Comment by thundergolfer

I'm not sure you understand Marx. The author probably has read Marx during their philosophy training.

'cost centre' does not mean a place that a capitalist is unable to perform exploitation. A cost center in Marxist terms can be understood as a department that participates in the money-commodity-money' (MCM') flow but doesn't directly complete the circuit to M'.

For example, delivering and receiving mail does not realize profit for most companies, but is an essential part of the business. If they spend $1,000,000 on the mail department in Q1, spending $2,000,000 in Q2 is likely to waste the extra $1,000,000. But spending zero in Q2 would cripple the company. That's a cost centre.