From: paul cockshott (clyder@GN.APC.ORG)
Date: Fri Dec 12 2003 - 06:15:34 EST
What is at issue here is not whether wages are the same in all industries, but whether the distribution of the profit share tends to be degenerate. Empirically we know that while it is not degenerate, the profit share has a relatively narrow dispersion, we found a coefficient of variation of 0.42 for the UK economy, which is narrow compared to the dispersion of profit rates. By Farjoun and Machovers argument, this narrow dispersion of the sectoral profit shares will tend to cause the likely value of the mean profit share to be of the order of 50% (Actually it was 31% in the year we measured.) -----Original Message----- From: OPE-L [mailto:OPE-L@SUS.CSUCHICO.EDU] On Behalf Of gerald_a_levy Sent: 10 December 2003 23:45 To: OPE-L@SUS.CSUCHICO.EDU Subject: (OPE-L) Re: the real wage, and the production of surplus value Re Paul C's post on Farjoun and Machover: > More generally, if class struggle is able to establish > a uniform ratio between wages and profits for all > industries, the only possible such uniform ratio is > 50/50. Why would we anticipate a uniform ratio of wages to profits for all industries? What would be the preconditions for such a condition? Perhaps One Big Union that fought successfully against wage disparities in all industries? Or would the OBU have had to successfully fight to peg wages to profits such that as profits increased wages would be adjusted? Of course, this implies that when profits decreased then wages would decrease as well by the same proportion, willy nilly. None of this makes any sense to me, nor do I think it makes much sense as an empirical claim since there are _huge_ wage disparities in most capitalist economies in different industries, sectors, and regions. It also implies a rather odd totalizing conception of class struggle which does not well represent the actual processes of class struggle where there is the _uneven development of class struggle_. In solidarity, Jerry
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