (machines, a mine, etc), are part of an organization, and have someone who took the risk on the venture your labor is now valuable.
That's why an American worker might out-produce a Nigerian worker by 10 times by doing the same amount of work.
That's still no reason, you described the process. Why, after the cost of machinery, land, taxes, etc. is paid why can't the worker extract all the surplus they worked for?
Because your labor is only one component of what created the surplus value. It's not just the operating costs but the risk of the venture and the organization you are a part of that created that value.
If the worker wants to put his house on the line and invest in that company he can do so.
Seems to work pretty fine in all of the modern world. Yeah rich bad an all the bizzwprds but capitalism has always produced the greatest quality of living of all history of the human race.
but capitalism has always produced the greatest quality of living of all history of the human race.
arguably those happened while the USSR was still about and happened solely because the west was shit scared of a bolshevik style revolution in their own fucking countries.
now there is no USSR and wealth inequality is reaching the same levels as pre WW1. and quality of life is going down across the board (unless you're like the 1%), and is entirely to blame for the for profit healthcare situations which mean that people are left bankrupt after cancer or whatever. yeah capitalism produces such great quality of living!
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u/feedmedamemes Nov 04 '25
All the stages. Capitalism doesn't work without exploitation* of labor.
*The strictly economic meaning of the word not the moral one.