Date: Thu, 5 Dec 1996 12:24:55 +1030
From: MO-AT-pseud.pseud
Subject: Re: M-INTRO: exploitation of workers




>The richer the capitalist gets, the more he can employ people and the more
>benefits he can give to his customers.  If those workers could provide more
>value to society than they are getting paid by their employers, they would
>not need their employers.

Well, workers could provide more value to society if they owned means of
production. The assets that they begin with are not the result of trades
but the result of the social structure through which wealth is distributed.


The fact that workers choose to work for their
>employers means that they recognize it as their best alternative.

In Australia last century workers flocked from cities to goldfields because
they saw an alternative to working for employers. The government imposed a
tax on miners to force those who were less successful to return to
employment. Such interventions are usually not required in the smooth
working of a capitalist system, but they demonstrate what it presupposes.
The distribution of wealth is something people ar elargley born into,
rather than made by their own eforts, This distribution is usually
self-perpetuating. is this fair?

  Unless the
>capitalist has caused the workers' dependence on him, he is merely offering
>workers another opportunity that they are free to decline.
>
How are they fre to decline the opportunity? By taking to crime to feed
themselves? And is it important that the individual employer should create
the dependency of workers on employers? Or is it enough that it should be
the result of social insitutions and the collective power of employers?





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