I suspect that I am making a mistake stepping into this minefield late at night, but Mike's thread connects nicely with with recent flame war about who is most exploited. With respect to Mike's assertion, probably all of us participate in bad stuff. I take my $ from the state as a tenured prof. We contribute to the profits of the bastards when we buy stuff .... In spite of all of our imperfections, Mike is absolutely correct to say that the question is how we are able to contribute to social betterment. This idea brings me to the question of exploitation. Reading Marx formally, the amount of surplus value taken from a worker in an industrialized economy excedes that of what is taken from the Indonesian or Nigerian worker. On the other hand, Marx was clear that the central industry of England relied on the labor of slaves and the Irish. So both sides of the debate can find support in Marx. Now back to Mike. Marx was working for social betterment. He understood that the artificial separation of British and Irish workers was self destructive. The working class was international. If we debate whether the Nigerian, the Indonesian, or the citizen of the U.S. is more exploited, we dissipate our energies. I enjoy spirited debates as much as the next person, but I am watching this one spin out of control. The key should be to locate the weak parts of capital, to know how to fight the good fight. As I read him, Marx did. We should do the same. Marx saw capital as social capital. Without the Nigerian oil (metaphorically speaking) to create the electricity, the exquisite computers at Microsoft would grind to a halt. Marx understood this about the cotton industry, at least after the Cotton Crisis during the U.S. Civil War. I suspect that I should go back to reread this to make sure that I have thought this out well enough, but I am tired and need to get up early. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
