Subject: [OPE-L:1867] Re: A Review of Lapides' Marx's Wage theory (fwd)
From: Paul Zarembka (zarembka@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU)
Date: Wed Dec 08 1999 - 17:10:28 EST
Ajit,
Thanks for your reply as I'm working through these issues.
I am a bit surprised that you cite only TWO supporting passages for an
increasing misery argument in Marx: 1) "VPP" (which I presume means
"Wages, Price and Profit") and 2) Chapter 25 of CAPITAL, Vol. 1, which
is empirical for a specific period of time and widely accepted before Marx
and by Lapides as common knowledge. I had asked you where you find
support for increasing misery theory because I thought you had more
textual citations to Marx to your argumentation than you mentioned in the
review. It seems that your THEORETICAL support in Marx is therefore
reduced to only VPP and I'll do a separate posting on that.
Regarding the Iron Law, you don't answer my question which was "where do
you find [Lapides] in his book joining an Iron Law with immiseration".
You had made such an assertion POINT BLANK in your review ("He identifies
Marx's increasing immiseration thesis with Iron Law of Wages, which is
simply absurd"). I reread the chapter once again and cannot find such a
joining of increasing misery with iron wages. I do find him rejecting
both characterizations of Marx. Anyway, this question of mine is not
important enough to worry further about.
One more observation. You quote Lapides: "What I do show is that many
followers and critics of Marx have mistakenly 'identified' his economic
doctrine with Lassalle's 'iron law of wages,'..." Then you say that this
effort "is another proof of his theoretical bankruptcy. Lassalle's 'iron
law of wages' suggests that real wages, due to population mechanism,
cannot stay higher than the bare subsistence for any considerable period
of time." Yet, it is clear that Lassalle's iron law WAS INDEED
misinterpreted as Marx's and by 1875 Marx himself felt he had to set the
record straight in "Critique of the Gotha Program"! There is no
"theoretical bankruptcy" involved, unless it is Marx's also.
Paul
P.S. Personally, even though I have never met Kenneth Lapides, I would
prefer not reading: "a debate with him would amount to one of those
unending waste of time", "anybody who has a good sense of history of
economic thought", etc. Such language often encourages wiping persons out
of the movement (and for some whose skin is not thick enough actually
succeeds). On the other hand, I have no problem if there are people or
topics whom you simply chose not to discuss--all of us do that all the
time.
***********************************************************************
Paul Zarembka, supporting RESEARCH IN POLITICAL ECONOMY, web site
******************** http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/PZarembka
On 12/08/99 at 01:54 PM, Ajit Sinha <ajitsinha@lbsnaa.ernet.in> said:
>Paul Zarembka wrote:
>> Ajit,
>>
>> I now have time to turn to wage theory and note a criticism in 1112 you
>> posted of Kenneth Lapides' book "Marx's Wage Theory in Historical
>> Perspective" (see below). Lapides replied to you in 1303:
>>
>> "It really seems as though Sinha only glanced through my book, because if
>> he had actually read it he would know that I show that there is no such
>> thing as 'Marx's immiseration thesis,' that it only exists in the minds of
>> writers like himself. Thus I cannot 'misunderstand the logic' of
>> something that I demonstrate does not exist (or exists only as an
>> imaginary entity). What I do show is that many followers and critics of
>> Marx have mistakenly 'identified' his economic doctrine with Lassalle's
>> 'iron law of wages,'..."
>>
>> What I would like to know is 1) where you find an "immiseration" thesis in
>> Marx and 2) how do you respond to Lapides' denial that he had joined an
>> Iron Law of Wages to immiseration (i.e., where do you find him in his book
>> joining an Iron Law with immiseration)? Note Lapides': "The
>> misrepresentation of Marx's wage theory that is the most far-reaching in
>> its implications and widespread in its dissemination is the allegation
>> that it rests on a thesis of 'increasing misery' of the working class" (p.
>> 238).
>>
>> Thanks, as I think these issues are important, Paul
>___________________
>Paul, I have not responded to Lapides's response to my review because I
>did not like his tone, and I thought getting into a debate with him would
>amount to one of those unending waste of time. I have tried to be as
>generous to him as I could in my review. He thinks that I have simply
>glanced through his book; but as a matter of fact I read the whole book
>three times and some sections more than that to make some sense of what
>he is saying, since he quotes everything that is 'out there', some of
>which are contradictory but he does not go into an analysis of those
>contradictions. The fact of the matter is that nowhere he tries to
>explain the simple fact that the technical change, which according to
>him, creates a possibility or causes the rise in real wages also causes
>an increase in unemployment. How come a rising rate of unemployment be
>accompanied with a rise in real wages within a Marxist framework? He does
>not even think that there is even a question out here. That's how bad the
>theoretical part of his book is. And his statement, "What I do show is
>that many followers and critics of Marx have mistakenly 'identified' his
>economic doctrine with Lassalle's 'iron law of wages,'..." is another
>proof of his theoretical bankruptcy. Lassalle's 'iron law of wages'
>suggests that real wages, due to population mechanism, cannot stay higher
>than the bare subsistence for any considerable period of time. The people
>who are arguing that marx had an imiseration thesis are evidently
>assuming that the real wages remain higher than the bare subsistence for
>a long period of time, that's why they can talk about a secular trend in
>the real wages to fall. So how could they identify it with the Lassallian
>'iron law of wages'?
>Now, about where do i find the immiseration thesis in Marx. Well, I have
>quoted that in the review and I will do it again here for your
>convenience:
>"In addition to Marx's famous statement in his 1865 lecture (VPP) where
>he says '... the general tendency of capitalist production is not to
>raise, but to sink the average standard of wages, or to push the value of
>labour more or less to its minimum limit' (p.61); in *Capital 1* the
>whole of section 5 of chapter 25 (68 pages in total) is devoted to
>documenting a declining tendency of real wages in England (for the period
>1846-66) and Ireland (for the period 1860-65). Most interestingly, Marx
>puts a lot of stress on the deteriorating condition of housing for all
>strata of workers. Since housing constitutes a fair share of the real
>wage basket, the case for a declining tendency of the real wage in this
>period is very strong. Meek (1967) also agrees with our position in
>general, though he does not explicitly take into account the evidence I
>have alluded to above." (Sinha, Ajit 1998, *History of Economics Review*
>no. 28, summer, f.n. 1, p. 110)
>Moreover, anybody who has a good sense of history of economic thought
>would know that the classical economists were almost unanimous in their
>opinion that the secular trend in real wages was to decline to its bare
>subsistence level--this is one of the conditions for the stationary
>state. If Marx was opposing this unanimous opinion of the classical
>trend, don't you think he would have made a lot of hay out of it? Where
>do you find Marx opposing classicals on this point? In my opinion, there
>is no epistemological break between Marx and classical economists in the
>context of a theory of wages. The difference lies in the mechanism
>through which the declining trend in the real wage is brought about. In
>Ricardo, and in classical theory in general, it is the population
>mechanism that is critical; whereas in Marx it is the nature of technical
>change that is critical. Cheers, ajit sinha
>>
>>
>> ***********************************************************************
>> Paul Zarembka, supporting RESEARCH IN POLITICAL ECONOMY, web site
>> ******************** http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/PZarembka
>>
>> On 09/05/99 at 01:41 PM, Ajit Sinha <ajitsinha@lbsnaa.ernet.in> said:
>>
>> >The fundamental problem with Lapides s position stems from his complete
>> >misunderstanding of the logic of Marx s immiseration thesis. He
>> >identifies Marx s increasing immiseration thesis with Iron Law of Wages
>> >, which is simply absurd. An increasing immiseration thesis must assume
>> >that real wages for most of the historical period under consideration
>> >must be considerably above the minimum subsistence , otherwise how could
>> >one talk about a secular tendency for the real wages to decline? The
>> >Iron Law of Wages , on the other hand, maintains that real wages cannot
>> >be higher than the minimum subsistence for any considerable period of
>> >time. Thus the two theses mutually exclude each other, and their
>> >identification on Lapides s part is evidence to his poor understanding of
>> >this issue.
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