From: Simon Mohun (s.mohun@QMUL.AC.UK)
Date: Tue Jan 06 2004 - 09:07:24 EST
Paul Z: There are 2 different issues here. 1. I think of the rate of surplus value as an overall macroeconomic category applying to the whole economy, and not applicable to individual production processes. (But I know that many disagree with this.) 2. Given 1, then the issue revolves round comparisons of productivity. Have you got a citation for the US study? There's some evidence coming out of the Treasury in the UK that US multinationals with plants in the UK have higher levels of plant productivity (by a factor of 5-10 per cent) than UK multinationals with plants in the UK (although these are TFP studies with all the problems that that methodology entails). These UK studies are being used by New Labour as evidence that UK management might be a significant causal factor of the UK's significantly poorer productivity performance compared with France, Germany, Italy etc. But the comparisons are interesting nonetheless. Simon At 08:49 AM 1/6/2004 -0500, you wrote: >Simon, There was a U.S. Senate study done many year's ago for the same >production processes done on both sides of the Mexican-U.S. border and it >found that Mexican workers and U.S. workers are more or less equally >productive using the same technology (I remember baseball gloves being one >product examined). So how could it be that U.S. workers are more exploited >with a higher rate of surplus value than Mexican workers, indeed, how it >even be a close call? Paul > >--On Tuesday, January 06, 2004 11:05 AM +0000 Simon Mohun ><s.mohun@QMUL.AC.UK> wrote: > >>I think that US workers are >>probably more exploited than third world workers, not less, in the sense >>that rates of surplus value are higher in the US. > > >*********************************************************************** >RESEARCH IN POLITICAL ECONOMY, Paul Zarembka, editor, Elsevier Science >******************** http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/PZarembka ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Simon Mohun Centre for Business Management, Queen Mary, University of London, Mile End Road, London E1 4NS, UK Tel: +44-(0)20-7882-5089 (direct); +44-(0)20-7882-3167 (Dept. Office); Fax: +44-(0)20-7882-3615 Webpage: www.qmul.ac.uk/~ugte154/ ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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