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submitted 3 months ago by plinky@hexbear.net to c/theory@hexbear.net
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[-] plinky@hexbear.net 3 points 3 months ago

exploitation on supranational scale?

take planet as a whole (a thoroughly marxist notion) producing basket of commodities, you have workers doing socially necessary labor, and receiving equivalent of like 1 hour out of 8 hours worked (of average labor time on the planet). Seems obvious to go to superexploitation thesis. Unequal exchange is not marxist-like, but highlights this dynamic.

Hickel does marxist work, and uses the unequal exchange terms, but i feel like contradiction is surface level at best. Unequality is most obvious when say a bangladeshi worker would try to trade t-shirt she made to union made usa t-shirt. Its exact same t-shirt, one costs 3 dollars, the other 40. And textiles are notoriously badly mechanizable. But if we take planet scale t-shirts we average out that difference, and instead get that bangladeshi worker receives like 1/10th of value and american worker like 7/10 of his value, thus she is superexploited.

this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2024
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