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If this were true wouldn't every employee take their labor somewhere more profitable?

ruined 5y ago
> If this were true wouldn't every employee take their labor somewhere more profitable? Yes, this is what happens when the labor is something that can effectively be independent, operate without massive capital investment, or be relocated easily. E.g. doctors, programmers, lawyers, plumbers. But many kinds of labor are only useful in a coordinated context, requiring capital support and infrastructure, perhaps due to economies of scale, natural monopolies, regulatory restrictions, and the like. So that kind of worker must be embedded in a firm to be effective. Currently, policy is written to support corporate firms, and suppress cooperative organization and independent labor, so there's not really an option for most workers to depart. There's no such thing as an independent one-man freelance car manufacturer, for instance. This is the distinction between the marxist concepts of petit-bourgeoisie and proletariat.
- missedthecue 5y ago
  What you've basically said is that labor isnt the only input to production; there are other inputs required as well. So if labor is just one of many inputs, it seems wrong to attribute all profit to labor as if it played the only part.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - ruined 5y ago
    well, within the theory, all of those other inputs are also labor. "fixed" capital like skills, software, machines, and facilities are all produced with labor input. liquid capital like funds, raw/processed materials, and commodities are produced, extracted, refined, processed and/or transported by labor. executive decisions, management and organization are labor. land itself is just about the only thing that is arguably not ultimately labor, but it seems that through the capitalist lens, land is only valuable due to location (proximity to labor?) or resources gained by application of labor to the land. you could make some arguments about conservation, but those tend to be either moral arguments about externalities which by definition are not systematically considered by capitalism, or arguments about natural environments as a resource, in which maintenance and access management become the value-creating labor.

> If this were true wouldn't every employee take their labor somewhere more profitable? Yes, this is what happens when the labor is something that can effectively be independent, operate without massive capital investment, or be relocated easily. E.g. doctors, programmers, lawyers, plumbers. But many kinds of labor are only useful in a coordinated context, requiring capital support and infrastructure, perhaps due to economies of scale, natural monopolies, regulatory restrictions, and the like. So that kind of worker must be embedded in a firm to be effective. Currently, policy is written to support corporate firms, and suppress cooperative organization and independent labor, so there's not really an option for most workers to depart. There's no such thing as an independent one-man freelance car manufacturer, for instance. This is the distinction between the marxist concepts of petit-bourgeoisie and proletariat.

missedthecue 5y ago
What you've basically said is that labor isnt the only input to production; there are other inputs required as well. So if labor is just one of many inputs, it seems wrong to attribute all profit to labor as if it played the only part.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ruined 5y ago
  well, within the theory, all of those other inputs are also labor. "fixed" capital like skills, software, machines, and facilities are all produced with labor input. liquid capital like funds, raw/processed materials, and commodities are produced, extracted, refined, processed and/or transported by labor. executive decisions, management and organization are labor. land itself is just about the only thing that is arguably not ultimately labor, but it seems that through the capitalist lens, land is only valuable due to location (proximity to labor?) or resources gained by application of labor to the land. you could make some arguments about conservation, but those tend to be either moral arguments about externalities which by definition are not systematically considered by capitalism, or arguments about natural environments as a resource, in which maintenance and access management become the value-creating labor.