From: gerald_a_levy (gerald_a_levy@MSN.COM)
Date: Thu Jun 05 2003 - 06:46:51 EDT
I agree with Paolo: the Meillassoux interview was very interesting. On the question of 'guest workers', I think that Meillassoux is basically correct: not only can immigrant workers help capital to overcome possible shortages of labour-power but they are (generally) paid wages below the value of labour-power. What strikes me as missing, though, in the Meillasoux interview, and in Rakesh's musings on Marx's theory, is the non-recognition of the "cultural and moral" component of the wage. To grasp the cultural and moral component more concretely, one must: a) recognize that wage determination is brought about through class struggle. One can not simply assert that wages will adjust to whatever the 'needs' of capital are. b) recognize how different histories of struggle internationally have resulted in different national 'standards' (or averages) of wages -- which are constantly in flux. These international disparities in wages -- and the value of labour-power -- must be comprehended. Whether the "male bread winner" would or would not "tend" to "win a family wage" has to be comprehended within this context -- i.e. it has to be understood more concretely in terms of the particular context in terms of time and space of wage determination. Rakesh writes that Marx did not believe that the "male bread winner would tend to win a family wage within a developed capitalist system." That is probably true, but Marx did not assert either that there was a contrary tendency which would necessarily dominate for those male workers to not win a "family wage." c) the role of the state, and the extent and limits to which reforms re wages and labor standards can be won through struggle, must also be grasped. I do not think that Marx held that child labor, for instance, would become generalized under capitalism. Indeed, there were already some limits on child labor being imposed by states in some advanced (for the time) capitalist nations during Marx's lifetime. Marx, though, understood that _if the logic of capital dominated_, then child labor would be preserved and expanded. He also knew, though, that it was possible, through workers' organization, to fight for and win laws against child labor. And he understood that the needs of capital _alone_ do not determine wages or the persistence of child labor -- the aspirations, collective organization, solidarity, and resistance of the working class have to be reckoned with. One must realize, moreover, that the specific subject of _Capital_, and hence the context in which child labor was discussed there, was capital and hence wage-labor was incompletely (one-sidedly) grasped and the state was explicitly abstracted from (even though some of the historical sections refer to state policies, the role of the state within the context of the subject matter of capitalism was not theorized). In solidarity, Jerry Excerpt from Rakesh's post: > Not only did Marx not think that the male bread winner would tend to win a family wage in the developed capitalist system, Marx explicitly showed how with the development of technology capital was able to and forced by the threat of moral depreciation to raise the rate of exploitation by hiring hitherto dependent women and children and thereby displacing the family wage earning male head of the household. Marx's point was that capital would bring the whole family under its heel: a closed capitalism can, did and would break the power of the family wage earner.<
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Jun 07 2003 - 00:00:00 EDT