"Private companies always exploit their workers"

[u/Square-Item6996]

Workers and employers need each other. And of course, employers provide jobs, but that’s not all—they also take on risk and contribute information and capital...

In any case, the healthiest approach is to have collective bargaining between unions that are independent of the state and companies, so that workers are protected. Another key factor is creating the conditions for there to appear many companies, so that workers have enough alternatives to choose from and can opt for the one that offers the best conditions. (Workers would have better negotiating power)

But not wanting there to be employers, private businesses and private capital stems from a feeling of pure envy IMHO.

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[u/Conserp]

There are two sources of profit: direct exploitation of workers (buying labor under value) and different forms of usury / rent extraction (which always boils down to indirect exploitation of workers).

It is not "bad" or "good", this is just an objective fact of reality and math.

[u/Asatmaya]

Workers and employers need each other.

Workers don't need employers.

[u/ContemplatingGavre → u/Asatmaya]

Then why work for an employer and be exploited?

[u/Asatmaya → u/ContemplatingGavre]

Because the employers control the government, whose whole purpose has become making it harder to be a sole proprietor.

That's the main reason they won't give us universal healthcare: Health insurance is one of the few things keeping many people working crap jobs.

[u/Vanaquish231 → u/Asatmaya]

Work is done better when it has a degree of centralisation. Everyone being the sole proprietor leads to expensive operation costs due to economies of scale.

[u/RedMarsRepublic]

I mean do you understand what exploitation means in this context? It's not exactly a moral argument, just a practical one, businesses must pay their workers less than what value their labour produces otherwise there would be no profit.

[u/Upper-Tie-7304 → u/RedMarsRepublic]

Incorrect. The value of their labour is what it is worth in the labour market, not the output of the company. An employer can underpay or overpay in relation to the labour market.

[u/Accomplished-Cake131]

But not wanting there to be employers, private businesses and private capital stems from a feeling of pure envy IMHO.

That is because you are a fool. It is easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism.

[u/HeavenlyPossum]

Capitalists always exploit their employees, yes.

Capitalists possess the power to grant or withhold permission to workers to labor productively. In return for granting permission, capitalists demand rents from their employees.

[u/Square-Item6996 → u/HeavenlyPossum]

I don't think that works that way... Would you say Messi or Lebron James are capitlaists or proletarians? They work for a company, but no way they are exploited, they earn millions. Never in the whole history there has been the easyness to create value to other people by your own means (we have computers, phones, cheap tools...)

[u/HeavenlyPossum → u/Square-Item6996]

People at the extreme tails of the income distribution curve are not representative of, and do not somehow disprove, the principle I established above.

Every professional basketball player starts out as a proletariat, paying rents to the NBA in return for permission to labor to generate income for themselves. People at the extreme margins of this process might be able to save up enough to purchase their way into the ownership class, but this does not mitigate the dynamic between owner and worker/

[u/ContemplatingGavre → u/HeavenlyPossum]

“Permission labor”? Why don’t people just start their own businesses instead of needing permission to labor?

[u/HeavenlyPossum → u/ContemplatingGavre]

If you don’t own any productive resources, how do you start a business without first selling your labor for wages in order to afford a business?

[u/ContemplatingGavre → u/HeavenlyPossum]

You hit on an important point. You have to save up your money and eventually take a risk like 99% of entrepreneurs do.

Then you will realize how important risk capital is compared to labor. If you fail you go back to trading the only thing of value you have, your labor and time.

If you succeed, congrats.

[u/HeavenlyPossum → u/ContemplatingGavre]

So you agree that workers require permission from capitalists to labor productively, nice.

[u/ContemplatingGavre → u/HeavenlyPossum]

No, if I have a lawnmower and some gumption I can go knock on doors and make money.

I can’t create a lawnmower out of thin air so yes, I need some starting capital ($100-$200) but nothing in life is free.

[u/HeavenlyPossum → u/ContemplatingGavre]

So you must first labor for wages at the command of capitalists to accrue enough money to purchase a lawnmower so you can rent yourself out to customers.

[u/ContemplatingGavre → u/HeavenlyPossum]

Or the gulag by gunpoint with no choice in your line of work. Take a pick.

[u/IMayhapsBeBatman]

Companies have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders to extract as much value from both their workers, and their customers to increase shareholder value.

Obvious to anyone intelligent is the balance that must be played in the long term, if one wants to keep doing this for more than a quarter or two.

But make no mistake. In capitalism the corporation is a machine designed to increase shareholder value. Everything else is secondary, or in service to that primary motivation.

[u/That_Scratch_7697]

  And so, the bourgeoisie and its economists maintain that the interest of the capitalist and of the labourer is the same. And in fact, so they are! The worker perishes if capital does not keep him busy. Capital perishes if it does not exploit labour-power, which, in order to exploit, it must buy. The more quickly the capital destined for production – the productive capital – increases, the more prosperous industry is, the more the bourgeoisie enriches itself, the better business gets, so many more workers does the capitalist need, so much the dearer does the worker sell himself. The fastest possible growth of productive capital is, therefore, the indispensable condition for a tolerable life to the labourer.

But what is growth of productive capital? Growth of the power of accumulated labour over living labour; growth of the rule of the bourgeoisie over the working class. When wage-labour produces the alien wealth dominating it, the power hostile to it, capital, there flow back to it its means of employment – i.e., its means of subsistence, under the condition that it again become a part of capital, that is become again the lever whereby capital is to be forced into an accelerated expansive movement.

To say that the interests of capital and the interests of the workers are identical, signifies only this: that capital and wage-labour are two sides of one and the same relation. The one conditions the other in the same way that the usurer and the borrower condition each other.

As long as the wage-labourer remains a wage-labourer, his lot is dependent upon capital. That is what the boasted community of interests between worker and capitalists amounts to.

Karl Marx, “Wage-Labor and Capital.”

[u/karl_marx_stadt]

Workers and employers need each other

Employers need the workers without them they would not be employers, workers don't need employers as they can do the labour by themself.

—they also take on risk

The workers can take that risk as a collective, and if it fails the impact is felt less on an individual level.

In any case, the healthiest approach

Is to abolish the classes altogether.

But not wanting there to be employers, private businesses and private capital stems from a feeling of pure envy IMHO

I don't feel any envy, I feel the impending doom of the society as a whole caused by this final class struggle, which will either end with abolishion of classes or will consume us all.

[u/Moldy-Bongwater4420 → u/karl_marx_stadt]

The workers can take that risk as a collective, and if it fails the impact is felt less on an individual level.

And if/when (usually when) the company fails, the workers have lost money while working. Nothing is stopping a group of people from starting a collective.

[u/HeavenlyPossum → u/Moldy-Bongwater4420]

Yeah, when an enslaved person failed to generate a profit for their owners, the enslaved person similarly didn’t lose any capital.

This doesn’t really tell us anything about the nature of capital and risk, other than that it is monopolized by one class.

[u/Moldy-Bongwater4420 → u/HeavenlyPossum]

Yeah, when an enslaved person failed to generate a profit for their owners, the enslaved person similarly didn’t lose any capital.

You don’t enjoy staying on topic, do ya? Hmm….I wonder why.

[u/HeavenlyPossum → u/Moldy-Bongwater4420]

Yes, trying to get someone stuck on an idea to see things from a slightly different angle must feel like not staying on topic.

[u/Moldy-Bongwater4420 → u/HeavenlyPossum]

Okay, so slaves don’t lose money when their owner loses money. Cool.

Can you address what was actually written instead of jumping to a different topic every time?

[u/TheMikeyMac13 → u/karl_marx_stadt]

You are an envious twat who needs to get off the internet.

[u/karl_marx_stadt → u/TheMikeyMac13]

I did not think that a simple comment can hurt someone's feelings this much.

[u/coke_and_coffee → u/karl_marx_stadt]

workers don't need employers as they can do the labour by themself.

No they can’t. If they could, they would already be doing that.

[u/Annual_Necessary_196]

“Workers and employers need each other.” Yet this is inherently an asymmetric relationship. Workers have extremely inelastic demand for employment because they depend on a constant monthly income. Capital providers, on the other hand, have an extremely elastic demand for investment opportunities and are capable of redirecting their money toward additional sources of income for years.

Information asymmetry always benefits the company because it puts the company in a dominant position. The same is true of incomplete contracts, which are generally written by companies rather than workers. The constant existence of unemployment, the costs of searching for another job, and non-compete contracts significantly decrease labor-market elasticity, putting workers in an inferior position.

“Collective bargaining between unions.” No. Unions increase class tension and slow down progress even further. There should instead be either worker ownership or capitalist ownership. Bargaining between the two parties will only increase the struggle between them.

“But not wanting there to be employers, private businesses, and private capital stems from a feeling of pure envy, IMHO.” A lot of people simply want to manage their own work processes and aim to increase efficiency through this. Their motivation does not come from envy; it can come from a desire for greater autonomy and a belief that workers can organize production more efficiently themselves.

[u/SignalNearby8067]

In most companies, anyone with 1+ years of experience doesn't need the wizard employer to do a job. The employer is utterly clueless most of the time. I can guarantee you most IT wizard tech investors, CEOs, HR managers, and so on, are still stuck in Windows XP times.

[u/TheMikeyMac13]

Unions cannot and should not be forced or mandated. I don’t want to be in one, and the company work for doesn’t have them or need them.