TT17

Wow! Are you a history major? That was an impressive display of knowledge on fascism and Europe. That was a very interesting and cool approach to answering these questions.

My answers to the study guide:

1. Labour is when you do work in general. Labour-power is a commodity that you sell to a capitalist in exchange for wages.
2. If I labour to make a pizza at home then sell that pizza to a buyer, that would be an example of me ‘selling my labour’. If I were to go to the capitalist pizza shop owner and agree to make pizza for them, for a certain amount of time, for a fixed wage. This would be an example of me ‘selling my labour power’ as a commodity to the capitalist.
3. Maybe I’m wrong here but I don’t believe he makes the argument that supply and demand play no factor in prices. He is simply adding the cost of production into the equation.
4. Sellers compete on the market to offer the lowest price, buyers will go with the lowest price, thus a race to the bottom. I can’t see an example where Marx uses products in short supply while also decreasing in price at the same time, maybe I missed something. I see him making the opposite argument, that when supply is low, the sellers will work together to drive the price up.
5. The cost of production is directly related to the price of a commodity, thus giving the capitalist incentive to cut labour costs. Giving the capitalist the biggest portion of the profits.
6. Wages boil down to the bare necessities for keeping the species alive, able to work, produce future working offspring, and getting enough nutrients to get through a working day. Notice how he emphasizes the word species, there are plenty of individual workers who don’t get enough to fill these basic needs. Rather the goal is to keep the species alive just enough to keep the money machine working.
7. According to this logic with free public education wages would decrease, simply because the cost of giving workers the bare necessities would go down significantly. I argue despite this potential problem there should be free or a reduced cost of education, and that this logic too simplistic.
8. Although you might be able to make a ghoulish argument that increased immigration will lead to lower wages, I sure will not. I think that framing is missing a lot of context while leading to dangerous and xenophobic conclusions. I don’t think it’s as simple as more immigrants = bad wages. Frankly I find that rhetoric disgusting and reeking of fascistic principles. Marx didn’t say a word about immigration during the reading. Pisses me off that the study guide would even include that, as if it’s appropriate to ‘debate’ human beings living their lives outside of the arbitrary border they were born into. Call me a moralist if you want, I don’t care, I refuse to engage in any further discussion or ‘debate’ on this subject. If you think we shouldn’t allow immigration because of a potential drop in wages, I’d be happy to smash the keyboard over your head and force feed you the pieces.
9. He’s making the argument, in an antiquated gross way, about how by themselves (people or objects) they are only that person or object. It’s the way that person or object interacts in the system is when they become an integral part of said system. For example a car sitting in the garage is just a car, if I use that car to deliver pizzas for a capitalist it becomes an instrument in the capitalist system.
10. He’s stating that capitalism is a social relation of production, just like other systems are about how a given society chooses to produce.
11. I’m going to use my example of a car again. A car sitting in the garage is just a car, if I use that car to deliver pizzas for a capitalist it becomes an instrument in the capitalist system.
12. The dead dominate the living in the sense of ‘old money’. Great great grandfather accumulated capital in the slave trade, great grandfather expanded that capital by getting rich on the war machine, grandpa expanded that capital with a pizza chain, dad expanded that capital on real estate, the son inherits all of that capital, and so on. This is what I mean by ‘old money’, it’s been proven that most wealth/capital is inherited. This is how the dead come into play, because it was accumulation of the sweat/blood/tears of dead workers that allowed the rich family to have such vast capital today.

Thank you comrade I really appreciate it

I think that was a great takeaway from the reading. It is fascinating to see how capitalism effects different classes under the same system. The writing you quoted at the end of the chapter was great! I agree with their assessment that capitalism is a self defeating ideology, and that the same forces that create/drive it, will inevitably lead to it’s own demise. It MUST be gotten rid of, it CAN be gotten rid of!