From: rakeshb@stanford.edu
Date: Wed Jan 22 2003 - 19:07:17 EST
Quoting Paul Cockshott <paul@cockshott.com>: > > One has to be cautious not to mistake ones wishes for reality. It > would > be nice if all employees had, underneath it all, a common interest, > but > I dont think we can assume this. > > I think that there are real contradictions between the working class > interest in general and certain groups of employees. In particular: > > 1. Employees whose income is above the value they create are > recipients of surplus value, as such they are subsidised by > others > and have a built in interest in preserving this position. > > 2. Employees who are paid out of surplus value, rent, or profits > are dependent on the contiunity of these income streams and > as such have interests opposed to productive workers. Yes but capital must keep a tight lid on the wage demands of those workers paid out of surplus value--unproductive, albeit oppressed, workers as Carchedi puts it--if the reproduction of total social capital is to yield a positive uniform rate of profit across all its sectors--industrial, commercial and financial. Capital pays to all these workers--exploited productive and oppressed unproductive--only that wage which allows for the reproduction of labor power and the continuous expenditure of labor. The unity of the working class is thus founded on their wages (collectively and individually) being driven to the reproduction costs of labor power. Capital relies on this whether the workers are productive or unproductive. By your reasoning, productive laborers would have an interest in driving the wages of unproductive labor below the value of its labor power in order to prevent capital from having to do the same to their own wages as a countertendency to FROP. Or by your reasoning productive labor should welcome the automation of fnancial and circulation activity without any social insurance for the technologically unemployed because such insurance would only deprive capital of surplus value that it will have to try to win back by accentuating the exploitatoin of productive labor. I don't understand this attempt to drive yet another a wedge into the working class. We already have enough disunity across national, so called race and gender boundaries. Do we really need a new division in the form of productivist ideology? Yours, Rakesh
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Jan 25 2003 - 00:00:01 EST