How Libertarians, Anarchists and Marxists can dismantle the Fascist State (and end unemployment) in 24 months
The scuttling of the USS Oriskany
Today the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) published its most recent data on hiring and firings during the month of May (PDF link) showing 4.1 million workers were hired in May.
The conclusion to be drawn from this data? Job creation isn’t the problem, unemployment is the problem — and this can be fixed very simply by reducing hours of work. Americans are being played like a tennis ball between the two parties with Democrats demanding “Job creation”, while Republicans denounce restrictions on “Job creators”. Both are a load of crap — there is no job creation problem in the US economy; the problem is the 40 hours work week. And, it is a bigger problem than Libertarians, Anarchists and Marxist appear to grasp.
Consider, that, by reducing hours of work the following things could be accomplished:
- At the rate jobs are being created all unemployed — including all the hidden unemployed and discouraged workers — would have jobs in six months or less.
- In the next six months, Washington would have to begin dismantling all overseas bases, and slashing its fleets and military forces.
- Six months after that, we could turn off the last light in the White House.
Briefly stated, within 18-24 months, the largest military empire in human history could be dismantled and sold off for scrap simply by reducing hours of work. This is why no Washington politician dare suggest a reduction in hours of work to end unemployment — at all costs work must not be reduced.
Ask yourself this question: Why has not a single economist ever calculated the wage impact of a labor supply shock created by a reduction in hours of work? Because, they are all directly or indirectly on the government payroll. The largest single direct employer of economists is Washington. There is no significant second place in this category.
Ask economists of any ideological persuasion – Keynesian, neoclassical, Austrian, post-Keynesian, monetarist – and you get the same answer: of all the solutions to unemployment, it is never permissible to suggest reduction of hours of work. This rule must be observed absolutely, and in no uncertain terms. All references to such a solution must be ridiculed and ignored. Because it is the one solution that sounds the death knell for the Fascist State and its global empire. Not a single living economist passed Intro to Economics (econ101) without being subject to a scathing denunciation of reduced hours of work. No effort was spared to erase the idea from economics at all the major universities. The attempt was more pervasive than anti-communist blacklisting in the 1950s. Every edition to Samuelson’s “Economics” printed since 1947 carried an argument against this idea, in which it was ridiculed and summarily dismissed. This was simply because reducing hours of work made Fascist State control over the economy superfluous — and robbed the state of resources. Economic and fiscal policy only works when there is a mass of unemployed fixed and circulating capital (factories, raw material and ancillary goods) coupled with a large mass of unemployed workers who can be put to work by the Fascist State for whatever ends it sees fit.
Libertarians, Anarchists and Marxists reject a reduction of hours of work only by rejecting the only realistic possibility for freedom from the State — leaving society to suffer under its continued domination! The signal symptom of the failure of Libertarianism, Anarchism and Marxism is their uniform ignorance of this fact.
5:44 pm
“The signal symptom of the failure of Libertarianism, Anarchism and Marxism is their uniform ignorance of this fact.”
I think that is incorrect. Anarchism and Marxist fundamentally reject the basis on which the economy operates, which you aren’t fundamentally challenging. I presume you’re just trying to get people fired up, but some might feel a bit insulted by that statement.
7:53 pm
Name me one Anarchist or Marxist who has embraced a reduction of hours of work not simply as an answer to unemployment, but also as a peaceful path toward abolition of the State. My intent is not to insult anyone, but to show what my actual research reveals about this idea.
8:52 pm
I’ve already named several – see the link I shared in my first post. Bob Black, most notably, favors the total abolition of work as an anarchist goal, rather than proposing a mere ‘reduction in hours’ as a reformist tactic. FWIW, I’m sympathetic to the former goal; but see the latter as a pretty useless endeavor – I don’t think a mere reduction in hours in the current system would have the magical domino effect you claim. Reformism rarely does.
9:04 pm
I have read some of Bob’s writings. But, I did not know he was an Anarchist. Thanks for the information.
But I must ardently disagree with you on your other point. Reduction of work hours is NOT a reformist tactic, since the entire basis for surplus value rests on the length of the social work day. Moreover, the State is itself only surplus value organized in the form of wasteful public expenditures. Since the State does not itself produce anything of value, it must be composed of the surplus value wrung from the productive classes in society.
Why you would support total abolition of labor, but not a fifty percent reduction of labor hours is quite beyond me. Why you would see one as a worthy goal, but the other as a useless endeavor is puzzling. Perhaps, you could expand on your reasons for this opinion, to clarify it for me.
2:10 am
The idea of someone reading Bob Black & not picking up on his raging anti-authoritarianism is surprising to me. Which of his writings have you read?
For the same reason that I support the abolition of the wage system, but am skeptical about the effectiveness of reforms to wage labor within the current system. Also, I never said that I’d necessarily oppose such a thing. Basically:
2:34 pm
The reason I did not notice Bob’s anarchism was simple, I came upon his writings in the course of doing research on the history of the fight to reduce hours of work, not in the course of studying anarchism. It is not his anarchism that interested me, but his position on hours of labor — I am not an ideologue. (Which is why, despite their differences, I see no essential distinction between Libertarianism, Anarchism and Marxism — though the three trends swear they have nothing in common.)
I am unclear to which magical domino effect you refer. I cite two:
First, that the State, since it is only a mass of surplus value, must decrease in proportion to (perhaps, even at a greater rate than) the decrease in the creation of surplus value — and this surplus value creation itself hinges on the length of the social work day. Do you take exception to this point?
Second, I made the point that the supply of labor is determined not only by the absolute number of workers, but also by their average hours of labor. For this reason, reducing the average hours of work has the effect of reducing the supply of labor — which must lead to increased wages. This notion is simple supply and demand. Do you object to this point?
The conclusion following these two points: By reducing hours of labor, we can both increase average wages and forcibly restrict — even abolish outright — the Fascist State. If you wish, I am willing to give you space on my blog to refute any of these points.
6:23 pm
I don’t see why capitalists (I’m referring to non-anarchist libertarians here) would want to end unemployment – just as the threat of corporal punishment compels the slave, the threat of unemployment is the disciplinary measure that keeps workers in line. In order for capitalism to work, the threat of unemployment must be immediate & real, and being unemployed must be shitty enough to frighten everyone into submission. If it were any other way, capitalism would crumble – after all, why work for a boss if you can live comfortably without doing so?
People in industrial capitalist societies are conditioned to be masochistic work fetishists; not even leftists are immune to this conditioning. It’s a mistake to assume that there aren’t any strains of anarchist thought that reject that line of thought, though. Primitivists & various anti-civ types arrived at this conclusion a long time ago.
8:01 pm
I strongly disagree with this view. I do not believe the worker has to be bludgeoned into submission to maintain the system of wage slavery. The worker chooses it because of material advantages the relationship offers to both exploiter and exploited. If this were not true, the present State could not exist, since it rests on voluntary consent to the very system of exploitation it enforces from the vast majority of society, who are the very object of this exploitation.
9:30 pm
Obviously, because people in power have perfected the art of manipulation & control over millennia, they usually don’t have to directly oppress the masses – marginalized people police each other, and individuals even subtly police themselves. There is still a coercive system of discipline in place, though.
You say that as though workers have as much to gain from these relationships as bosses do.
Furthermore, describing worker-boss relationships as ‘voluntary’ when participation in the wage labor system is necessary to procure the very basics of life is disingenuous. Food, bodily care, and a home to live in during the dead of winter aren’t “material advantages”; they’re bare essentials.
These essentials must be purchased with government-issued currency, which requires participation in wage labor.
The fact that bosses don’t actually pull guns on poor people & herd them into degrading McJobs doesn’t make these contracts ‘voluntary’. There are many different degrees of coercion; it’s not the case that something is either backed up by naked force or completely “voluntary”. There are shades of grey here – for instance, Warren Anderson’s choice to be CEO of Union Carbide is a hell of a lot more voluntary than the Bhopal workers’ “decision” (purposeful use of quotes) to work in the plant. Labeling a relationship between persons A & B “voluntary” simply because neither use naked force to compel the other is intellectually lazy.
6:07 pm
jamayla,
I am not so naive to imply that no forms of coercion exist in this society — the existence of the state itself disproves this thesis. However, I think its is not the whole explanation for what is happening. Moreover, trying to explain the present society by coercion or threats of coercion clearly fail to explain basic empirical evidence.
The fact that wage slavery offers an advantage to both exploiter and exploited does not in way imply both see equal advantage to the relation. In fact, the opposite is true. The worker gains the “advantage” of eating regularly, while the capitalist gains the advantage of being able to exploit a well-fed slave.
11:29 pm
jamayla,
I am not so naive to imply that no forms of coercion exist in this society — the existence of the state itself disproves this thesis. However, I think its is not the whole explanation for what is happening. Moreover, trying to explain the present society by coercion or threats of coercion clearly fail to explain basic empirical evidence.
The fact that wage slavery offers an advantage to both exploiter and exploited does not in way imply both see equal advantage to the relation. In fact, the opposite is true. The worker gains the “advantage” of eating regularly, while the capitalist gains the advantage of being able to exploit a well-fed slave.
8:09 pm
1) I’d love to work less hours, trust me on that one – but can you answer me how those of us who are paycheck to paycheck at the CURRENT rate of pay are going to live on half the income? Hell, I can barely live on the income I have now working nearly 50 hours a week – so unless my employer plans on doubling my wage in order to halve my hours, that wouldn’t work for me. If my employer has X capital that they are willing/able to pay for my job to be done, reducing my hours and hiring someone else isn’t going to change that… they simply have two bodies doing what one is now. So unless you plan on somehow altering the entire cost of living structure built into our economy so that half of everyone’s current wages are now livable, it’s a pipe dream. Being employed, but destitute, doesn’t really solve anything.
2) How would this be enforced? Adding more laws? Using the State as a bludgeon against employers? I’m sorry, but I have a hard time believing you think that adding MORE regulations will somehow fix unemployment, or ultimately lead to a stateless society.
9:21 pm
Two good points:
1. The point I made about economists having never calculated the wage impact of a reduction in hours of work is based on what you and I both know to be true: there is not one factor to consider when you consider the labor supply, but two factors. The first is the absolute number of people employed; the second is the average number of hours each of these people work. If you change one of these factors, it will have an immediate affect on labor supply.
So, for instance, if you reduce the average number of hours each person works, the change amounts to the same thing as reducing the total number of people working. As you can imagine, the sudden reduction in the supply of labor must force wages to rise. Just as too many people looking for work causes wages to fall. Wages can be held down by creating an oversupply of labor, and they can be increased by reducing the supply of labor.
If hours of work are reduced by half, wages would rise dramatically! — economists and the Fascist State don’t want us to know this fact.
2. It would be enforced pretty much the same way the 40 hours work week is enforced today: Employers would have to pay a severe penalty in the form of mandatory overtime pay to the worker. I suggest 3-4 times regular pay — perhaps higher. It requires no more State interference than exists at present, but could dramatically alter both the wage structure and the ability of the Fascist State to employ tens of millions of idle hands for its own purposes.
9:35 pm
I still disagree that the effects would be immediate enough to make this a workable solution, and in the end that they would be sustainable for many of the businesses out there. Let’s say that right now I make 50,000 dollars a year working 40 hours a week, and that is a livable wage for me. So let’s say that you reduce my hours to 20 hours a week, and you hire someone else for the other 20 hours a week. In that situation, you haven’t effected the fact that 50,000 is still a livable wage for me, whereas 25,000 is not. So let’s extrapolate that to both people. Now, my employer would be on the hook for 100,000 for the same job that was being done for 50,000 before. Take that over say 10 employees, so before the wages might have totaled 500,000 – now you’ve cut the hours and doubled the staff, and we have 20 employees demanding 1,000,000. Do you really think that most employers can afford doubling their wage output? I’m sure that larger businesses and corps probably could (I’m not sure they WOULD, but I’m sure they could), but not your average mom and pop and small businesses. My parents owned a restaurant when I was a kid. I can flat out _guarantee_ you that there is now way they could have doubled the amount of money they were putting out to employees wages and still remained in business.
5:57 pm
Okay. So, let’s reason this through:
Let’s assume two sectors, a private company call General Private, and the State. The State doesn’t produce anything — not a bomb, not a paperclip, not a house — all the revenues it uses to finance its operations come from taxes on General Private. General Private, on the other hand, produces everything it needs for itself, and all the things needed by the State — bombs, paperclips, and wage goods, etc. — plus it supplies all the revenue to pay this crap.
Now, we cut hours of work in half, what happens?
General private can only produce half of what it could before — certainly not enough to satisfy the requirements of its own plus the requirements of the State’s demand for revenue and goods. General Private now must hire workers to produce anything in excess of its own needs. On the other hand, the State, which produces nothing, and which depends entirely on what General Private can produce, sees its tax revenues collapse.
So, how does this get resolved? My suggestion is that since the State can no longer raise enough revenue to pay wages, nor pay for bombs and paperclips, the labor force employed by it must be discharged and find jobs at General Private. On the other hand, General Private now has a decided shift in what it must produce with all this new labor for the new source of demand. Gone are the state demand for paperclips and bombs, to be replaced by demand for wage goods of the newly employed workers at General Private.
The additional wages comes entirely from the necessary reduction of State taxes on the private sector. The wage goods to satisfy the demand produced by all these new wages come from the capital formerly employed to satisfy state demand for bombs and paperclips.
This, of course, is a very simplified model of what would really happen. What do you think?
11:29 pm
Okay. So, let’s reason this through:
Let’s assume two sectors, a private company call General Private, and the State. The State doesn’t produce anything — not a bomb, not a paperclip, not a house — all the revenues it uses to finance its operations come from taxes on General Private. General Private, on the other hand, produces everything it needs for itself, and all the things needed by the State — bombs, paperclips, and wage goods, etc. — plus it supplies all the revenue to pay this crap.
Now, we cut hours of work in half, what happens?
General private can only produce half of what it could before — certainly not enough to satisfy the requirements of its own plus the requirements of the State’s demand for revenue and goods. General Private now must hire workers to produce anything in excess of its own needs. On the other hand, the State, which produces nothing, and which depends entirely on what General Private can produce, sees its tax revenues collapse.
So, how does this get resolved? My suggestion is that since the State can no longer raise enough revenue to pay wages, nor pay for bombs and paperclips, the labor force employed by it must be discharged and find jobs at General Private. On the other hand, General Private now has a decided shift in what it must produce with all this new labor for the new source of demand. Gone are the state demand for paperclips and bombs, to be replaced by demand for wage goods of the newly employed workers at General Private.
The additional wages comes entirely from the necessary reduction of State taxes on the private sector. The wage goods to satisfy the demand produced by all these new wages come from the capital formerly employed to satisfy state demand for bombs and paperclips.
This, of course, is a very simplified model of what would really happen. What do you think?
11:29 pm
Okay. So, let’s reason this through:
Let’s assume two sectors, a private company call General Private, and the State. The State doesn’t produce anything — not a bomb, not a paperclip, not a house — all the revenues it uses to finance its operations come from taxes on General Private. General Private, on the other hand, produces everything it needs for itself, and all the things needed by the State — bombs, paperclips, and wage goods, etc. — plus it supplies all the revenue to pay this crap.
Now, we cut hours of work in half, what happens?
General private can only produce half of what it could before — certainly not enough to satisfy the requirements of its own plus the requirements of the State’s demand for revenue and goods. General Private now must hire workers to produce anything in excess of its own needs. On the other hand, the State, which produces nothing, and which depends entirely on what General Private can produce, sees its tax revenues collapse.
So, how does this get resolved? My suggestion is that since the State can no longer raise enough revenue to pay wages, nor pay for bombs and paperclips, the labor force employed by it must be discharged and find jobs at General Private. On the other hand, General Private now has a decided shift in what it must produce with all this new labor for the new source of demand. Gone are the state demand for paperclips and bombs, to be replaced by demand for wage goods of the newly employed workers at General Private.
The additional wages comes entirely from the necessary reduction of State taxes on the private sector. The wage goods to satisfy the demand produced by all these new wages come from the capital formerly employed to satisfy state demand for bombs and paperclips.
This, of course, is a very simplified model of what would really happen. What do you think?
4:39 pm
With regard to your point 2 here I’m not sure I understand, so let’s take some examples. Let us say that I hypothetically work right now for 40 hours/week at $10/hour.
Example 1: My hours are cut back to 20 hours/week at the same pay rate. I now make $200/week instead of the $400/week I earn now. My employer would like me to work more. I think what you are suggesting is that my employer should then be forced by government to pay me 4X my hourly rate for each hour I work over 20/week. So to maintain my 40 hour work week my employer gets now, he pays me (20 hours X $10/hour) + (20 hours X $10/hour X 4) = $1000/week. Is that what you are proposing?
Let us say that my employer doesn’t like this idea so he tries to find some loopholes.
Example 2: What’s to stop my employer from cutting my rate of pay? This is simple algebra:
(20 hours X $x/hour) + (20 hours X $x/hour X 4) = $400
Solving for x, we get a new hourly rate to maintain my previous weekly total compensation for my previous work hours as $4/hour. What prevents my employer from simply cutting my pay rate by 60%?
I think offering me $4/hour for the first 20 hours plus $16/hour for the second 20 hours for a total of $400/week works out well for my employer in any week where I am unable or unwilling to work the full 40 hours. Instead of getting $200 for a 20 hour work week, I will get only $80 for a 20 hour work week in this scenario.
Meanwhile, if employers can maintain the current number of work hours in this way, we get none of the alleged price benefits, thereby further impoverishing workers as they now are severely screwed in any week they cannot work a full 40 hours. Instead of losing $10/hour for each hour not worked, they lose $16/hour for the first 20 hours not worked. Instead of earning $10/hour for the first 20 hours worked, they earn only $4/hour for the first 20 hours worked.
More questions later, but I’ll start with these.
9:29 pm
Kirsten,
Hehe. Your approach to this is entirely to granular. You could as easily ask me the opposite question: “What if my boss, in a sudden fit of generosity, decided to double my wages?”
The thing about the response to a sudden reduction of labor supply is that we can, theoretically, only foresee the general tendency, not the result in any given case. In your specific case, your boss must figure that you are not an idiot and will immediately go looking for work elsewhere in what is now a very tight labor market. If he does decide he can do without your services, he likely will say this upfront. In the meantime, there are thousands of employers who will need additional labor to fill their orders. You will be able to tell you employer to kiss your butt.
10:26 pm
You could as easily ask me the opposite question: “What if my boss, in a sudden fit of generosity, decided to double my wages?”I could, but that seems a much less likely concern. The system is set up- as I think you have pointed out in the past- such that the point is for employers to maximize profit. My hypothetical boss does not likely figure that randomly doubling my wages is a profit-maximizing strategy, else it would already be done. On the other hand, it IS likely that my hypothetical boss would understand there’s an inherent financial disadvantage to having twice as many employees and will most likely do what he can to maintain as close to the status quo work week as possible.your boss must figure that you are not an idiot and will immediately
go looking for work elsewhere in what is now a very tight labor marketThis assumes that it will be a very tight labor market. But if my boss and large numbers of bosses elsewhere figure out that they can avoid the trouble, inconvenience, and expense of bringing in more employees by simply recalculating wages as can be done with simple 9th grade algebra, this expected very tight labor market will not likely come to fruition. Instead, we will have simply given the bosses of the world more power over the workers who find it even harder to keep up in their current positions and have gained no advantage in terms of ability to walk away.On to my next questions- details of enforcement. I understand you to be proposing that employers are to be forced by government to pay 3-4X wages for anything above 20 hours. Why would government do that when it is bought and paid for by the corporations against whose interest this proposal stands?Assuming that government even made some token effort to do this, how would it be carried out? For example, at what level of government is it enforced, by what agency, how is the information tracked so offenders are identified, etc.?
11:25 pm
Kirsten,
Okay, let’s begin at the beginning:
What I think often gets lost in these discussions is that the capitalist does not approach the problem in this manner — wage costs are beside the point, since all the employees pay for themselves. The capitalist does not actually pay for labor power at all — the worker pays his own wages plus the profit of the capitalist. This is what exploitation means.
(We tend to say the capitalist buys the labor power of the worker, but you know this is not true: you have always worked first, and were paid after some set period. So, you produced your own wages that are used to purchase your labor power.)
So, when deciding how many people to hire in the aftermath of a reduction of hours of work, the capitalist will ask himself: “How much profit can I make by employing such and such a number of workers.” Just as a slave owner did not think of the cost of buying another slave — or of buying a dozen to replace the dozen he worked to death — the capitalist never considers it a problem to double his labor force if profitable operations require it.
The capitalist’s profit is in no way related to the number of workers he employs, only the total product of these employees. Historically, a reduction of hours of work has never resulted in less demand for labor — it always results in more demand, i.e., higher wages. This is always true. And. no empirical evidence exists to suggest otherwise.
4:55 am
The capitalist’s profit is in no way related to the number of workers he employs
I’m not sure about this.
If I am working 40 hours per week doing some sort of skilled labor- for example, assembling circuit boards- my employer is paying for 40 hours of work per week at some hourly wage plus some fixed benefit package plus administration expenses for 1 employee.
If my hours are halved and my employer must hire another worker to pick up the other 20 hours to maintain the same output, he is then paying for 40 hours of work per week at some hourly wage (20 hours for me and 20 hours for the new employee), plus 2 benefits packages, plus administration expenses for 2 employees, plus training expenses for 1 new employee.
Same output plus increased expenses would seem to indicate less profit. Where am I wrong in my thinking on this?
12:54 pm
The reason I said your approach is too granular is the problem known as fallacy of composition. This fallacy states what is true in the individual case is also true for the entire economy. You have offered the individual case of an employer who incurs increasing costs by hiring two employees to do a job previously performed by one. However, this individual case overlooks the fact that the employees are the only customers for the output of the capitalist. While this is not clear for the individual case, it has to be true for the economy as a whole.
So, the case is as follows: if private employment doubled overnight for the whole economy, while state employment went to zero, production of wages goods must increase, while production of bombs and paperclips demanded by the state would go to zero. Although wages do increase rather dramatically, demand for wage goods would increase just as sharply, making production of these wages goods more profitable.
Again, the workers produce their own wages, the capitalist incurs no cost by employing them. But, this is only true for the entire economy, and may not be true in any given instance. For instance, a capitalist who produces for the government — bombs and paperclips — will immediately go bankrupt and will not hire more workers. Wages paid out in this sector will never be recovered.
5:34 pm
I understand that the capitalist incurs no “cost” by employing workers because the workers pay for themselves through their work. However, my point is somewhat different. The capitalist is still going to make less profit if more of the workers’ productivity must be diverted to pay for the additional expenses.
Let me ask you this. Regardless of the fact (upon which we agree, I think) that workers cover the cost of their own employment through their own productivity, do you acknowledge the additional expenses that I listed above involved in the addition of employees to businesses? If we agree on those two things, that narrows down our area of disagreement substantially.
12:58 pm
I am confused. You acknowledge the capitalist incurs no cost by employing one worker, but then argue this zero cost will increase if he employs two workers. How does this happen? If one worker produces her wages that the capitalist then uses to purchase her labor power, how does this situation change when a second worker is added?
7:48 pm
Let’s take an example.
Pointy-Haired Boss, owner of Acme Rocket Company, has $1,000,000. He would like to hire an employee at $10/hour for 40 hours per week, 50 weeks per year, for a total of $20,000 in wages. Additionally, this employee will cost another $2,000 in annual benefits such as health insurance, sick leave, and so on, plus $500 in administration costs, such as accounting, government paperwork and reporting, and so on. However, John Doe expects this employee to produce $50,000 for the company.
The total cost of the employee is $22,500. In the sense that the employee produces more than his “cost” and therefore Doe will not be tapping into his $1,000,000, I agree with you that Pointy-Haired Boss is not incurring a “cost” from the employee.
Pointy-Haired Boss, however, I bet will disagree with you. Pointy-Haired Boss is looking at this in terms of how much of his potential $1,050,000- not just his original $1,000,000- the employee will “cost” him. The more he can drive down that down, the less the employee will “cost” him of that potential $1,050,000. As it stands now he is looking to have in the bank at the end of the year $1,000,000 + $50,000 – $22,500= $1,027,500.
Now let’s look at the case of halving the employee’s work hours and adding a second employee to work them.
Dilbert works at $10/hour for 20 hours per week, 50 weeks per year, for a total of $10,000 in wages. His annual benefits still cost $2,000, and the cost of administration is still $500. Dilbert’s total cost is now $12,500 and expected output is $25,000.
Wally is then hired to work at at $10/hour for 20 hours per week, 50 weeks per year, for a total of $10,000 in wages. His annual benefits still cost $2,000, and the cost of administration is still $500. Wally’s total cost is likewise $12,500 and expected output $25,000.
Now Pointy-Haired Boss is looking to have in the bank at the end of the year $1,000,000 + $25,000 – $12,500 + $25,000 – $12,500 = $1,025,000. This is $2,500 less than he would have in the bank with one employee doing the work of the two. So in this sense, that second employee has “cost” Pointy-Haired Boss $2,500 of his profit.
Do we agree yet that the capitalist’s profit is to some degree related to the number of workers he employs? If not, where are we diverging on this?
1:47 pm
It is not that I don’t under stand your argument; rather the case is the opposite: I understand your argument and I disagree.
You have absorbed the standard business school model of capitalism wherein the money belongs to the first hands through which it passes. In this model, since the sale of the commodity is performed by the capitalist, and he afterwards pays the worker, the capitalist somehow “pays” the worker. The facts are entirely the reverse: the worker pays her own wages and pays the capitalist his profits.
So, even if I accepted your argument, it would amount to no more than this: by overworking the worker, the capitalist is able to cheat her of her proper wages. Reducing hours of work does not rob the capitalist but ends his robbery of the worker. It comes down to this: the capitalist is a convenient way for the worker to feed herself, and nothing more — what she is willing to pay for this is determined by her recognition of this fact.
1:02 pm
I understand that we disagree. I just don’t think we agree what is that we disagree on here.
What is leading me to feel like I’m not getting my point across is that I think we are in agreement on points that you seem to be telling me we disagree on. I want to clear this up.
So, even if I accepted your argument, it would amount to no more than this: by overworking the worker, the capitalist is able to cheat
her of her proper wages.
You’re calling this “your argument” as if it is mine. It’s not. I’m pointing out that this is what the majority of employers’ views are likely to be. In other words, this is what’s going to be their argument. Why would I bring this up? Well, moving on:
Reducing hours of work does not rob the capitalist but ends his robbery of the worker.
I’m not disagreeing with you here. In fact, this is one of my points almost exactly! If this is truly the case, why would the capitalist buy into this idea of reducing work hours? And if the capitalist doesn’t buy into this idea, how do you use the government to mandate and enforce this?
My two main questions that I’m going after here are:
1. How is this *really* going to affect the worker? I assume here that the employer, presented with such a mandate, will do everything in his power to turn this to his advantage and screw the worker or maintain the status quo at least rather than to cede the advantage to the worker. And I think there are some really easy loopholes to be exploited.
2. How could this actually be implemented in real life? I’m leaving aside for now the philosophical question of whether or not we *should* use the government to create such a mandate. I’m not entirely unsympathetic to that point of view, but very cautious there. But I think that is secondary because I am not seeing how we even functionally *could* do that, given that (as you have even pointed out on Twitter) the corporations own the government. In short, if the corporations own government, and this is perceived by corporations to be disadvantageous to themselves-i.e. that they will end their state-supported robbery of the workers- how is the government an effective mechanism by which to mandate and enforce this?
1:41 am
Okay, I will answer you argument, not mine.
To question one: There are no “easy loopholes” to exploit. Imagine the capitalist is a fish and the pond is being drained. He cannot avoid the consequences of the lower water level. The capitalist cannot avoid the consequence of a general reduction of the supply of labor. He competes for labor power against all other capitalist, and we changing the parameter of the competition to one of a relative shortage of labor.
To question two: The corporations may own the government, but they do not own the state. i.e., democracy. (I did not say the idea was a likely outcome, only that it is possible.) The government is what we are trying to dismantle — the body of armed men, the bureaucracy, etc. The State (democracy) which, in this instance, would be dismantling itself, would, of necessity, be required to enforce its will over the government — just as occurred in Tahrir Square.
I am getting cramped here, so you will need to start a new question.
3:34 am
Alright, prepare to be bumped back up several levels. Let the record reflect, however, that I was prepared to keep posting until we got down to 1 character wide responses.
3:45 am
Continued:
Okay, I will answer you argument, not mine.
Since I don’t employee anyone, it’s not my argument. It’s an argument from a capitalist employer’s point of view.To question one: There are no “easy loopholes” to exploit.What about this one I pointed out earlier?”Example 2: What’s to stop my employer from cutting my rate of pay? This is simple algebra:(20 hours X $x/hour) + (20 hours X $x/hour X 4) = $400Solving
for x, we get a new hourly rate to maintain my previous weekly total
compensation for my previous work hours as $4/hour. What prevents my
employer from simply cutting my pay rate by 60%?I think offering
me $4/hour for the first 20 hours plus $16/hour for the second 20 hours
for a total of $400/week works out well for my employer in any week
where I am unable or unwilling to work the full 40 hours. Instead of
getting $200 for a 20 hour work week, I will get only $80 for a 20 hour
work week in this scenario.Meanwhile, if employers can maintain
the current number of work hours in this way, we get none of the alleged
increased wage benefits, thereby further impoverishing workers as they
now are severely screwed in any week they cannot work a full 40 hours.
Instead of losing $10/hour for each hour not worked, they lose $16/hour
for the first 20 hours not worked. Instead of earning $10/hour for the
first 20 hours worked, they earn only $4/hour for the first 20 hours
worked.”(I did not say the idea was a likely outcome, only that it is possible.)Perhaps our disagreement here then boils down mainly to the odds of possibility becoming reality. Unfortunately, from what I see so far, I think it is very close to zero. I do disagree with your comment that corporations own the government but not democracy. One word: Diebold.
3:44 am
We could have done this 50 or 150 years ago when Marx was around. It’s not going to happen without a plan or a strategy. If you are an Amercican, you have to Read “Common Sense 3.1” at ( http://www.revolution2.osixs.org )“THE REVOLUTION HAS STARTED”“Spread the News”
“THE REVOLUTION HAS STARTED”
“Spread the News”