This week Dr. Ben Burgis decided to once again grace the pages of Jacobin Magazine; this time with a rather uninteresting article about the current Right-Wing infighting social media drama concerning Steven Crowder’s greed and Ben Shapiro’s misery status in the Right-Wing Social Media club. The article is entitled “Right-Wingers Like Steven Crowder Need Billionaire Funders Because Their Ideas Are So Bad” [Jacobin ]. Funny thing is the article isn’t about the bad ideas of people like Steven Crowder or why billionaires fund these charlatans—the article should titled more accurately “No One Is Safe From Capitalist Exploitation”, because that would a far more accurate title for the primary thesis of this article in question. But that little grip isn’t as important as the fact that Dr. Burgis’ seems to not really understand the concept of Surplus Value which is the crux of Marx’s critique of worker exploitation.
Surplus Value is the amount of extra value your employees and capital machinery add to the overall value of the commodity you’re selling. It’s the profit they create for your products. So, if we accept this fact that all employees no matter their pay scale add surplus value to a product it becomes hard to understand comments like the following from Dr. Burgis:
“On its face, there’s something absurd about the phrase “slave contracts.” Contracts are things you sign when you’re a free citizen who gets to decide whether to accept or reject a particular job offer. It’s not like literal slaves ended up in chains because they didn’t read over the proposed language in their employment contracts carefully enough."[Ben Burgis]
This is sort of misses the entire point of the power structures within capitalism that Marx was commenting on. Marx didn’t believe that slavery was literally a contractual dispute; but, that contracts between people with power I.e. the Capitalists and those with out power i.e. the employee were designed to maximize the capitalists exploitation over that of that of employee. The power that Marx was interested in was the ability for the employee to control the surplus value he or she created for the corporation. In this respect Marx if he is logically consistent have to accept the fact that raw salary amounts are not the critical element in this act of exploitation—instead the important factor is the amount of control one has to determine the use of the surplus of value one creates for the company.
Again, Dr. Burgis acknowledges this fact in this following: “One of Karl Marx’s core contentions in Capital is that even though capitalist employment contracts take the form of voluntary agreements between legally equal parties, they still involve relations of power and domination that can be meaningfully compared to earlier and more naked systems of control like slavery and feudalism.” [Ben Burgis] So, clearly on some level Burgis knows that the actually salary amount isn’t the fundamental issue of Marx because if it were the the counter argument to Marx’s exploitation of the worker would be simply: workers in the tech sector of the economy make 20x over their counterparts in the regular manufacturing sector clearly exploitation isn’t occurring in the tech sector. Therefore these tech sector employees aren’t being exploited which of course if you want to unite the people under socialism is absurd. But the sad fact is is that our good doctor does make an argument similar to the one I outline above in the following quote:
“Even if you accept Marx’s argument, you might still think that calling any legally voluntary employment contract a “slave contract” involves an unhelpful amount of hyperbole. And it might seem particularly absurd given the amount of money that the Daily Wire was offering Crowder.” [Ben Burgis]
There it is the sloppy logic of Dr. Burgis at work again. With a few short sentences it would appear that Dr. Burgis seems to think that exploitative contracts as long as they are entered into between two legally parties on a voluntary basis are some how just fine. But, further more Dr. Burgis further muddies the problem of understanding exploitation of workers by pointing out the amount of money Crowder is asking for. Now, I’m not defending Crowder’s greed or self-aggrandizing what I’m pointing out is that logic of Burgis in this argument creates a natural cleavages in the relationship of employees to each other in the face of exploitation. As in my example some arbitrary salary number can now be used to define exploitation in the workplace—employee group A from the tech sector make $150,000 per year so clearly they aren’t exploited; but employee group B from the service sector makes $50,000 per year so they are exploited? Perhaps, Burgis just forgot about how lopsided contracts can be historically.
It’s also interesting that Burgis forgets that the Ford System popularized and thus named after Henry Ford in the 1920’s or the earlier Scientific Management of Frederick Winslow Taylor[The Principles Of Scientific Management ] all of which sought to control the employee’s actions. Henry Ford took the principles of scientific management one step further and extended the control of the corporation not just from the factory gate directly into the homes of the workers. Ironically, in one of the better articles from the magazine Current Affairs “Putting Capitalism in Surveillance Capitalism” by Ben Lee [Article] in Feb, 2020 outlines how effectively the capitalist model of surveillance through data has turned into a process of monetization—but, this also implies that like Henry Ford before the BOSS is watching now more completely and not just what happens at your place of work. Again with some irony I am going to quote, yet another article from Current Affairs Magazine “The Boss is Watching” by Ruqaiyah Zarook [Article ] from the July/Aug 2022 edition points out two incredibly important points to be made about the construction of unequal power within an otherwise a legal agreement. In this case Zarook points out the fact that Fordism was not just a workplace agreement between the workers and the employers that ended with ringing of the shift bell. No, Fordism extended directly into the homes of the employees to gain the $5.00 per day rate the employee not only had to reach specific workplace goals of production and quality but also the close monitoring of hygiene and health as well other aspects were required. Zarook tells of one employee for Ford in the 1920’s remarked the following about the program:“The machine I’m on goes at such a terrific speed that I can’t help stepping on it in order to keep up with the machine. It’s my boss.”(Smithsonian article). It is interesting that some how Ben Burgis appears to think that perhaps, this is sort of agreement is okay for the working class to enter into after all Slave Contracts— are so nothing more than voluntary agreements and all this talk of them tends to be hyperbole that is both nonproductive and ultimately useless. I guess that is so unless you happen to laboring under one of these unfair contracts? So, what if you make $150,000 at Google or Amazon, but your life is chained to your desk? Is that not that same abuse that Amazon Workers face in the fulfillment centers? The only difference is the paycheck?It seems you might just need the power of collective bargaining to set you free from your exploitation? But, I guess Ben Burgis isn’t a fan of this idea? What then does he want?
[These employees wouldn’t have meet the hygiene and health requirements of Ford’s Sociological Department for the $5 per day pay.]
Perhaps a small socialism that is continually trying to justify its membership through paystubs? Clearly this is not going to be a productive system because it will only divide the employees by class—instead of uniting them together. This is especially true if the Tech Sector is going to be a critical part of further Unionization in America [Tech Unionization]. It is hard to support such a sloppy argument about “slave contracts” when we know that one of the critical battle grounds for unionization in the next 10-20 years will be in the tech sector; And these are going to people making significantly more than their service industry union counter parts. If we follow the logic of Dr. Burgis we must ttell these white-collar employees “sorry, you have no place in the union”[Tech Workers Unite]. I think we can safely say that Dr. Burgis’ complaint against the nature of a slave contract is both myopic and pointless for the overall unionization project of the American Labor Force. It focuses on the wrong aspect of Marx’s exploitation paradigm, thus ultimately causing more rifts within the socialist project than need to exist and is assured to weaken the project as awhole.
Now, I do agree that Steven Crowder’s salary demands are absurd. However, that is another type of argument—should we as a socialist society allow people to make absurds amount of money with very little meaningful social impact is important. This is not what Ben Burgis is doing here with his argument about slave contracts. Instead Burgis is claiming two very important things: one that legal contracts some how don’t have power imbalances and two that at some point the amount of money one is paid makes the contract less exploitive. Which of course both of these statements are blatantly absurd on the face of things.
Furthermore, Dr. Burgis makes another interesting claim here about independence in the work place that I find very disturbing as a big advocate for workplace democracy— that some how never being independent negates people from wanting independence in the work place from their bosses. Dr. Burgis writers, “Crowder insists that the issue is “independence.” But as Boreing pointed out in his response video, Steven Crowder has never been “independent”[Ben Burgis]. This is interesting because logically most service workers looking for unionized jobs will be working for other people. So, what exactly is Burgis claiming here?
It seems to me that Burgis is claiming that Crowder cannot be arguing the he wants independence in the work place because it is something he’s never had before. Well, those facts might be true—it doesn’t negate the fact that currently Crowder could be in fact looking for this type of employment. And more importantly what does it say about Burgis’ claims of being a socialist? If anything Burgis should be pointing out the exploitative nature of capitalism at all levels and how even the most wealthy entertainers are at the end of the day still being exploited by their capitalist employers. That the entire wage-profit system headed by a small group of people profiting off the mass of their employees skills and abilities is in fact the problem. But, instead Burgis makes this Neoliberal argument that basically Crowder isn’t worth $50million on the grounds of the following:
“In fact, Boreing goes on to point out, Crowder doesn’t even “know for a fact” if his show was profitable because those companies didn’t share all the relevant numbers with him.
That last point is absolutely crucial — and Boreing may be revealing more than he realizes. Because if Steven Crowder doesn’t know if Crowder was actually generating net revenue for his previous employers, Jeremy Boreing certainly doesn’t know. And yet he was willing to blow $50 million of his company’s money on Crowder.” [Ben Burgis]
(Jeremy Boreing is a right-wing filmmaker and Co-Ceo of the Daily Wire with Ben Shapiro.)
There it is folks—doesn’t this sound like the average person telling the Kaffeehaus barista that I just don’t see what you do that makes you worth $15 dollars per hour? It’s literally the same argument. Burgis’ believes in this article that he has managed to cleverly suborn these arguments of the right-wing to show their absurdity when applied to Steven Crowder’s position. Instead they’ve shown that Burgis seems to fundamentally misunderstand Marx’s critique of surplus value and how it affects the labor value of commodities. It also shows that Burgis lacks the understanding that his own argument as outlined to support the idea that exploitation isn’t a matter of actual paychecks but of the control of the surplus value generated by the employees in question. Burgis also seems to fail to understand that pretending that independence in the workplace isn’t important to those making the highest wages in a free market employment system is also missing the point of socialism too.
The question I think Ben Burgis should be asking is why aren’t some of our most important people in our society the ones making $50 million per year. Think of how miserable our lives in modern cities would be without the many people that toil removing the waste from them? Why aren’t they being paid $150,000 or more? Why aren’t critical aspects of our society controlled by the people??? Why isn’t Burgis fighting for a higher standard of living for all workers???? Instead he is basically fighting to say that the hypocritical nature of Right-Wing is the problem? The funny thing is that Steven Crowder isn’t really doing that—instead he is arguing that he is worth more than this offer and part of his worth is the ability to control his output… I’m sure Ben Burgis would be unhappy with Jacobin magazine if they decided that his material was too left leaning (I know that this a joke , but bear with me on this one) wouldn’t he claim that he was being forced into an unfair situation? Much like the workers in the Ford Plants a hundred years ago who had to subject themselves to the Ford Sociological Department’s demands if they wanted the highest pay in the industry of $5 per day?
I find it most amusing, that Ben Burgis thinks this statement is some major rebuke of the present fight “The willingness of some of the wealthiest people in our society to put a thumb on the scale of political discourse by funding the right-wing noise machine has profound political consequences. The idea of Jacobin, for example, ever being able to offer anyone $1 million a year, never mind $12.5, is… well, let’s just say it would be hard to imagine.”[Jacobin] This is laughable because we all know that magazines like Jacobin would be more than happy to take large donations from outside sources such it would appear for some period of time was funded by Connor Kilpatrick’s Oil Barron Wife as Professor Erik Loomis reported on Twitter [tweets]about state of affairs at Jacobin. In fact co-creator of the magazine Micah Uetricht replies with “Nobody at Jacobin Regrets this”—meaning taking money from a large money donor. So, the question is if Crowder is unfree by the Marxist principles then we must also accept that Ben Burgis is also unfree with his contract to Jacobin… Just like the workers of Current Affairs were fired for in the Summer of 2020 for attempting to create a more socialist workplace[Article] and as deplorable as Steven Crowder is we cannot let our socialism become of one a fight over poverty based paystubs! We must accept the fact that socialism will need to embrace the entire working class and that does mean white collar class workers—but that doesn’t mean those workers get to take over. We must show them that blue collar class workers are just as necessary and just as vital to the entire working of the planet as they are. So, we shouldn’t be asking to prove our socialist credentials based on our lack of monetary resources but on what we actual provide to the society; how it impacts our fellow human being. That should be the metric of our pay scales. It turns out that pay scale might get inverted if we base it on the importance of daily interactions and stability of our societies! In that model the sanitation worker is the Steven Crowder of our society!
Excellent piece!