Is there literally any kind of Marxist basis for this asshole's position? Baristas grind up beans and add hot water and hot milk, and thus their labor turns the coffee beans and milk into a commodity. It's textbook extraction of surplus value. Am I missing something there? Is it because the beans and milk are also commodities, or what? Can someone explain this to me?
Nah, baristas would still be workers under a Confucian framework because they transform already preexisting material into something new, in this case transforming coffee beans into a beverage. It is no coincidence that the word gong, which used in this context means craftsmen and artisans, means work or worker in modern Chinese. "Working class" in Mandarin is gongren jieji, "labor party" is gongdang.