Where does profit come from for self-employed workers. That is, workers who sell goods...

the self employed wroker gets the full value of their labour but the value of the commodity produced is determined by the general value of the commodity under worker capital relations.

tbh I never really understood the labour theory of value, but I don't think it's really needed, wage labour is an essential part of work/production and if you have wage labour you have the theft of surplus labour.

You realize what you said banks on the LTV being true, right?

The exploitation thesis only works if you can prove there is an objective exploitation beyond "my boss is a dick and doesn't treat me well, and i would be making great art if it wasn't for needing moneys". Well you can have many relationships in your life having nothing to do with jobs that puts you in such a situation.

They use their labour to transform one commodity into another which has a higher exchange value. (Or they make a service, which still uses commodities, albeit its more labour focussed). What did you think, that profit appears out of thin air?

They don't extract surplus value in the marxist sense since they get all of the added financial value they create (which is the money left after subtracting all costs and deprecation which is a cost from the sales income). If they don't have employees to pay less than those employees create, then there is no surplus value that he can extract.

No it doesn't. Surplus value existing is perfectly regular economics, but mainstream economics never name it because:

1. It makes them look bad and might cause trouble
2. It has no administrative benefit to evaluate each workers surplus value since in all but a few jobs many hands are required to finish the same product, so its hard to quantify per worker. It is easier to quantify it as a whole or by grouping workers together.

No it's not. It's just called profit, and it's considered to have nothing specifically to do with what goes on in production. A snake oil salesman and a merchant makes profit without any value shifting around in regular econ theories.

Apple sells $250 phones for $600 not off the back of its workers, but because buyers are just silly ignorant goyim.

If the iPhone were plainly sold at its labor value, its perceived value in the market would be much less, Apple would be out of business in short order, and the next company that comes along would probably use cheaper materials. Since Apple can demand "excessive profit" for its product, the public has more time to experience the technological achievement and ingenious design that the iPhone represents.

Individual capitals don't receive the surplus value they appropriate directly. Given equilibrium conditions, firms operating with the socially normal standards of productivity (ratio of constant capital to variable capital ) will receive a profit (the average rate of profit) that is equivalent to the surplus value they directly extract.

Firms with greater than average productivity though directly appropriating less surplus value (given lesser quantity of variable capital) receive profits greater than the average and quantitatively beyond the surplus value they produce. Inversely, firms with less than average productivity while directly appropriating more surplus value actually receive less in the form of profit.

No individual capitalist receives what they pump out and capture–through competition and the movement of capitals, surplus value is distributed among all capitals in a manner tending towards but always diverting from the average rate of profit.

Finish all three volumes you dinguses. It's not THAT hard.

So, if you had a society of 100% self employment (lets ignore the practically of that for a moment), there would be no exploitation?

Would that actually still technically be capitalism?

Petit bourgies are irrelevant, as they will become prols once the big fish eats the small fish.

Now, the whole neoliberal "Be a worker, but not a worker, as you are "self employed" but depend on the corporation to have your service promoted" is the absolute perversion of capitalism. *snif*

It would not be industrial capitalism, that's for sure. In that all industries might given the same social norms still seek only to increase profits they would be capitalists in that the aim of their activities is the expansion of capital, not the production of goods or creating for creation's sake.

I know, I said that in my comment. It is just a concept that exists but if ignored because its not usefull to the capitalists. You don't need LTV with its use value and SNLT and all that, surplus value is exclusively about exchange value, money.

They don't profit. They do all the work themselves.

Would self employment exist in communism? If the MOP belong to everybody, they couldn't own a business even if they didn't employ anyone, right?

There wouldn't be any point in owning a business. You make no money doing it when the value of everything else offered is zero or close to it.

...

this

From what I read here, it's not capitalism unless you can attach some kind of personality flaw to it, so no.