Chatting With a Marxist

Yesterday I had the privilege of chatting with an aspiring, and rather attractive, I might add, Marxist. We briefly exchanged our views and unfortunately had to end the conversation early. Nevertheless, I did enjoy it. And not only for the visual aspects of it.

When she started telling me how supportive she is of a proletarian revolution, I had a few questions on the topic, as one might expect. Namely, why the focus on the proletariat. Why these people in particular and why group them like that? She replied that she prefers to view and analyze people in groups rather than as individuals but more importantly, the proletariat in particular because they are being exploited by the capitalists, predictably. How, exactly, are they being exploited? The reason for this is supposed to be the observable fact that the wage a worker receives is lower than the price the capitalist receives for the final product on the market.

My response was that this is true only insofar as the capitalist is engaged in forced labor. But if the relationship is voluntary, how can there be any exploitation involved? By definition, any voluntary exchange or contract implies that both parties to the contract expect to be better off as a result of engaging in it than they would otherwise be. The worker always has a choice. Her answer was that there is very little choice for a worker. But this is not true. Firstly, as long as we allow competition in the labor market, firms are going to compete for the limited supply of labor. What's more, there is always the choice of being self-employed and trying to create a product with your own hands in your own garage. An employee in a bicycle factory can always choose to quit his job and try to create the bicycle(s) by himself. This is difficult, true. But that is precisely my point. The capitalist lends the worker capital equipment to work with, while the worker brings in the labor services. They are both better off as a result.

Another point I made was one which I borrowed from Hans-Hermann Hoppe. Namely, a capitalist has many expenses when bringing inputs together to produce outputs, labor services being only one of them. He also has to buy or borrow capital and buy or rent buildings from his fellow capitalists. For these he also pays less than the price he receives for his products on the market. If we want to be consistent in our analysis we have to thus claim that capitalists, in doing this, are also exploiting each other. But then of course the whole edifice of Marxist though collapses instantly.

I do hope I was able to install at least a fraction of doubt in the young lady. It remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, as suggested by a friend, we concluded that perhaps indeed one day a bunch of us from both camps should get together, each reading a book recommended by the other side, and then engage in a debate. What a wonderful idea!


Matej Avsenak Ogorevc