Hi again. Long entry today, sorry about that.
Society is all about money. The accumulation of wealth has become the driving force of the capitalist society, and everything else comes second. This is really not debatable, so I’m not going to spend much time on this specifically. What I want to talk about, is work.
First, I’m going to postulate that there are 2 kinds of people (in this context). People who need to work in order to survive, and people who survive on others work. The 
people who survive on the work of other people, are the owners. Those lucky few who own factories or stocks in companies, who get to sit on their asses and watch as their factories make money for them. Most people, however, need a job to survive. A job where you produce something, be it raw materials, finished goods or services. We get hired by a company of some sort, we get told what to do with the materials at hand, and we make stuff. We don’t have anything to sell but ourselves, so we sell our work to our bosses. This is where it gets interesting. Because no matter how hard you work, you get paid the same. Allow me to demonstrate.
Meet Bob. Bob works in a factory. In one week, Bob produces 100 items, which is sold by other branches of the company. These 100 items earn the company 1000 dollars. For his one week of work, Bob gets 500 dollars paid. The next week, Bob decides to give everything he’s got, and he manages to double his productivity! Wow, amazing! Well done, Bob, you just earned the company 2000 dollars instead. For this feat, you still get 500 dollars. The week after, Bob is demoralized, and only produces 50 items. The company only earns 500 dollars, and Bob still gets his 500 dollars pay.
My point here is that no matter how productive us workers are under capitalism, we get the same amount of money. As long as we produce enough to make the company survive, there really is no motivation for us to work as hard as we can. If Bob doubles his productivity, the only person who gains from it is his boss. So why should he?
My place of work recently won a cash prize because of an index. I work in a pizzashop which is part of a chain, which measures how much each branch earns in relation to what the workers earn. Basically, its an index of which branch pays the smallest part of their profit to their workers.
Marx talked about the exploitation of the workers. Capitalism can’t survive without profit, and the bosses, the owners of companies, won’t run their companies unless they earn a healthy profit. The exploitation of workers is a problem, because in the end the work we do doesn’t benefit society, it benefits our boss.
So why not turn it around? If all the factories, companies etc. that are today privately owned, are owned by the people in stead, the profit would benefit everyone. Thats the kind of world I would like to live in.
Vegard
