12-30-2016, 10:16 PM
(This post was last modified: 12-31-2016, 05:16 AM by FireIceTalon.)
I was going to respond to all you said, but this here needs special attention.
You know, its one thing to be skeptical of communism and put forth arguments or evidence in an attempt to support your position of doubt.
However, it is ANOTHER thing altogether to deny how capitalism objectively operates and how it is structured in the face of irrefutable real world workings and observation. Your denial of this is entirely untenable.
Not only is what I described easily obervable and verifiable as existing in the real world, it is in fact the defining characteristic that capitalist social relations and institutions are structured upon. The capitalists own private property - the state exists to violently protect and uphold private property relations. This is absolutely indisputable, beyond any shadow of a reasonable doubt. Saying otherwise would be like bouncing a rubber ball off the ground, watching it go up, then come back down and then still denying the existence of gravity. Like it or not, these things do objectively exist.
A terribly weak justification for capitalist power and privilege. There are so many objections against this, its not even funny. Even the human nature argument, as lousy and irrational as it is, is still better than this.
Capital itself was and is built by the working class in the first place - who built/builds all the factories, tools, technology and instruments of production in general? The working class. Who dug up and cultivated all the natural resources required to do this? The working class. The capitalist has the luxury to take such a "risk" because they have unjustly profited in relation to the means of production - hardly a risk at all. Nor is it a risk in a broader sense, since they have already ended up with far more wealth than they will ever need to survive, and they did so at the expense of workers. So it begs the question, what gives capitalists the right to own that which they did not produce? The answer is, they have no legitimate claim to it. "Capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks" - Marx
Aside from that, workers take far more and greater risks than capitalists do - a construction worker for instance takes a FAR bigger risk walking across I-beams to build a sky scraper than the capitalist who borrowed the money to build it. Hell, we take more risks than any capitalist simply by being forced to enter into a 'at will' contract where we can lose our livlihood at the drop of a hat - for any reason or no reason at all. Is that not a risk that workers must face every single day? Indeed it is, and we don't get any kind of permenant reward for it like capitalists do, which leads me to...
It seems like the whole "risk" argument is based on some strange belief that "temporary risk entitles permenant compensation". If the start-up origin is bad, it doesn't say much too good about the system itself now, does it?
Lastly, the outrageous notion that capitalists somehow deserve to expropriate surplus value from workers because they took a "risk" is red-herring idealism. It is done regardless because they own the means of production - the result would be the same whether they took a risk or not. "Risk" is completely irrelevant to production for profit.
So once again, I hereby state that capitalists are free-loaders and welfare kings/queens.
While I abhor the wealth and income equality that capitalism has generated, it isn't the crux of the problem - it is merely a symptom of it. The crux lies in ownership of the means of production.
Fair taxation? We know that works wonders, since the capitalists can't easily rollback such policies in the future now can they? Except, we've seen this happennow constantly the last several decades after the so-called 'New Deal'.
Inconsistent. To propose a negotiation of salary and wages would be to reject Marx's analysis of surplus value and exploitation, because this has implications that surplus value is not being expropriated (or very little is) from the worker, and therefore the capitalist/worker relationship is not an exploitative or antagonistic one, would it not? But to accept Marx's position as correct, as you did here, would have the logical conclusion that capitalists do indeed expropriate the overwhelming majority of the value produced by workers for themselves (minus the paid wages/salary), thereby nullifying their ability to negotiate said salary or wage; since if they did, this would have the radical implication of workers receiving the full value of what they produce (in other words, the capitalist would get ZERO)! LOL.
Quote:A claim without any evidence to support it.
You know, its one thing to be skeptical of communism and put forth arguments or evidence in an attempt to support your position of doubt.
However, it is ANOTHER thing altogether to deny how capitalism objectively operates and how it is structured in the face of irrefutable real world workings and observation. Your denial of this is entirely untenable.
Not only is what I described easily obervable and verifiable as existing in the real world, it is in fact the defining characteristic that capitalist social relations and institutions are structured upon. The capitalists own private property - the state exists to violently protect and uphold private property relations. This is absolutely indisputable, beyond any shadow of a reasonable doubt. Saying otherwise would be like bouncing a rubber ball off the ground, watching it go up, then come back down and then still denying the existence of gravity. Like it or not, these things do objectively exist.
Quote:The one service Capitalists provide is the risk of capital to create new ventures, with the hope for lucrative rewards for their risks.
A terribly weak justification for capitalist power and privilege. There are so many objections against this, its not even funny. Even the human nature argument, as lousy and irrational as it is, is still better than this.
Capital itself was and is built by the working class in the first place - who built/builds all the factories, tools, technology and instruments of production in general? The working class. Who dug up and cultivated all the natural resources required to do this? The working class. The capitalist has the luxury to take such a "risk" because they have unjustly profited in relation to the means of production - hardly a risk at all. Nor is it a risk in a broader sense, since they have already ended up with far more wealth than they will ever need to survive, and they did so at the expense of workers. So it begs the question, what gives capitalists the right to own that which they did not produce? The answer is, they have no legitimate claim to it. "Capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks" - Marx
Aside from that, workers take far more and greater risks than capitalists do - a construction worker for instance takes a FAR bigger risk walking across I-beams to build a sky scraper than the capitalist who borrowed the money to build it. Hell, we take more risks than any capitalist simply by being forced to enter into a 'at will' contract where we can lose our livlihood at the drop of a hat - for any reason or no reason at all. Is that not a risk that workers must face every single day? Indeed it is, and we don't get any kind of permenant reward for it like capitalists do, which leads me to...
It seems like the whole "risk" argument is based on some strange belief that "temporary risk entitles permenant compensation". If the start-up origin is bad, it doesn't say much too good about the system itself now, does it?
Lastly, the outrageous notion that capitalists somehow deserve to expropriate surplus value from workers because they took a "risk" is red-herring idealism. It is done regardless because they own the means of production - the result would be the same whether they took a risk or not. "Risk" is completely irrelevant to production for profit.
So once again, I hereby state that capitalists are free-loaders and welfare kings/queens.
Quote:No one here is disputing that wealth distribution in the US (elsewhere) needs correction, which can be done by placing the burden of the "public good" more fairly through fair taxation.
While I abhor the wealth and income equality that capitalism has generated, it isn't the crux of the problem - it is merely a symptom of it. The crux lies in ownership of the means of production.
Fair taxation? We know that works wonders, since the capitalists can't easily rollback such policies in the future now can they? Except, we've seen this happennow constantly the last several decades after the so-called 'New Deal'.
Quote:Marx correctly pointed out a problem with "surplus value" and exploitation, and IMHO, one "labor law" that makes sense to me would be that every worker should be informed of there annual production value as a part of negotiating their annual salary, or wage.
Inconsistent. To propose a negotiation of salary and wages would be to reject Marx's analysis of surplus value and exploitation, because this has implications that surplus value is not being expropriated (or very little is) from the worker, and therefore the capitalist/worker relationship is not an exploitative or antagonistic one, would it not? But to accept Marx's position as correct, as you did here, would have the logical conclusion that capitalists do indeed expropriate the overwhelming majority of the value produced by workers for themselves (minus the paid wages/salary), thereby nullifying their ability to negotiate said salary or wage; since if they did, this would have the radical implication of workers receiving the full value of what they produce (in other words, the capitalist would get ZERO)! LOL.
https://www.youtube.com/user/FireIceTalon
"Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence is but the will of your class, made into law for all, a will whose essential character and direction are determined by the economic conditions of the existence of your class." - Marx (addressing the bourgeois)
"Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence is but the will of your class, made into law for all, a will whose essential character and direction are determined by the economic conditions of the existence of your class." - Marx (addressing the bourgeois)