Workers are, as a rule, not paid the cost of their labor power. The scam of capitalism is that workers are usually paid a small fraction of the value they generate for the company. Some of that value must necessarily go to material inputs, maintenance, and upgrades of the workplace, as well as contribution to necessary public services; some goes to the worker; but the bulk of it goes to owners and shareholders for no good reason.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 11 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

Labor-power is paid its value, which is the cost to reproduce a day of labor. The problem is that workers work beyond the number of hours needed to do so due to capitalist relations. In other words, a worker sells their labor power for 1 day to earn the ability to survive another day, but the capitalist gets out of it more commodities than the worker needed and thus comes the profit, this surplus value creation. Commodities are sold at their value, not above it, to still make a profit.

Huge simplification though, there exists super-exploitation of the global south via imperialism, there's also the reserve army of labor and intentional homelessness to force lower wages, and the struggle for higher wages by workers.

Might need to re-read Capital tho, I've been focusing on DiaMat and hismat and am a bit rusty economically.

[–] sharkfucker420@lemmy.ml 9 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (1 children)

Labor power is not the same as labor. The price of labor power is the minimum cost of reproducing labor. That's enough money to provide food, water, and shelter. The quality of your shelter is up for debate though. Effectively, the price of labor power is how much it cost for you to be able to come to work the next day. VPP covers the topic in detail

[–] Ildsaye@hexbear.net 7 points 6 hours ago

I appreciate the correction. That's my signal to do another push into the books.

[–] balderdash9@lemmy.zip 6 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)

The exploitation is baked into the very foundations of capitalsm. Another scam is that the workers, who are the ones actually making all the useful commodities we need (e.g., food, clothing, housing, etc.)--as well as the infrastructure that keeps production operational (e.g., roads, bridges, electricity, etc.)--cannot access those commodities without an exchange of money. We create all the necessities of life, we create more than enough to provide for everyone's needs, but we cannot access those necessities outside of a fucking paywall.

Even worse, the capitalists that produce commodities in search of profits are independent; but the realization of the value embedded in those physical objects depends on an exchange at the market which is outside the capitalist's control. So the conjunction of the profit motive and the paywall (i.e., exchange-value standing in the way of the use-vale) leads to much overproduction and waste. Even when labor has gone into agriculture, for example, the capitalist would rather dump tons of fresh food than lose money. It's an idiotic system and yet people will defend it to the death.