good, glad i was able to get the point across...even for you! :~P

It's not tautological because it assumes that __management contributes nothing.__ Management's decisions about what to build in, how to build it, etc... are worth __nothing__ to Marxists.

Related: when Marxism was actually implemented, they had big problems with not building the right things, and building the things they did build poorly. For example a factory was assigned the task of building N pounds of nails a day, so they just built one giant nail that weighed N pounds (and was totally useless) rather than buliding what was needed. Because it turns out, management is actually needed and useful.

[And so are price signals, but let's take baby steps here!]

> Management's decisions about what to build in, how to build it, etc... are worth __nothing__ to Marxists.

this is so wrong. management is labor, too.

The Marxist view is that capitalism is inherently exploitive. You said it yourself: the capitalists are "captur[ing] a portion of the labor's true value." That isn't something you say about someone who is doing an essential part of the work.

In the Marxist view, the work just inherently "happens" (like water flowing down a stream) and capitalists can only be like a water wheel "capturing the value" that's flowing past. Of course, this is bullshit, but that is the mentality.