Doug, I didn't say there wasn't discrimination. I said that I found it
dubious that "race" explains the accentuation of income inequality itself.
If there are a lot more poorly paying jobs, discrimination both directly
and indirectly via conscious underdevelopment of so called productivity
enhancing attributes does explain more than partially why racialised
minorities are overrepresented in those jobs, without explaining why there
are so many more bad jobs in the first place. If race serves as an
allocation mechanism, that is to say that it does not determine the job and
pay structure, the study of the changing parameters of which is therefore
not aided by data on racial inequality.
In short, "race" does not necessarily explain why income inequality itself
is greater in the US than elsewhere, though in Frances Fox Piven and
Richard Cloward's latest book, the reason offered for a limited American
social wage is the political role of Southern white racists. They argue
through the filibuster and other political means, Southern racists blocked
the development of a universal social protection from the 1930s on; that
well positioned industrial workers were then forced to and successfully
extracted benefits directly from employers, though this has left in its
wake a split between mostly priviliged male and white workers and mostly
unprotected minority and women workers.
So that the reason why the US provides less protection against inequality
is a racist and sexist disregard for the lower half of the working class as
the potential tax burden alienates not only capital but also that part of
the working class which has won protection directly from employers. Hence,
the disaffection of especially white male workers from the Democratic
Party, which has thus been unable to develop into a truly social democratic
one, presumably along the lines of Jospin's Socialists. What do you think
of this argument?
>course, but race has a life of its own. Navarro's evidence aside, mortality
>rates for blacks are worse than those for whites even after controlling for
>education and income.
It would seem that the more important control here is occupation, though
Navarro himself notes that even when this is controlled for, blacks die at
a higher rate, suggesting that the most dangerous jobs are assumed by
minorities.
>income inequality is an objective and subjective fact of social life. Why
>is it "more important to determine the rate of exploitation through a
>rejection of wage share" than to explore income polarlization? What does it
>reveal?
I gave you my answer on marxism international. You didn't respond.
> "Greater misery with the production process"? In
>general, "productive" workers are better paid than "unproductive" ones -
>who feels and looks more exploited.
I meant to say greater misery *within* the production process. Greater
income may not compensate workers for it. To the extent that the whole
edifice is built on the exploitation of productive labor, it is not
surprising to hear even progressives remind us that the productive labor is
priviliged vis a vis unproductive labor in the US or even rich peasants, as
the liberal left points out in India. The bourgeoisie has a very practical
sense of where its power derives from, and the most critical ideas of the
ruling class become the ruling ideas shared by it and progressives and the
left alike.
Value categories may be important for
>examining the inner dynamics of capitalist economies, but, as they say in
>school, appearance counts. A lot.
Yes, for Marx appearance counts a lot, so to speak: The appearance of an
equal exchange between labor and capital; the appearance that capital is
compensated for by profit, land by rent, and labor by wages; or the
appearance that value must take in the use value of another commodity.
But these are appearances that are generated out of bourgeois social
relations themselves; data on income inequality is more of an arbitrary
system created by officials and social scientists. It is not an appearance
in the strict Marxian sense (for the relationship between essence and
appearance in Marx, see Derek Sayer, Marx's Method, Jairus Banaji in Diane
Elson.ed. Value; Patrick Murray in Fred Moseley, ed. Marx's Method in
Capital).
As for the arbitrary nature of income inequality stats (and for Marx the
kinds of appearances he was talking about are not arbitrary--this is key),
Marc Linder notes in Italy that the newspapers will headline articles about
labor's share in national income, while in the US we are more likely to
have such econ data refracted through income quintile groups or ethnracial
groups.
Rakesh
