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If someone invents a tool and sells it for a profit - who was exploited? Is it not possible for everyone to be richer than they started and also create wealth??

If someone invents a tool and sells it for a profit - who was exploited? Is it not possible for everyone to be richer than they started and also create wealth?? The question was really simple. Your answer is the kind that inevitably ends with "you just have to read Das Kapital". That is not an answer.

claudiawerner 8y ago
>If someone invents a tool and sells it for a profit - who was exploited? Nobody, and Marx doesn't say that anyone is in such a case. >Is it not possible for everyone to be richer than they started and also create wealth?? In some way, it is possible - after all, the worker is richer than he was before (he has more money thanks to his wage) as is the capitalist (who has made money from the sale). Now what wealth is created? Arguably, social wealth in the case of new technology being developed, for example. But Marx doesn't deal with this concept of "wealth" or even immediately money, he deals with the concept of value, which works at a different level of abstraction to money. The value-form only becomes the price-form, they're not identical. I'd suggest looking up theories of exploitation as they have been figured in Marxisms that don't rely on a labour theory of value. It's too much[0] to summarize in one HN comment, but you don't need to read Capital either (though it would be helpful). [0] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/exploitation/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/exploitation/
- chlvsl 8y ago
  Marx believed in the time theory of value, yes. He believed that if you took 100 hours to make a chair then its inherently worth more than someone who spent 10 hours on a chair. However, consumers select for quality - nobody cares how long it took you to do. The fact that his entire ideology is built on this belief is worrying for any modern followers of his cause.
peisistratos 8y ago
> If someone invents a tool and sells it for a profit - who was exploited? Is it not possible for everyone to be richer than they started and also create wealth?? As I said, when, after the electricity bill etc. is paid, created wealth is split between dividends to heirs and wages to those who worked and created the wealth. If in your hypothetical situation there is no split - if the person who worked and created wealth keeps everything - there is no expropriation. The expropriation is the last few hours of work he does, of the wealth he creates - none of it going to him, the one who created the wealth and did the work. All of the profit going to the heir. But if there is no split, this expropriation does not happen.
- hoaw 8y ago
  I never understood why people are so casual about inequality. To put it bluntly a lot of people will eventually, if not already, be working something like three quarters of their lives for society, a company and a land owner. And only one quarter for themselves.

claudiawerner 8y ago

>If someone invents a tool and sells it for a profit - who was exploited? Nobody, and Marx doesn't say that anyone is in such a case. >Is it not possible for everyone to be richer than they started and also create wealth?? In some way, it is possible - after all, the worker is richer than he was before (he has more money thanks to his wage) as is the capitalist (who has made money from the sale). Now what wealth is created? Arguably, social wealth in the case of new technology being developed, for example. But Marx doesn't deal with this concept of "wealth" or even immediately money, he deals with the concept of value, which works at a different level of abstraction to money. The value-form only becomes the price-form, they're not identical. I'd suggest looking up theories of exploitation as they have been figured in Marxisms that don't rely on a labour theory of value. It's too much[0] to summarize in one HN comment, but you don't need to read Capital either (though it would be helpful). [0] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/exploitation/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/exploitation/

chlvsl 8y ago
Marx believed in the time theory of value, yes. He believed that if you took 100 hours to make a chair then its inherently worth more than someone who spent 10 hours on a chair. However, consumers select for quality - nobody cares how long it took you to do. The fact that his entire ideology is built on this belief is worrying for any modern followers of his cause.

peisistratos 8y ago

> If someone invents a tool and sells it for a profit - who was exploited? Is it not possible for everyone to be richer than they started and also create wealth?? As I said, when, after the electricity bill etc. is paid, created wealth is split between dividends to heirs and wages to those who worked and created the wealth. If in your hypothetical situation there is no split - if the person who worked and created wealth keeps everything - there is no expropriation. The expropriation is the last few hours of work he does, of the wealth he creates - none of it going to him, the one who created the wealth and did the work. All of the profit going to the heir. But if there is no split, this expropriation does not happen.

hoaw 8y ago
I never understood why people are so casual about inequality. To put it bluntly a lot of people will eventually, if not already, be working something like three quarters of their lives for society, a company and a land owner. And only one quarter for themselves.