Not to disagree with the point itself, I have seen a post that the top 10% use 50% of the consumer goods. While googling for a source, I saw that rich countries use six times the resources of poor countries.
What’s the real number? If wages are only a fraction of expenses, it’s difficult to calculate.
Essentially, commodities trend towards being sold at their values, and thus profit comes from the wages taken from the average laborer in the supply chain. That boils it down and skips over all of the nuance and backing, though, so I like this Extremely Condensed Summary of Capital. Be sure to read Capital itself, though, if you get the chance!
That’s a very nice summary, thank you. However, I don’t see how it answers my question.
A real iceberg would imply that a capitalist would take 7/8 of the value. However, that article about consumer goods suggests that capitalists only take 50%.
To me, it seems that motivating workers for rebellion will be difficult if they can only gain twice their current resources.
The answer is that it depends on firm, industry, sector, country, and more. Countries in the Global South perform the majority of the labor for the Global North’s consumption via Imperialism, as a quick example.
Motivation for revolution doesn’t solely lie in the idea that any given worker can buy twice as many funko pops, for example. It lies in the fact that no system is static, and thus the value expropriated increases over time into fewer and fewer hands, without that being necessary in the slightest. Issues like Climate Change are sidelined by the pursuit of profit, there are more reasons than a simple in/out equation for humanity to wrest control of Capital and make it work for all. There’s also the potential for democratization and lowering working hours.
