Andrew (Trigg)
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Gerald Levy [SMTP:glevy@pratt.edu]
> Sent: 18 November 1998 11:43
> To: ope-l@galaxy.csuchico.edu
> Subject: [OPE-L:343] Re: Re: working-class savings
>
> Thanks for the reference, Ajit. However, when you write --
>
> > <snip> All these variables are determined in the
> > historical class struggle. Marx's point is not that an individual
> worker
> > cannot save at any given point in time. His basic point is that for
> the
> > working class as a whole there cannot be persistent positive saving,
> i.e.
> > the working class cannot go on bequeathing property from one
> generation to
> > another. If the working class as a whole could go on saving
> persistently,
> > then, in the long run, they would not remain the propertyless
> proletariats,
> > and the whole basis of the capitalist mode of production would
> collapse.
> > Thus, the assumption that workers consume all the wages is a sound
> > assumption in Marx's theoretical system.
>
> I think you misunderstand my question(s). I was not asking whether
> Marx
> assumed that workers' savings = -0-. I was asking, instead, for any
> references written by Marxists in which workers' savings were > -0-.
>
> You raise the question of whether, over the long-run, the inheritance
> of
> workers' savings can lead to a change in class membership. I think you
> raise a valid point, *but* workers' savings doesn't have to be large
> enough per family or a large amount of inheritance/family for it to be
> important for the macroeconomy. After all, we're talking about savings
> by 80% (or so) of families. Even if that doesn't break-down to much
> money
> per family in relationship to savings per bourgeois family, the total
> amount saved would be important to the macroeconomy. Also, it would be
> important to the individual working-class families. Suppose a
> significant
> percentage of an individual working-class family income (let's say
> 20%) is
> derived from interest. Under those circumstances then if they are
> receiving less interest with the same amount saved, then their total
> income has gone down, ceteris paribus. Before someone considers this
> to
> be a marginal case, consider the elderly who in many countries have
> over
> the course of a lifetime saved a substantial amount of money. Indeed,
> in
> many countries they *have* to save some money to be able to pay for
> medical bills, nursing, housing, and burial when they are older. In
> Japan,
> for instance, there aren't generally pensions and instead a worker is
> given a one-time "golden parachute" of sorts (in practice, this
> generally
> means that the elderly family members often become more reliant on
> their
> children or other relatives). Thus, by the time many (most?) of these
> former workers die their savings will have either been greatly eroded
> or
> completely disappeared. There isn't therefore generally what you call
> "persistent positive saving" (as you define it above).
>
> Thus, on the level of concretion where we are examining an advanced
> capitalist economy in the period of late capitalism, we have to
> consider
> the effect of savings by working-class families. This would be the
> case
> regardless of what Marx wrote or did not write. Do you agree?
>
> In solidarity, Jerry