Talking more about how we in the imperial core are exploited, rather than how imperialism exploits other countries’ resources, labour etc. I’m trying to find a satisfying explanation for why “well-paid” workers are also exploited.
From my understanding of Marx, exploitation happens in capitalism by the worker producing more value than what they are paid. This is evident by the profit these companies make, as it wouldn’t exist if their workers were not exploited. But I find it awkward to try to get this across to people not well versed in theory. You have job types like office workers that don’t really produce anything and only contribute to the companies bottom line indirectly. I get that theres unproductive and productive labor, but this is also alot to explain to someone who is not deep into economics.
This also got me thinking that exploitation is broader than just underpaying workers. There’s also psychological and physical abuse at the workplace that I feel has some connection to exploitation. The fact that the employer can threaten you with firing, or cutting some benefit also seems like exploitation to me.
Marx never really completed a theory about imperialism. I mean, he definitely talked about the global character of capital and the world market, but he didn’t theorize about superexploitation (profit acquired by systematically depressing wages of certain sections of the global working class) which is arguably the defining characteristic of modern 21st century capitalism. And of course in the decades after Marx’s death, it was Lenin (and many others) who had to pick up where Marx left off with regard to imperialism.
It bears emphasizing, none of these posthumous Marxian theories replace Marx, they only carry on the theory as any science carries on.
There is a lot of talk about a “labor aristocracy” in the West. I think there is some truth to that, but it is often taken to such absurd ends that one would consider an impoverished American a “labor aristocrat” simply because the $5/day they receive from hand-outs is more than many workers in the Global South receive in a week or a month.
Above all, Marx defined exploitation in terms of relations of production. A worker in Bangladesh is exploited by their employer to some degree, but the dominant force in their overall relation to (global) production is the force of imperialism, which at the national scale prevents moving up the value chain and externally constrains the wages of all workers in the country. This is why communist revolutions in the Global South take on a specifically anti-imperial character rather than a more proletarian character as seen earlier in the western industrial nations.
On re-reading the OP I realized I didn’t directly answer the question…
Exploitation in the imperial core I think still occurs in the standard Marxian sense of surplus-value. Though, the point doesn’t hinge on whether that calculates to be numerically true or not (if that were even possible). Workers in the imperial core are still paid just enough to eat and sleep so that they can return to work for 40 more years, with no ability to escape that social relation. People have tried and failed to start communes in the United States for example. Many of the early religious sects in the United States, such as the Mormons, in fact tried to start up their own non-capitalist relations of production, but the might of capital is too overwhelming for these small experiments.
The capture of the means of production under the control of an exceedingly small number of individuals in the United States, coupled with the near impossibility of survival without accepting wages from these individuals, is the most direct proof that exploitation exists still to an incredible degree even within the imperial core.
Sorry just returning to post another distinct thought.
It is a mistake to analyze exploitation on an individual basis. You already mentioned unproductive labor, for example, a cashier or a security guard who does not directly add value to the products for sale. These workers are nevertheless necessary for the continued production of surplus value. (Recall Marx: “Capitalist production is not merely the production of commodities, it is essentially the production of surplus-value.”)
If one analyzes the individual worker within the imperial core and finds that they do not individually produce surplus-value, this says nothing about their individual relations of production and therefore nothing about their class. If the worker was not necessary for the continued production of surplus-value, they would not be hired. The exact mechanism of this necessity could be extremely roundabout, for example, by “paying off” the masses of the imperial core so that they don’t protest against the exploitation of the imperial periphery. But in any case, there is no requirement — even within the confines of Capital vol 1, let alone later Marxist theory — that an exploited worker is individually productive of surplus value. They can be unproductive and exploited.
It is a mistake to analyze exploitation on an individual basis.
It’s interesting where to draw the line at for who is getting exploited and who is the exploiter. Is it only the workers at the bottom of the hierarchal structure? The middle managers as well? I suppose all who are not the owners of the means of production are exploited.
“Capitalist production is not merely the production of commodities, it is essentially the production of surplus-value”
Good quote to remember when libs/conservatives expose their understanding of socialism to be when you don’t produce commodities. I would like to say to them socialism and capitalism can both produce commodities, but capitalism requires there to be a surplus value aka profit
In capital volume 1, Marx frequently refers to individuals in his narrative, but it is always after first assuming that an individual is an average, representative member of their class. E.g. many of the examples assume that a laborer works with average skill and intensity.
Later discussions, such as productive and unproductive labor, the assumption of homogeneous value production on an individual basis is questioned. How does the analysis change if some workers do not produce value, but nevertheless receive wages? And the analysis continues forward dialectically as usual, re-treading the same ground with a different set of assumptions to see how things appear to change, before reflecting on those changes relative to the first perspective and integrating the new perspective into the theory.
The important takeaway is that, as a class, the proletariat are collectively exploited and that, as a class, the bourgeoisie are collectively exploiting. This doesn’t mean every single labor must mechanically produces a linear amount of surplus-value each hour in order to “count” as exploited. Nor does it mean that every single capitalist must receive an amount of surplus-value each hour — or even turn a profit! The theory is oriented toward the aggregate of society, the understanding of class dynamics as a whole and the large-scale structure of society’s relations of production.
It is already a well established part of Marxist theory that there are intermediate classes such as the petty bourgeoisie. However Marx and Engels insisted that the defining struggle is between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, and that the proletariat is the class with revolutionary potential. (It should be noted that, in the context of China, Mao included also the lumpenproletariat as a revolutionary class.) The intermediate classes are typically ephemeral and historically unimportant relative to this larger struggle.
Alienated labour. You might have golden handcuffs chaining you to your office desk, but you don’t own that desk or the computer or the product you’re selling. If you’re socially discriminated against at that job, you aren’t an equal member of your team. That job degrades the air outside you have to breathe and the water you have to drink.
I don’t see the connection to exploitation though. Definitely agree with the alienation part. Does that mean all alienated labour is exploitation?
Yep. Exploitation is twofold:
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You’re reduced to the most wretched of commodities. Your labour is for sale but you don’t get the full value. You aren’t an equal partner to your coworkers or your boss. You’re being directly stolen from and forced into a position that makes stealing from you easier.
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The full cost of production- the toll it takes on you, society, and the environment- is externalised by the company. They steal your water and poison your air, but you don’t get your share of those profits being made. You get sick from the work but they don’t pay the taxes to fund your healthcare. Your car is destroyed by the commute that is made worse by their tax evasion and semi-trucks degrading the roads, but they don’t pay for the wear and tear on it. You’re left paying for the privilege to work.
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The western left sometimes gets a bad rap, but one of the best voices about this are marginalized people IN the western left. Huey Newton or MLK are good places to start. Zinn’s famous People’s History is a good history book to get you up to speed and unlearn some propaganda.
To be a bit anecdotal, read about Huey Newton’s theories on the lumpenproletariat. With all the mass layoffs, the current job shortage, unaffordable housing, the ruling class is intentionally creating as many lumpenproletariats as they can. Hard to get out there and oppose the rich if you’re depressed and hopeless. Exploitation can most certainly impact you simply by not even being hired in the first place.
You wouldn’t be hired by companies if they couldn’t exploit you. Exploitation is the difference between what you could make and what you do make, the former in the case of where you fully own the means of production that you use. Without exploitation, there simply cannot be profits.
Notably, exploitation is not just performed by business owners. Rent, interest and taxes are also paid from surplus value. This is both the rent, interest and taxes that you are paying personally out of your wages, and also the stuff that your employer is paying (since your employer pays it out of the surplus they got from you).
Another way to look at it is that exploitation falls out naturally from a theory in which the labor theory of value is true. In a capitalist economy, everything roughly sells around its value Wages are the value of workers, aka the labor/money it takes to reproduce the working class. For a society that has the ability to produce more stuff than the bare minimum, any excess production (which is called surplus) is naturally appropriated by the ruling class.
In modern capitalism, many people have the illusion that they are not exploited, because their ideas of exploitation and alienation are deeply liberal (the hegemonic ideology). They see themselves as different than the 19th century English factory man, or the child sweatshop workers that produce shoes/garments. “How can I be exploited when I can afford consumer goods and luxuries?”. “How can I produce surplus value when my labor involves typing on spreadsheets?”.
The problem with such thinking is that exploitation and alienation are not moral categories that exist for the purpose of drawing sympathy or divide the working class into productives and unproductives. That’s the liberal/fascist goal. Exploitation in Marx’s theory is that bit of energy being extracted from you to power the present order. It is a numerically quantifiable number (that stands in the range of 40-50% for most western economies).
Just as a car engine might produce net 150 horsepower but doesn’t get to decide what is done with that power, your net power output is surplus. You do not control it. Your boss who has rented you decides what happens, and his job is to whip you into working hard and working for his ends. That is exploitation.
In modern capitalism, many people have the illusion that they are not exploited, because their ideas of exploitation and alienation are deeply liberal (the hegemonic ideology).
Curious what you mean by their ideas of exploitation are liberal. As in they will only feel exploited once they can’t afford their necessities?
There’s a lot of cultural stereotypes that go into the idea of “exploitation” in liberal ideology. Even many people who literally cannot afford necessities may not think of themselves as exploited, because liberal ideology teaches us that the markets give us what we deserve.
In some situations, such as factories in 19th century England or sweatshops, the brutality of wage labor can reach a level where liberals think “nobody deserves to be treated like this” and “the market is a force of goodness, but it should be regulated”.
However, the thing that makes these ideas liberal is that like all ideologies of class societies, they are blind to the reality of what makes the market system perpetuate across the generations. Instead, ideologies make us go round and round in circles talking about morality and who should get what.
The simple physical reality on the other hand is that exploitation of humans is the lifeblood of every class society that has every existed and ever will exist. Every country in which an exploitable working class cannot be reproduced over time simply dies. This applies to societies as varied as the roman empire (which had to constantly conquer slaves to fuel itself) to modern south Korea (which is on track to ageing itself out of existence).
In my experience, everybody who has learns about this dynamic about class societies becomes 10 times more class conscious.
Let’s say your example is a Microsoft programmer. They work on a software product that Microsoft sells and they are paid $200k per year. Even at that high wage, Microsoft is pocketing their surplus labor value, otherwise they wouldn’t have profits. When companies are so large and have so much income, the exploitation in raw value can actually be even higher than that of a low wage worker. The Microsoft programmer just doesn’t feel the pain as much because their labor value is scarce and hard to replace and so they are paid better.
The rest of capitalist relations still exist there as well. Microsoft wants to pay their programmers less. This is why they promote STEM education, bootcamps, etc. They want a large number of unemployed programmers competing for that job so they can drive wages down.
The Marxist concept of exploitation does not imply that all workers are impoverished. The labor aristocracy was already a thing in Marx’s time. But it does mean that there is a tendency to drive down wages, i.e. increase exploitation to maximize profit. So over time, in a closed system (e.g. the global working class), wages are driven down.
everything that’s still legal
I think it’s quite simple to explain to people that they generate the value of their wage for their boss in a fraction of the time they actually work, and then they work for the boss for free for the rest of the day. Especially obvious to explain to anyone that works in retail or sales or hospitality or whatever, when they can literally see the amount of money going into the register versus how much they make an hour.
