[lbo-talk] Slavoj ®i¾ek . The Revolt of the Salaried Bourgeoisie: The Ne w Proletariat

[Shane Mage]

This whole discussion is totally off base.  Employers don't derive  
profit from the exploitation of "their" workers.  They derive profit  
from their relative position in the capitalist class as a whole: if  
they are "perfectly competitive" (producers of a standardized  
commodity, by standard methods and with no barriers to speedy entry of  
competitors) in a competitive economy they receive as profit a share  
of the society's aggregate surplus value proportional to their share  
of the total invested capital, whether or not their workers produce  
much or little of that total surplus value; and if (as is most always  
the "real-world" case) there is a monopolistic element to their  
business their share of the aggregate surplus-value is a "rent"  
roughly proportional to the relative strength of their monopoly  
position.  Modern monopoly capitalism extracts "rents" in three  
principal ways: "resource" rents from control over natural resources;  
"intellectual property" rents exemplified by an Apple, Disney, or  
Microsoft; and "intermediation" rents of the extortionate type  
exemplified by the whole "financial sector."  In none of these cases  
do their profits depend to any significant extent on the exploitation  
of "their" employees: those profits are scarcely anything but a "tax"  
on the productive economy as a whole, a vastly disproportionate share  
of the aggregate surplus value deriving from the exploitation of the  
class of productive workers as a whole.  So it is totally and entirely  
wrong to say that "It is arguable that the 5 highest paid athletes in  
Baseball & Football(sic) are the most exploited workers in the US."  
Prince Fielder, Albert Pujols, Alex Rodriguez, Cliff Lee, Ryan Howard  
& co. are not exploited proletarians paid the value-equivalent of the  
cost of production of their labor power: they bargain individually, on  
the basis of their monopoly control over their own enormous talents,  
with other monopolists over the division of the monopoly rents  
generated by the monopoly known as "Major League Baseball."  The most  
exploited workers (and here the economic and moral senses of the term  
coincide) in the US, however, are indeed athletes: the tens of  
thousands of young adults laboring not for the wage of a Foxconn  
worker but for nothing at all in the plantation operated by that most  
monstrous combine of monopoly and monopsony, the National Collegiate  
Athletic Association (NCAA).

Shane Mage

"All things are an equal exchange for fire and fire for all things,
as goods are for gold and gold for goods."

Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr, 90

On Jan 25, 2012, at 3:59 PM, // ravi wrote:


> On Jan 25, 2012, at 3:47 PM, shag carpet bomb wrote:
>> it was zizek writing that (not ravi), and I noticed it too.
>>
>> but isn't that typical of most leftists who see exploitation as a
>> moral issue, right?  hardly anyone actually speaks of it as a
>> technical issue.
>>
>
> I think that’s because most of us have no technical training. For us  
> (non-technical :-) leftists), it *is* a moral issue. Far be it from  
> me to defend Zizek, but I think you should consider the qualifier  
> “successfully” in his sentence:
>
>> His wealth has nothing to do with Microsoft producing good software  
>> at lower prices than its competitors, or ‘exploiting’ its workers  
>> more successfully (Microsoft pays its intellectual workers a  
>> relatively high salary).
>
> If I understand the technical term correctly, and I probably don’t,  
> exploitation occurs when the value created by the labour is greater  
> than the price paid to the labourer. Assuming that’s correct, one  
> can, it seems to me, technically "measure" “how much” exploitation  
> occurs and how successful a capitalist is in such exploitation. The  
> more the producers of the gidget are able to extract in wages, the  
> less successful the company is at exploitation.
>
> No?
>
> 	—ravi
>
>
>>
>> <> // ravi: " 'exploiting' its workers more successfully (Microsoft  
>> pays
>> <> its
>> <> intellectual workers a relatively high salary). . .
>> <>
>> <> Non sequitur. Your argument may be correct, but this is no  
>> support for
>> <> it.
>> <>
>> <> It is arguable that the 5 highest paid athletes in Baseball &  
>> Football
>> <> are
>> <> the most exploited workers in the u.s.. Exploitation is a  
>> technical
>> <> not a
>> <> moral question.
>> <>
>> <> This is a sloppy expression of the point. Better expressed it  
>> might
>> <> well fit
>> <> into shag's discussion of theoryl
>> <>
>> <> Carrol
>> <>
>> <> Carrol
>> <>
>> <> ___________________________________
>> <> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>> <>
>>
>>
>> -- 
>> http://cleandraws.com
>> Wear Clean Draws
>> ('coz there's 5 million ways to kill a CEO)
>>
>>
>> ___________________________________
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>
>
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