In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Rob Schaap
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes
>The proletariat *as a whole* tends to a condition of immiseration on the
>Marxist view. Accumulation grows the proletariat, and the tendency of the
>rate of profit to fall causes immiseration in the sort of drama we saw
>unfold in SE Asia last year, where over 200 million innocents simply had
>their lives ruined. All are exploited, but to differing degrees, and all
>are immiserated, but to different degrees. Only at the analytical level of
>*class* do we see the ties that bind - not only worker to capital, but first
>world worker to NIC worker.
Volume 1 of Capital, Ch XXV, sec 4:
"The greater the social wealth, the functioning capital, the extent and
energy of its growth, and, therefore, also the absolute mass of the
proletariat and the productiveness of its labour, the greater is the
industrial reserve army. The same causes which develop the expansive
power of capital, develop also the labour-power at its disposal. The
relative mass of the industrial reserve army increases therefore with
the potential energy of wealth. But the greater this reserve army in
proportion to the active labour-army, the greater is the mass of a
consolidated surplus-population, whose misery is in inverse ratio to its
torment of labour. The more extensive, finally, the lazarus-layers of
the working-class, and the industrial reserve army, the greater is
official pauperism. This is the absolute general law of capitalist
accumulation. Like all other laws it is modified in its working by many
circumstances, the analysis of which does not concern us here."
In other words, an absolute fall in living standards or "immiseration"
(I believe Marx does not use that term) applies only to the industrial
reserve army, the unemployed.
Incidentally, Rob, I have been asked if this list has a searchable
archive and, if so, how does one access it.
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Chris
Burford <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes
>I know this argument and have always had difficulty with it. eg the small
>number of elite electical engineers who run the electricity grid of modern
>capitalist countries, and really are the aristocracy of labour in the old
>sense with their very high wages, are according to marxist logic said to be
>much more exploited than the person who cleans out the toilets in a
>transport cafe.
>
>I know that marxism is not "common sense" but really this is extremely
>counter-intuitive. Am I heretical or am I revealing my revisionist colours
>again? I must grasp this nettle even at the risk of exposing my true nature.
>
>I think it is wrong.
Presented like that, it does give the wrong impression. But there are
two ways of looking at exploitation: as the rate of surplus value (s/v),
or as the historically developed relations of production. The former
category of exploitation is a useful technical device for analysing the
structure of capitalism. However, throughout the history of capitalism
different jobs have yielded different rates of surplus value, so no
great surprise on that count. The "problem" here is to be found in the
nature of capitalism, not the analysis itself. The latter historical
approach explains exploitation as a class relationship, eg:
"Now that we have considered the forcible creation of a class of
outlawed proletarians, the bloody discipline that turned them
into wage-labourers, the disgraceful action of the State which
employed the police to accelerate the accumulation of capital
by increasing the degree of exploitation of labour, the question
remains: whence came the capitalists originally?" (Ch XXIX).
--
Lew
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