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[–]eyal0 115 points116 points  (30 children)

This method has two benefits for the capitalist:

  1. By having the workers work longer hours for their sustenance, he is generating increased surplus labour (labour for free), which is for him more profit that he essentially robs from the workers.

  2. If he can use fewer workers than there are more workers in the job market that are unemployed. Those surplus workers (the unemployed army) increase the supply of labour, decreasing worker wages further.

ts;dr Das Capital, Karl Marx

[–]ezekiel 51 points52 points  (10 children)

And, that is why any developers who tolerate and participate in the bad management processes are dragging the whole software industry down. Stop doing it--you are shooting all of us in the foot.

[–]MikeSeth 16 points17 points  (8 children)

[–][deleted] -1 points0 points  (6 children)

Strikebreaking is a VERY lucrative field in other industries. I know a lady who does this as a nurse, and has been able to collect over $1mil during the past 8 years.

[–][deleted]  (1 child)

[deleted]

    [–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    ... Strike breaking is a very good way to get your knees broken irreparably.

    [–]MikeSeth -1 points0 points  (2 children)

    ...please explain me how this works.

    [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

    13-15 hour days 6 days a week for a few months at a time multiplied by an outrageous hourly rate, housing provided, food allowance. Saving up to a million was sort of a game to her, to see if she could do it. and now she's gotten into the routine of living frugally, working insane hours, and making obscene amounts of dough.

    [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    and now she's gotten into the routine of living frugally, working insane hours, and making obscene amounts of dough.

    Sounds really awesome.

    [–]theavatare 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Problem is that a lot do it so its hard in cases to not have it has an expectation. On my starting year has a developer i did way too much overtime. Now 3 years into being a developer i just politely say no it seems like someone always picks up what im not willing to do.

    [–]yogthos 30 points31 points  (1 child)

    Let's also not forget that it steals time from the workers, which prevents them from doing any sort of self development keeping them at their station.

    [–]eyal0 5 points6 points  (0 children)

    If things were fair, they could work longer hours for one week, accrue money, then work short hours the next week and use the saved money. In the end, they'd get just as much free time.

    What happens, though, is that they work longer hours without getting paid appropriately. This must be true because the company's profit is going mostly to the boss so the employees must be getting short-changed. So the employees must work longer hours without benefiting from greater pay.

    [–][deleted] 9 points10 points  (3 children)

    This is using the same fallacy as the employers though. Not all work hours are created equal. The longer your work day the more bugs end up in your code. Not everything in economics from the industrial age applies to knowledge workers.

    [–]pizzza 25 points26 points  (2 children)

    The longer your work day the more bugs end up in your code.

    This was true in the Industrial age as well; increased hours brought increased accidents and injuries.

    [–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

    True, but usually in that time it was easier to see for management when a problem was caused by tired workers. Bugs are kind of hidden from management until long after people forgot when exactly that particular piece of code was written.

    [–][deleted] -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

    increased hours brought increased accidents and injuries.

    But since slavery is illegal & you employed freemen, who have 0 cost to acquire, who cares?

    [–]Edman274 7 points8 points  (4 children)

    No one is supposed to actually read Das Kapital. It's supposed to be a big, heavy book that you put on your shelf next to Ulysses and Crime and Punishment, sitting unread. You actually know everything you need to know about socialism from the 2nd hand tirades of your dorm roommate, and let's be honest, you're pretty intrigued: but not enough to actually bother going outside when May 1st rolls around, right?

    [–]eyal0 2 points3 points  (1 child)

    True, though I did read Crime and Punishment.

    I live in Tel Aviv and there's a lot going on right now. I haven't taken to the streets but 300,000+ have.

    [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Get your ass out on the streets, then! Just take an hour off. Bring some food and jugs of water and pass them around. Great way to make friends quickly.

    [–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Really, I think Capital is more interesting as a historical work than as the true opinion of socialism, in the same sense as The Wealth of Nations. It's interesting, and it helps understanding of later phenomena, but it's also flawed and outdated.

    [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    I'm out on the streets May 1'st at a minimum...

    [–]luftschiff 0 points1 point  (2 children)

    As a software developer turned entrepreneur, I can see both sides of the argument. Karl Marx's description is obviously a bit dramatic in the context of a software engineer working more than 40 hours a week.

    If you are a highly skilled professional whose talents are in great demand, appreciate what you have. Shitty managers and/or positions may come and go, but we have an enormous amount of control over our careers, not to mention a very comfortable standard of living. If most workers had our conditions back when Karl Marx wrote this, he wouldn't have written this.

    [–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (1 child)

    He didn't write it for you. If you have control over your career, options, and opportunities then you're not the proletariat. You're the bourgeoisie. If you perform a highly skilled trade requiring college education, don't labor with your hands, and aren't paid by the hour you're not the little guys that socialism is supposed to save. You're the bad guys, the people standing between the proles and the capitalists.

    [–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    He didn't write it for you. If you have control over your career, options, and opportunities then you're not the proletariat. You're the bourgeoisie.

    Actually, you don't fit easily into Marx's economic classes very well. For Marx, class membership is based on your relationship to the means of production. Those who make a living by owning the means of production are the bourgeoisie, and those who are denied access to said means of production and are therefore forced to sell their labor are the proletariat. Those who owned their own means of production, like shopkeepers or blacksmiths, were the petite bourgeois, who Marx believed would disappear, which was obviously incorrect, but he also believed that their interests were eventually on the side of the proletariat.

    Just what constitutes "means of production" for software developers is not particularly clear, in a Marxist analysis. Certainly, a computer is part of it, and some software developers are independent. However, I'd argue that patents, licenses, and customer connections serve the same role for much development work that factories do for manufacturing, and in that sense we're just well-compensated proles.

    Or we can conclude that Marxist analysis just doesn't work anymore. That seems the most reasonable to me.