Republican Defines Workers: "Labor is a commodity just like corn or beans or oil or gold"

KING: If you wanna do as many Democrats have said on this floor, and that is that any relationship between two consenting adults the federal government shouldn't be involved in, well this is a relationship the federal government should not be involved in. For the federal government to tell me that I can't say to my own son, I'd like to climb in the seat of your excavator and sit there for $10 an hour, federal government says I can't, he's gotta pay me some $28 rate or whatever that is. But the government has no business interfering and no business driving up these costs. And we must go through this period of austerity. That requires that we not impose federal union scale on federal construction projects. <...> And I think the free market should set the wages. Labor is a commodity just like corn or beans or oil or gold, and the value of it needs to be determined by the competition, supply and demand in the workplace.

http://politicalcorrection.org/blog/201106020015

When I was young and there was a Cold War, we were taught that the Evil Communists believed that the American system oppressed workers by impoverishing them. Of course, this was not true because in the US workers enjoyed a standard of living much higher than anywhere else in the world. The high standard of living for the average worker demonstrated the failure of communist ideology and the success of the American system.

Now please tell me who really won the Cold War?

the truth of the marketplace economy.

You'll notice that all of this devaluation of the working class happened AFTER they destroyed the USSR. The reason things were a little better BEFORE the USSR broke up was because the capitalists had a competing economic system in place and they HAD to show some concern for the workers to keep the lid on discontent. Without that competing system, they know they can get away with ANYTHING.

And BTW, I wasn't a big fan of the USSR either. It turned into a degenerated worker's state ruled by a bureaucracy controlled by Stalin after Lenin's death and Trotsky's exile. But at LEAST the SYSTEM, even degenerated and bureaucratcized, WAS an alternative to capitalism.

an non-cynical Marxist would make this observation as a rallying cry for the workers

A cynical Marxist would make this observation and say, "Now we are all screwed".

It wasn't a slam on ALL Marxists then. :) Thanks for the clarification.

and use the word "hegemony" a lot

That's why we NEED working class organizations to PROTECT us from these businesses.

We are so screwed...

commodities as well? :shrug:

and policies a FORM of slavery, i.e., wage slavery.

But I have a feeling you knew that. :)

Capitalists try to dress it up as a different system, when it truly isn't. Go look at what is about to happen to Greece as everything will be taken away by the Predatory Capitalists.

their maintenance is looked after by the slaveowner, like machinery, so it's constant capital.

This idiot has no clue as to what he is talking about.

If demand drives prices, right now oil would be around $75 a barrel instead of $100, based solely on demand and not speculation.

like any other marketed product, should be allowed to maximise their profits (wages). So why are Rethugs against workers collective bargaining rights?

Philosophically to be consistant, you would be right. But their "philosophy" is one of convienence and hypocrisy. They are ONLY on the side of the exploiters. Unfortunately, so are most of the Dems.

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Nothing new. People will keep thinking that as long as capitalism is in place or as long as labor keeps acting like it is true.

sigh. :cry:

Corn gets eaten, excreted and then processed back into Mother Earth. Labor is the output of human toil and should never be compared to a commodity.

about people who work for a living.

which won't work if individuals do not themselves organize their own lives around the same principle.

No labor would occur without an appropriate return, real value FOR real value, return/profit on the real value of that personal-capital/labor. That personal-capital would, then, also be used CO-OPERATIVELY with others who have agreed to the same principles: Labor is real value (in Adam Smith's sense of what real value is) and because Labor has real vaue it is, therefore, personal capital and should, like all capital, EARN A REAL VALUE PROFIT, i.e. the basics of life, no matter what wall street/the markets are doing.

there isn't an equilibrium price for the commodity labor power the way there is for corn or beans or oil, because we live in a world of sovereign nation-states.

They used to have Personnel Departments, now they have Human Resources.

-Hoot

instead of personnel. I remember back in the 80's when I started noticing the change and thinking to myself "here comes the de-personalization of humans". Many of the offices to which I applied during that time didn't even allow family pictures on the desks, or any personalization of work surroundings.

Human lives are things to be bought and sold.

You think women hate being considered objects? Men are really gonna hate this.

it is the capacity to work that is exchanged for money.