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Home > Section II: Anarchist Critiques of Capitalism and Anarcho-Capitalism > Section B
This question was proposed in 2003 and added in 2004 (exact dates unknown due to forum change).
The capitalist owns the commodities which are produced, and can sell them and keep all of the profits. The capitalist pays the worker a wage, but the wage will never be the actual price of what the workers are producing. If s/he did pay the workers the actual price of their work, then s/he wouldn't make any profit off of it, and we all know that this never happens. The capitalist will only pay the worker the bare minimum of what is needed to keep the workers working for him/her. It is the difference between the value of the product and what is paid by the capitalist that is being robbed from the workers.
Workers are always paid less then the value of the goods they produce. The difference between the value of what the workers produce and what the workers are paid is called surplus value – this is where profit comes from. If workers were paid an amount equal to what they produced there would be no money left over for the capitalist’s profit. The capitalist thus makes money without having to do any productive labor. As that money is then used to purchase things which were produced by the workers’ labor, the capitalist is living off the labor of the workers. Hence, Capitalism is inherently exploitative.
Capitalists try to pretend this is “voluntary” or “natural” but it is no more voluntary or natural then paying taxes. In order for a worker to survive s/he must sell his/her labor and become a wage-slave. Otherwise s/he will not be paid and will eventually starve to death. While some form of productive labor is necessary to produce the basic necessities needed to survive (food, shelter, etc.) there is no reason why this must be in the form of wage-labor. For most of human history it has not.
Historically pre-capitalist societies that developed into capitalist ones have all gone through a process called proletarianization whereby the majority of the population were changed from their previous status (usually of peasants) into workers or proletarians. This involved expropriating the land and forcing the population off it; thereby putting the population in a situation where they have to sell their labor to make a living. If most live on the land (as they did in many pre-capitalist societies) then they will not have to sell their labor to make a living and full-fledged capitalism becomes impossible.
The process of proletarianization happened differently in different places and had a number of variations with more then a few bumps on the road. In the first societies in which proletarianization started it was a long process that was not originally initiated with the desire to create a capitalist society but by other historical factors. One of the first capitalist countries, England, began this with the “enclosures” whereby lords would enclose land that formerly belonged to peasants and expropriate it for themselves. This was legalized by parliament in the Enclosure Acts. In Mexico the majority of proletarianization started under the President Benito Juarez and rapidly accelerated under the dictator Porfialo Diaz. Both Juarez and Diaz were classical liberals who believed in free market capitalism and private property. To that end, Juarez initiated a program whereby public lands and common lands held by Native Americans was expropriated and sold to the highest bidder. Since they have more money, the majority of this land got concentrated in the hands of the rich capitalists. Small landholders were often expropriated as well. In most of North America the indigenous economic systems were eventually exterminated along with the indigenous people and replaced with a capitalist production process.
Capitalists sometimes defend the exploitation inherent in capitalism by claiming that the capitalist contributes to production by providing money and the means of production, which he owns, to the production process. This is a subtle form of circular logic, since it assumes capitalist forms of property in order to defend capitalism. ‘Providing the means of production’ means nothing more than 'allowing it to be used.' Simply granting permission, in and of itself, is not a productive activity. If producers cease to produce, production stops in any society. But if owners cease to grant permission, production is affected only if their authority over the means of production is respected. This authority derives from the violent and coercive mechanisms of the state, which ensures that capitalists have this ability to grant or deny workers access to the means of production. Therefore, not only is "providing capital" not a productive activity, it depends on a system of organized and systemic coercion which requires the appropriation of a considerable portion of the value produced by labor, through taxes, and hence is parasitic.
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