I. Introduction to the Capitalist structure of production: labor and wages
A. Theory of Surplus Value
1. We’re exploited!
For those of us who do not manage to enter the upper classes and live from investments and from the labor of others, survival means securing “employment”. Yet we cannot help but notice that no matter how hard we work, no matter how well we perform our “jobs”, the people who hire (and fire) us, who supervise us, and especially who “own” the business for which we work, earn a lot more money than we do. Yet in many cases they do less work, are less intelligent and less talented than we are, and frequently they seem to be quite a bit more evil as well, judging from the dictatorial and inhuman way in which they tend to treat us, the workers.
2. Surplus value and wages
It is a fact of economics that in the capitalist system a worker’s wages are equal to less (usually much less) than the value of the work performed. It is easy to document this. For example, if we add up the wages of each auto worker for the time they worked on a particular automobile, and include the costs of materials and all costs associated with the production of that one automobile, we find that the price received by the manufacturer for the finished car is greater than the costs of producing it. Or in a restaurant, if we add up the receipts for a day, we find that they are far greater (assuming the restaurant is successful) than the sum of the wages and costs involved in running the restaurant and producing the day’s food. And they are always great enough that the owner (“boss”) manages to end up with “earnings” quite a bit higher than ours. It is no mystery where the extra value earned by the workers’ labor goes: into the pockets of the owners and of their upper-level management. And the disparity between their profits and our wages is always of several orders of magnitude. Obviously the money we make is not proportional to the value of our labor!
3. Myth of owner superiority
Under capitalism the myth is perpetrated that if it weren’t for the owners and managers, the business could not operate. Corporate leaders, for example, like to claim that they “create jobs”, as if without their owning the enterprise, no workers would be able to perform that work for their living. All of this is very insulting to the workers, once we begin to doubt the truth of the myth of the worth of the owners. It assumes that only the owners are capable of creating enterprises, of managing businesses. It assumes, therefore, that the upper class is naturally superior, more intelligent, than the workers. Social science and psychology can easily prove this to be a false assumption, but as long as the owners are in control, we have to act as if we accept their lie, even though we know better.
4. The myth rationalizes exploitation by the owners
And why are the workers insulted in this way? It can only be to justify the position of the owners, and their usurpation of the profit produced by the workers but never enjoyed by them. Obviously the workers, joined together, could hire a manager to supervise the business and there would be no need for an “owner” of the business. But the owners, or capitalists, are in the game of living lives of luxury--extreme luxury, when compared with the lives of most people--and the only way to do that is to maintain a system where they may take advantage of the labor of other people without giving those people the full benefit of what they have produced. In other words, the bosses get so much more money simply through their illegitimate usurpation of the means of production, which they possess by largely undemocratic and illegal means. Yet this possession is sanctioned by the state power of the capitalist countries, whose police will invariably back the bosses.
B. Social relations of production
1. Thus it is that in a business, the owner assumes dictatorial control over all of his employees. If we compare the individual freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution of the U.S. with the rights enjoyed by a worker on the job, it is easy to see that human and civil rights are largely left behind when we enter the workplace. The fact is that even though the workers may be capable of making business decisions as well as the owner, in order to maintain control and justify his larger share of the profits, the owner must keep the workers completely subordinate and removed from any power over what goes on within the business. Anyone who has held a job in a capitalist society knows that not only freedom of speech, but even the freedom to dress and look as we prefer is taken from us in the workplace. The bosses have the power to fire us as they choose, and our ability to be hired in the first place is entirely at their discretion. In reality, the entire Bill of Rights applies only to the capitalist class (the bourgeoisie), because at work only they are free in any real sense.
2. The system is set up in this way to preserve the ability of the capitalist class to maintain its relatively higher wealth, and to keep the workers in a position of having to perform the labor which produces this wealth. For this reason the workplace must be organized hierarchically, with all power flowing from the owner. Only the “well-being” of the business is supposed to be taken into consideration by the owner as he decides who should perform which task, who may work at all, and under what conditions. The good of the workers, and of society as a whole, is of no consequence when the capitalists are making decisions. Liberal reformers will impose controls (regulations) in a limited way; under fascist (“conservative”; in the US, “Republican”) governments the bosses will have a free reign. The political ideal of the bosses and their conservative political servants is a system of “laissez-faire” capitalism. On eux doit laisser faire ce qu’ils veulent!
3. Most importantly, the owner maintains all control over the distribution of the product. The workplace is set up so that once a product is finished, it is removed from contact with the workers. There is no ability on their part to identify with what they have produced, because it’s disposal is out of their control. The workers are taught to believe not that they have some interest in the product of their labor, but rather that they have “sold” their labor. The energy of their work has been purchased by the owner. There is no question of control or power--once the labor has been delivered for a wage, the worker has no more interest in it. Since the worker has in effect sold a portion of his life to the owners, he is not considered to have produced anything. The owners claim that they produce things (just as they claim that they have “earned” their profits).
C. Social structure of production
1. Since there are so many more workers than owners, and since the workers’ average intelligence is equal to that of the owners, it is obvious that if the workers had any power at all, they would quickly alter the system so that they were not so exploited and the owners not so unfairly enriched. But the workers do not have power. In every capitalist country it can be demonstrated that the political system, including laws and police power, is under the control of the owners. When in a democracy workers manage to attain some power, as through the labor movement, the capitalists do everything in their power to reverse every gain made by the workers. A recent example would be the union-busting tactics of the Reagan and Bush administrations, or of
the two Republican governors of California, Deukmejian and Wilson, who did everything in their power to curtail the power of the state’s Farm Labor Relations Board which was standing up for the rights of farm laborers under the prior Brown administration. And of course U.S. history is full of examples of union organizers being beaten and killed by hired goons and by the police themselves. And since the same capitalist owner class is in control of the communications media, they use powerful propaganda to convince the public of the inferiority of the workers, the evil of the labor unions, and the virtues of the capitalist class.
2. We can see this struggle between labor and capital throughout the history of capitalism. The owners have nearly always prevailed, despite temporary setbacks, because of their control of enough resources that they can always command the greatest police, or if necessary, military power to suppress uprisings, and they can always manipulate the political system with their large stocks of capital to the extent that they quite often have the workers themselves voting for pro-owner policies and politicians. A recent example of this would be the heavy financing of anti-Proposition 167 advertising by the rich, in the California election of 1992, in order to deceive the people into voting against a measure which would have taxed the rich and thereby demonstrably made life better for the majority of the state’s people! But the pro-167 forces had little money to spend, since the class with money naturally would not support a proposition which would cause their own taxes to be raised. This may be logical from the self-interested point of view of the rich, but it is not democratic.
II. Control of the means of production: capitalist means of restricting free trade in the labor market
A. Monopoly ownership and restricted access to the means of production [we have to work for them]
1. If working conditions are so unpleasant, why do we continue to work for these abusive owners? The answer is obvious: they control all of the jobs, because they control the resources. In the case of restaurants, for example, there is little opportunity for a worker to gain control of the capital necessary to open his own restaurant, and we find that even the land and the buildings which could be used to establish a restaurant are in the control of the owners--in this case the land owners who charge exorbitant rents in order to receive maximum profits (in this case for no work, since the act of owning land itself entitles an owner to receive a large monthly rent, whether or not that owner ever did a lick of work in order to come into possession of that land or building), and city and county codes will inevitably restrict someone with limited resources from setting up a food service establishment. Often even the building and health regulations seem designed not so much to protect the public safety as to make it prohibitively expensive for workers to open their own businesses.
2. Of course there are the exceptions, the examples of people who started off poor and “made it”. But these are so few in number that it is meaningless to the average worker, because he has, statistically, virtually no chance of escaping the cycle of wage oppression and managing to take control of enough resources to be free of the owner-oppressor. The fact remains that for most people, their chances of “making it” depend almost entirely on their luck in managing to find a “good job”, one where the boss will treat you as a human, and pay you decently. Unfortunately, such situations are rare, and the overwhelming majority of bosses/owners maintain their workers in powerlessness and subordination, in order to preserve their own position of privilege.
B. Psychology of wage oppression [we have to obey them]
1. The tactic of controlling workers includes a heavy complement of what we might call “psychological warfare” or “brainwashing”. Many workers actually believe that the bosses deserve what they have, because we are so often told in school and on television that wealth is the result of hard work, that one “earns” a comfortable life. TV commercials are designed to carry messages supporting the supremacy of the capitalist class, and to convince the people that the situation of having to “go to work” for someone is natural, and that it is the capitalist who “creates jobs”. Many of these commercials also make a point to portray the workers as dolts, and the owners and managers as sophisticated and intelligent.
2. This was made glaringly obvious by the working-class supporters of Ross Perot in the 1992 presidential campaign. The most commonly heard comment about Perot from his supporters was that “if he was smart enough to make all that money” he must be qualified to be President! Yet we have to wonder if such billionaires reach their level of wealth because they are more intelligent or simply more devious. From the experiences most of us have on the job, we should conclude logically that it is more their evil nature than any other quality which enables the rich to be rich. Yet anyone can turn on the TV and quickly find a commercial in which the “joke” is the stupidity of the worker, the right of the boss to terrorize and intimidate the worker, and the naive wish of the worker to become rich by means of luck. The capitalists who pay for the commercials will naturally not suggest to us that we should have some legitimate means of bettering ourselves--only that we should work harder for them in the hopes of “deserving” some small improvement, such as a raise, by the good graces of the capitalist!
C. Structure of wages [we have to accept low wages]
1. “An honest day’s wage for an honest day’s work” is a well known cliche of the capitalist world. But while millions of workers turn in an honest day’s work every day, there are few of them who receive for it honest pay. The labor market is just that, a market, but it is not a free market. The system maintains an unemployment rate high enough (usually it fluctuates from as low as 4% on up to the more usual 6-10%) that there is always a significant number of unemployed workers who are desperate for any work. This drives down wages. If everyone were employed, the workers would be in a position to bargain for truly decent wages, but full employment simply does not occur in a capitalist society. This fact alone should tell us that all of their talk of the “free market” is a lie. Isn’t it a bit much of a coincidence that even in the best economic times there has not been full employment in the capitalist nations?
III. Coexistence of two modes of production: capitalist market & domestic/cooperative
A. In 3rd world: non-capitalist reproduction of labor
1. History shows us quite clearly that modes of production other than capitalism can be productive and especially more just. Even in the capitalist world, much work is accomplished outside of the capitalist structure of production. Any work which is not done for wages, but for a family or community, is non-capitalist labor. Probably most of this type of work occurs in the poorer countries, where migrant or other part-time workers spend part of their time in their home village, existing by means of economic activity which is of the traditional sort. Often they are eating food produced by their family, and their consumer goods are produced by family members. This non-capitalist activity actually works to the benefit of the capitalists, because the people are not allowed enough resources (usually measured as land) to prosper by their non-capitalist work, but rather it is only enough to keep them alive until they are next needed by the capitalists for such work as seasonal agricultural or industrial labor. In traditional times, such activity supported an entire society, but in the present circumstances, the capitalists are always in control of enough resources to assure that all the significant production in a country will profit them, while the workers remain at a level of bare subsistence. Even a brief look at any colonized country or oppressed class confirms this.
B. Peasant production: DMP (Domestic Mode of Production)
1. If the people were to have control of sufficient resources, they would easily be able to produce a decent living for themselves. In some cases they could even produce significant wealth. This is because the non-capitalist modes of production are not in fact less efficient or productive than the capitalist mode. The difference is not in diminished productivity, but rather in the destination of the fruits of the workers’ labor. In agriculture, for example, the “domestic mode of production”, which is roughly what we think of in the U.S. as the “family farm”, is in fact more efficient and productive than the capitalist “agri-business” mode of production. But the capitalists must perpetuate the myth that their gigantic farms are better than the older family farm in a community of other family farms, because the agri-business structure is more profitable to the capitalists who own it. It is easily demonstrated that a village full of small farmers can out-produce a large farm worked by farm laborers, but it is just as easily demonstrated that it is much easier for the capitalist to keep the farm workers oppressed and underpaid on the large “plantation” farm.
2. In feudal times, the farming community was intact, and producing as family units, but there was always a “Duke” or other “noble” extracting, by force of course, a large portion of the produce for his own enrichment. While we hear much about the poor peasants fleeing to America to gain their “freedom”, for most of us America has only meant exchanging the “Duke” for the “boss”. The fact is that it is not the life of small village farmers which is oppresive and poor, but rather the social system in which the farmer--and other workers--exists. Under capitalism we trade the peasant’s farm for a wage job, but we do not necessarily gain any more freedom in the exchange. The claim that in the U.S. we have gained some “freedom” which did not exist in Europe, is just so much window dressing.
3. Non-capitalist production, which in modern times is usually termed “cooperative”, is thriving in many areas of the world. In Europe there are numerous examples of villages which produce cooperatively, produce higher quality produce than the capitalist plantations, and which enjoy the fruits of the labor themselves, although there too the capitalists maintain control of the great majority of a country’s resources and therefore of production and profit. Without the extensive state support (which the capitalists enjoy), it is not reasonable to expect that, despite their greater efficiency, cooperatives will spread and replace the capitalist mode of production. The capitalists would, as they always do, resist such a change with whatever violence and perfidy is at their disposal.
C. Cooperatives: communalism interacting with capitalism
1. A cooperative can survive and prosper even within the larger capitalist system when it can maintain control of sufficient resources and prevent the rise to power of a minority class (capitalists) who will take control of production and distribution. This is because a cooperative can take its produce to market as easily as can a capitalist enterprise, as long as the state does not interfere and the resources can be kept in the control of the cooperative. What is important is that within the cooperative justice prevails, and care is taken that productivity and quality are maintained to be competitive in the market.
2. The cooperative is the nearest modern equivalent to the productive unit which existed in pre-capitalist, pre-imperialist days. Marx and Engles called it Primitive Communism. Somehow, despite what modern capitalists would have us believe, a tribal or village unit managed to get the work done, they were not afflicted with hordes of lazy people mooching off the rest of society, and the quality of production was high...high enough that the products of such people are today in museums and celebrated as great art. Those peoples' descendants are the field and factory workers of today, and they are you and I...indebted to Visa and MasterCard, taught to thank the bosses for creating jobs, jobs that already existed before these same bosses usurped the means of production from our ancestors.
Grow your own!
