Marxist Theory: Capitalist Exploitation and Communism
Formation of Goodwill and Capitalist Exploitation
When an employee works, they produce a value greater than their own wages. The surplus value the worker creates is called goodwill, and that’s where the profit of the capitalist comes from. This is why Marx called the time a worker works for wages necessary labor time, and the time they work to create goodwill surplus labor time. The ultimate goal of capitalism is to profit through capital appreciation.
The means of production are necessary to create goodwill, but the workforce is the only one who can create it.
Capital can be defined as a value that increases indefinitely through money, goods, instruments of labor, labor, etc.
Capital is dead labor that feeds on the living work of labor.
Marx’s great discovery consists in unmasking the relations of exploitation of one class by another (capitalist exploitation) and making the most coercive capitalist systems of production.
Overcoming Capitalism: Proletarian Revolution and Communism
The idea of revolution is constant in the work of Marx, underlying the need for revolution in historical materialism and the study of capitalism.
Revolution is a total change in the economic, political, and ideological spheres.
Communism is a new mode of production that involves:
- Abolition of private ownership of the means of production
- Elimination of class struggle
- Abolition of wage labor
- Emergence of relationships based on cooperation, not exploitation
Marx described the communist society as the realm of freedom.
Goods and Appreciation: Marx’s “Das Kapital”
Marx developed a scientific theory about the modes of production (historical materialism), but also made a scientific analysis of the mode of production to support the French Revolution. This analysis is contained in his book “Das Kapital”, which criticizes capitalism and the exploitation of the system.
Analysis of Merchandise: Labor Theory of Value
Apparently, a good is a simple thing, but it is actually very complex.
Goods are all interchangeable products on the market, which have a use value and an exchange value. Use value is the utility that it has to satisfy a need, and exchange value is that by which it can be exchanged for other goods or money. Marx said that there is also a value, which is something that is not determined by its intended use of goods, but its only cause and source is work (labor theory of value). This theory is the core of “Das Kapital” and Marx used it to denounce capitalist exploitation.
Work, for Marx, creates value. The value of goods is given by the amount of work required to produce them. According to Marxist theory, work can be concrete, which is what creates use value, and abstract, which is what creates value. Marx also distinguishes between value and price, stating that price is derived from value and not the reverse.
Labor and Workforce
Marxian economics differentiates between work and workforce.
Workforce is the set of physical and mental faculties that exist in the worker, and it is used when producing a commodity. In the bourgeois or capitalist system, the worker sells their labor to the capitalist owner in exchange for a salary, as agreed in the contract. The pay is the price of labor. For Marx, the employee is not truly free to choose, because in reality, they are tied to capitalism.