From: Jerry Levy (Gerald_A_Levy@MSN.COM)
Date: Mon Jan 16 2006 - 09:42:22 EST
Re: [OPE-L] the global labor force and capital accumulatio> But I would argue that the fundamental apologetic mistake Freeman > makes is to confuse the source of the present global oversupply of > labor vis a vis capital with its source in Malthus' time. Rakesh, Perhaps, but neither we should not confuse the source(s) of the present over-supply of labour power with the source(s) of the over-supply of available labour power in the various historical periods that Grossman referred to. There are some similarities but a large part of the context that R. Freeman is talking about -- the dramatic increase in workers producing for international markets due to the entry of workers from the PRC and Russia (and other now independent nations that were once part of the USSR and many Eastern European nations) -- is quite different from that in the time of Malthus or Grossman. Whether one believes that the USSR, the PRC, etc. were socialist or state capitalist, it is clear that most workers in those nations were not producing commodities for sale on international capitalist markets. Of course, there was some production for international markets which varied in different 'socialist' nations and periods, but this was more in the form of trade within 'socialist blocs' (e.g. trade between the USSR and COMECON nations) than a generalized production of commodities for sale in global capitalist markets. Obviously, this development -- the 'freeing-up' of large amounts of workers from 'socialist' nations now employed by private capitalists for export-led commodity production -- was something that Grossman could not have anticipated. (So I am not advancing a criticism of Grossman; I am only noting a way in which the current period is distinct.) There are other disanalogies and analogies: even if one accepts Grossman's argument, one can not reasonably claim that the current transition "is a necessary and constitutive element of capitalism." Yet one might claim that this "can and should only be a transitory tendency". OTOH, the increase in the quantity of workers employed by capital for the production of commodities on global markets in India and some other less developed capitalist nations could be viewed as another concurrent tendency. But, that tendency also has to be put in the context of other concurrent tendencies, e.g. the growth in the informal (petty commodity producing) sector in some of the same social formations. This is important when thinking about the extent to which the entry of new workers into the employed wage labor force changes variable capital. In solidarity, Jerry
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