Workers are, as a rule, not paid the cost of their labor power denied the full fruits of their labor. The scam of capitalism is that workers are usually paid a small fraction of the value they generate for the company. Some of that value must necessarily go to material inputs, maintenance, and upgrades of the workplace, as well as contribution to necessary public services; some goes to the worker; but the bulk of it goes to owners and shareholders for no good reason.
Labor-power is paid its value, which is the cost to reproduce a day of labor. The problem is that workers work beyond the number of hours needed to do so due to capitalist relations. In other words, a worker sells their labor power for 1 day to earn the ability to survive another day, but the capitalist gets out of it more commodities than the worker needed and thus comes the profit, this surplus value creation. Commodities are sold at their value, not above it, to still make a profit.
Huge simplification though, there exists super-exploitation of the global south via imperialism, there’s also the reserve army of labor and intentional homelessness to force lower wages, and the struggle for higher wages by workers, and much more. Might need to re-read Capital tho, I’ve been focusing on DiaMat and hismat and am a bit rusty economically.
Labor power is not the same as labor. The price of labor power is the minimum cost of reproducing labor. That’s enough money to provide food, water, and shelter. The quality of your shelter is up for debate though. Effectively, the price of labor power is how much it cost for you to be able to come to work the next day. VPP covers the topic in detail
Workers are, as a rule,
not paid the cost of their labor powerdenied the full fruits of their labor. The scam of capitalism is that workers are usually paid a small fraction of the value they generate for the company. Some of that value must necessarily go to material inputs, maintenance, and upgrades of the workplace, as well as contribution to necessary public services; some goes to the worker; but the bulk of it goes to owners and shareholders for no good reason.Labor-power is paid its value, which is the cost to reproduce a day of labor. The problem is that workers work beyond the number of hours needed to do so due to capitalist relations. In other words, a worker sells their labor power for 1 day to earn the ability to survive another day, but the capitalist gets out of it more commodities than the worker needed and thus comes the profit, this surplus value creation. Commodities are sold at their value, not above it, to still make a profit.
Huge simplification though, there exists super-exploitation of the global south via imperialism, there’s also the reserve army of labor and intentional homelessness to force lower wages, and the struggle for higher wages by workers, and much more. Might need to re-read Capital tho, I’ve been focusing on DiaMat and hismat and am a bit rusty economically.
You explained it plenty well enough 👍
Never hurts to reread capital though
Thanks!
Labor power is not the same as labor. The price of labor power is the minimum cost of reproducing labor. That’s enough money to provide food, water, and shelter. The quality of your shelter is up for debate though. Effectively, the price of labor power is how much it cost for you to be able to come to work the next day. VPP covers the topic in detail
I appreciate the correction. That’s my signal to do another push into the books.