This study re-evaluates Marxian exploitation theory and its ability to explain relationships in modern department stores. A new theoretical analysis of the nature of retail work in department stores is necessary if we are to fully understand these historical changes. The base refers to the foundation of society, the totality of the productive forces, to paraphrase Marx, or rather, the economic system of the current period.
The sad irony of this comes from the fact that in order to make available all the extra hours that employees want, there has to be a growing success. The interdependence of the two parties is considered equal only in the sense that the two parties demand something from the other, and that both have the right to refuse exchange with the other if they wish. One response might be that the prices/exchange values of commodities are determined by the preferences of the individuals participating in the exchange.
Direct labor time is the actual time spent producing the item, such as milling rails and stiles together to make a door, teaching, or in the case of retail workers, performing all the activities that contribute to selling a product. Coincidentally, however, this would also be direct labor time for the workers producing the timber routers, so it is important to keep the context of the example when using these terms. Internal critics (Roemer 1982; Sraffa 1960) have argued that the value of a good should be determined more complexly by including all the material costs of producing that good, rather than just the labor time contained in them.
Workers in particular, and exploited groups in general, are a necessity for the capitalist to maintain the success of the business, and therefore some consideration for their well-being must be considered, albeit at a minuscule level of attention. Likewise, if there were Africans who, for reasons such as physical incapacity, were unable to work, they would transition from exploited to oppressed in the eyes of the colonizers.3. It provides just one example of the difference between exploitation and oppression, and of the importance that dependence on labor plays in the continuation of capitalism.
Inverse Interdependent Welfare Principle: The material well-being of capitalists causally depends upon the deprivations of workers
Resource Exclusion Principle: The underlying cause of one group benefiting from the deprivations of another is the exclusion of one group from access to
Effort Appropriation Principle: the mechanism by which exclusion from resources generates inverse interdependence of welfare involves the appropriation
This is one of the biggest misunderstandings of Marx's work, and a primary reason it is rejected, as many people recognize that a large majority of the workforce in the United States is no longer in direct factory production. The distinction allows us to draw two points from it: 1) the company dictates how a position is classified, but also how it is actually realized, and 2) the company declares that they pay the worker for what has been decided to be part of the actual work they do (sales), while potentially not compensating them for the other part (the rest of their labor services). 4 It should not be misunderstood that the workers are not responsible for all sales in the store.
Shortest and most efficient” recognizes that the way a work activity is designed does not necessarily mean that it is the soundest method, but the one that fulfills the basic requirements of the task in the least amount of time. What makes retail work reproducible is that the purpose of the work is trainable, beyond simply explaining the color and purpose of the position. Although the company formulates almost every aspect of the work process, it is still.
The above would appear to be a dead end to the argument, since without a proper assessment of the position, how can the dividing line be drawn between an employee's necessary work effort and additional work performed for the company above and beyond the value of theirs. wages. Fortunately, a direct assessment of the work involved in a retail position is not how its wages are determined. In this case, wages become the representation of goods consumed by the worker, which Marx believed would be a socially determined level (the living wage).
The price of any commodity is determined by the competition between the potential buyers and sellers, i.e. since its peak in 1968, the value of the minimum wage has had periodic rises and falls, but overall has remained relatively flat with the 1968 level (Schmitt 2012). As previously mentioned, prices differ from exchange values in that they generally have a rental price due to the company's profitable interests.
This really has less to do with the value of the commodity than with the interests of the capitalists involved. In fact, retail workers are direct producers, just not creators of material goods like those made in factories, but that's only part of the problem. Given that a company is able to exercise control over department store workers, it then follows that retail companies would appropriate this surplus labor to force a greater turnover of various products in the store.
That's a staggering number, and what's most surprising is that if retail companies decided to pass the full amount of the cost of this small wage increase onto customers (a highly unlikely scenario), it would only be a 1 percent increase in the price of products, or an average of about 30 cents more per shopping trip per customer. Overall, the structure of the retail industry seems to make it relatively unlikely to eradicate exploitation, but that does not mean that some major improvements could not and should not be sought.