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A great article on the determination of new layers of relative surplus population as members of the working class, _http://www.ceics.org.ar/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=149%3Athe-relative-overpopulation-the-leas t-known-aspect-of-the-marxist-conception-of-th e-working-class&catid=59%3Aarticles&Itemid=78_ (http://www.ceics.org.ar/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=149:the-relative-overpopulation-the-least-known-aspect-of-the-mar xist-conception-of-the-working-class&catid=59:articles&Itemid=78) Comment I enjoyed this article's strict adherence to Marx theory premise and factual inquiry into the life of the working class. Youth and/or young workers entry and exist out of active worforce, as a lens to examine the surplus population was refreshing. The article adhered to Marx general law of capital accumulation, tying increase in the surplus population to increased misery - lowering wages, of the proletarian masses as a dynamic. Of interest was the author making short work of tackling the issue of the lumpen proletariat, which in my mind is a narrow sliver of modern society at best. At any rate I would not call sex workers - prostitutes, lumpen proletariats. I tend to view the category called "lumpen proletariat" as a historical phenomenon belonging to a passed historical era. For me, the fundamental attribute of the lumpen proletariat is neither criminality nor living on the edge of civic society, but rather its existence and evolution as the refuge of decaying feudal society. A decaying feudal society and emergent bourgeois society produces the phenomenon of lumpen proletariat. A decaying industrial capitalist society produces dispossessed proletarians, rather than lumpen proletarians. If this is true then the organization of the dispossessed proletariat, in all its dimensions is on the agenda. The growing mass of dispossessed workers in modern society tends to be unemployed, underemployed, work 2 and three "bits of jobs" but many are still employed in the process of losing everything. These are not "new lumpens" because they are unemployed, marginally employed or when they engage in criminal activity. II. A particular passage of Marx was used of interest to my particular lens. "A development of productive forces which would diminish the absolute number of laborers, i.e., enable the entire nation to accomplish its total production in a shorter time span, would cause a revolution, because it would put the bulk of the population out of the running. This is another manifestation of the specific barrier of capitalist production, showing also that capitalist production is by no means an absolute form for the development of the productive forces and for the creation of wealth, but rather that at a certain point it comes into collision with this development." [36] Marx, Karl: Capital, vol.3, op.cit. p.372. The meaning of "the bulk of the population out of the running" is "not having a chance to make it in the society one lives in." Now, roughly 60% of our working class makes $14 an hour and less, and I call that "out of the running." Do the math. $560 a week and less for 40 hours. And this is before taxes. Things appear considerably worse when considering earth and over 6 billion people of whom most are "out of the running." WL ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
