| This question <158-1|172-1> overall <167-10|168> George: <167-10|177>. |
| Question 205: Commodity producers do not exchange their products because they consider these products as the materials shells of homogeneous human labor. Marx claims that, on the contrary, the market interactions induce them to unknowingly equalize their labors. Describe the process by which they equalize their labor, and the goals which they pursue in this process. |
| [167-11] George: In the capitalist society, the main goal of a firm is to make the most profit at the lowest cost. This process includes paying laborers just enough to keep them there, paying as little as possible for inputs. By taking these steps, owners ensure that they will continue to make profits with little or no concern about the advances socially or economically their laborers will make. Since the employees are the victims of this cycle, if they want to make any money or gain any degree of what is perceived as success in the Capitalist society, they must go along with this act. This includes how they go about the actual labor process of their job, how they are hired onto other jobs, and deciding where their time will be most valuably spent. |
| This is how the labor process is homogenized, no matter what job a person is doing. There is a constant struggle to “get ahead”, and little concern about matters that will not make them more valuable as a laborer. This just feeds into the process of exploitation, however, as employees remain in a constant struggle to get ahead of the other laborers, and ignoring the problem that the owners are the real reason their wages remain low, their working conditions are less than favorable, etc. They make their labors equal, in that the only people they are making richer are the owners, and are lucky to see wages that will rise with inflation. They tolerate the fact that they are not paid what they are worth for the fact that they are trying to make a good impression on the people in power. |
| The goals in which the laborers achieve in this process is that they are made to believe they are in good standing with the firm, and therefore, their job is more secure for the moment. However, when all of the employees have are pursuing this goal, it would seem that nobody's job is really more safe than another's, especially when profits are down. The owners achieve their goal of maximizing their profits by keeping the laborers in a position where they tolerate their working standards, and the laborers continue to tolerate how little the physical labor means in terms of the wealth the laborer will see to the firm. |
| Hans: Excellent resubmission. |
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