By David S. Pena
Capitalists want to maximize profits, and they do this by exploiting the working class. The basic method of capitalist exploitation is to pay workers the lowest wage they can get away with (as close to mere survival as possible) while forcing their employees to do the maximum amount of work.
More specifically, capitalists try to maximize the value they get out of you, in the form of the product or service that you produce, by increasing the period of time that you have to work beyond the time it takes you to produce enough to cover your wage or salary.
For example, take an auto parts worker who's paid $50 per 8-hour day. He's able to produce $50 worth of product in approximately 3 minutes.
It took him an insignificant amount of time to produce enough value to cover the day’s wage. If you consider only those 3 minutes, it looks like an even exchange between the worker and the capitalist. The worker produced $50 worth of product and will be paid $50 in return.
But don’t forget, our factory worker has to stay on the production line for a much longer time—another 7 hours and 57 minutes, just to get the $50.
If this had been an even exchange, in which the wage equals exactly what the worker produces, the workday would have ended after those 3 minutes.
But if that happened the capitalist wouldn’t make any profit, and maximizing profit is the whole point of capitalist production.
Nearly $10,000 worth of surplus value was produced during the additional 7-plus hours that the worker was forced to remain at work.
The capitalist steals this value from the worker; the worker is never paid for producing it. This theft of surplus value is what is meant by the term “capitalist exploitation.”
In Marxist theory, the amount of time you must work to cover your wage or salary is called necessary labor time.
The time beyond that, during which you are forced to continue working in order to receive your wage, is called surplus labor time, and the value produced during that time is called surplus value.
During surplus labor time you are working for free because the capitalist steals the time and the resulting product from you without paying for it.
In order to maximize profit, capitalists try to minimize the amount of necessary labor time and maximize the amount of surplus labor time, so they can profit from the surplus value that results.
That is why capitalists are always trying to keep wages as low as possible, extend the length of the workday, and increase through speedup the amount of work that you have to do in any given period of time.
This intensification of work is what capitalists really mean when they speak so benignly about “improving productivity.”
...workers are exploited and are literally victims of theft on the job... Read the rest of this article.
For example, take an auto parts worker who's paid $50 per 8-hour day. He's able to produce $50 worth of product in approximately 3 minutes.
It took him an insignificant amount of time to produce enough value to cover the day’s wage. If you consider only those 3 minutes, it looks like an even exchange between the worker and the capitalist. The worker produced $50 worth of product and will be paid $50 in return.
But don’t forget, our factory worker has to stay on the production line for a much longer time—another 7 hours and 57 minutes, just to get the $50.
If this had been an even exchange, in which the wage equals exactly what the worker produces, the workday would have ended after those 3 minutes.
But if that happened the capitalist wouldn’t make any profit, and maximizing profit is the whole point of capitalist production.
Nearly $10,000 worth of surplus value was produced during the additional 7-plus hours that the worker was forced to remain at work.
The capitalist steals this value from the worker; the worker is never paid for producing it. This theft of surplus value is what is meant by the term “capitalist exploitation.”
In Marxist theory, the amount of time you must work to cover your wage or salary is called necessary labor time.
The time beyond that, during which you are forced to continue working in order to receive your wage, is called surplus labor time, and the value produced during that time is called surplus value.
During surplus labor time you are working for free because the capitalist steals the time and the resulting product from you without paying for it.
In order to maximize profit, capitalists try to minimize the amount of necessary labor time and maximize the amount of surplus labor time, so they can profit from the surplus value that results.
That is why capitalists are always trying to keep wages as low as possible, extend the length of the workday, and increase through speedup the amount of work that you have to do in any given period of time.
This intensification of work is what capitalists really mean when they speak so benignly about “improving productivity.”
...workers are exploited and are literally victims of theft on the job... Read the rest of this article.
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