I'd make the same argument using the real wage and the wage and profit shares of national income plus an analysis of the balance of class power. I saw that the profit rate, by my vulgar measure, fell during the 1970s and rose during the 1980s and 1990s. What happened? Unions were broken, the welfare state pared back, and a deep recession from 1980-82 scared the hell out of the working class. The profit rate fell sharply from 1997-2001 because labor markets were tight; Alan Greenspan was channelling Kalecki, saying that the "pool of available workers" was running dry, invoking the threat of wage inflation. As you say, tranlating the bourgeois stats into Marxian categories takes lots of work; why spend all that time crunching numbers when you could better spend it by thinking politically?
Doug
Yes. And this is a fine argument - on the labor/capital shares side of the profit rate issue (for political impact you might include the labor productivity increase being lower that the real wage increase). BUT I have been trying to point out that it does leaves out the capital side of the issue (were there any increases in capital productivity, capital price effects, etc?) - and this costs you politically (and at key moments can get things wrong).
What do you lose, politically, by using ONLY the kind of argument you have laid out - which is more conventional, and hence, for now, more accessible and acceptable? Let me try it again, starting with Wolff's presentation (which might be a bit closer to you). You do lose LOTS politically in the terms of the contrast Wolff gives between the current era and the post-WWII era. The two eras differ not just "just" the contrast in fairness (a big enough issue) but the contrast in terms of actual increases in the productivity of capital. Wolff shows the Reagan-Clinton era as not just treating the average person badly, but for no real *sustainable* gain in the underlying "engine" of growth. When the IMF types call for temporary austerity in the name of future growth (as they will), with the Classical/Marxist numbers on the capital side one readily has the answer: this sacrifice is being frittered away in the current economic regime. In contrast, using just the conventional type numbers the Clinton people can claim that the process you describe was "worth" it because it led to sustainable growth (or at least was separate from that growth), and was just an income distribution problem that is now correctable.
What do you lose intellectually that could lead to a wrong analysis that would have strategic political implications? Let's start with Dumenil & Levy's numbers which mitigate *a little* the picture painted by Wolff. In their RRPE article they show *a bit* of an increase in capital productivity (don't get too excited, Clinton-istas). In a presentation last week at the New School [I'll try to post on this separately] Dumenil was overall pessimistic in his prognosis (for other reasons not relevant here) but emphasized in his conclusions that this mini-trend might be a "loophole" for the U.S. economy. Other people in the Classical/Marxist tradition (I believe Shaikh, but we will see when his book comes out) have felt yet more strongly about the possibilities of a coming upturn and feel this helps explain some of the current buoyancy. The point is one can't say that there will NEVER be a case of labor restraint contributing to accumulation (e.g. post war Japan) although the cases may be rare. It is very difficult to catch turning points and one has to avoid "cry wolf" - but this requires having the numbers calculated in a way that exposes these trends and counter-trends.
The short-run Keynesian\Kaleckian issues are important. The long-run Classical\Marxist ones are too, especially at moments of changes in 'regime' - when long standing constants change. The point is not that one side is "deeper". Life is both short and long run. They interact in some ways that contradict each other (a wage increase raises aggregate demand and so could raise profits, but the wage increase also raises costs and could lower profits) and some ways that reinforce each other. While the conventional categories sort of give you the Keynesian picture (Jim rightly corrected me when I slurred them as neo-classical), for now you have to go digging to get the Classical picture. But I think you will find it worth doing.
Paul
