From: Paul Cockshott (wpc@DCS.GLA.AC.UK)
Date: Thu Sep 16 2004 - 05:08:52 EDT
Gerry The same factors that Anders discusses for Scandinavia were operative in the UK in the 60s and 70s. I think they are characteristic features of a closed mature capitalist economy where demand for labour will tend to outstrip supply and place the working class in a strong bargaining position. The tendency was only reversed in the UK by the conscious policy of the Thatcher government to open up the movement of capital internationally, allowing abundant external labour elsewhere to be used as a bargaining tool One has to recognise that the current contrary development, one characterised by an oversupply of labour is a relatively short term phenomena, that will come to an end as the latent reserve army of labour in China and India is absorbed into capitalist industry. The attached graph shows a logistic fit to the growth of the industrial share of the population of China. It indicates that the Chinese industrial population will be mature by the middle of the century. With current growth rates it may occur even sooner. At that point, the nature of capitalism on a world scale will shift back to the mode of development shown by the north European countries in the 3rd quarter of the 20th century. The supply of labour will be constrained leading to a greater strength of the international trades union and labour movement politically. It is worth looking at the most developed capitalist economies since these show the system at its extreme - de te fabula natur. -----Original Message----- From: OPE-L [mailto:OPE-L@SUS.CSUCHICO.EDU] On Behalf Of Gerald A. Levy Sent: 15 September 2004 13:56 To: OPE-L@SUS.CSUCHICO.EDU Subject: (OPE-L) Re: tendencies for equalization Hi Anders. > And I think that empirically the development of wages in the Nordic > countries (espec. Norway and Sweden) after WW II can be interpreted to > support Ian's point. That is - when labour movement is strong - when > workers are free to form the wage system - there will be (and still is) a > strong urge for wage equalisation. The narrowing of wage differentials is > very marked from 1945 - 1985. And this was not the result of Nordic > "harmony" - on the contrary - in Norway we "lost" more workdays in the > thirties than any other European country - there was very hard class > confrontations. Same in Sweden. The post-WWII experience that you refer to in Norway and Sweden was a consequence of the deliberate strategy by trade unions to reduce wage differentials (i.e. 'wage solidarity'). The influence of the trade union leadership in the (social-democratic) government was also an important factor in determining state and corporate responses to these workers' struggles. While the historical experience that you refer to is real enough for these individual capitalist social formations, on what basis can you claim that there is a historical _tendency_ that there will be reductions in wage inequalities under capitalism as a consequence of workers' striving for equality? I.e. on what basis can you claim that there is a general tendency for wage equalization rather than a contrary claim that these experiences are the consequence of highly contingent factors associated with workers struggles in individual (and, in significant ways, atypical) capitalist social formations? In solidarity, Jerry
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