cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/4485127

Capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks. KARL MARX

  • Justice@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
    4·
    6 months ago

    Yo, are we dropping Marx quotes? Here’s my favorite with no apology for the length:

    We now know how the value paid by the purchaser to the possessor of this peculiar commodity, labour-power, is determined. The use-value which the former gets in exchange, manifests itself only in the actual utilisation, in the consumption of the labour-power. The money-owner buys everything necessary for this purpose, such as raw material, in the market, and pays for it at its full value. The consumption of labour-power is at one and the same time the production of commodities and of surplus-value. The consumption of labour-power is completed, as in the case of every other commodity, outside the limits of the market or of the sphere of circulation. Accompanied by Mr. Moneybags and by the possessor of labour-power, we therefore take leave for a time of this noisy sphere, where everything takes place on the surface and in view of all men, and follow them both into the hidden abode of production, on whose threshold there stares us in the face “No admittance except on business.” Here we shall see, not only how capital produces, but how capital is produced. We shall at last force the secret of profit making.

    This sphere that we are deserting, within whose boundaries the sale and purchase of labour-power goes on, is in fact a very Eden of the innate rights of man. There alone rule Freedom, Equality, Property and Bentham. Freedom, because both buyer and seller of a commodity, say of labour-power, are constrained only by their own free will. They contract as free agents, and the agreement they come to, is but the form in which they give legal expression to their common will. Equality, because each enters into relation with the other, as with a simple owner of commodities, and they exchange equivalent for equivalent. Property, because each disposes only of what is his own. And Bentham, because each looks only to himself. The only force that brings them together and puts them in relation with each other, is the selfishness, the gain and the private interests of each. Each looks to himself only, and no one troubles himself about the rest, and just because they do so, do they all, in accordance with the pre-established harmony of things, or under the auspices of an all-shrewd providence, work together to their mutual advantage, for the common weal and in the interest of all.

    On leaving this sphere of simple circulation or of exchange of commodities, which furnishes the “Free-trader Vulgaris” with his views and ideas, and with the standard by which he judges a society based on capital and wages, we think we can perceive a change in the physiognomy of our dramatis personae. He, who before was the money-owner, now strides in front as capitalist; the possessor of labour-power follows as his labourer. The one with an air of importance, smirking, intent on business; the other, timid and holding back, like one who is bringing his own hide to market and has nothing to expect but — a hiding.

    If you can read that and fully imagine in your mind the scene of a mid-1800s capitalist taking a young person into a seedy shop where they force a pen into their hand and have them sign their rights to their fair wages, all under a guise of “fair” and “free” markets, then you see why unionization and collective bargaining of labor was absolutely required then as it is now.

    Marx writes it beautifully, his humor (Mr. Moneybags- classic) coming through time and translation, and paints the same picture that the right wingers and generally capitalists of today still paint.

    The idea of the small business owner, so proud of himself! The image of the worker forced to a table with no protections under threat of starvation and homelessness for themselves or their family.

    Only a capitalist themself (an actual capital holder, not the cucks who fanboy for them) would defend such a situation… and yet…

    Also the middle paragraph from Marx above, minus the large slathering of sarcasm, is precisely the ideology of libertarians today which has been bought into by large segments of the western population. Similar to “thinkers” of the part who are universally denounced as dingdongs by normal people, and yet, once again… their ideology forms the basis for much of how shit is run or the justification for things like anti-union laws and such.