Quote:
Originally posted by GreatWyrm of Babylon@Sep 3 2003, 08:44 PM
Capitalism allows the market to set the value of labor, what the group is willing to work for determines the pay for the individual in that field of labor. While leaving the price of the item up to what the consumer is willing to pay.
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Thats an idealised view.
Humans are enslaved to resources, resources that are in the hands of others. Therefore we MUST work for those people, regardless of wages, in order to live a little bit longer. Those owners of course have the wages as low as possible, just enough so people can come back to work the day after.
But even that is idealised. Because there is a huge pool of unemployed people, it is not neccesary to pay enough wages for people to live properly, to get enough food, medicine or decent place to live. If somebody gets ill and dies, or suffers malnutrition, no problem, just fire them and hire someone else.
The reason there is such a great problem for the working class under capitalism is that we are nothing but an economic unit, and are treated as such. If the market is flooded with grain, for instance, the cost of grain goes down. Same for people. There is so many people, the wages go down.
But the odds are stacked against the workers. Goods can be freely transferred around the world. Workers can't. So an owner can fire all the people in Guatamala and move his base to Bolivia if the wages are lower. However, if the wages are higher in the US, the workers can't move there.
Globalisation has been built up to allow capitalist owners get richer and richer, while workers just have to hope for the best. And the best is, without being melodramatic, a quick death.