man the production on these is really great
Big Wolff fan but doesn’t this get something a bit wrong?
It seems to imply that wages are paid from the profit the capitalist makes; the workers are just not getting the amount they produce and that surplus is the capitalist profit.
Iirc Marx explains that wages are actually paid for at the start of the process in the same way raw materials are bought. The capitalist then makes their profit and invest it back into wages and materials which perpetuates the process.
It’s probably helpful to think of it in terms of inflow (revenues) and outflow (expenses). Where exactly in the process expenses are paid and revenues are received doesn’t materially matter very much in the course of normal operation. Profit is simply what’s left from revenue after expenses are paid for a given period, which, yes, is used to accumulate further productive capital and inputs.
I guess I would agree that it doesn’t really matter for the scope of this short video but Marx does make a big deal about it in Value, Price, and Profit. Labor is a commodity purchased to begin like raw materials. This is a very important prerequisite to understanding how supply and demand effect the cost of labor and how the price of any commodity (which labor is) always will trend toward the cost of it’s production. Which in the case of labor is the cost of the bare minimum of food, water, shelter for human workers to maintain themselves.
Edit: actually it might be in Wage, Labour, and Capital not Value, Price and Profit I can’t remember sorry 😅
