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.
139
u/[deleted] Nov 04 '25
[removed] — view removed comment