Thanks Rakesh for your prompt reply. The topic on forms of wages I think it is important to include contemporary forms of retribution such as "participation in profits obtained" or more generically and euphemisticly speaking 'participation in the performance of the firm'. Here in Brasil we refer to this as "Participação nos Lucros e Resultados das empresas". This is to me an important phenomena for it intermingles with new forms of organization of the labor process such as the so-called teamwork. They seem to reduce to new forms of extraction of absolute surplus value in as much as they amount to an increase in involvement and intensity of labor on the part of the worker. So the analysis should incorporate time and piece wages but should also go behyond: the new experiences I think could show the importance of the concepts we have at hand for the analysis of new phenomena. About the formally unfree labor. Are there slaves in the USA? I think not. At least not on sacale we have here, hidden in the dark of forest, faraway and inaccessible places, sometimes not even so inaccessible. That suggets a rupture between advanced capitalism and backward regions and this rupture is related to the absolute degree of misery, isolation and corruption (that is the maintenance of the police on the side of the exploreres), as the article shown in OPE-l made us believe. If so, then we can say that whenever those conditions exist or are created there returns the possibility of unfree forms of exploitation. there is much more to develop about the circunstances surrounding slave labor nowadays. One of them, which is related to the issue of isolation is the relative absence of a labor market in the region. The existence of such a labor market would on its own function as a check on slave labor for it would entail free workers mobility and therefore the availability of information. Well, thanks a lot for the references you suggested ( I took note of them). Paulo Rakesh Bhandari wrote: > re Paulo's 6828 > > >Hi Cyrus, welcome to the Ope-l. The title of the book you co-edited interests > >me. Would you please send us the table of contents, even if briefly stated. > >Thank you, > >Paulo > > > >P.S. I have been thinking about how a marxian book on labor economics would > >look like and came to the following points > > > >I. Inclusion > >1. exploitation > >2. forms of wages and exploitation > > Paulo, > while I2a may include analysis of time vs piece wages and I2b wages > vs. salaries, would I2c include analysis of formally free and > formally unfree forms of *capitalist* exploitation? What did you make > of the story that I downloaded in OPE-L 6817? I have had some offlist > discussion with Patrick Mason about this, and I am trying to > encourage him to return. > > Have you reviewed Ingrid H Rima Labor Markets in a Global Economy > (Armonk, NY: ME Sharpe, 1996)? > > > > >II. Exclusion > >3. technological change and exclusion (industrial reserve army) > > Chris Freeman wrote an interesting book on technological > unemployment. I learned a great deal from this forgotten classic, > Alexander Gourvitch, Survey of Economic Theory on Technological > Change and Employment, New York: Augustus Kelley, 1966 [1940]. > > >4. exclusion and self-employment > >5. historicam transformation in the composition of the resenve army > > One interesting aspect here is border politics. As workers have been > laid off in the US, they have found themselves returning back to > Latin American, Mexico in particular. > > Another interesting aspect would be the export of workers. Do > exporting countries really relieve unemployment and collect hard > currency through the export of workers? If there is a net loss, then > would do they allow it? Can they stop it? > > > > >IV. labor process and forms of control > >6. technological change, labor process and forms of control over labor > > Interesting that Rima has little to say about this, but I am sure > Tony Smith does. > > > > >V. Differentiation > >7. competition and wage differentials > >8. wage differentials and different rates of exploitation > > > >I would like to hear from our colleagues what they think would compose a table > >of contents of a book on labor economics. > >Paulo > > > > All the best, Rakesh
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