From: Ian Wright (ian_paul_wright@HOTMAIL.COM)
Date: Tue Dec 30 2003 - 14:00:33 EST
Hello Jerry, Apologies for the very delayed response but I have been away. The trail has probably gone cold by now ... >* Can't class struggle -- which, after all, is rooted in the relations > of production -- have a role within systemic explanations? > All hitherto history, after all, is a history of what? Yes class struggle can play a role in systemic explanations. But the distinction I was trying to make was between explanations that are rooted in the objective relations of production that generate unintended consequences (e.g., income distribution, and, hypothetically, the relative shares in national income) compared to explanations rooted in conscious, goal-directed activity that generate intended consequences (e.g., labour organisation to defend wages). As a heuristic I'd favour examining the former kind of explanation first, primarily because the relations of production are invariant to capitalism, whereas the causal efficacy of the class struggle is conditional. But this is only a methodological prejudice -- I don't have a theory of the determination of the shares in national income. >* _If_ there is a relatively stable wage to profit share, what > are the 'systemic' causes 'absent the class struggle'? Don't know. I'm working on things that may produce some hypotheses eventually, perhaps along the lines that there are theoretical bounds to the shares, beyond which the system begins to break down, in terms of rising unemployment, higher probability of recessions etc. I'd be interested in any pointers to existing work on endogenous explanations of income shares. -Ian. _________________________________________________________________ Help STOP SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail
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