more or less
the way i explain the labor theory of value to people is very simple. i don’t talk about commodities, commodity fetishism, proletarians, bourgeoisie, private property, the evolution of feudalism out of capitalism, hegelian dialectics or any of that complex historical materialist analysis that marx spends hundreds of pages building up before explaining worker exploitation. I cut straight to the chase.
I say these things, usually not all at once. I let people chew on each one:
- If you’re a boss, and you own a business, you have to pay the worker less than their work is worth.
- If you pay them exactly what their work is worth, you don’t make any money, your business won’t grow, and you’ll get bought out by some asshole who pays workers less.
- If you pay a worker more than their work is worth, you’re losing money, your business will shrink, and you’ll go out of business.
- the problem is the system, because the way the system is set up, workers have to beg for a job from people who own the places we work at, and the bosses only give the job to the lowest bidder, the people willing to do the most in exchange for the least in return.
My favourite scene from The Wire is the one where D’Angelo Barksdale explains the labour theory of value (not by name, obviously) using the example of the inventor of the Chicken McNugget for this reason
Was trying to explain it to a coworker after we got into an argument when I said the executives in the office are living off our work. He said something about how we’re paid a fair market wage, so I pulled out our labor rate sheet and showed him just exactly how much our company charges clients for our labor (generally 4-6 times more than our hourly wage) and was like no, that’s the fair market wage and it finally made sense to him
I’m glad literally ever one of my co-workers gets this.
