Relation between things vs. a relation between people Lenin: “Where the bourgeois economists saw a relation between things (the exchange of one commodity for another) Marx revealed a relation between people . The exchange of commodities expresses the connection between individual producers through the market .” – “The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism”
International Division of Labor
The objective logic of economic evolution “The fact that you live and conduct your business, beget children, produce products and exchange them, gives rise to an objectively necessary chain of development, which is independent of your social consciousness, and is never grasped by the latter completely. The highest task of humanity is to comprehend this objective logic of economic evolution (the evolution of social life) in its general and fundamental features, so that it may be possible to adapt to it one’s social consciousness and the consciousness of the advanced classes of all capitalist countries in as definite, clear and critical fashion as possible .” – Lenin, Materialism and Epirio-Ciriticism
Wage Labor and Capital: Labor vs. Labor Power “It appears that the capitalist buys their labour with money, and that for money they sell him their labour. But this is merely an illusion. What they actually sell to the capitalist for money is their labour- power…. “Wages therefore are only a special name for the price of labour-power, and are usually called the price of labour; it is the special name for the price of this peculiar commodity, which has no other repository than human flesh and blood.”
Labour is “a sacrifice of his life” “But the putting of labour-power into action – i.e., the work – is the active expression of the labourer's own life. And this life activity he sells to another person in order to secure the necessary means of life. His life-activity, therefore, is but a means of securing his own existence. He works that he may keep alive. He does not count the labour itself as a part of his life; it is rather a sacrifice of his life. It is a commodity that he has auctioned off to another. The product of his activity, therefore, is not the aim of his activity .”
Wage-labor and slave labor “But the worker, whose only source of income is the sale of his labour- power, cannot leave the whole class of buyers, i.e., the capitalist class, unless he gives up his own existence. He does not belong to this or that capitalist, but to the capitalist class; and it is for him to find his man – i.e., to find a buyer in this capitalist class .”
WSWS.ORG WSWS.ORG WSWS AUTOWORKER WSWS AUTOWORKER NEWSL NEWSLETTER ETTER GM GM Profits Profits 2010-2017 FIGHT FIGHT GM PL GM PLANT ANT CLOSINGS CLOSINGS DETROIT • DECEMBER 9, 2018
WSWS.ORG WSWS.ORG WSWS AUTOWORKER WSWS AUTOWORKER NEWSL NEWSLETTER ETTER Corporate Corporate Profits vs Profits vs Wages as Wages as % of GDP FIGHT GM PL FIGHT GM PLANT ANT CLOSINGS CLOSINGS DETROIT • DECEMBER 9, 2018
WSWS.ORG WSWS.ORG WSWS AUTOWORKER WSWS AUTOWORKER NEWSL NEWSLETTER ETTER Work Work stoppages stoppages and and income income inequality inequality 1951-2017 FIGHT GM PL FIGHT GM PLANT ANT CLOSINGS CLOSINGS DETROIT • DECEMBER 9, 2018
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