5 Assignment 04

Capitalism as we all know is about, private ownership, competition, profit and rapid growth. In the article, “What are Wages”, Karl Marx says that capitalism is presented as a “natural system” and it forces beyond human control. I completely agree with this statement because we labor to pursue our own needs. We have to do it because society has in-bedded in our brains and in the system that we “cant do anything on our own. It is “supply and demand, they demand and we supply, and this to me is unstoppable because its “considered” and “good thing” because it generates wealth. It increases the market, the profit and it changes the society. When I think of capitalism, I think about Starbucks. What does Starbucks have? I believe  when Starbucks started it was about coffee and for coffee drinkers. Starbucks is capitalism, it grows; it started off small, it started with 1 vision and now it is everywhere. According to Karl Marx, In capitalism it means “money” and that is the highest stage of human development, “Money means power. We, the people, advance is the participation and it goes to the division of labor and it becomes oppressive. The working class is always exploited and we will only survive as long as we let it. This is what Karl Marx is explaining that the cost of production is the labour that we have to keep investing in the things we already have. For example the machine that cost 1,000 shillings, you have to keep adding on to it, in order to be able to replace it when its worn out.

The article by Rank, Hirshil and Roster “From High Hopes to Low Wages”, Its like a combination of everything like welfare, and inflation. He explains how people are willing to take a job that pays them less than what it should be getting paid, then the employer will find more people that are willing to take that low paying job. The employer is okay with paying you less more because it becomes convenient for them. The more we get paid the higher the living goes. I really like this quote that Karl Marx says, “What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers.” Its the truth, we are our own destruction.

Marielis Rosado
September 21, 2016
SOC 32014
Prof. Elizabeth Bullock
What are wages?
In the reading, “What are wages? How are they determined?” by Karl Marx he talks about what he considers wages to be. He mentioned that wages are an exchange of labor power for a set amount of money that will then bring those worker commodities. As he continued in the reading he said, that money is able to be exchange to provide commodity, which means that it has a price or a cost. This could be taken as that wages equals price of labor. Karl Marx then touched based on a weaver that works for the capitalist and is given the yarn and the loom to produce the cloth. Marx says that the weaver only gets paid for the labor power, that whether the cloth sells at a higher or lower price than the weaver wage it is not the weaver’s problem. That even if the cloth does not get sold at all it is not the weaver’s problem once more, because the weaver was paid for producing that cloth only. He then compared the weaver to the loom, as he mentioned that the worker was just a tool part of that production but not the final result which is the cloth. So no matter what happens to that cloth, the weaver will still get paid for the amount of money he agreed to produce the product. Since the weaver works for the capitalist, the owner or I should say the capitalist provides the weaver with the required products to produce which in this case are the yarn and the loom, so the weaver does not have to spend their money on those products since they come with the job. If the weaver would have to buy these products, the yarn and the loom, to be able to make the cloth then he would not have the same amount of wage he gets from the capitalist as being a worker. Because the weaver would have to buy these products to produce plus also counting his labor power to make the cloth, that takes away from his wage and time which provides him with commodity. Workers sell their labor power to the capitalist to be able to live, which is their commodity. Workers will produce a product, but in reality Karl explained that what they are really producing is their wages and commodity, this is also the case for the weaver worker.

Due Sunday, September 25th, by midnight. Word count: 400 words. Please note that you will not receive full credit if your assignment includes quotes. Make sure everything is in your own words. If you paraphrase (which I encourage you to do) make sure to include the proper citation.

In his writing on wage-labor, Marx argues that wages “are not a share of the worker in the commodities produced by himself.” From the text, use the example of the weaver that Marx points to in order to explain how he is characterizing the relationship of labor activity to the commodity that is produced.