Charles Brown writes: > 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 :>)).
This sentence that I type now isn't true. > 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. As I said, I think the word probably means "abstract," but I'd have to consult a Hegel expert. Unfortunately, Marx decided to play with the use of Hegelian language in CAPITAL. This has put off and/or confused a lot of readers, while creating a sector of academics (not all working in colleges) who dwell on the Hegelian mysticism of it all. I'm afraid that old Karlos was in love with jargon as much as many academics are. (Of course, among the econfolk, some people are in love with math more than with jargon.) > 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.. right. > 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. ... I don't think the absolute number of paupers is useful, since the population has increased and is increasing. I'd say that Marx's tendency has "reasserted" itself in the US since about 1980. the Federal government's official measure of poverty actually fell from 9.2% in 1979 to 8.7% of families in 2000 (between two business-cycle peaks). However, the downward trend of official poverty from 1959 or so _ended_ in the 1970s and started upward for quite awhile. (Numbers come from http://www.census.gov/hhes/poverty/histpov/famindex.html.) Further, over the long haul, the poverty rate isn't worth much. "Poverty" is defined by an income level that assumes that 1/3 of a family's budget goes to food. That seems more and more obsolete (even though the poverty level is increased as money loses value due to inflation), since these day's it's housing which is swallowing the lion's share. The rise of poverty rates after 2000 (to 9.6% in 2002) might indicate that in 2000, even officially-defined poverty was "too low" for capitalism's health. That is, the business-cycle downturn after 2000 may have followed Marx's volume I scenario of low unemployment squeezing profits and encouraging slow-downs. Another way to measure poverty is in terms of relative poverty, i.e., the percentage of the families (or the population or the households) that are below some measure of how high an income is needed to attain a "middle class" life-style. For example, one could use a measure like 60% of the median income as the cut-off. I don't have the statistics here. But Doug Henwood writes "A more honest count of the poor - one either based on an updated market basket (rather than the 1955 or 1960 one today's line is based on) or figured on a poverty line measured against average incomes rather than a fixed standard from long ago (like, say, setting the poverty line at half the average income, which would push the line up to $19,250 for two people or $26,852 for four, 90% and 67% higher than official levels) - would yield a poverty rate almost twice the present level, in the 20-25% range" in 1995. (see http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Stats_incpov.html.) The share of total income received by the poorest 1/5 of the families in 1975 was 5.6%, while in 2001 it was 4.2%. This indicates an increase in inequalty (also seen in other measures) and likely an increase in poverty defined in relative terms. In the Jan./Fed. issue of CHALLENGE, Caner and Wolff have another measure of poverty, based on people's net worth (NW) rather than income. (The official stats use income.) For them, "asset poverty" is defined as follows: >A household or a person is considered to be "asset-poor" [net worth-poor] if the >access they have to wealth-type resources is insufficient to enable them to meet the >"basic needs" for some limited "period of time."< where the period of time is 3 >months and "basic needs" are defined following the National Academy of Sciences >study. Here's the summary results (from page 32): date official NW 1984 14.4 24.45 1989 12.8 25.42 1994 14.5 24.83 1999 11.8 27.93 Official poverty goes down between these dates, but Caner and Wolff's measure rises (though there's a fall from 1989 to 1994). The asset-poverty levels (the amount of net worth needed to escape "poverty" was $2,589 in 1984, $3,089 in 1989, $3,693 in 1994, and $4,151 in 1999, for a "reference family." (These include home equity, while the stats listed above are based on their measures of net worth that include home equity. Home equity can be used as collateral to borrow money.) > 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. In 2003, the official poverty threshold for a family of 4 with 2 related kids under 18 was $18,660. >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 ? In terms of politics, "poverty" would be defined in terms of subjective consciousness of being poor (rather than having some economist define you as poor) and of wanting to end that state. jd
