Exploitation: The Foundation of Capitalism

Exploitation: The Foundation of Capitalism

When people complain that they are being 'exploited' at work, they usually mean that they are being treated unfairly or being ripped off.

For instance, Burger King used to make workers clock off when it wasn't busy, though they had to stay at work. One young worker made less than the price of a burger in an 8 hour shift. Pizza Hut offered a young Spanish woman a job - but the first 2 weeks would be without pay, to "help" her improve her English! Some places make staff work unpaid overtime. Nike pays Chinese workers just 16 cents an hour for a back-breaking 70 hour week while its president Phil Knight is worth $6 billion. People hear about things like this and they say "That's exploitative - it's taking the piss."

But if we want to understand what makes capitalism tick, we need to go further than this simple idea of unfairness - it naturally implies that there can be a fair wage, a job where we aren't exploited. Is that true?

Karl Marx said no. He was the first to analyse how the capitalist system works in depth, and how exploitation was central to it. That was what made him different from many anti-capitalist thinkers who have followed him. Simple theories of exploitation say capitalism can be made fair by making the worst capitalists behave. The Marxist theory of exploitation means that society can be made fair only by overthrowing the capitalists and getting rid of their system.

So how does the Marxist theory work?

Capitalists invest money in factories, materials and hiring workers to produce goods for sale. When goods are sold they make a profit. The capitalists' money, repeatedly invested in production and recouped in the form of profits, is called capital. It grow...

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...s can be done in two ways. One is by getting more work out of us for the same wage - by increasing the length of the working day (overtime) or by making us work harder and faster. The second way to boost profits is to reduce wages - by cutting workers' wage packets, or sacking some of the workforce or moving production to a country where labour power can be bought more cheaply.

In this ceaseless struggle workers have only one resource - the fact that no surplus value will accumulate, no profits be made without their labour. If the individual worker is powerless, the workforce united is powerful. When bosses push workers too far they strike and remove the source of profit - their labour. Out of the need to resist the capitalists' remorseless hunger for surplus value comes the need for a collective fightback. Out of capitalist exploitation comes THE CLASS STRUGGLE.