: The owning class in a capitalist society, however, lives by appropriating this surplus value. Here's how it's done. The owning class pays the working class an average wage sufficient enough to reproduce itself at the level of basic subsistence if it works N hours per week on average, plus an additional amount covering some partial amount of the surplus value.I thought you might have to add that last line in - the additional amount over and and above subsistence sufficient to reproduce. Well that additional amount is huge, given that the kinds of lifestyles lived by most people in the west are a *long* way from subsistence.
Now do regale us with an acount of this additional income being necessary to keep 'the masses' docile and well fed - 'bread and circuses' I think the phrase is.
Maybe at some point we can move away from LTV and discus why those exceptional people who 'conceive, plan, design' as ewe were discussing previously would want to carry on doing so when their reward is the exact same as for doing the simplest mechanical task for a few hours a day?
