Ew commies.
Communism
Welcome to the communist Lemmy community! This is a community for all Marxist.
Yes, you're on a platform built by commies along commie principles, specifically on a commie community.
I see that now.
You gonna leave?
No. I forgot the /s. I might be autistic.
I’d say capital it exploited for surplus value, and the laborer and capitalist split that surplus.
Capital is made up of dead labor and raw materials, it isn't something shared by the Capitalist and Worker. Instead, it's vampiric in the sense that ownership by the Capitalist allows said Capitalist to exploit living labor.
Commodities trend towards being sold at their values, not below or above, over time, yet profit is still taken. This is due to the laborer working for more hours than they are paid. Ie, if they create 50 dollars of Value in a 4 hours, yet recieve 50 dollars for 8 hours labor, then they are working 4 hours for themselves and 4 hours for the Capitalist.
Reading Wage Labor and Capital followed by Value, Price and Profit can help explain this further, in much more detail.
I work in flexographic printing as a QA and I get to see the numbers in our database. A print/lamination job for a million and a half impressions of frozen chicken nugget bags will gross $350,000. We do that in a day and a half while the other press and laminator is also doing other jobs. One of our presses costs $3.5m. we could literally be buying a new one every goddamn month. Press operators are at $25/hr for 5-6 12hr shifts every week. I make $17/hr for an admittedly really easy job(except when we're really busy).
Our roof leaks everywhere. The eye wash stations are all broken. They only just fixed the AC because they're expecting people to quit just after the latest round of BS. They just installed a crazy number of cameras and are now installing a turnstile because they think people are stealing hours. They owe literally all of us back pay for the pay half year because the clock system isn't tracking lunch properly.
Our big boss owns a whole damn building in Manhattan. We could all be doing really well if this guy wasn't just a leech in the order of hundreds of millions of dollars every year. The only reason we can't make more money is because we don't have the financial freedom to leave or stand our ground. We have no union. None of us will ever have the chance to invest in our own equipment. Our wages are a leash, not a return on value produced.