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Comment by raverbashing | Hacker News Reader

What it seems is that Marx view is extremely simplistic

Marx is saying: worker produces X value and is payed Y, and since Y < X, bosses are evil, capitalism is evil, blah blah blah

Well, to begin with, the situation where X < Y is fatal to a company. So it's never going to happen (theoretically)

So X - Y, is what? Pure profit in bosses pocket? Not really...

It's the cost of everything needed for the company and for the worker to do their job

It's the job security (even a tiny one like in some states in the US)

Yes, whatever is left is the profit, and a small profit times the number of employees is the profit of the company, and if someone thinks it's unfair they're welcome to start their own company and compete (which is why cartels, oligopolies, monopolies are so damaging)

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> Marx is saying...bosses are evil, capitalism is evil

Actually Marx said capitalism was a positive historic development.

> So X - Y, is what? Pure profit in bosses pocket? Not really...It's the cost of everything needed for the company and for the worker to do their job

When I said...

>> What happens with that $1000 in sales? $800 of it goes to buying wood, nails, hammers etc.

...that is what I was covering.

> cartels, oligopolies, monopolies are so damaging

Marx goes into cartels, oligopolies, and monopolies a little bit, but they didn't really hit their stride until after he died. Lenin is who covers this in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. They both go into great detail of why it is economically and politically impossible to stop cartels, oligopolies, and monopolies from forming. Lenin mentions Standard Oil in his paper, which the government tried to break up in 1911. As Lenin knew then, it is impossible to stop monopolies, which is why the old broken up parts of Standard Oil reformed in the 1999 ExxonMobil merger to become the most profitable company in the world, as well as the company with the third largest revenue in the world. And I can go on and on about how government can't break up monopolies (the Bell breakup only lasted a few years, now AT&T and Verizon control most of the US wired last mile and wireless).

>>>> What happens with that $1000 in sales? $800 of it goes to buying wood, nails, hammers etc.

>>...that is what I was covering.

But the cost of materials is one thing (and not related to the employees), the value added by the company, another.

>> And I can go on and on about how government can't break up monopolies

Cue the communist states creating the biggest and most useless ones.

> Cue the communist states creating the biggest and most useless ones.

Communism wasn't Marxism. Marxism has the probably even-bigger flaw of being completely impossible to put into practice in the real world.

That's the problem with the genius of Marx. He was able to quite convincingly deconstruct the issues with capitalism, without being able to recommend a better replacement that could survive first contact with the masses.

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