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I can't say offhand Paul, and I'm at a technical university which wouldn't
have the volume. But I'll check it up when I return to Sydney in early
July--a reminder to do so about that time wouldn't go astray, by the way!
But in answer to the second question, I accept Marx's position that the
minimum wage is dependent "on the habits and degree of comfort in which the
class of free labourers has been formed... there enters into the
determination of the value of labour power a historical and moral element."
(Capital I: 167)
Cheers,
Steve
>From: Paul Zarembka <zarembka@acsu.buffalo.edu>
>Reply-To: ope-l@galaxy.csuchico.edu
>To: ope-l@galaxy.csuchico.edu
>Subject: [OPE-L:3479] Re: "Debunking Economics" and Marx's value theory
>Date: Sun, 11 Jun 2000 08:09:35
>
>Steve, How do your citations compare to the careful reconstruction by
>Lapides, *Marx's Wage Theory in Historical Perspective: Its Origins,
>Development and Interpretations*, 1998? Does minimum wage mean for you
>biological subsistence? Paul Z.
>
>***********************************************************************
>Paul Zarembka, supporting RESEARCH IN POLITICAL ECONOMY
>******************** http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/PZarembka
>
>
>"Steve Keen" <stevekeen10@hotmail.com> said, on 06/11/00:
>
> >I argue that Marx clearly and properly
> >equates to the value of the means of subsistence--is not the actual wage,
> > but the minimum wage. I have cited these references numerous times
> >before on OPE (has anyone ever read them, I wonder??), but here we go
> >again:
>
> >"The natural price of labour is nothing but the minimum wage." (*The
> >Poverty of Philosophy*, p. 55 [though this clearly predates his
> >dialectic analysis, the dialectic made this insight more profound]);
>
> >In a section of the *Grundrisse* entitled "*The minimum of wages*", Marx
> >shows that the statement that labour receives only its value is an
> >assumption, to be dropped at a later stage of analysis:
>
> >Quote: "For the time being, necessary labour supposed as such; i.e. that
> >the worker always obtains only the minimum of
> >wages. This supposition is necessary, of course, so as to establish the
> >laws of profit in so far as they are not determined
> >by the rise and fall of wages or by the influence of landed property. All
> > these fixed suppositions themselves become fluid in
> >the further course of development." (p. 817)
>
> >And so on; there are several other instances. Whenever Marx compares the
> >wage to the value of labor-power, he speaks of the "minimum wage".
>
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