That's not the flip side of that view, because the socialist view of an exploited proletariat in an advanced industrial democracy is not one of “helpless victims”, but of a powerful force that has the power to reverse the power structure once they realize it exists and act in solidarity against it.
A quick (and very) simplified summary of the traditional socialist perspective is that in capitalism, the vast majority of the population must work as wage-earners (proletariat) to provide the means to sustain their life.
A much smaller group of people (capitalists or bourgeoisie) own the means of production and do not need to work. The material interests of these two groups are in opposition (class struggle): value is created by work done (labour theory of value) and it is in the interest of capitalist owners to exploit workers as much as possible, i.e., maximise the amount of value they can extract as profit.
As economic value is created by the labour of workers, in an advanced industrial society, they are the class with the potential to consolidate this economic power: if they were to unite (in unions and socialist parties), they could use this economic power to take political power from the capital class. The goal of the socialist is to unite workers across boundaries so that they understand that their material interests coincide with other workers (class consciousness) – what they have in common is more important than what divides them. If workers don’t see that their material interests lie with the vast majority who have to work to live, the class will remain divided (as illustrated by the Ronald Wright quote).
As well as these two primary classes, there are other (smaller) classes in capitalist society, such as
- petit-bourgeoisie (small capitalists who own their means of production, e.g. shop-keeper) who can employ workers but don’t possess sufficient capital to not have to work themselves. Their class interests can lie with both capitalist and worker.
- lumpen proletariat – the underclass of the proletariat who don’t provide economic value, e.g., thieves, beggars, criminals; they lack class consciousness and act in their individual self-interest; they can be used by capitalists against the interests of the proletariat (e.g., strike-breaking, inciting racism to divide workers).
It should be pretty clear to anyone at this point that all you need is a laptop, programming skills, a good idea, and a lot of luck to become a billionaire. You don’t need thousands, let alone millions, of employees labouring for you.
Name a company with a billion dollars in revenue that is, or could be, operated solely by someone with a laptop and programming skills.
Indeed. There's a big difference between 1 person and a team of hundreds.
I definitely would not describe myself as a socialist (I have an academic background in economics) but it's pretty clear that the labor theory of value is not contradicted in the slightest by citing examples of lone rent-seekers.
Write code that makes those computers $0.01-$0.10 more valuable for human being, multiply by large number of humans paying yearly.
Billion dollars, easy
While central to Marx’s writing, the LTV isn't particularly essential to socialism (that labor is essential to the production of value is, the LTV itself is not).
> It should be pretty clear to anyone at this point that all you need is a laptop, programming skills, a good idea, and a lot of luck to become a billionaire.
Or ownership of sufficient quantity of the means of production and a lot less luck. But, though there are reasons to question the LTV, I'm not sure how the high value of of some particular labor that requires only minor capital to realize in any way figures I to such criticism.
But that's silly. We see celebrities generating tremendous amounts of economic value by the "labour" of taking a selfie. To emphasize the labour is like focusing on the discarded cigarette butt instead of the thousands of acres of dry tinder it landed in.
Or ownership of sufficient quantity of the means of production and a lot less luck
People who own factories needed a lot of luck to get there as well. What real difference does it make whether I earn a billion dollars with a factory or a laptop? Or are they roughly equivalent in power and my laptop ought to be collectivized? That doesn't seem right.
Well, and their and various publicists and promoters labor that went into creating the environment for the reception of that selfie, and lots of other people's labor on the things that made the celebrity a celebrity, whether it's the labor that went into building a business that made the family name for someone like Paris Hilton, or the labor that went into making movies or TV shows for celebrities manufactured in Hollywood, or the labor that went into political campaigns for celebrities of political origin.
Heck, even celebrities who have “made it” like Kevin Costner can still produce something like “Waterworld” while complete nobodies like JK Rowling can launch themselves to mega stardom by writing a novel while commuting on the train.
And what of users? The value in social media companies, for example, comes from the number of users, who provide free labor in producing content.
Not really smaller, the lumpenproletariat and petit bourgeoisie are each generally both numerically larger than the haut bourgeoisie. Less important in terms of the basic class conflict, but not smaller.
Appreciate your time. Peace
I used to be an anarchist (libertarian socialist) and was very much inspired by the accomplishments of the CNT and FAI in the Spanish Revolution of 1936 [1]. The book that I remember most from those days was “The ABC of Communist Anarchism” [1] by Alexander Berkman which explains in plain language the ideas and philosophy of libertarian communism. Being Irish and interested in history, I also read James Connolly’s “Labour in Irish History” [2] where he argued that class solidarity was more important to the cause of freedom than pure nationalism. I was also strongly influenced by the Orwell classics, “1984”, “Animal Farm” and “Homage to Catalonia”. Most of these books are free of the jargon and overly academic language that many leftist authors are wont to use.
Nowadays, I still consider myself to be a socialist, albeit a sceptical one. I’m always open to learning more about history, economics and human nature. I find myself seeing the conservative perspective on a number of issues and I despise the divisiveness of cancel culture and the modern incarnation of identity politics as being antithetical to the ideals of socialism. Anyhow, I’ve had “The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists” on my to-read list for some time (now that I’ve publicly said it, I better stop procrastinating and actually do it).
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Revolution_of_1936
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Now_and_After
3. https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1910/lih/
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ragged-Trousered_Philanthr...
May be mistaken, but historically didn't socialist view proles as a 'lumpen mass', with no real power?
No, the lumpenproletariat, in Marxist theory is an underclass beneath and contrasted with the proletariat consisting largely of the unemployable (not due to economic system or structure, or physical capacity, but personal character and inclination), career criminals (of more than mala in se than malum prohibiting sense), and the others who neither make nor are inclined to make a positive contribution to society, and which unlike the proletariat is not viewed as a fertile ground for developing class consciousness and is viewed as a dangerous class at best useless to revolutionary organization of the proletariat, and also having a great potential, largely for pay, to individually be recruited as agents by the bourgeoisie against the proletariat.