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I don't think it's a misconception that workers get paid what they are worth. In a capitalist system, something is only "worth" as much as someone is willing to

by Meekro 12y ago

I don't think it's a misconception that workers get paid what they are worth. In a capitalist system, something is only "worth" as much as someone is willing to pay for it. Few people question this notion when we're talking about the price of gold or stock market shares, but it's true of labor as well. From what I understand, Marx's definition of exploitation involves companies paying some workers less than what the fruits of their labor are worth. For example, McDonalds might pay an employee $9 an hour while getting $12 an hour in revenue from that employee's work. But, it sounds to me like your coop would be guilty of the same thing. To take an extreme example, suppose your coop includes a janitor and a heart surgeon. Both used to work as independent contractors and bill for their time to whoever needed work done, and now your coop sends the bills and takes in the money. Before joining your coop, the janitor was making $8.50 an hour and the surgeon, $500 an hour. The coop now pulls in $508.50 an hour and gets to decide how to distribute it. I gather from your comments that you find income inequality and starvation wages to be undesirable things. Therefore, you equalize things somewhat and give the janitor $20 an hour and the surgeon $488.50. Now, haven't you committed the same sin as the exploitative companies, namely paying an individual less than the fruits of their labor have produced?

TaylorAlexander 12y ago
Well in basically all cases the worker can't be paid exactly as much as they produce because some of that money must be used to pay for other business costs. However in a market with excess labor, workers can get paid a very small fraction of the value they produce, keeping large sums of profit for those at the top. In a coop the workers simply won't allow this, and more reasonable pay rates can be determined. According to another commenter, many coops operate with some kind of market rate pay scale and place limits on the ratio of highest pay to lowest pay. This prevents one CEO from gobbling up half of the money used to pay workers and leaves more money to pay those at the bottom. So you are correct that in all cases workers are paid less than the value of what they produce, but in a worker-run coop the ratio of pay to value can be much higher than in a typical business. As far as workers getting paid what they are "worth", I think you are missing something. Yes, workers are only worth what someone is willing to pay for them. However I don't think workers get paid the maximum a company is willing to pay, especially in a market with excess labor. A company may be "willing" to pay programmers $180k per year before their business model fails, but due to a good supply of desperate people they may only need to pay people $80k per year. So in that situation the workers are getting paid much less than they are worth. Would you agree that workers typically do not get paid the maximum the company would be willing to pay but instead get paid the minimum the market will bear?

by Meekro 12y ago

TaylorAlexander 12y ago

Well in basically all cases the worker can't be paid exactly as much as they produce because some of that money must be used to pay for other business costs. However in a market with excess labor, workers can get paid a very small fraction of the value they produce, keeping large sums of profit for those at the top. In a coop the workers simply won't allow this, and more reasonable pay rates can be determined. According to another commenter, many coops operate with some kind of market rate pay scale and place limits on the ratio of highest pay to lowest pay. This prevents one CEO from gobbling up half of the money used to pay workers and leaves more money to pay those at the bottom. So you are correct that in all cases workers are paid less than the value of what they produce, but in a worker-run coop the ratio of pay to value can be much higher than in a typical business. As far as workers getting paid what they are "worth", I think you are missing something. Yes, workers are only worth what someone is willing to pay for them. However I don't think workers get paid the maximum a company is willing to pay, especially in a market with excess labor. A company may be "willing" to pay programmers $180k per year before their business model fails, but due to a good supply of desperate people they may only need to pay people $80k per year. So in that situation the workers are getting paid much less than they are worth. Would you agree that workers typically do not get paid the maximum the company would be willing to pay but instead get paid the minimum the market will bear?