willow: "cool story but the appropriator of surplus value is entirely irrelevant to the degree and magnitude of exploitation."

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willow @dreary.dev

cool story but the appropriator of surplus value is entirely irrelevant to the degree and magnitude of exploitation.

Marx, Capital Volume 1, 159
Although the rate of surplus-value is an exact expression for the degree of exploitation of labour-power, it is, in no sense, an expression for the absolute amount of exploitation. For example, if the necessary labour = 5 hours and the surplus labour = 5 hours, the degree of exploitation is 100%. The amount of exploitation is here measured by 5 hours. If, on the other hand, the necessary labour = 6 hours and the surplus labour = 6 hours, the degree of exploitation remains, as before, 100%, while the actual amount of exploitation has increased 20%, namely from five hours to six.

February 28, 2025 at 3:48 PM

willowFeb 28, 2025

i don’t care if it’s an owner despotically or my peers (and myself) democratically cracking the whip. and frankly i’d prefer not to deform myself into a petit bourgeois in the process. as you correctly point out, the form of the firm changes nothing meaningful while the law of value remains intact.