The early 20th century labor movement negotiated a ceasefire in the class war. Here we are now.
What have we learned about negotiating with capitalists?
The bosses don't pay their workers. Workers pay their bosses.
Submitted 2 days ago by sanitation@lemmy.today to workreform@lemmy.world
https://lemmy.today/pictrs/image/aae461a7-36e7-4d21-aa0f-a6b999e6e5ea.jpeg
Comments
UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
ElChinchilla@lemmy.world 1 day ago
That they are often reasonable and quick to adjust to market conditions to maintain the quality of life of employees because they care deeply!?!?! Is it that?!
Narrator: it was not that
TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world 1 day ago
The first therapeutic insulin was developed by University of Toronto. However, they did not have the money or means to mass produce it and thus the patent was sold to pharmaceuticals. Cuba and USSR are also pretty impressive with their biotechnology but unable to scale up their ideas.
I always see this narrative of “ceasefire with socialists” but the end of the day, you still need money. Even China abandoned pure socialism/communism and instead went to state capitalism. But at least China tax and rein their billionaires unlike the rest of the spineless world.
I think the problem is that with the rise of the middle class in the mid-20th to 21st century, everyone had become NIMBYs and complacent having been spoiled by the post-war economic boom and globalisation. Much of the world have gotten private property and unwilling to give a helping hand; but instead kick down the ladder. The 19th and early 20th century still had a large amount of working class who are brave to mobilise against wealth inequality In the post-war boom to the present day, that demographic shrunk and both the left and centre-left had to cater to the now larger and wealthier, but admittedly, pretty selfish professional, managerial middle class. In other words, uplifting the society has, paradoxically, created an unequal society because many have now gotten a piece of the pie but unwilling to give even a small piece to the remaining few left behind.
3abas@lemmy.world 1 day ago
The first therapeutic insulin was developed by University of Toronto. However, they did not have the money or means to mass produce it and thus the patent was sold to pharmaceuticals. Cuba and USSR are also pretty impressive with their biotechnology but unable to scale up their ideas.
The insulin example proves you need resources and manufacturing capacity, not capitalism.
Banting and the others gave the patent to the University of Toronto for $1 each because they didn’t want insulin monopolized. Production was then scaled through a mix of public institutions and private manufacturers.
The original patent expired, but drug companies built new patents around insulin analogues, formulations, and delivery devices, while the market became heavily concentrated.
So “you still need money” misses the point. Of course large-scale production needs funding, factories, workers, and logistics. The actual political question is who controls those resources, who owns the patents, and who gets the benefits.
Tja@programming.dev 1 day ago
I wonder how many outraged posters have ever tried to be their own boss. I gladly trade 50% of my potential income for uninterrupted family time, PTO, marketing, customer service, support, accounting, tax declaration, and all the other crap that I had to do myself as a freelancer.
sunnie@slrpnk.net 1 day ago
Some people like doing those other tasks and the owner/boss doesn’t do them but pays others to (while still taking the biggest chunk of the proceeds).
There are other forms of organization than capitalistic corporations with a parasite at the top. Cooperatives, collectives, and other organizations like that even exist today and are successfully functioning. The parasite serves no vital function and can be cut out to the benefit of everybody else.
Tja@programming.dev 1 day ago
In the company I work for the CEO does quite a lot of work, in the previous company the owners were there when I came in the morning and still there when I left home, writing code like me but also meeting customers, doing acquisition, finding out why the cleaning company didn’t send anyone that week, etc.
If being “a boss” is so easy, I don’t understand why don’t everyone here just go freelance, hire people and start browsing for Ferraris.
Peaked@thelemmy.club 2 days ago
$4.00 in October 1937 has the same buying power as $91.78 in August 2026.
Psythik@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Damn has there ever been a time where a working class American was paid a fair wage? Other than the brief period after WWII up until Reagan, that is.
FlyingCircus@lemmy.world 1 day ago
That was still only a relatively small portion of the working class and even then it was only possible because the US took over control of global imperialism and were subsiding domestic worker wages with wealth extracted from the rest of the world.
KullumDaue@lemmy.world 2 days ago
surely not when you factor in in real estate 🙈
Gpennyhigh@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Instead distractions over exact numbers, apply Sagan’s Baloney Detection Kit: Does the pattern of owners profiting more from workers’ labor, and compensate as “market allows”, hold true regardless of the specific dollar amounts?
Let us not nitpick numbers as a distraction, but instead focus on the trend and the systemic issues of low wages, inferior benefits compared to many other nations, so they have less artificial scarcity and better lives. Demand better for all, not less for others!
DioramaOfShit@lemmy.world 1 day ago
What does it say inside that big red circle?
patruelis@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Gold
realitaetsverlust@piefed.zip 2 days ago
Well, technically, customers pay bosses.
Arcanepotato@crazypeople.online 2 days ago
Customers give the business money for the goods. It could be directly to the boss, or other employees of the business. When we say the customer pays the boss in this case, “pay” refers to an uneven relationship between the customer, the business, and the boss. The business has a product that the customer doesn’t have or doesn’t have the means to produce, so they give the business money to obtain it. In this relationship, it is considered appropriate for the company to charge more than it costs to produce the good. The price is set by the boss, who decides what profit is achievable, and what they are willing to do to maximize that.
In the poem the worker is said to pay the boss because the employee is in a similar position as the customer. In this case, they are giving the boss a higher value than they are receiving from the boss. They are exchanging their labour and the finished goods in exchange for two items the boss has a monopoly on: money (which is required to obtain goods in a system where you are alienated from the fruits of your labour), and access to the means of production.
You could simplify the “labour and the finished goods” for surplus labour value. I hear some guy wrote some compelling books about how many yards of linen a coat is worth. Might be worth a gander.
realitaetsverlust@piefed.zip 1 day ago
In this case, they are giving the boss a higher value than they are receiving from the boss
Well of course, because a business has more expenses than just paying the worker. Material needs to be paid, taxes, insurances etc. If the worker would receive the full value for his production, the company would lose money and go bankrupt within months.
They are exchanging their labour and the finished goods in exchange for two items the boss has a monopoly on: money
Your train of thought has a gap. The boss has no monopoly on money. The customer has. He’s the one that buys or pays something. The boss is, more or less, at the mercy of his customers. This is less of a problem if the boss sells something that is crucial to your life, like food, water, housing etc, so things you really need to survive, but a big problem if you sell something that isn’t.
That’s why I usually say that we as society absolutely have the power to decide which companies live an die. We just don’t work together and use that power.
Tja@programming.dev 1 day ago
Why are all this discussions centered in 1880 industrial England? Less than 10% of people work in manufacturing in Western economies, time to come up with better examples maybe? Do you also live in a house with a clock on the front wall?
kestrel7_7@lemmy.world 1 day ago
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This was originally published in 1937, so
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It applies to more than just manufacturing by using manufacturing as a generic exmaple. If a person works at a restaurant and makes $X worth of meals every day, if a person works at a software company and makes $X worth of software every quarter, etc.
Tja@programming.dev 1 day ago
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This was posted in 2026.
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Dont like selling your software to your boss? Sell it to clients directly and pocket the difference! The means of production are literally a laptop and an internet connection, about 200 dollars capex for a decent ThinkPad and 30 opex, free if you go to a library.
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boonhet@lemmy.zip 2 days ago
If he’s paid four dollars a day and only makes 10 dollars worth of products, he’s probably turning a loss once material costs and everything are accounted for? As 10 dollars would be revenue, not profit
glitchdx@lemmy.world 2 days ago
The specific numbers are hardly the important part of the story.
Steve@communick.news 2 days ago
The story exists because of the numbers
Tja@programming.dev 1 day ago
The outrage is the important part, math is for nerds!
yesman@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Talk about missing the forest for the trees. I notice that Econ101 people never want to include profit, or advertising to the cost of production. Both are inefficiencies due to adding cost without value, but it’s invisible to the system. Always left out when it comes to factoring costs. Weird.
Arcanepotato@crazypeople.online 2 days ago
As 10 dollars would be revenue, not profit
It does not specify what the $10 is a measure of.
Pixel_Jock_17@piefed.ca 2 days ago
The numbers are certainly off. This person would probably only be paid $2 a day, the costs and materials would only likely account for another $2 per day and they sell $10 in revenue and make the owner $6 of profit. But even then thats company profit and the boss takes a salary too. Then there’s taxes and other stuff and it gets complicated.
BillyClark@piefed.social 1 day ago
I can’t remember for sure how capitalism defines labor. I think it’s just an expense. You know, the idea is that if you can buy it for cheaper than you can pay to make it, then you’ll just fire all of your workers and buy the product. Just like that.
That’s why every time there’s a disruptive technology, every company loses its fucking mind. “Oh, I can get AI to code for cheaper than my engineers? Time to get rid of those expenses.”
Arcanepotato@crazypeople.online 2 days ago
Image
wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 2 days ago
Appropriating the surplus value of labor
Arcanepotato@crazypeople.online 2 days ago
Yes, exactly!
(Maybe I’d say stealing or obtaining through coercion but why get too picky, eh?)