From: Ian Wright (ian_paul_wright@HOTMAIL.COM)
Date: Fri Jan 02 2004 - 14:28:49 EST
Hello Michael, Thanks for taking an interest. >I don't understand how income distribution can be separated from >class struggle. Is the suggestion that workers' wages are independent of >their struggles (eg., the formation of trade unions)? What exactly do you >mean by 'the objective relations of production' that generate income >distribution? Empirically, in advanced capitalist countries, there are universal functional forms that describe income distribution of individuals. For example, the distribution of the majority of incomes is well described by an exponential or lognormal distribution, whereas the higher property-incomes are characterised by a Pareto (power) law. These features are common across countries and across time. These functional forms are not the result of class struggle, but are unintended consequences of the social relations of production, that is capitalists that pay wages and earn profits, and workers that perform work and earn wages, coupled with buying and selling in competitive marketplaces mediated by money. My claim is that these features of the economy are a sufficient explanation of the observed functional forms of income distribution. In other words, causal factors deriving from psychology, whether modelled as individual neoclassical rationality or collected under the rubric of collective class struggle, are not the determinant factors in the generation of these income phenomena. They are very much consequences of enduring social relations, which are of course implemented in the psychology and actions of economic actors, but are not reducible to such things. In my view, the social relations of production constitute an abstract, but nonetheless real, enduring social architecture that constrains the possibilities that economic actors may choose between, whether rationally or otherwise. This underlies my methodological prejudice in favour of structural explanations rooted in the totality of social relations, prior to consideration of conscious reactions to the social environment, such as the formation of defensive coalitions, such as trade unions. In general, the former explain the necessity of the latter. But to emphasise again, I have an open mind regarding the role of class struggle in the determination of wage and profit shares in national income, except for the prejudice just outlined. My guess is however, that similarly to the case of individual income distributions, the aggregate shares of national income received by the various classes will also largely be determined by structural, objective features of capitalist organisation. >And, can you find a basis in Marx or Engels for this separation? The causal priority of the social relations of production and the forces of production compared to individual and collective rationality is in Marx and Engels. But they don't provide a deduction from the social relations to the functional form of income distributions, and I wouldn't expect them to. That's a non-obvious deduction, which I've only asserted rather than demonstrated. -Ian. _________________________________________________________________ STOP MORE SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail
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