[Marxism] Let's expose the unfair division of income!

["Barry Brooks" <durable@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I can't claim to be much of a Marxist scholar.  I
do try to understand the world and no one who has
that goal should fail to study Marx.  He has not only
provided us his viewpoint as an observer, an outsider,
who is able to see more than the inside participants;
he is also part of history. He is one of its most inside
participants, a man of important thought who took
and inspired important actions. He must be respected
and studied.

For me, the concept of the division of income, and the
belief that that division is unfair seem to lie at the
heart of Marxist thought. By his definition he makes
labor and value become equal, thus any profit is a
form of surplus value. Marx can't be seen as failing
to take sides about how income should be divided
between wages and profits.

I share Marx's partisan support for the workers in the
struggle for economic justice, but the promotion of
the labor theory of value has not served that purpose
well. Yes, surplus profit and exploitation are realities,
but proper division of income is not so simple. The
labor theory may be true as defined and still it
may mislead us to think that profits are bad when we
must not forget that in an fully automated economy
wages would trend toward zero and thus profits must
necessarily trend toward being the only kind of income.

We must not fail to question wage dependence. The
unfair division of income is not between wages and
profits. It is a question of who gets profits and who gets
only wages. How much of the profit should the workers
get without working?

People can be paid for their contribution to production.
They can be paid for any reason we choose, but nature
has no bank account. If our wealth and income derive from
the automated extraction of the wealth of nature how can
prices reflect the current labor input? Is all human income
surplus income from the point of view of exploited nature?
Is profit bad in an economy that has no wages?

Barry

































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