The double exploitation of laborers

Laborers are filling the squares and shouting to the government that they cannot make ends meet. Does the government hear this outcry? No, it does not! Today, we will briefly discuss the double exploitation of laborers, the government's silence in the face of their outcry, and the reasons behind all these developments. 

Laborers are the most genuine factor of production that carries out social production. Our laboring friends receive wages in return for the production they perform, but the wage they receive is much lower than the income the boss obtains when the product is sold on the market. In other words, the money the boss receives when selling the product that has passed into their ownership is higher than the amount paid to the laborer as wages. If the production belongs to the laborer, why does the laborer not receive the entire sales revenue? The reason for this is that the boss, as a factor of production, also receives compensation for the service of organizing production. Let us accept that we are within reasonable limits up to this point, even if we have deviated slightly from Marxism. 

Remaining within these limits, let us see that the boss still obtains a surplus after receiving compensation for general services such as organization or marketing. Bourgeois economic doctrine asserts that the income obtained by the boss is a justified gain as profit. The doctrine even goes further, reflecting the height of profit to society as an indicator of the boss's business skill. However, despite the bourgeois economic doctrine's glorification of the profit phenomenon, it is also a fact that the boss exploits laborers excessively due to market power and oppressive influence over labor. Especially in situations where unemployment is rampant in the economy, laborers are exploited excessively. Let me introduce you to the cautionary slogan of a very important professor of bourgeois economic doctrine who passed away some time ago. This person once argued that an environment of mild unemployment and mild inflation was the most ideal condition for capitalism. Well, what could this esteemed person have meant by this statement! What he said is this: the condition of mild unemployment suppresses monetary wages, meaning laborers cannot pressure employers to raise their wages. Mild inflation, on the other hand, suppresses the real value of the wage. Well, since this double suppression takes something away from the laborer, to whom, where does the taken share go? Of course, to the boss! 

The phenomenon and amount of exploitation is the difference between the wage that the laborer who performs the production should receive in return for their production and the wage paid as the market wage. This is where the laborer receiving a wage below the income they should receive in the production process appears as the first stage of exploitation, that is, the exploitation that occurs in the market process. To elaborate on the subject, the difference between the wage that labor should theoretically receive and the amount necessary just to be able to make a living, that is, to produce labor capable of working the next day, is profit according to bourgeois economic doctrine, and exploitation that enters the boss's assets according to Marxist economic doctrine. 

When the laborer under exploitation begins to suffer from livelihood difficulties due to low wages, they turn to the bank to use credit. At this point, let us think about where the source of the credit taken from the bank comes from. Interestingly, this source is nothing other than the part of the value created in production that enters the boss's assets. If we visualize the situation, while the boss exploits labor in the first process, the production stage, and makes them dependent on credit, the laborer's need for credit is also met from the source that the boss has provided through exploitation over the laborer. The laborer takes the share of exploitation they encountered in the production stage, which has passed into the boss's assets, this time as a loan from the boss's bank, and also pays interest on it. This is the second mechanism of exploitation applied to the labor segment in the financial process. The share of exploitation in the second exploitation mechanism is the interest the laborer pays on the credit they use. Interestingly, laborers who are in a difficult situation due to exploitation see the credit mechanism as a kind of credit opportunity provided to them, and perhaps they are happy. What a sad perspective this is! The reality that the laborer should be aware of is that the boss who exploits labor in the first stage, in the second stage, gives the source they unfairly passed into their ownership to the laborer as a loan as a second-stage exploitation tool, and takes interest in return. The laborer takes the source they left to the boss by being exploited in the first stage back as a loan as an exploitation tool, and of course, at the end of the period, they are exploited for a second time over this source. Without closing the credit chapter, it should also be noted that the exploitation experienced in both stages is so severe that since only the minimum amount can be paid on the credit taken from the bank at maturity, the exploitation increases exponentially with the interest debt that rises over the remaining debt amount. 

While the minimum wage is determined for the laborer in the first stage and paid in the second stage, that is, while the amount of money necessary for the person to meet their essential needs is determined and paid, the state enters the scene with two different roles this time. The state's first role is that it takes the side of capital at the stage where wages or minimum wage issues are negotiated. The state's second anti-labor role is to collect taxes through withholding on the wage amount forcibly created in line with capital interests. Two important points catch our attention in this matter. First, although the withholding system is defended as an administrative convenience, the withholding method creates an extremely heavy burden on laborers. Because in this system, without any expense deduction, the wage is deducted by the boss on behalf of the tax office before it enters the laborer's pocket. Whereas the boss's tax, except for some advance payment systems, is assessed and collected after an average period of one year and over the income the boss will declare after deducting expenses. There is no disadvantage of withholding in boss taxation. The second important disadvantage in the taxation system on labor is that since the total wage amount is increasing towards the end of the year in the progressive tax tariff application, the tax amount is also rising depending on the tax bracket steps. Thus, the net wage at the beginning of the year and the net wage at the end of the year can be different to the detriment of the latter. 

The most important reason for the quite dire situation of our laborers is that our industrial structure is inefficient, which is also the cause of inflation. Since the industrial structure is inefficient, as input costs rise depending on the rise in exchange rates, the burden falls on the labor segment. In addition to these, foreign labor elements entering our country from abroad, especially Syrians, can push Turkish laborers out of production and/or suppress wages at the cost of heavy exploitation on themselves. Likewise, the prevalence of the system called under-the-counter production is also a reflection of the inefficient industrial structure. 

In the related dimension of issues regarding labor exploitation, the government or state ideology also has a place and importance. Since the sole purpose of bourgeois states is to enable the transfer of resources to private capital, their view of labor, in order not to shake the social order, is the prevention of unemployment, because unemployment creates social problems and its suppression is politically inconvenient and difficult. Since the employment of labor also depends on capital accumulation, it is natural for all decisions and calculations of the state to be shaped around capital accumulation. In other words, in capitalist state structures, while capital is protected both by laws and government decisions, only the prevention of unemployment as much as possible falls to the share of labor.