From: michael a. lebowitz (mlebowit@SFU.CA)
Date: Sun Jun 08 2003 - 14:03:41 EDT
At 09:43 06/06/2003 -0700, you wrote:
>Michael,
>I am not getting your point here.
>
>>In short, just as in the case of changes in the standard of necessity
>>over time, differences in that standard for different groups of workers
>>are the result of class struggle--- the result of capitalist and worker
>>pressing in opposite directions. The historical premises (insofar as they
>>have affected the level of social needs) may explain why particular
>>workers do not press very hard against capital; however, it is what
>>workers accept in the present rather than the historical premises that
>>determines the level of their necessary needs.
>
>Are you saying that the vast disparity in wages between ethnic groups and
>what you call races and the sexes and nationalities come over time to be
>explicable in terms of the variance of organized struggle? But what
>would explain the variance in organized struggle? This seems to me to veer
>on an overly subjective explanation for the inter-group variance in wages.
>Do certain groups have a cultural disposition for organized class struggle
>while others simply do not? And what would then explain that variance in
>cultural disposition? Do minorities, members of poor nations, and women
>not press very hard against capital? Or are you inferring the level of
>struggle from the wages which they actually receive?
Rakesh,
I feel that your question is a bit like 'have you stopped being
subjective'? I don't think I'm being any more subjective than Marx when he
talked about capitalists and workers pressing in opposite directions-- ie.,
engaged in class struggle (which is, of course, two-sided). A critical
variable (affecting wages and the length and intensity of the workday) in
my discussion is 'the degree of separation among workers'; and this
variable clearly reflects not only struggle on the part of workers to unite
but also struggle on the part of capital to divide (which can involve-- as
Marx discussed in his seminal discussion of the situation of Irish and
English workers-- the turning of differences into antagonisms, which he
described as the 'secret' of its ability to rule). What may in any
particular case make it easier for capital to divide and/or more difficult
for workers to unite to struggle against capital is important to discuss
concretely. My point (expanded at length in a discussion of the
reproduction of wage-labour in the new edition) was the general one that if
the determination of the set of necessities entering normally into the
reproduction of workers was 'given' (both over time and for differing
groups of workers), then Marx's stress upon the competition of English and
Irish workers is hard to fathom.
>It would seem to me that your explanation for inter-group variance in
>wages is as subjective as the Keynesian explanation for the failure to
>expand the level of investment. Some groups of workers just don't struggle
>hard; capitalists lose animal spirits.
And, your explanation?
>In theorizing the dialectic between subject and object or agents and
>structure, the stick can be bent so far in the direction of the subject
>that the stick itself is broken.
>
OK, explain your structure--- once we have proceeded (as Marx intended
after CAPITAL) to relax the assumption that the standard of necessity (ie.,
the use-values entering into the value of labour-power) is given.
in solidarity,
Michael L
>Yours, Rakesh
>
>
>
>
>>
>>
>>> Of course, the wage-labourers who face capital do not only live
>>> in families. They live in neighbourhoods and communities--- indeed, are
>>> concentrated by capital in particular neighbourhoods and cities, and
>>> they live in different nations (Engels, 1845: 344, 394.). They are
>>> distinguished not only as men and women but also as members of
>>> different races, ethnic groups, etc. Once we acknowledge that 'every
>>> kind of consumption... in one way or another produces human beings in
>>> some particular aspect,' then it is not a great leap to extend this
>>> discussion of differently-produced wage-labourers to differences based
>>> on age, race, ethnicity, religion, nationality, historical
>>> circumstances and, indeed, on 'all human relations and functions,
>>> however and in whatever form they may appear.'
>>> Marx did not take this step. He limited his comments to the
>>> matter immediately at hand--- the question of the value of
>>> labour-power. Thus, he acknowledged that 'historical tradition and
>>> social habitude' played an important part in generating different
>>> standards of necessity for different groups of workers (Marx, 1865b:
>>> 145). Not only do necessary needs vary over time; they also vary among
>>> individuals and groups of workers at any given time. An obvious example
>>> was the situation of the Irish worker, for whom 'the most animal
>>> minimum of needs and subsistence appears to him as the sole object and
>>> purpose of his exchange with capital' (Marx, 1973: 285). Marx argued
>>> that their low necessary needs (compared to those of the English male
>>> worker) reflected the historical conditions under which Irish workers
>>> entered wage-labour, conditions which drove the standard of necessity
>>> to which they became accustomed to the level of physiological needs
>>> (Marx, 1977: 854-870).
>>> Yet, differences in the value of labour-power reflect more than
>>> differences in 'the social conditions in which people are placed and
>>> reared up.' The latter are merely the 'historical' premises; and, on
>>> this basis, we could never explain changes in relative wages--- e.g.,
>>> the equalisation (upward or downward) of the value of labour-power of
>>> differing groups of workers. Limited to historical premises as an
>>> explanation, 'the more or less favourable conditions' under which
>>> various groups of workers 'emerged from the state of serfdom' would
>>> appear as original sin (Marx, 1865b: 145).
>>> In short, just as in the case of changes in the standard of
>>> necessity over time, differences in that standard for different groups
>>> of workers are the result of class struggle--- the result of capitalist
>>> and worker pressing in opposite directions. The historical premises
>>> (insofar as they have affected the level of social needs) may explain
>>> why particular workers do not press very hard against capital; however,
>>> it is what workers accept in the present rather than the historical
>>> premises that determines the level of their necessary needs.
>>> The principle, of course, goes beyond the case of Irish and
>>> English workers. It encompasses not only workers of differing ethnic
>>> and national background but also male and female workers. Unless, for
>>> example, we recognise the central place of class struggle in the
>>> determination of the value of labour-power, we are left with an
>>> explanation of male/female wage differentials that rests upon the
>>> assumption of lower subsistence requirements for women. This would be
>>> as absurd as to assume that Marx believed that the value of
>>> labour-power of Irish workers would always be below that of English workers.
>>
>> in solidarity,
>> Michael L
>>
>>
>>---------------------
>>Michael A. Lebowitz
>>Professor Emeritus
>>Economics Department
>>Simon Fraser University
>>Burnaby, B.C., Canada V5A 1S6
>>Office: Phone (604) 291-4669
>> Fax (604) 291-5944
>>Home: Phone (604) 689-9510 [NOTE CHANGE]
---------------------
Michael A. Lebowitz
Professor Emeritus
Economics Department
Simon Fraser University
Burnaby, B.C., Canada V5A 1S6
Office: Phone (604) 291-4669
Fax (604) 291-5944
Home: Phone (604) 689-9510 [NOTE CHANGE]
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