/WRK/ - Wagie and Work

It seems to largely exist to skirt labor regulations, save money on equipment and maintenance, and avoid existing unions. Operating factories, farms, etc. this way would probably not be sustainable, but I can see how, like, a nationalized taxi-esque service could potentially take influence from the model, with a smaller portion of the profit taken for public funds through the service rather than by larger portion taken by a private employer. I still don't know if that's a good idea; a socialist economy with adequate programs would probably prefer to build a lot of mass transit, since that's more efficient than operating individual transportation services.

>>728
A lot of Fiverr and call centers could be described as part of them.

Gig economy is just a farce. It only works if you have enough investment in it.
Otherwise, get an official second job.

https://karlxxi.wordpress.com/2013/06/06/services_surplus_value/


Is he right?


>The assertion that "workers in the non-material production sector… create surplus value for the owner without creating any new value" is incorrect.
>
>This implies that what these workers "create" is surplus value, but not value itself… At the same time, what they BRING to the owner (and "bring" is the appropriate word) is, of course, value… This terminology is illogical and inconvenient.
>
>It is correct to say that service sector workers do not "create surplus value for the owner," but rather BRING PROFIT to the owner. And that they are "productive" from a capitalist point of view because they "produce" PROFIT for "their" capitalist.
>
>Profit in the service sector is not surplus value. Surplus value is produced only in the sphere of material production. Simply because value is produced only in the sphere of material production. Therefore, it is incorrect to say that "unpaid labor in the sphere of non-material production is the source of surplus value." But it is correct and necessary to say that in any sphere, the only source of profit is unpaid labor. And the only source of surplus value is also unpaid labor, but only unpaid labor in the sphere of material production.




"The labor of hired workers engaged in the realization of goods, that is, the transformation of goods into money and money into goods, does not create either value or surplus value, but it gives the commercial capitalist the opportunity to appropriate a part of the surplus value created in production. "Just as the unpaid labor of the worker directly creates surplus value for productive capital, the unpaid labor of commercial hired workers creates for commercial capital a share in this surplus value" (K. Marx, Capital, Vol. III, 1953, p. 305).


It explains the lack of leverage such workers have over their owners

damn…

>>738

how evil.

> it changes a boolean flag and ignores it

hyperkek

>>738
Honestly any able-bodied, neurotypical adult past their early twenties that’s doing food delivery driving for mere dimes deserves this.
Unless you have a criminal record there’s no reason for you to do more serious line of work

>>743
>deserves this
And you deserve the wall, so what? Get your moralism out of here.

Why would those jobs exist in the first place? There is obvious social necessity for that job if there is an entire industry around it.

>>737
I struggle with this. I also think it's a very important point for communists to get right. After all most of the western economy is service jobs. Are service workers really workers i.e. the proletariat in a Marxist sense?

>It explains the lack of leverage such workers have over their owners

Perhaps. So would a lack of organization.

>>Surplus value is produced only in the sphere of material production.

Is it? Let's examine this. I'm going to forget the surplus part, do service workers produce value?

Do they provide a use-value? I would say yes, I can't think of a single service that doesn't provide anything useful.

Are people willing to pay for it? Of course. Labor-time becomes socially necessary at the point of exchange, moreover value is created by labor in the abstract, we aren't concerned with the particular form of labor, I think Marx is clear on this.

Therefore I would conclude that the service industry indeed creates value, and that value takes the form of service-commodities. These are sold and surplus value is extracted from the laborer. This also fit's in with Marx' description of value being a social relationship mediated by commodities.

Someone with a deeper understanding of Marxism please come and destroy my argument, I would welcome that. But I fail to see the flipside of this where service-workers aren't workers.

>>745
>I'm going to forget the surplus part, do service workers produce value?

bro really i thought this was a marxist board

>>746
Not that anon, but they do refer back to surplus value a few paragraphs below that.

I've seen "surplus value" used to refer to profits taken from service workers, too - it's really common, and I'm not sure if it's meaningfully wrong, and it certainly doesn't seem meaningfully wrong in instances like retail, delivery, etc. where the function of the services done is still the sale and maintenance of products.

>>747
Yea I don't necessarily buy into the idea in that blog, that's why i asked. In fact when I was reading his post before i remembered I was the guy he responded to I was thinking, "whoever he's responding to is a moron". But conflating use value and surplus value like they're interchangeable is absurd, and on top of that, "sales" as I recall is a surplus-value-realizing occupation but not surplus value generating. The question isn't supposed to be, do service workers "have value" in some sense, but instead, "do service workers have leverage and revolutionary potential on the basis of seizing the means of production". And it seems the answer may be "no".

My feeling is it's that the value added to whatever product they're handling is just very low relative to the value already involved, because it's at the end of a very long supply chain. So if you are adding an additional "1%" value to your product, guess what: no leverage

>>748
>So if you are adding an additional "1%" value to your product, guess what: no leverage
That seems really arbitrary when the total amount "1%" actually covers would in practice be billions or trillions of dollars a year when evaluating service workers as a strata within the overall workforce. You can draw the line any number of places and get a larger or smaller percentage, but if you're asking about revolutionary potential then the whole will always be better than any of its individual parts. Service workers are increasingly aware of their exploitation just like other workers, and so they should be! The greatest hindrances to leverage are lack of organization, captured unions, and high costs of living/lack of adequate pay, and any progress anywhere against this is good.

>>750
I like the way you think. I was just inspired to be negative since 2-4 years ago in my city a bunch of baristas unionised and the owner of the coffee chain just shut down every one of his businesses in a tantrum. So unlike rail workers, nurses, flight controllers, whoever, it seems like the service sector (is nursing service sector?) is extra vulnerable to capital strike.

>>744
>Social necessity

Bruh, jobs like food delivery exist purely for convenience.

>>752
Don't you think convenience can be socially necessary in an advanced economy? I thought labor becomes socially necessary at the point of exchange, so if someone is willing to pay for a commodity then it's socially necessary. It's not just the stuff we need for the survival of the species, even though that's part of it.

>>753
If we are talking about delivery of machinery parts than yea that's a social necessity.

>It's not just the stuff we need for the survival of the species, even though that's part of it.

This is not a bad argument but it's a terrible justification for why unskilled service jobs became the common job type of the average person

>>754
>It's a terrible justification for why unskilled service jobs became the common job type of the average person

We can talk about why they became the dominant sector, and I believe we can fully figure that out with facts, by looking at the history. I'd like to put a pin in that because…

What I'm actually trying to justify is service workers having a place amongst the proletariat. If we think that service workers, the predominant kind of worker today, are inherently not revolutionary because of their relation to production or whatever, or simply put if they aren't really contributing anything to society, then the consequences of that kind of freak me out.

Hear me out, that would mean that we as revolutionaries don't give a shit about them, that would mean that if there was any kind of revolutionary working class movement then it would be a minority of the population who would be the dictatorship over the rest of the urban, city dwelling, service working population, which might have a problem with what the conservative blue-collar "true" working class want to exert on them.

So how I see this is a contradiction potentially, and I'm not sure how that would be resolved. How could it be a popular movement without actually needing the majority of workers?

>>754
>>755
Anon let me know if I'm not making any sense…

>>756
You're making sense I'm just bemoaning the fact that most prime age adults are wasting away in service industry work instead of more contributive fields like mechanics, agriculture, medicine, etc.

I think part of the reason why our economy sucks is that people nowadays have to beg corporations for a job scraping grease off the griddle for a living.

It's no wonder why work ethic is low and mass shootings are at an all time high.