File spoon-archives/marxism-intro.archive/marxism-intro_1997/97-02-04.192, message 36


From: Roger-AT-pseud.pseud
Subject: Re: M-INTRO: exploitation of workers
Date: Thu, 5 Dec 1996 07:24:12 +0000


At 01:54 AM 12/5/96 +0000, MO wrote:

>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.

Workers have no way of acquiring the means of production independently of
capitalists.  It is capitalists who have made possible the development of
the means of production.  If workers could have done that, they would have.


>>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.

A legitimate function of government is to provide equal opportunity.  I do
not see how capitalism can be blamed for its failure to do that.  I find it
ironic that third world poverty is blamed on capitalism when it is the lack
of a free market that primarily causes poverty.  People can feed themselves
unless government does not stop others, including itself, from stopping them.


>The distribution of wealth is something people are largely born into,
>rather than made by their own efforts, This distribution is usually
>self-perpetuating. is this fair?

My impression is different, but I have little in the way of facts to back it
up.  I would be interested in knowing how, say, the 500 wealthiest people
made their money.  I would guess that the majority of them made it
predominantly through skill.  An incompetent heir to money stands a
reasonable chance of losing it.


>>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 free to decline the opportunity? By taking to crime to feed
>themselves? 

If they cannot provide others with enough value so that others are willing
to give them what they need in order to survive, their choice is between
being a burden on others or dying.  This does not obligate anyone to support
them.


>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?

If employers, even collectively, did not cause workers to be dependent on
them, they do not owe their workers any more than they have agreed to pay
them.  Or might you be saying that capitalists have benefitted from social
institutions that they did not cause?  If capitalists had never existed, how
would workers be better off?  The fact that they have chosen to work for
capitalists means that _they_ believe they are better off and see it as an
improvement over all other alternatives.





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