Question about Marxist Analysis of Class Consciousness

[barnhart]

Good analogy OJ.

[Ken]

I would suggest that most business owners do, to widely varying degrees, "exploit" their workers. But how much of this is "just", in consideration of their own investment in the work, albeit often totally non-labor related? (That is, monetary investment. But how did they get those funds?) How can a 'fair' profit for the one putting up the capital be determined?

But the question here is well beyond an employer's "exploitation" of his own employees (profiting off of the labor of those who work for him), going on to the perceived exploitation of ALL poor (or all employees, whether they work for this particular business man or not). In Marxism (at least as it was encountered by my people in Ukraine) was not concerned with whether a given wealthy person (a Kulak) had any relationship at all to a given person of the working class. All Kulaks were judged guilty of exploiting all workers, whether the Kulak was the owner of a factory or a farm, and whether the worker was a factory worker or a farm hand. These individual Kulaks were guilty because they were a part of the system which exploited the poorer. (You didn't actually have to own very much land in order to be judged a Kulak. It was less than 10 acres, as I recall.)

That is only true if you assume that workers are entitled to all of the profits of their labor despite:

Having made zero investment in the means of production (business or factory space, machinery, real estate, etc.)
Having made zero investment in the intellectual or creative ideas behind the business
Having made zero investment in marketing and sales which are often the most critical aspect of most businesses
Having made zero investment in the actual management of the business.

That is why most collective farms and collective factory enterprises failed in the USSR and everywhere else. And when you do actually have employee-owned businesses like say the Publix Grocery Chain they operate pretty much exactly the same and with the same salaries and benefits as other competing non-employee owned businesses.

I wasn't making any assumption(s), and certainly not that a business investor is not entitled to ANY of the profits. I was actually asking how one could determine what portion of the gross profits should go to that investor, as compensation for risking his own funds. Nor am I endorsing Marxism in any form, although I share some of their concerns, and sometimes found myself in agreement with Marxist social justice efforts in the Amazon, specifically as pertaining to Indian land and waterway rights. Rather, I was attempting to characterize Marxism as it was experienced "on the field" by my people during the 20's and 30's, in what is now Ukraine.

And what is the "that" in the sentence I set in bold print?

I have commented elsewhere on the problems encountered by those attempting to institute a localized anarchist governmental system, especially as it pertains to industrial centers. (By the way, I don’t think the common definition for ‘anarchism’ well describes what they were attempting to accomplish there. I’m also not endorsing the methods or objectives of anarchists like Nestor Machno, who, in fact, oversaw the massacre of whole Mennonite villages.)

We actually have a way of determining the value of labor and that is the free market. However what often happens is that moneyed interests use the political system to tilt the balance of power in their favor which makes the labor market less than free, or less than fair. This happens in a wide variety of ways from the promotion of anti-union legislation to hiring of undocumented labor to opposing basic labor standards like minimum wage and benefit laws.

I'm not a Marxist and I'm not familiar with all the current Marxist thinking. But in my mind, simply tilting the labor market back to something more equitable would go a long way towards allowing us to determine the actual value of labor. We should also stop trying to piggyback all manner of other social policy onto employment such as health and retirement benefits and so forth. And just pay people fairly for the work they do. Most other countries don't base their health insurance on the employer, for example.

[Josh]

The new international socialist government, being a hybrid of socialism and free market capitalism seems to be okay with some inequalities. You may own nothing and be happy, but they won't! They will probably own quite a bit, and you better like it!

It is interesting the "Xi Jinping thought" of "socialism with Chinese characteristics" is one of the few forces prevailing against this new "international socialism", which seems to revolve around really rich people getting even richer, whilst the rest of us are told we can't have beef, gasoline, cars, land, or own our own homes. It is no wonder the global elites want Xi Jinping out of power very, very badly.

[Josh]

We actually have a way of determining the value of labor and that is the free market.

Then why are minimum wage laws necessary?

However what often happens is that moneyed interests use the political system to tilt the balance of power in their favor which makes the labor market less than free, or less than fair. This happens in a wide variety of ways from the promotion of anti-union legislation to hiring of undocumented labor to opposing basic labor standards like minimum wage and benefit laws.

That is incorrect. Labour unions are coddled and protected in America.

As far as "undocumented labour", that's because Democrats decided they want to flood the country with as many impoverished immigrants as possible in order to harvest more (illegal) votes for themselves.

I'm not a Marxist and I'm not familiar with all the current Marxist thinking.

You could say that again. Is there a reason you keep chiming in to a thread specifically wanting to talk about Marxist thought, perhaps with people who are up to date on Marxism, have read Marxist writings, and have listened to what actual Marxists have to say? Instead you just keep bleating about how great the American market economy is (with excuses that those mean evil Republicans are responsible for things not being perfect).

But in my mind, simply tilting the labor market back to something more equitable would go a long way towards allowing us to determine the actual value of labor. We should also stop trying to piggyback all manner of other social policy onto employment such as health and retirement benefits and so forth. And just pay people fairly for the work they do. Most other countries don't base their health insurance on the employer, for example.

If we did that a lot of jobs would be paying far LESS. Imagine what America would look with no minimum wage at all and removing "all manner of other social policy onto employment", such as removing state and federal unemployment, workers' comp, and so on.

[Ken]

I would suggest that most business owners do, to widely varying degrees, "exploit" their workers. But how much of this is "just", in consideration of their own investment in the work, albeit often totally non-labor related? (That is, monetary investment. But how did they get those funds?) How can a 'fair' profit for the one putting up the capital be determined?

But the question here is well beyond an employer's "exploitation" of his own employees (profiting off of the labor of those who work for him), going on to the perceived exploitation of ALL poor (or all employees, whether they work for this particular business man or not). In Marxism (at least as it was encountered by my people in Ukraine) was not concerned with whether a given wealthy person (a Kulak) had any relationship at all to a given person of the working class. All Kulaks were judged guilty of exploiting all workers, whether the Kulak was the owner of a factory or a farm, and whether the worker was a factory worker or a farm hand. These individual Kulaks were guilty because they were a part of the system which exploited the poorer. (You didn't actually have to own very much land in order to be judged a Kulak. It was less than 10 acres, as I recall.)

That is only true if you assume that workers are entitled to all of the profits of their labor despite:

Having made zero investment in the means of production (business or factory space, machinery, real estate, etc.)
Having made zero investment in the intellectual or creative ideas behind the business
Having made zero investment in marketing and sales which are often the most critical aspect of most businesses
Having made zero investment in the actual management of the business.

That is why most collective farms and collective factory enterprises failed in the USSR and everywhere else. And when you do actually have employee-owned businesses like say the Publix Grocery Chain they operate pretty much exactly the same and with the same salaries and benefits as other competing non-employee owned businesses.

Most collective farms and Communist factories did not fail.

Well, the whole system collapsed. I would call that failure. How many communal farms and factories are still operating in the former USSR if it is such a good model? For that matter, how many kibbutz are their still operating? They are still around but are a small and shrinking percentage of the economic output of Israel.

[nett]

That is only true if you assume that workers are entitled to all of the profits of their labor despite:

Having made zero investment in the means of production (business or factory space, machinery, real estate, etc.)
Having made zero investment in the intellectual or creative ideas behind the business
Having made zero investment in marketing and sales which are often the most critical aspect of most businesses
Having made zero investment in the actual management of the business.

That is why most collective farms and collective factory enterprises failed in the USSR and everywhere else. And when you do actually have employee-owned businesses like say the Publix Grocery Chain they operate pretty much exactly the same and with the same salaries and benefits as other competing non-employee owned businesses.

Most collective farms and Communist factories did not fail.

Well, the whole system collapsed. I would call that failure. How many communal farms and factories are still operating in the former USSR if it is such a good model? For that matter, how many kibbutz are their still operating? They are still around but are a small and shrinking percentage of the economic output of Israel.

Kibbutzim account for 40% of Israel's agricultural output.

[Josh]

Well, the whole system collapsed. I would call that failure. How many communal farms and factories are still operating in the former USSR if it is such a good model? For that matter, how many kibbutz are their still operating? They are still around but are a small and shrinking percentage of the economic output of Israel.

Communal farms and state-owned factories kept operating right through the end of the USSR and in fact continued to operate after its dissolution. After that, the various constituent republics began a process of selling off state-owned factories to private owners, and did the same with collective farms.

For most of the USSR's existence, collective farms and factories produced a large amount of food and of heavy industrial goods. The USSR often was a food exporter and used that as a diplomatic tool to get other countries to support it. And as far as USSR industrial output (which was 50% military) they produced military goods that rivalled the U.S. and were unequalled anywhere else.

In the more modern era, "socialism with Chinese characteristics" in China has turned them into a manufacturing powerhouse, and indeed taken that mantle away from America. Know what other country is rapidly ramping up its industrial capacity and opening factories left and right? Vietnam.

[barnhart]

I would guess a modern Marxist might respond by pointing out the categories of "proletariat" and "bourgeoisie" are not immutable but rather descriptive. People who act in ways that oppress are oppressive and those who are oppressed are not by definition "good", just oppressed.

Perhaps, "Good" and "Bad" as we understand them are nonsensical to a materialist and our attempt to translate the 'Oppressor-Oppressed' dialectic into our moral categories is a fundamental category error. I am curious though about your first statement, the part I bolded. You may be perfectly right, however I have always understood the Marxist categories of "proletariat" and "bourgeoisie", to in fact be something close to immutable.

This is likely true in a classic sense but even then people argued endlessly about the true nature of Marxism. Marx is one of those historical characters, like Lincoln or Freud, who left behind enough material that one can use them to support diverse ideas. This is why I prefaced with how I imagine a modern Marxist might respond.

Marxism has to some extent fallen victim to it's own success, we no longer live in a dickensian dystopia of unregulated industrialization capitalism where the masses are pressed to the knife edge of poverty because we chose (Marxist inspired) regulation instead. Now that we have integrated rights and respect for labor into the economy, we have more freedom to evaluate the productive and expansive nature of consolidated capital.

I wonder about this thought as well - inasmuch as I have always understood the labor/economic reforms of last century to be spurned by doctrinaire Marxists. ...

...I was also immediately reminded of my favorite (tongue-in-cheek) socialist, historicist; Howard Zinn. In his polemical "A People's History of the United States" he suggested that the so-called Progressive reforms were nothing more than the "system" or might we say the bourgeoisie, self-correcting to stave off something like a socialist revolution and that the true socialists of the era despised the do-gooder...

...All that is to ask, were the reforms Marx-inspired or bourgeois attempts to avert Marxism?

Yes?
The value of Marx lies in the critique of unrestrained capital, not in his prescriptions which range from unadvisable to evil. I tend to agree with Zinn that the progressive movement was conservative in nature in that it was designed to stabilize capital, not overturn it. In my mind that was the genius of the American people, to extract the workable ideas and reject the crushing, dehumanizing elements.

[joshuabgood]

The value of Marx lies in the critique of unrestrained capital, not in his prescriptions which range from unadvisable to evil.

He always says in one sentence what it takes me paragraphs to elucidate.

[Neto]

I should openly say here that I have not read much Marxist writings. I DID read a good bit on Liberation Theology back in Bible College days, where it was presented in a positive light, basically, I think, because the "Biblical terminology" they used had not yet been clearly defined in their application of the ideas yet. That is, over time, it became clear that words like 'sin' and 'salvation' didn't mean to them what they mean in the Scripture.

But as to Marxism itself, my knowledge of it is fairly well limited to seeing it "on the ground" as it was applied in some agencies who also worked in indigenous areas in Brazil. Beyond this, I found HK's quotations regarding the "progressive" labor reforms in America to be very interesting. That is, that these 'reforms' had at their core the desire to fend off a "real revolution". Not that I am, or was, in favor of a socialist revolution, but in light of the question "Why did Marxist Communism have to be anti-Christian?", it has long seemed to me that the answer lies in their similarities. Boht belief systems (in pure form) endeavor to bring about equality. But the secular version had to defeat Christianity, because the State needed to be at the center, and could not share it with God. (I will also openly admit that I sometimes found myself "on the same side" as our Marxist "enemies" - people who opposed our main purpose to their very core. Again, The Marxist god is not willing to share any power with the God of creation. They were bound by their 'god' to oppose us, even when we were in agreement on many individual issues.)

While I'm at it, I'll go on and shove my foot farther down my throat. Regardless of what motivated the Labor Union movement, it is also anti-Christian, and does seem to just create a new power structure, or at least a rival one. Christian love is totally absent from this 'struggle'. Rather, each power structure is grappling against the other in order to gain the top position, to be "The King of the Hill".