I appreciate what you are saying about Marx qualifying his statement. I believe all social scientific empirical generalizations are less than 100% true ( including the one I am making here ? Reflexivity alert :>)).
I wonder whether the use of the term "absolute" is some type of rhetorical advice to emphasize , what ? That this generalization or tendency is strong ? He of course uses "law of the tendency" with respect to the rate of profit falling, and discusses countervailing tendencies right there ( in Vol.III). Maybe the use of "absolute" here is not significant. I really posed one of my questions wrongly, because it is not an issue of looking at the trend since 1867 and showing a monotonic rise in official pauperism in the U.S. It is more finding , as you mention the tendency being displaced to sections of a more globally integrated economy, and then perhaps reasserting itself even in the U.S.. Is it "reasserting" itself in the U.S. ? I think Marx's wording leaves open that he is referring to absolute numbers of poor people, not relative numbers of poor people. Anyway, it would be important to show , if true, that _even in the U.S._ one of the richest countries "the law is reasserting itself". In other words, I think we all see the application of the generalization by looking at a "global" economy and taking into account world poverty rather than only looking at the U.S. national economy. But if we can say that the generalization even has some current validity in the rich, U.S. economy, this would give significant, fresh credibility to Marx' theory. It also might ameliorate somewhat the issues sartesian raises. Then what's "offical pauperism" ? A person can have a car, a television and a rented house, et al. and be officially poor today, even though having more material wealth in the absolute sense than some "middle class" person from 1867. On this issue of poverty, I want to say there is in Marx's concept a mixture of objectivity and subjectivity. Part of immiseration is a state of mind and situation relative to the norm and average of the day. There is disgrace and anxiety in being unemployed even with unemployment benefits or welfare. Does Marx's term "official" get at this ? Charles ^^^^^ by Devine, James Marx qualifies this "absolute" law immediately after stating it. For him, it's a "law" at the level of "capital in general," the subject of volume I of CAPITAL. However, it might be changed by the competition of capitals, e.g., the uneven development of capital on the world scale. During the period from World War II to 1980 or so, the law seems to have shifted in its application from the "first world" to the "third world." Now, in the era of neoliberal capitalism (which seems aimed at restoring the classical capitalism that Marx described), it seems more general, incorporating even the US. Mike Lebowitz, in his book BEYOND CAPITAL (now in its 2nd edition!), argues that in CAPITAL, Marx took the working class' situation as given, assuming (for example) that working-class reaction to capital's depredations is largely passive. You might see the relatively good situation of the US working class during the 1945-1980 period as a result of the fact that this assumption didn't apply, i.e., that struggles of the 1930s and after allowed workers to get a "piece of the pie." The decline of workers' power since then meant that the "absolute law" reasserted itself.
