this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2024
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Communism
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They agree to trade the surplus value they create in order to have a job, and receive a ratio of that surplus value instead. This is because they know they haven't the capital, nor the preparation to do otherwise.
If they owned the means of production, they probably wouldn't work so hard as they'd have a relatively larger slice of the pie.
This means the "efficiency of Capitalism" comes from the exploitation of workers. It it only because the full surplus value is kept from them, and they have a knowledge that they can be fired, or have their lives made difficult by "superiors" that they can be worked so hard (aka "efficiently").
Finding a better balance or third way structure, would require finding a way to motivate people, whilst also rewarding them AND not exploiting them.
Perhaps workers could be arranged to keep each other in check. Perhaps there's some other structures that facilitate freedom, a lack of alienation or exploration, whilst retaining motivation... That's what's needed... Comfortable, unalienated labor, that is desirable, and efficiently structured.
IDK why you got downvoted. Is it coz you are not actively promoting communism as silver bullet? But rather pointing out fact that all known approaches have issues
Ideology does that to people. I don't think Marx liked ideology, and I believe he said that he's not a Marxist.
He also played the stock market.
Marx didn't like it when people followed a set of rules with no Materialist bearings but imagined it to be logically consistent. Marx was definitely a fan of believing things and advocating for better.
When Marx said he wasn't a "Marxist," he was referring to people who took his words as dogma, not people who generally used the Marxian method of analysis. He wasn't dunking on people who agreed with him, he was telling people to also touch grass.
I don't know what playing the stock market has to do with anything, Communism isn't a vow of poverty and nothing about society would change if he refused to do so.
I had none of the misapprehensions you've assumed I had, and was not making any case against Marx (but against ideology instead). That said, maybe someone else will read your comment and understand more about Marx.