[K-Dog]

Why profit is theft

Right now, as you're listening to this, you are being robbed. A chunk of everything your hard work creates is being stolen from you. And it's a system called capitalism that's robbing you. Every day, when you check in to work for your boss, you are being taken advantage of and stolen from. You are being deprived of the full value of what you contribute.

What is a capitalist? Let me break it down. A capitalist isn't someone in a top hat burning library books to run a misery factory. Anyone who puts forward capital – money – to set workers in motion becomes a capitalist, and their goal is to turn a profit. People will tell you it's innovation, or competition, but down in the real world, it's pretty simple: capitalists have one goal, and that goal is to turn a profit. Pursuing profits to accumulate money is just how capitalism works. That's the nature of the beast. It's the single impulse of capitalism. That doesn't make capitalists personally greedy, though some might be. We're not even talking about good or evil here: capitalists need to maximize profit, to the exclusion of all other considerations, or they'll get eaten up by capitalists who are smarter or more ruthless than them. The Jungle Law. That's the jungle law of the market. So capitalists need profit to survive.

But where does this profit come from? That's where you come in. Literally. Profit comes from YOU. Here's a little thought experiment. Meet Harold. Harold has a chain of buildings full of kitchens full of ingredients. But Harold doesn't know how to make a burger himself. How does Harold get someone to make enough burgers that he can sell them and turn a profit? It's not a trick question – he pays you! Because you know how to make really good burgers. The money he uses to pay you is what we call "capital." That's money used to set production into motion.

Let's say Harold spent $1,000 buying all the ingredients in the restaurant. After you work for a few weeks there—turning the ingredients into burgers—they brought in $3,000. That's not bad! You added $2,000 worth of value to the ingredients.

But wait. You don't get all the money.

Because Harold now has $3,000 on his hands. $1,000 of that just covers the cost of the ingredients. And if you were paid for the full value of your labor, you'd be making $2,000.

But then Harold decides not to pay you for the full value of your labor. Maybe he pays you just $1,000 of the value you produced. Maybe he pays you $1,500. The Dirty Truth. No matter what, you've been stolen from. You spent more of your labor than you were compensated for. But here's the dirty truth: the story doesn't end with you and Harold. This process plays out across your city or town, your state, the country and the entire world – the rich get richer and the little guy barely gets by. We call the process – a boss's stealing from you – "exploitation." We don't mean that in an emotional sense about how we feel about it, but something that's actually a documented economic phenomenon – the gap between how much the worker produces and how much they get paid. Exploitation is a universal feature of capitalist economies. And it never ends: the system requires more and more exploitation – paying workers less, making them work more, or making them more productive without increasing wages.

When you see in the newspaper that a corporation's recording record profits, that is what they are doing: your hard work is producing more value, but you're not getting enough compensation in return. There are tens of thousands of Harolds out there. But billions of people just like you. You and Harold are two different types of people. You belong to two different classes. There's a capitalist who owns the means to produce goods and services, and there's workers who only have their own labor to survive on. The capitalists appropriate the value that the worker's labor creates and keeps it for themselves. And you are not immune from it. At any job you work at, the condition of your employment is that you produce more by your labor than you get paid. So in the capitalist system, no one is paid what they're worth. Capitalism means they get paid significantly less. All profit is value extraction. And that means that all profit is theft – from you.

This is Richard Wolff, professor of economics at the New School and founder of Democracy at Work, for the Gravel Institute.

And to make matters worse, Harolds don't just control the means of production; they also effectively control the political system. Through massive campaign donations, high-paid lobbyists, and their ownership of influential media outlets, the Harolds of the world ensure that laws and regulations are written to favor their interests, not yours. They fund the politicians who promise to cut taxes on corporations, weaken unions, and dismantle worker protections, all under the guise of "economic growth" or "job creation." This ensures that any chance you have to collectively bargain for fairer wages, safer working conditions, or a greater share of the value you create is systematically undermined. They create a system where the rules of the game are rigged in their favor, making it nearly impossible for workers to challenge the exploitation and secure a truly fair shake, or to create a more just fair, and sustainable world.

This is K-Dog, webmaster of this place on the dark web, for the Doomstead Diner.

[K-Dog]

Should America be run like a business?

If we elect Donald Trump and let him run the country like you run a business.

If a commercial company operated the way the federal government does, then it would go immediately bankrupt.

Let me make it clear. Government should not be run like a business.

Now, of course, no one wants their tax dollars wasted. Cutting government waste is a good thing. But you must be careful and methodical. You must make precise cuts with a scalpel, not a - chainsaw! There's a big difference between cutting waste and running America like a business.

First and foremost, the goal of business is to make the most profit possible. Corporations like McDonald's and Walmart, they don't exist for the public good. They exist to maximize their shareholder returns. This often means paying their workers as little as possible.

Before I started comedy, I used to work at McDonald's making minimum wage. Do you know what it means when somebody pays you minimum wage? You know what your boss was trying to say? It's like, "Hey, if I could pay you less, I would." That's why you end up subsidizing Walmart and McDonald's with your tax dollars.

Many Walmart and McDonald's employees rely on government programs like food stamps and Medicaid to make ends meet. When McDonald's says "I'm loving it," the "it" they're referring to is the profits. The aim of government should be to make life better for the people. To provide services that help our nation achieve the common good. It's the very first sentence of the Constitution. See? Promote the general welfare.

And let's not forget.  Running a government like a business isn't just inefficient, it's dangerous. Look at what happened in the Soviet Union under Stalin. He reversed the revolutionary ideals of worker control, turning the state into a top-down autocracy that functioned like a ruthless corporation.  Exploiting labor, Stalin prioritized output over people, and he crushed dissent. The wished for "dictatorship of the proletariat" became just another dictatorship, betraying the workers it claimed to empower. A government should serve its citizens, not treat them like expendable cogs in a profit machine. State capitalism is not a replacement.

The aim of government should be to make life better for the people. To provide services that help our nation achieve the common good. It's the very first sentence of the Constitution. See? Promote the general welfare. (K-Dog's value added content)

But making people's lives better costs money and it doesn't return a profit. Wait, hold on a second. Making a profit is not the point of government. Should we gut health care services for our veterans because it's not profitable? What about inspecting our food? Should we cut Social Security and let seniors starve?

And think about schools, highways, libraries, national parks, mail delivered by the Postal Service. These are public goods that are paid for by the public and are available to everybody. That's the beauty of them.

What politicians really mean when they say they want to "run the government like a business" is they want to privatize services for their corporate backers. Wall Street would love to have its hands on your Social Security. The Trump Organization would love to turn Yellowstone National Park into a private resort for only the wealthiest to enjoy. It's not about efficiency or because these public goods "cost too much." That's rubbish.

Private corporations want to profit at your expense. But we are citizens, not customers. We're voters, not shareholders. Trump and his cabinet are not our CEO and board of directors. They are supposed to be public servants. They are supposed to be working for us.

And let's not forget Trump sucks at running businesses anyway. I can make a whole video about Trump's many, many business failures. And I have. You can watch that next. Businesses take risks in pursuit of money. That is perfectly fine. And if you run a company into the ground, you can go bankrupt like Donald Trump and start a new one. But when you take risks with the US government, you're gambling with people's lives, their constitutional rights, and their pursuit of happiness. You can't just shrug it off and start another country. Again.  The purpose of government is not to show a profit. It's to achieve the common good.

[K-Dog]

Marxist Theory in Anthropology and Sociology

In the broadest sense imaginable, Marxism is a conflict-oriented economic interpretation of history based on the works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. It developed into two separate traditions: one political, which aimed to overthrow capitalism in favor of some form of communism, and the other academic, which is far less politically oriented. The academic tradition exists as a form of criticism, an analytical method, and a theoretical lens used to examine everything from literature and architecture to race, gender, and political economy.

The academic tradition is frequently distorted and attacked by reactionaries who will do whatever they can do divorce a connection between Marxism and economics in the popular mind.  Such a divorce in fact makes no sense since the academic tradition was developed by Marx so he could study economics.  The academic tradition being Dialectical Materialism.  It is notable that reactionaries have no idea what Dialectical Materialism is and the louder they scream the louder is their admission of ignorance (Jordan Peterson being a notable example  (K-Dogs value added content)).


Why is Marxism conflict-oriented? In their reading of history, Marx and Engels focused on technological innovation and class conflict as the driving forces behind social development and change. While this is a simplification, they argued that all societies progressed through four stages: primitive communism, slavery, feudalism, and capitalism. Each stage was characterized by distinct technological modes of production and the revolutionary tensions between the wealthy and the poor.

For example, in primitive communism—which Marx imagined as a Stone Age hunter-gatherer society—productive labor was shared equally. Over time, technological innovations like agriculture and animal domestication led to specialized labor, creating class divisions. Some people gained power and established laws to maintain their dominance, resulting in class conflict. This dynamic, Marx argued, drives societal change: new technology exacerbates class tensions, leading to revolutionary shifts in social organization.

That scratches the surface, but leaves way too much out.

Marxist Cultural Theory

In Marxist cultural theory, this historical interpretation was combined with a structural model dividing societies into two parts for analysis:

    The Base (Infrastructure) – This consists of the technological means of production (industry, land, natural resources) and the social interactions
    tied to economic activity (buying, selling, labor relations).

    The Superstructure – This includes media, education, religion, politics, and law—the cultural institutions that shape identities and ideologies.

In classical Marxist theory, the base and superstructure exist in a dynamic relationship, each influencing the other. Marxist sociologists and anthropologists applied this model using dialectical analysis, a method that examines social groups in terms of their conflicting interests. For instance, to understand the bourgeoisie (factory and business owners), Marxist critique would analyze how their economic interests clash with those of the proletariat (working class). The dialectical approach simplifies complex social phenomena into binary conflicts, theorizing how these tensions might resolve or lead to new social structures.
Marxist Criticism

While simplified here, these models were highly influential in the social sciences. They formed the backbone of Soviet anthropology and post-revolutionary Chinese social theory, while also shaping

I am beginning to think this video is a wolf in sheep's clothing.  That last oversimplification was disgusting.  Here is some nuance:

Gramsci's revisions to Base-Superstructure Theory

Rejection of Economic Determinism: Gramsci strongly opposed the crude interpretation that the economic base mechanically determines the superstructure. While maintaining that economic relations are ultimately foundational, he emphasized the superstructure's active role in maintaining social order.

    Two-Layered Superstructure: Gramsci divided the superstructure into:

    Political Society: The state and its coercive apparatus (law, police, military)
    Civil Society: Cultural institutions (education, media, religion) that generate consent.

    Hegemony as the Key Mechanism: The ruling class maintains power not just through economic control (base) but primarily through cultural hegemony - getting subordinate classes to accept the existing order as "common sense" via civil and social.

    Relative Autonomy: Gramsci argued superstructural elements like ideology have significant autonomy from the base and can react back upon it.
    Counter-Hegemony: Revolutionary change requires winning the "war of position" in civil society before the "war of maneuver" to seize state power.


Western academic criticism.

However, Marxism has faced significant critiques:

    Anthropological Criticisms: Classical Marxist readings of history were seen as overly deterministic and Eurocentric. They imposed a European model of development onto non-European societies, a flaw heavily criticized up through the 1970s.

    Empirical Criticisms: Since Marx viewed social science as a tool for political change, his theories (and those of his followers) were often accused of partisan bias, raising questions about the objectivity of Marxist research.

By the late 20th century, postmodernism led to a generational shift away from grand Marxist narratives. Yet, many scholars retained Marxism's focus on ideology, power, and economic critique, adapting it to analyze contemporary struggles. Thinkers like Judith Butler, Alain Badiou, Slavoj Žižek, and Axel Honneth have reimagined Marxist dialectics to examine race, gender, labor, trans rights, and minority identities.

Today, Marxism is best understood as a diverse theoretical movement with a complex past—one that reemerged as a profound critique of capitalism and its systems of exploitation, mirrored in global liberation movements.

I have to wind this up in a larger font because Marxists absolutely did not make this video.  It is a slick package that may lead you into thinking you are going to learn about Marxism watching it, but the actual fact is that this is a reactionary video that does everything it can to ignore and cancel the foundation of class struggle on which Marxism is built.

Alain Badiou, Slavoj Žižek, and Axel Honneth have all faced accusations of being reactionary.

The dialectical approach simplifies complex social phenomena into binary conflicts.

Is an insult.  And very clever.

Dialectics Is Not Binary Reductionism – It's the Opposite

The dialectical method, properly understood, is a dynamic framework for analyzing contradictions without collapsing them into simplistic binaries. Far from being a "simplification," it reveals how apparent opposites interpenetrate, transform, and generate new syntheses through historical movement.