Why is the exploitation of workers growing?

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

There is a classic thesis: As capitalism develops, the exploitation of workers grows. I, frankly, have no idea where exactly the classics wrote this and how it is correctly formulated (if someone tells me, I will be grateful), but I tried to convey the meaning of the thesis.

Moreover, this formulation is most important for the subsequent analysis, since, no matter how it was written in the original, in everyday public consciousness it is "remembered" in approximately this form.

And it is in this form that she receives the bulk of the objections. Professional and spontaneous critics criticize approximately in the same vein:

Look around. Two hundred years ago, a common man, on average, plowed sixteen hours a day in the field day and night, he didn’t always have enough food, he was beaten with a whip for a while, but now it’s an eight-hour working day, an apartment with heating and a large plasma TV. Moreover, if in our conditions we could still "justify" this by the former existence of Soviet power, then in the United States there has never been any Soviet power. There was only capitalism. And the result is such an effect. On the contrary, as we can see, exploitation has dropped dramatically. Life has become better. So, why all of a sudden "capitalism is a brake on progress"? He did not slow down anything, on the contrary, he led to prosperity

These objections are based on a number of misunderstandings and misinterpretations, the first of which is a misunderstanding of the term “exploitation”. As you know, words can change their “intuitive meaning” over time, and even if the dictionary still has the same meaning, intuitively the word is still associated with something else.

Hearing "it is being exploited", citizens see a plantation where, sweating, blacks dressed in rags are dragging huge sheaves of something incomprehensible. And nearby, with his hands on his side, stands an overseer in a cork helmet, with a large stick and a pistol in his belt. This is what I understand - exploitation. And eight hours, five days a week - just a fairy tale.

Without denying the value of five days a week for eight hours with a seagull and casual conversations against the background of sheaves on the shoulder under the hot sun, however, I will note: the meaning of the word "exploitation" is different.

Exploitation- This is the appropriation of the results of someone else's labor in the process of unequal exchange.

There, as usual, there are all sorts of "desires to find the edge" expressed in questions like "is the beggar exploiting you when you give him a ruble?" or “and the gopnik, who squeezes out the mobile phone, does he use it?”, but this is all - avoiding the problem. Exploitation does not mean everyday situations, but industrial relations. It’s not even the relationship between buyer and seller - only production. It is in this sense that this term was used by the classics, therefore, even if its meaning seems to us different, when analyzing the statements of the classics, we should understand by the term what they understood. Since what they said is true precisely for their definition of the term, and not for all possible ones in general.

If you imagine the meaning of the word in a very schematic way, then the classics mean this: the worker produces ten chairs, but he receives money from the owner only for five. Hence it is being exploited.

This, already a much more correct description of the term, also finds its objections. Which rest mainly on two related things:

1. The capitalist also contributed, he also worked, so the difference between the five chairs is his “salary”.
2. Without the capitalist, there might not have been ten chairs at all, but at best there would have been one, so he even benefited society and the worker.

Both objections do not contain any fundamentally incorrect assumptions, but they have completely logically incorrect conclusions. Nevertheless, I will not give them a refutation right now, instead I will describe the whole process as a whole, the meaning of the initial thesis within the framework of the explanation, and the incorrectness of the above two points after that will become clear by itself.

So, to begin with, let's look at another concept: labor productivity. The phenomena behind this concept are the key to understanding the whole topic.

Labor productivity is understood, roughly speaking, as a useful output per unit of time per person. Someone makes one chair a day, someone - two. The second, respectively, with equal quality of chairs, labor productivity is higher.

What is important here is that higher labor productivity does not generally mean that someone is working harder. And even, interestingly, it does not mean that someone is doing better. There are basically more than one possible options.

1. The first one goes out to smoke every five minutes, and on the spot also stares out the window. At the same time, the second plows in without unbending. (labor intensity)
2. The first is seven years old, and the second is forty. And he had been making chairs for the previous thirty. The first was just getting started. (skills and experience)
3. The first one works in the tundra in the open air, dressed in a fur coat and high fur boots, and the second - in a well-ventilated room with a comfortable temperature (working conditions)
4. The first one cuts the boards with a blunt hacksaw, and the second one - on a CNC machine (technical equipment)
5. The first works sixteen hours a day, seven days a week, and the second - six hours a day, five days a week (physical activity over an extended period of time)
6. The first one without one arm and one leg. And the second is normal. (non-identity of workers)

As you can see, only the first option implies the full responsibility of the employee for his own labor productivity. In the second, with some stretch, a certain amount of responsibility can also be found (well, there, you have to study hard, work on yourself, all that), but a seven-year-old cannot make himself forty with thirty years of work experience by any of his actions. Subsequent points do not depend on the employee at all, except in the sense that he could somehow contribute to a change in working conditions, the introduction of technology, and so on.

Labor is the intellectual and physical effort spent on the production of a product useful to society. Labor productivity is analogous to efficiency in physics. That is, in what proportion labor and its result are related.

In addition, such a concept as "social labor productivity" or "average labor productivity" makes sense. By them we mean: if we take all manufacturers of chairs in a given society and calculate the average of their productivity, then we get a description of how much labor is required on average to produce chairs in a given society. By this criterion, we can single out, in particular, those whose productivity is above average and whose performance is below. But the most important thing: we can find out how many chairs a society will receive at this stage of development.

This characteristic is especially important in explaining the fallacy of criticisms of the original thesis. Namely: as society develops, labor productivity grows on average. It grows regardless of the structure and nature of social relations, but, perhaps, it grows at different rates. Therefore, the total increase in the number of chairs is not a proof of the special charm of any kind of structure.

The social utility of the system can be characterized as a maximum in terms of the rate of growth of labor productivity. But that would also be wrong. Indeed, for public utility, it is not only the total amount of each product that is important, but also the nature of the distribution of this product. If, say, everyone has one chair, and one of them has a thousand, then the social utility is lower than if each had two chairs. Even if there are more chairs in the first case than in the second.

This obvious thesis, however, does not help us in any way to realize the fallacy of objections to the original. However, it helps us to understand the criterion of assessment: not only the amount is important, but also the nature of its distribution among the participants.

So, suppose that at a point in time 1, a certain society produced 100 chairs per month for a hundred people. The chairs were distributed one by one to each. In this case, it is not important for us that any other products were produced, we abstract from this. At time point 2, a talented entrepreneur was found who cleverly reorganized the process, so 300 chairs were produced. Each got 2 chairs, and the rest of the businessman took himself. Everyone obviously began to live better, but the question itself was ripe: no matter what, the chairs are still made by the same people who, possibly, work as intensively as before, but with the help of an entrepreneur, their labor productivity increased. The entrepreneur obviously put in some effort, but what kind? How to evaluate his contribution?

Offhand, it seems that the entrepreneur's contribution is 200 chairs per unit of time, so he even shared it with the rest. But there is a subtlety: without manufacturers of chairs, there would be zero, no matter how talented the entrepreneur's idea turns out to be, and no matter how intensively he worked on organizing the labor of zero people. That is, we are forced to conclude: the indicated increase in productivity is the result of not only the actions of the entrepreneur and not only the labor of workers, but a certain symbiosis of the former with the latter.

An entrepreneur certainly deserves a salary and a reward for his ideas, but the amount of this reward cannot be calculated in terms of "productivity in the number of chairs." Accordingly, with a fair (about the meaning of this word will be a little later) distribution, it obviously cannot be such that everyone still gets one chair, and the entrepreneur gets two hundred. Moreover, it cannot be that everyone will receive less than one chair a month. But it cannot be that the entrepreneur received zero chairs, and the three hundred produced were distributed strictly among the workers.

Here we have defined the acceptable range. And no matter what meaning from the existing ones we endow the word "justice", the boundary points should not be reached and, moreover, there should not be going beyond them. This is obvious to everyone, and the regular violation of this will sooner or later raise 100 workers against one entrepreneur.

Going beyond the obvious borderline of what is permissible gives rise to a process called "the growth of class contradictions." However, the approach to this edge and even disagreements about the correct definition of the distribution within the range also generate it

Consider the development of chair manufacturing. Suppose now the heir to this entrepreneur has come up with something else, which has brought the productivity of chairs to 1000. The workers began to get four chairs, and the entrepreneur - six hundred a month. The heir to the heir himself did not invent anything, and for a hundred chairs a month he hired a special inventor who, as a result of his labors, made it possible to produce 10,000 chairs. Workers have now been allocated as many as ten. But the intensity of their work even decreased slightly.

Progress is evident. Those who used to have only one chair now have ten. Where is the exploitation? Does everything seem fine?

But. Let's summarize the results at each stage of the process.

Total chairs	Goes to workers	Goes to every employee	Goes to the entrepreneur	It goes to the inventor
100	100	1	-	-
300	200	2	100	-
1000	400	4	600	-
10000	1000	10	8900	100

Already, in general, some suspicions are creeping in: the numbers seem to grow as if asynchronously in different columns. However, in order to directly turn completely into suspicions of understanding, consider another indicator

Total chairs	Share of employees	Share of each employee	Entrepreneur's share	Inventor's share
100	100%	1, 00%	0%	0, 00%
300	67%	0, 67%	33%	0, 00%
1000	40%	0, 40%	60%	0, 00%
10000	10%	0, 10%	89%	1, 00%

Now, according to the new columns, what is happening is quite obvious:

1. The total production of chairs is growing
2. More chairs available to each employee
3. The number of chairs available to the entrepreneur is growing

But at the same time:

1. The share of each employee in the amount produced falls
2. The share of the entrepreneur in the amount produced is growing
3. The number of chairs received by an entrepreneur is growing fundamentally faster than that of employees

If at the beginning of the process the workers received one hundred percent of what was produced, and each of them received one percent of the chairs, then by the end of the process their total share was already 10%, each, respectively, had only 0.1%. At this time, the entrepreneur already had 89%. 890 times larger than each of them. 8.9 times what they all get together.

The growth in labor productivity, therefore, led not only to an increase in absolute consumption, but also to a decrease in the share of those who directly produce chairs against the background of a huge increase in the share of the entrepreneur.

The growth of exploitation is a decrease in the share of the social product for the working people while the share of the employer increases. The capitalist withdraws a greater and greater share of what they produce. Moreover, the total amount of product and even the amount of product received by each worker may well increase

It should be noted here that the critics' premises are based on correct considerations, which they incorrectly absolutize. Yes, indeed, in the early stages, the entrepreneur worked perhaps even better than the workers themselves. He may not have slept all night, thinking how to improve the production of chairs. He risked his money and his life, all that. Therefore, the thesis "he should also be given something" is absolutely correct. However, the continuation is completely incorrect: "they just gave him something, so everything is fine." After all, it is important not “they should give - they gave”, but “should have given so much, but given so much”. It is no less important that after a while he was not so much waiting for what they would give him there, as deciding how much to take for himself, but how much to give.

At the first stage, we may still be at a loss as to whether he took exactly how much he was owed or not. But then, anyway, some kind of nonsense turns out: after all, an increase in the share of a social product, by any concept, implies an increase in one's own contribution, namely, an increase in the productivity of one's own labor or an increase in the amount of this labor. Suppose, at the first step, the entrepreneur really, by some miracle, managed to work 50 times "better" than the average worker, so his fair share was fifty times greater. However, his heir, it turns out, should have already worked 890 times better than the workers and almost 20 times better than his grandfather, who himself, according to our assumption, was not a mistake.

We can also imagine a person who, due to personal talents and thanks to hard work, works 50 times better than the average employee. But even intuitively, there is a limit somewhere. None of the people can work a thousand and, moreover, a million times better than the average. And obviously the relative quality of labor of the capitalist's heirs cannot grow with such a speed. The latter, as we can see, stopped inventing something himself - he hired an inventor for this. Yes, there was organizational work in this act, but obviously not on that scale. Not 890 to one.

In view of the above, we must necessarily conclude that the growth in the share of the entrepreneur in the example was to an extremely small extent due to his contribution to social production and was mainly a consequence of the exploitation of workers. The third and the second heirs simply received rent from the parental capital. In their income, the payment for their personal labor was almost invisible.

Capitalist - and before that - feudal and slave-owning societies - functioned precisely according to this scheme. In the early stages, the growth of the share of the dynasty was due to the outstanding qualities of its founder. He really was a genius inventor or organizer, a great warrior or something like that. The increase in his well-being was at first on a level, or even lagging behind his contribution to public welfare, and towards the end - already, it is possible, ahead of his contribution, but at a controversial level. In the future, the dynasty increased its own share sharply disproportionate to what it actually did. Labor was present to one degree or another, but it did not correspond to the award at all.

In later times, it became possible to achieve the aforementioned disproportion during one's own life. And this really was a consequence of the increase in social productivity of labor.

The point is that exploitation implies a surplus over what is vital. When an employee is able to produce a product for his own survival, there is no point in exploiting him - if something is taken from him, he will simply die. When there is a small surplus, part of it can already be withdrawn under all sorts of plausible and unseemly pretexts. But while the surplus is small, even with a large community, it is extremely difficult for the exploiter to get a radically large share. He will still be "the first among equals", he will still be many times, but not a thousand times more secured.

With the development of productive forces, the amount of surplus (and, in this case, not necessarily material, perhaps even labor) becomes enormous. When one peasant can feed not only one himself, but a thousand people at once, this thousand can be made to work strictly for the pleasure of the exploiter - to serve around the house, to grow a personal yacht the size of an aircraft carrier, etc. In fact, the surplus of labor is precisely the target parameter of exploitation, and the growth of labor productivity is its base.

Without exploiters, society, even if it slows down somewhat the growth of the product in absolute terms (well, everyone knows: don’t give a person a million, he won’t come up with anything), nevertheless, in relative terms - in the form of a share actually received by everyone, rather than dividing all produced per capita - on the contrary, it would greatly accelerate the progress of one's own well-being. In total, perhaps less would be produced, but each would get more.

In addition, projects such as shortening the working week, improving working conditions, and the like would go faster: after all, the labor resources freed from servicing the exploiters could be directed, among other things, to these projects, since there are already enough products for the eyes.

Here it is worth talking more about the assessment of the contribution. Above, we have defined the acceptable range. The distribution bar, below which it makes no sense for workers to produce more (after all, after that, they will get less in absolute terms), and the bar above which it makes no sense for an entrepreneur to do something, since he will not get anything at all. Nevertheless, the question arises about the refinement of the criterion: how much exactly is correct? How much is fair? And in general, what is “fair”?

I'll start with the latter. The concept of "fair" is precisely one of the fundamental disagreements between the supporters of different socio-economic approaches.

For the market liberal, “justly” is defined as an equivalent exchange of a personally produced product in the sense of market prices for it.

The frostbitten liberal version, of course, assumes that any exchange is fair if it did not take place under the threat of execution, but we will ignore it due to its deliberate absurdity

If we isolate the target setting from this option, then it turns out that each participant in the relationship should receive benefits equivalent to how many of these benefits he gave out.

The socialist version, on the other hand, says that the share of each is proportional to his labor (as we remember, labor is, by definition socially useful activity).

It would seem, what is the difference? Are we not here expressing the same thing, but in different terms? Not really. According to the socialist version, the worker's share should depend on the quantity and quality of his / her personal labor, and not on the overall productivity of this labor. That is, if, due to some conditions that do not depend on this person, the productivity of his labor is lower than that of someone doing the same work, but in different conditions, then these two people should still receive the same salary and thus have the same share in the social product. Roughly speaking, only the first and partly the second points of possible reasons for differences in productivity have an impact on the share of workers in the public good. The liberal option, by contrast, implies that, regardless of the reasons, the pay is proportional to the results. Whether someone made a chair in the Far North, did he make it in a modern factory - these are the same chairs that are sold at about the same price, and the proceeds from their sale are payment.

Here you need to understand: the socialist version does not say that a bad result is identical to a good one

Which approach is correct? I believe the socialist is true. And that's why.

Let's say in the example of chairs, someone talented invented a machine. Before that, the logs were sawed with a saw, and then they were sanded for a long time with a file, now this can be done on a machine and already much faster - ten times, for example. It will not work to produce a hundred machines to give everyone a machine - this process still takes time. However, society needs at least one hundred chairs. With one machine, there will be one hundred and nine. Should the one machine that received the machine instantly get a tenfold increase?

He, of course, began to give out ten chairs, while the rest give out one. However, he works with the same intensity as the others. At the same time - in the best conditions. Others, too, probably would not mind switching to machines, and not figuring out with a file, but there are no such machines yet. However, all of them cannot quit their jobs either - society needs not ten chairs, but at least a hundred. Thus, it is not clear for what personal merits this one suddenly increased his share tenfold. Has he started to work harder? No. Has it gotten harder for him? Again, no. It even became easier. The only thing that has improved for him is his qualifications. After all, he learned to work on the machine. So it means that I should receive a bonus specifically for qualifications, and not directly for an increase in the number of chairs produced. It is hardly tenfold, well, let it be two times.

Exactly by the same logic, the inventor of the machine tool / entrepreneur should not get 900 chairs out of 1000, although he seems to have provided just such an increase. He receives a bonus, again for the growth of qualifications, and since it, apparently, did not increase at the time of invention, but some time before that moment, then also a bonus - as compensation for the difference in pay between the actual increase in qualifications and an event that unambiguously allowed to diagnose it and entail a regular increase in payment. Plus, of course, the bonus is a material expression of society's gratitude.

The fact is that remuneration is a way to stimulate a person to follow certain strategies that are beneficial to society. If we are considering the liberal option, then the best strategy is to strain yourself, by hook or by crook, to put together capital, and then live on the rent from it. Indeed, the invention made actually allows you not to do the following - except for your own entertainment, which is important for the inventor himself, but not for his heirs. The accumulated capital itself brings in much more money than any wages would bring.

In the current reality, of course, the main share of the income from an invention is received not by the inventor himself, but by his investor. Which is just illustrated by the third heir from the example about chairs

In the socialist version, on the contrary, the invention made is a fact for a higher assessment of qualifications, but in order to receive material benefits for your qualifications, you must continue to translate this qualification into real products through your own labor. Successful innovations, therefore, do not encourage you to put a bolt on everything from now on, but on the contrary - to keep working. For a higher pay, but that’s exactly what to work, and not live on interest.

In addition, there are so many interconnections in social production that it is impossible to attribute any growth in labor productivity strictly to the efforts of a certain person. This is a complex process. There are millions of participants in each increase. And how exactly efforts were distributed between them is not known for certain. Therefore, the only relatively reliable way to determine the share is through the amount of labor and the qualifications of the worker. With an amendment, of course, for especially unfavorable conditions, including the harmfulness of work.

Finally, a final consideration: the benefits of disclosing trade secrets. When paying for a result, it is beneficial not to tell anyone how this result was achieved. After all, if everyone else can achieve the same result, then the share that has just grown tenfold will again equal the share of the others: they will also produce ten chairs.

It already implies that the chairs are not made for personal use, but for sale. All other things being equal, someone paid for ten chairs will have better access to benefits than those paid for one. If everyone sells ten chairs, they will compete with the first in receiving benefits, which will reduce not only his share, but also the amount he received directly

Under the socialist approach, public disclosure, on the other hand, is beneficial: there will be more chairs and they will be cheaper. And payment does not depend on the produced quantity anyway. But when the result is made public, a large bonus will be given and wages will be increased - upon the fact of advanced training.

The second approach may seem to stimulate negligence and create egalitarianism. After all, if someone produces ten chairs by hellish labor, but receives as much as the one who releases one, then there is no point in releasing ten chairs. This conclusion, however, is incorrect. A graduate who graduates significantly more than average is the first candidate for advanced training and bonuses, if this is due to work in his specialty. On the contrary, a worker worse than average, all other things being equal, will sooner or later receive a downgrade of his qualifications, or, possibly, will be dismissed altogether for professional inconsistency.

With the production of a huge amount of surplus, it is high time to free workers from exploitation and introduce socialist wages. Whatever the proponents of the market say, there is exploitation under capitalism, and it pretty much slows down the growth of social welfare (although it does not cancel growth at all). This deceleration is expressed in the stratification of society and an even greater difference in the share received by different classes from the socially produced. Such a large-scale stratification, as well as the very opportunity for it, in addition provoke not an improvement in the quality of work, but a transition to the parasitic existence of those who somehow "broke through", and especially their heirs.

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