a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment
beezneez  ·  3457 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: 9th Triumphant Biweekly Let's Hear a Quote from Your Recent Reading Whatever

    The human being is no longer a component of the machine but a worker, a user... Of course, it was the modern State and capitalism that brought the triumph of the machines, in particular of motorized machines...; but what we are referring to now are technical machines, which are definable extrinsically.
[...]
    The wage regime can therefore take the subjection of human beings to an unprecedented point, and exhibit a singular cruelty, yet still be justified in its humanist cry: No, human beings are not machines, we don't treat them like machines, we certainly don't confuse variable capital and constant capital...

The differences between variable capital and constant capital could be exemplified in the variation between minimum wage and rent.