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Highly recommended refutation of Karl Marx's exploitation theory, by George Reisman

https://mises.org/library/classical-economics-vs-exploitation-theory

Given we have seen the 'founder' of BLM (read: Puppet of billionaire communist George Soros) openly declare herself "trained in Marxism", and given we have seen the NYC mayor Bill DeBlasio openly and favorably quote Karl Marx, I thought it is high time someone provide the most devastating criticisms of Marx's 'exploitation theory' here, the single most important site on the internet, so I decided that person should be me. Thankfully my years of studying Marxism will have a payoff for not just me but for everyone who values life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

What I am about to write is not new, but, I can almost certainly guarantee that by the time I am finished summarizing it in the most concise manner that does not sacrifice necessary content, it will be something most readers will have learned for the first time. I don't say this condescendingly, I say this with enthusiasm and giddiness at the fact that for the first time, I have access to a platform where the scale of the readership is worldwide, which means YOU ALL can become not just digital warriors of rapid fire fact-based research that you are, but to be blessed with knowledge that I promise you will blow your mind and allow you to demolish, HONESTLY WITH THE TRUTH ON YOUR SIDE, this ideology of Marx that has persisted since before any of us were born, and to do so ONCE AND FOR ALL.

I will arm you with philosophy, logic, and a deep understanding of what has been given credence only through deception, misunderstanding, and hollow platitutes that have preyed on people's emotions for generations.

There will be no politics here, no 'stats', it will be a purely logical analysis sufficient to completely upend Marx's ENTIRE theory and expose its fundamental error. I am so giddy about this I need to start so let's go:

Marx's fundamental 'criticism' of private ownership of the means of production is this: Capitalism is destined to (and 'should') collapse because the profits acquired by capitalists is 'labor power' unjustly 'extracted' from wage earners. Another way of saying this is that the profits made by capitalists is money that 'should' be going to wage earners, that since 'value' is determined by labor power, profits, which are not earned by labor power, are predatory in nature and must be abolished.

I consciously and intentionally describe Marx's exploitation theory in the above imperfect way to make it understandable to the general reader, in reality Marx explained his 'science' in 'materialist' Hegelian inspired concepts that are 'morality neutral' and 'historical', that communism would happen with the 'inexorability of a law of nature', that the 'revolutionary consciousness' of the proletariat would be the engine that drives society to utopia. I leave it to the interested reader to understand the subtlety and nuance of Marx's writings so as to be able to explain it correctly as Marx wrote it, but for now, I believe the way I described the fundamental core of Marxism will suffice for how I am about to absolutely demolish it from an entirely 'new' direction.

Here it is in one statement:

THE PRIMACY OF PROFITS

That one statement represents a total annihilation of Marx's ENTIRE LIFE'S WORK.

Allow me to explain:

Contrary to the notion inherent in Marxism that wages are the primary and original form of income, after which capitalists came along and started to 'extract' money from wages for themselves in the form of profits, the reality is that profits are the primary and original form of income that arose in the world in the very first exchanges, and it was not until the advent of people behaving as capitalists did wages appear for the first time, which REDUCED profit incomes.

"How can that be?" the reader 'trained in Marxism' unintentionally in public school may ask.

All we need to do to understand the truth of the primacy of profits is use plain languags to describe what in fact took place in 'the early rude state of society', before the onset of capitalists appeared for the first time.

What was happening?

People were producing goods and services themselves using their own materials, and they sold those goods for either other goods (barter) or money (typically gold/silver).

The earliest producers of goods directly produced the goods themselves and sold them.

…cont'd

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>>10070069

Here is the Q:

WHAT WAS THE INCOME BEING EARNED? WAGES OR PROFITS?

The answer is PROFITS.

How so?

Think about what exactly people were selling. People were NOT selling their labor to each other, they were selling GOODS to each other.

What is the form of income earned on the sale of GOODS?

PRODUCT SALES REVENUES!

But I said profits didn't I?

Where are the profits? They are there, 'hidden' the entire time!

How are money profits calculated?

Money profits = Money revenues MINUS Money costs.

Let's use an example:

A man sells a bear skin he made all by himself to his friend for 100 units of money.

Now, since

Money revenues = 100

and since

Money costs = 0

It follows that:

Money profits = 100 minus 0 = 100

IT TURNS OUT THAT ALL INCOME EARNED IN THE VERY FIRST EXCHANGES EVER MADE IN HUMAN HISTORY WAS 100% PROFIT!

There were no wages and therefore NO COSTS TO DEDUCT FROM PRODUCT SALES REVENUES.

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>>10070073

When our man sold a bear skin to his friend for 100 units of money, he was NOT selling his labor. His friend the buyer was purchasing a bear skin! The price his friend was willing to pay was for the bear skin. The buyer did not 'hire' our man as a 'wage earner' to work for the buyer. The buyer paid for the bear skin, a GOOD. Again, to really drive this point home, the income earned on the sale of goods is product sales revenues, and if there were any costs incurred by the producer/seller, those costs would be deducted from those sales revenues to arrive at profit. If the money costs were zero, then zero money costs deducted from 100 units of revenues is equal to 100 units of profit!

PROFITS, NOT WAGES, ARE THE 'PRIMARY', 'ORIGINAL' INCOME IN WORLD HISTORY!

What happened when capitalists appeared?

WAGES APPEARED FOR THE FIRST TIME AND WERE A COST TO DEDUCT FROM WHAT USED TO BE 100% PROFIT.

Capitalists appeared when people DID begin to pay people for their labor to help produce goods. Once that started to occur, PROFITS DECREASED BELOW 100%. For now there were money costs to deduct from money revenues.

And get this mind blowing fact: the more capitalists there are, the lower profits become! This is because the more capitalists there are paying wages, the more money costs there are to deduct from sales revenues!

This is in fact the reason why on heavily capitalist societies the going rate of profit is lower, while in less capitalist societies the rate of profit is higher.

One last thing to note for clarity: Even though the RATE of profit declined as more and more people behaved as capitalists and paid more and more wages (and material means of production), the REAL rate of profit increased because of higher productivity of labor, so capitalists in addition to wage earners became better off.

Boom, now you have with you the knowledge to see Marxism for what it is, a gigantic error in economic logic.

Spread this everywhere.

"Capitalism REDUCES profits" is a true statement!

>>10070147

MONEY profits is MONEY revenues minus MONEY costs.

Yes, there are always 'opportunity costs', but in the earliest rude state of society, and using the bear skin maker as illustration, the man made the bear skin himself. He hunted the bear, and produced the bear skin for later sale.

Now sure, he incurred 'time' costs, and 'energy' costs, but when he sold the bear skin for 100 units of money, that was 100 of MONEY profit.

>>10070194

Yes, but he could again spend energy to acquire food from the lands, and still be selling goods for all profit because he is not incurring any MONEY costs of production, and thus all of the money revenues he earns is 100% profit.

I should emphasize here that even though profits are the original income and even though 100% is a very high 'rate', on real terms people were much poorer because it is much more difficult for people to prosper and earn a living if they have to make goods themselves.

With the onset of capitalists, who paid wages, it allowed for the first time people to sell nothing BUT their own labor, and to PROSPER in doing so.

>>10070269

Money is not a 'manifestation' nor is it 'abstract'.

Money is a commodity.

It is not 'undue emphasis' on money to DESCRIBE the original primary INCOME as profits not wages.

You're really just meandering and conjurng vague platitudes like 'manifestation' and 'abstract'.

Yes, warm clothes were valued, but when money INCOMES arose for the first time, which must have occurred AT SOME POINT, WHICH IS NOT A HYPOTHETICAL BUT REAL WORLD, that income was profits, not wages.