If you're getting paid to work on something, it's not 'free labor', unless you're unable to leave. By behaving as if you've agreed to this undocumented arrangement, you've formed a 'constructive contract'.
its an interesting question, but im not sure what it has to do with the comment your replying to?
they are just saying, if you are contracted to be payed x per hour at 8hrs a day, unless you work 8 + n hours, wherein n gives you no additional hourly pay, then its free labor to the company (above and beyond contracted work hours), not sure what is controversial about that?
No company will pay for you more than what you produce, excluding exceptional circumstances. So no, it is not free money. Either it is money that you produced with your labor, or is an investment from the company to motivate you to produce more than what they are paying you for.
you have an answer in marx's capital: all surplus is wage theft because the capitalist, who does nothing, gets money from those who do the work. so any more money you get is not free, it's just a slight reduction in the money which is getting stolen from you.
what insane idea, don't believe people still citing Marx in 2023, coming from a communist country, I can just laugh hard on you. I'm working on a open source software, and our money depends directly on our work. Our CTO works side by side with us, and our bonus are all the same. That's just BS. If you want the same conditions, there are plenty of companies doing the same. Just find one.
Coming from a capitalist country, I say that money here do not depend directly on our work. The majority of people in my country works a lot and receives very little. The life for workers on farms, and meat-packing industries are particularly difficult and cruel. There are lots of people that becomes sick, or that became unable to work because of lesions. And guess that: they keep being poor and their employers are rich despite working much less. People in developed countries would understand better why Marx is still considered relevant and has worldwide appeal looking outside the comfort bubble that only a small part of countries in the world enjoy. Tech industries are not so terrible? Sure, they are not, and jobs in developed countries also are much better. But let's not forget that the goal in capitalism is increase profits, not well being of people. If and when it is necessary, the well being can be sacrificed. And even if you work in much better conditions, all the increase in productivity that you achieve will go to increase profits, not your wage. Sure, sometimes you can receive a little bonus and a good environment as a "thank you", that returns to you a small part of what you produced.
> the goal in capitalism is increase profits, not well being of people.
I thought that in 2023 would be clear to everyone that only capitalist countries were able to improve the well being of the people. I see 0 boats from Miami to Cuba, just the other way around. So even though we can agree that people working in some fields have a hard life, for a fact, we know that in the communist countries they didn't have a better life than before, as we saw in the Holodomor, the famine that was caused by the decision by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin to collectivize agriculture in 1929. Teams of Communist Party agitators forced peasants to relinquish their land, personal property. Collectivization led to a drop in production, the disorganization of the rural economy, and food shortages.
> Holodomor had a lot of reasons, collectivisation was not the main one.
It is not right. The same "collectivisation" was tried in different countries like GDR (1953 uprising), and China, great Famine, 1959. So same strategy led to same results in different countries.
Not same, since none of them have such loud names as Holodomor and are not considered genocide anywhere.
Collectivization initially leads to decrease and then to increase. In USSR result got so bad due to collection of reasons, unrelated to collectivization. Collectivization was badly needed in USSR, since 95% of population were inefficient farmers. It was a must for later industrialization.
If your employer knowingly and willfully doubles your pay without changing the contract, are you stealing from them? I think not, and it's just the other side of the coin.
Hold up. Your prior comment didn’t use the word “steal”, so I didn’t think you were talking about theft. Your prior comment used the word “free”, so I thought you were talking about “free”.
I was talking about “free” and I was not talking about “stealing”. That’s why I used the word “free” and did not use the word “stealing”.
Regarding your hypothetical, I’d say they’d be giving you approximately free money in much the same was as in the prior hypothetical you’d be giving them approximately free labor.
No, it would merely reduce the amount stolen from you.
See here [0] for more theory , but the basic tl;dr is since all value is created by labor being done (your employer, the capitalist doesn't actually do anything to create value) and not all of it is paid out in the form of wages, the workers are being exploited since value is being stolen. Reducing the amount of that wage theft is not the other side of the coin.
