the difference between the value the worker produces for the boss/factory owner/borjwazee (joking typo) in the process of their workday (from the value of whatever commodity they make), and the money they’re given at the end of the day for their work that produced that value.

a worker sells specifically the labor power that produces that surplus value, not just their hours (something of the sort, because marx made a big fuss about the distinction between labor power as a term and labor in whatever pamphlet i read a year ago now).

this is a Contradiction, because the boss didn’t do anything, it just owns the factory and the rights to the money when it sells the product the worker made. so it’s profiting from the labor power/surplus value taken from the worker. a contradiction is one of the tensions in the system of capitalism that will eventually have to become so irreconcilable that the workers who are getting shafted will obviously do something to. fix it and wrest control away.

in addition, the worker has to surrender this because they’re in the wage slavery system under capitalism, where necessities are withheld unless they have the money/wages to pay for it.

for capitalism to work it needs someone to be poor. this is when i get confused, because i am prone to the anti-communist questions and ignorance that i was indoctrinated with. if there’s no reason to work outside of necessity, how is enough produced like it is in AES? there was the inertia of voluntary manpower to set up things like industry in the first years of AES like PRC (with help from USSR), and then after that, to build light industry, there’s things like markets/modernization á la Deng, and then i suppose mechanization or automation will then remove the human worker from the equation?

anyways, also, before improvements in technology, most owned some means of production and sold their work or commodity themselves, like artisans as a class, who are in control of the means of production and the thing they make, but this is inefficient (as compared to the output of, say, a factory as compared to this cottage industry). as enterprises outcompete these small artisans they diminish. i don’t get the significance of this, i just know it’s there. these petit bourgeoisie can sometimes be reactionary like the luddites who felt industry and technology was a threat and then just attacked technology. i’m not sure how else they’re significant, i just know they were there, especially in the emergence of capitalism i think, so maybe i don’t need to know that much? anyways

imperialism in lenin’s definition, which is basically the only useful one (god forbid the term is also interchangeably used for “expansionism”, that’s something i’ve seen, sorry to bring that up cuz it’s unrelated, i’m just annoyed) is the imposition of a foreign country or borjwazee on another country to extract more capital(?)

in a capitalist system, there are basic processes that lead to a uniform conclusion. first off, a bigger company that has more capital will absorb more capital, and eventually you reach monopoly. big gets bigger: they have the money to make better products, invest in more cost-effective machinery, etc. and buy out smaller enterprises if need be = monopoly.

at a certain point, the monopoly gets so big it doesn’t have much to do, or can’t grow any more without doing Imperialism.

it has to expand because they have finite people in their country. if i’m highly developed industry some point in USA history, and i’ve run out of people to sell to because at first i’m contained to national market, how can i increase profits?

if i want to dramatically increase profits even though the customer pool is still limited, i can do a few things. i could pay my workers less (in a situation before outsourcing, if this was USA and i pay workers less and then they’re my only consumers, there’s less of my product sold) or i can mechanize more (same effect) or do other cost cuts in the production process

but once all the corners to cut are cut, and all the wages to slash are slashed, what else?

that’s when it expands elsewhere. also at a point the industry/enterprise becomes married to the banks, the monopoly basically ensures it’s always the best course for the banks to feed them and get a return on their investment to the point that they are so synergetic they become unified in some way.

then, at that point, they can do things like buy up other enterprises abroad to suck up the money and bring it back to the core ->

(at which point i don’t know the specific process that happens to it, but i just know it’s definitely got something to do with the ‘service sector’ and how nobody really produces shit, they just have a big ‘tertiary’ or heck even the ‘quaternary’ sector nonsense. your job is transitioned into something where you don’t produce something necessarily [but i feel like i’m wrong because things like service jobs do create surplus value i think? like baristas, or people that just ship already existing commodities, etc. etc?])

-> so less value is even kept within the imperialized country, hence why they remain underdeveloped and stagnant.

in addition, if they have any risk of growing independent and not having to rely on the capital export of another country, organizations like the WTO or other banking bodies can leverage things against them, but also things like blockades or diplomatic isolation, hell even military action to destabilize are things that happen for the sake of imperialism (RSF, NATO proxy war in hopes the rich can get richer, Iran war, iraq war, etc.)

then what’s the difference between that and foreign investment? because so many stupid idiots whine about BRI or other PRC initiatives or see them as imperialism. but isn’t it self evident PRC doesn’t impoverish the countries they’re undergoing this trade with or impose such conditions? not all trade counts as imperialism, then, since the definition is exclusively when industry employs coercive and destructive mechanisms to maximize profit