3 ms·

Is being a marxist, in your mind, just whining about stuff and being jealous of the haves?

• ndriscoll 3y ago
  No, but I think they frequently make the mistake of assuming goods/services have globally defined values. It's possible for both the buyer and seller of something to come out ahead in a deal. The option to start their own business is right in front of them. They even have a group of like-minded individuals with complementary skills that they could form a co-op with. Since they don't do that, obviously they're getting something from being a W-2 worker. It seems to me that they're not accounting for that something when asserting that there's some surplus value they're creating but not capturing. More accurately, that "surplus value" is being traded for whatever it is they get from W-2 work (e.g. a steady buyer for their labor). IIUC Marx says roughly that laborers are beholden to capital owners because they need access to that capital to be able to perform their labor. But lots of programmers/IT people have better equipment at home than their job provides (e.g. multiple large 4k displays, powerful CPUs, plentiful RAM). Many also have hobby homelab or colocated machines that they could easily run a business off of. They don't need access to someone else's capital, but they still sell their labor. It's the same as when people say that geo pay is "fair" because of cost-of-living differences. You're buying something (e.g. living 15 minutes from the ocean in an area with year-round perfect weather and lots of things to do) with that cost of living. Otherwise--obviously--you'd go somewhere else.