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Conclusion: The Less you Know, the More you Make.

Слова и выражения:

conclusion – заключение

decrease – уменьшаться

executive – исполнительный

increase – увеличиваться

postulate – условие ( постулируемое условие )

rigorous – строгий

solving – здесь : преобразовывая математическое выражение

business executives – управляющий производством

regardless of – вне зависимости от

Marxism

Karl Marx remains so far one of the most controversial figures in the field of economics. His criticism of capitalism, and his promise of a harmonious socialist future, inspired a revolution of global proportions which brought some economic and political systems to disaster. But, despite the collapse of socialism in the Eastern Europe it is evident that the Marxist dream had firm roots in reality. To understand those one has to look through general characteristics of Marxism – its economics, social theory, and overall vision.

The core of Marxian economics is the labour theory of value elaborated in Capital (1867). Its general issue is rather simple: the value of a commodity can be measured by the amount of labour hours that are necessary to produce that commodity.

To illustrate this Marxists usually employ pretty simple examples. If a watch usually takes twice as long to produce as a pair of jeans, for example, then watches are twice as valuable as jeans. In the long run the competitive price of watches will be twice the price of jeans, no matter what the value of the physical inputs is.

Marx was not the inventor of the theory. Marxism is based on the classical economics of the mid nineteenth century, namely on Adam Smith\'s The Wealth of Nations (1776) and David Ricardo\'s Principles of Political Economy (1817). But Marx went much further than his predecessors. He turned his theory against this advocates of capitalism. Arguing that his theory is supposed to explain the value of all commodities, Marx includes there also the commodity that workers sell to capitalists for a wage. Marx called this commodity «labour power». This move was imbued with strong political implications.

Labour power is the worker\'s capacity to produce commodities. The value of labor power depends on the number of labour hours it takes society to produce a person who is fit for work (to give him food, clothes, and shelter). Therefore, the worker\'s wage must correspond to this number of hours. If five hours of labour are needed to maintain the worker\'s capacity to produce commodities, and one labour hour is equal to one dollar, then the proper wage must be five dollars a day.

But, if all goods and services are sold at prices that reflect their true value (corresponding to labour hours), how can capitalists enjoy profits, which they really do?

The answer is as follows: the owners of the means of production use their privileged and powerful position to exploit workers by making them work more hours than are necessary to create the worker\'s labour power. Paying each of their workers five dollars a day, capitalists make them work twelve, and even more, hours a day, thus producing «surplus value».