Skip to main content

Karl Marx was right: Workers are systematically exploited under capitalism

Even among Marx-friendly economists, the labor theory of value has fallen out of favor. But its technical validity is less important than the core message: workers are exploited because the value they create is undemocratically taken by capitalists.

by Ben Burgis  

Part 5 - Cohen’s Analysis of Working-Class Unfreedom

To be clear, neither Marx nor Cohen thought that workers should receive the entire product of their labor. Marx argued that this would be both impractical and wrong for a variety of reasons. For one, what about upkeep of old factory equipment? Or about building new factories? What about “common needs” like schools and hospitals or the consumption needs of those unable to work?

What makes the surrender of some of the value produced by workers or the value of the commodities they produce exploitation is that it’s surrendered not in some democratic process in which the beneficiaries have to make a convincing case but that it’s taken as a result of the power one class has over another.

The real question, then, is whether the part of the value controlled by the capitalist is voluntarily surrendered by the worker. In fact, Cohen argues that the LTV being true would do nothing to strengthen the charge of exploitation. To see why not, assume a simply “marginalist” account of value whereby value is produced by the desire of consumers. Does that somehow give consumers a right to the things they desire? Of course not. The real issue is who produces the goods and services themselves, and whether the arrangements by which those products come under the control of separate capitalists are ones the workers accept of their own free will.

Libertarian philosopher Robert Nozick argued that someone can only be “coerced” to do something if their property rights aren’t respected, but Cohen argues in a brilliant 1983 paper that this gets things backward, and not just because libertarian theories of property rights are deeply implausible. We can and should establish that something is coercive before we ask whether anything could justify that coercion. A serial killer, for example, is forced to stay removed from society — and that’s a good thing.

Nor does it do any good to say that the worker with no realistic ability to start a business of his own has at least some other choices besides going to work for a capitalist — that he can “go on the dole, or beg, or simply make no provision for himself and trust to fortune.” You might as well say a bank teller forced with a gun to her head to give up the code to the safe isn’t really forced because she had the option of wrestling away the gun or giving her life for the bank. When we say that someone was forced to do something, Cohen points out, we don’t generally mean they had literally no other choices — just that they had no acceptable choices.

Cohen thinks the best argument against the claim that workers are forced to submit to the rule of capitalists, and hence forced to give up the part of the product of their labor that isn’t under their control, is the simple fact of upward mobility. Some workers, even some who start in very desperate positions, are eventually able to claw their way up to a higher position in the class structure — for example, by starting small businesses of their own.

But Cohen argues a crucial point: it’s structurally impossible for everyone in a complex modern economy to own their own little business. Either the labor force will collectively control the means of production or they’ll be dominated by capitalists who can then extract their surplus labor — the labor that goes not toward meeting their own needs but toward the remainder of a firm’s revenues, which, whether kept by the capitalists or reinvested, is outside of the workers’ control.

Capitalism requires a substantial hired labor force,” Cohen writes, “which would cease to exist if more than a few workers rose.” This means that even though there are a few lifeboats, the working class is collectively trapped aboard the wage-labor ship.

He introduces an analogy:

Ten people are placed in a room, the only exit from which is a huge and heavy locked door. At various distances from each lies a single heavy key. Whoever picks up this key — and each is physically able, with varying degrees of effort, to do so — and takes it to the door will find, after considerable self-application, a way to open the door and leave the room. But if he does so he alone will be able to leave it. Photoelectric devices installed by a jailer ensure that it will open only just enough to permit one exit. Then it will close, and no one inside the room will be able to open it again.

There is a sense in which any of those prisoners can escape. But there’s also a clear sense in which they’re collectively unfree. A prisoner in Cohen’s hypothetical room, like a worker under capitalism, might be able to make their individual escape, but they can’t escape with their fellow prisoners.

The only way for workers to be free to all escape together, Cohen says, is for them to achieve a “deeper kind of freedom” — freedom from class society.

***

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Protesters Stalk & Confront Israeli Minister Through NY Streets!

The Jimmy Dore Show   Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who is also a convicted terrorist and Jewish supremacist, has been touring the US, speaking on college campuses and meeting with political groups, and he even traveled to Mar-a-Lago. His visit has been met with widespread protests, however. Ben Gvir was confronted by pro-Palestinian demonstrators in New Haven, Connecticut, following a speech he gave at Shabtai, a private Jewish society at Yale that’s not officially affiliated with the university. Jimmy Dore and Americans’ Comedian Kurt Metzger discuss how Ben-Gvir’s security detail was able to assault protesters with impunity — and that in fact police officers approach an assaulted protester to demand that he step away from Ben-Gvir’s group.

Deranged euroclowns want to revive a nazi-origin project!

globinfo freexchange   Behind the ridiculously cartoonish latest spot of the EU that gives "instructions" to the European citizens on how to deal with a major crisis during the first hours, lies a secret desire.    The deranged euroclowns of the crypto-fascist extreme center , are trying to build up a condition of consent inside the minds of Europeans, which is related to their biggest wet dream: an autonomous imperialist European army. The idea was not born suddenly because of Trump's hostile attitude against his own allies. From the early 50s, pan-European networks of neo-Nazis were created. In May 1951, the European Social Movement (MSE) was founded in Malmö, Sweden. Essentially, it was about projecting the ideology of the German SRP on a pan-European level. The MSE, which would remain active until the 1980s, proclaimed the need for Europe to emancipate itself from the divisive tutelage of the USA and the USSR, called for the defense of the “European race” against th...

Trump's tariffs: A unique opportunity for BRICS and the Global South to fully escape from dollar tyranny

globinfo freexchange   Does Trump know what he is doing? Well, yes and no. While many interpretate his latest move, mostly as an attempt to halt China, his main goal is to give the final blow to the neoliberal order on behalf of his oligarchs .  From this perspective, Trump's unprecedented decision to decide mass tariffs against almost everyone, was an act of strategic hit against the global free market neoliberalism, with the financial capital  at its top. And that's because this dominant-for-almost-half-century system, identifies restrictions and protectionism as major threats against its own existence. In other words, Trump acted as a commander of the capitalist faction that wants to beat its neoliberal rivals and put itself in charge, through a new transformation of capitalism into a 21st century corporate feudalism.   Concerning China, Trump's move may have some negative impact on its economy for a while, since China has chosen to partially play by the rule...

Neoliberalism Needs To Go

Second Thought  

Google Imports Ex Israeli Spies, The Genocide Resumes, Cruel Britannia

by Nate Bear   Part 3 - Cruel Britannia   The UK is moving ahead with large welfare cuts for disabled people, including those with cancer. On TV the other day, the UK’s health secretary Wes Streeting said that people with cancer should be in work, not at home resting. Alongside this, the government has said that to cut youth employment it will push young people to join the army. This, of course, is in the context of a massive expenditure on military weapons in the face of the Russian bogeyman.   What’s happening in the UK under a nominally centre-left Labour government is a good reminder that there is never a lesser evil if your leaders are neoliberals. Balancing the books on the backs of the poorest and most vulnerable in society is the north star of all neoliberals, whether they call themselves centrists, left wing or right wing. Cruelty is the policy and the point.    Yet the last few years have also been a good reminder that everything is a choice. Cov...

Trump Speeds Up FALL OF THE WEST With Tariff War

Owen Jones     Related:   Trump's tariffs: A unique opportunity for BRICS and the Global South to fully escape from dollar tyranny

US Official EXPOSES Truth About Gaza From The Inside

Owen Jones  

UN rapporteur Francesca Albanese: World is watching a live genocide in Gaza and doing nothing

The New Arab   As Israel’s war on Gaza enters its 19th month, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese is sounding the alarm louder than ever: the world is watching a live genocide — and doing nothing to stop it. In an exclusive interview with The New Arab , Albanese describes the devastation in Gaza as unparalleled since WWII. Entire neighbourhoods lie in ruins, tens of thousands are dead, and 91% of Gaza’s population is at risk of malnutrition. Over 60,000 children show signs of cognitive impairment due to starvation.  “This is not just war. This is genocide in real time,” she says. “What we are seeing now is the destruction of a people who refuse to leave.” Despite UN mandates and international law, Albanese says the global system is paralysed, and governments, corporations, and even universities are complicit. “If Palestine were a crime scene, it would bear all our fingerprints.”

Every Day The Gaza Holocaust Continues, The Empire Tells The Truth About Itself

Caitlin Johnstone   We do not live in a free society that is guided by truth and morality. We live under the most murderous and tyrannical power structure on the face of this planet. And we should distrust everything about it. That's what they're showing us with the Gaza holocaust. More and more people are opening their eyes to it every day.      Related:   Time for the anti-imperialist powers to take the keys of the planet from the declining and morally bankrupt West