Capitalism for Anti-Authoritarian Marxists
Capital markets are needed to invest wealth wisely, even if workers seize the means of production
Karl Marx argued in Das Kapital that the profit a company generates after it has paid its workers — which Marx called “surplus value” — is wealth that the capital class steals from the working class. Imagine, as many Marxists do, that workers owned and controlled companies, including the surplus value they generate.
Let’s suppose there are around 7.5 billion workers on Earth. Earth’s annual income is about $130 trillion (in U.S. dollars). That’s about $17,500 in annual income per person. Let’s imagine that, in the wake of a global Marxist revolution, the full $130 trillion, including surplus value, is taken under the control of the working class. Global income is distributed equally, so that each worker has an annual pre-tax income of $17,500.
The workers of the world are now faced with a problem: what do they do with their $17,500 per year? If they consume it all, i.e. spend it all on goods and services, then the workers, their children, and their grandchildren, will never have an income more than $17,500 per year. On a 40-hour work week and a 47-week work year, that’s $9.30 per hour. For reference, that’s less than the minimum wage in eighteen U.S. states…
