195
pinata the rich
(quokk.au)
Seize the Memes of Production
An international (English speaking) socialist Lemmy community free of the “ML” influence of instances like lemmy.ml and lemmygrad. This is a place for undogmatic shitposting and memes from a progressive, anti-capitalist and truly anti-imperialist perspective, regardless of specific ideology.
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So if I make a program by myself, sell it for profit, I am stealing the wages of the working class?
What if I run a company that does the same, I pay my employees well above market value, yet still manage to make profit for the company, is that also stealing from the working class?
What if I reduce the price to stop making profit, yet won't reduce the pay for my employees, how has that benefitted them?
The employees working at the company, collectively, have produced, maintained, and distributed the product. When the product sells, any profit (the money left after operational costs and reinvestment) was generated by that labor. It isn't all that complicated. That money, under capitalism, is siphoned off by a class that only exists to steal this surplus. I'm sure you'd counter with something about mutual funds and retirement accounts. However, this same class also steals from those dividends as well via fees and set percentages.
Operating costs plus a certain percentage as savings.
You seem to be trying really hard to invalidate the point with whataboutisms as if a single gotcha will invalidate the entire argument.
Nah, I just enjoy pushing arguments further.
All great and smart questions. Marxism has the answers:
You could get lucky, but on average and long-term, self-employed people don't get any profit. Some lose, some win, but in total, they only make enough to reproduce themselves or everyone would be self-employed. In fact, they make less, because as a solo operation, they are at a disadvantage amongst market forces and fluctuations. So they are bought up by oligopolies. In the specific case of a very successful program, you might be able to exploit copy-right rules and the oppressive state apparatus to seek monopoly rents well above development costs and punish anyone threatening your monopoly with open source software. Then, yes, you'd be like a landlord.
Setting aside rents and violently enforced monopolies, let's assume you operate on a free market. Then you could pay fair wages for a short time, but you'd lose out eventually against inevitably arising competition who dosn't care about their employees and undercuts your prices making you irrelevant. You'll have to fire your employees or get bought out or both. Capitalists don't start out evil, the good ones just cease to be capitalists after a while.
Individual capitalists can freely set prices, but on average, market forces make prices tend towards the value. The value is determined by the socially necessary labor time to produce the commodity and all the inputs. (At least within a society with a fixed level of automation, in reality different sectors complicate things somewhat, but let's leave that aside for now). Exploitation happens, because employees aren't paid the true value of what they produce, but only enough to reproduce themselves (to come to work next day). Basically, after they have produced enough to cover their reproduction, they have to keep working for a few more hours. Clearing out your stocks by selling products below their market value doesn't change the fact that the workers aren't being paid the full value of their product. It just makes the company unable to stay afloat long term. If you lower the price just enough to not make a profit, you'll see competitors use their profits to buy more efficient machines and innovate. You won't be able to keep up and go under. Either that or you won't have any backups in case of a crisis. If you lower the price even more, you won't be able to afford inputs and pay your workers. The result is the same.
Being a capitalist is a social role that comes with certain rules enforced by market forces. Capitalists who don't behave like capitalists cease to be capitalists and become irrelevant. The only way for society to get out of this "game" is to stop playing.