"Max B. Sawicky" : There is plenty of immiseration in the Third World, and in pockets of the U.S., but I don't think that can be a central radical criticism. For one, people in that circumstance aren't in much shape to do anything positive about it.
More to the point is the gap between what people expect and what they get, which is more about inequality, not absolute deprivation or literal starvation. A problem is that people use terminology about absolute poverty when they are really talking about inequality (relative poverty). Second, the inequality frame is still stuck on GDP as a giant bundle of private goods and glosses over public goods, externalities, non-market amenities, and leisure. Inequality measurement studies tend to ignore what is difficult to measure and arguably of equal or greater importance. ^^^^ CB: Yes, I follow your concerns. I think the word "absolute" in the phrase "absolute general law" should not be read to mean "absolute poverty" or "absolute immiseration". In other words, in this section Marx is referring to "relative poverty and immiseration". So, inequality is relative poverty. In other words, I agree with what you say above. Even people who are not even poor are immiserated. People who live pay check to pay check with big pay checks are not poor , but they suffer some misery, big anxiety, big stress. White collar criminals are immiserated. Money grubbing mentality immiserates readily. The dog eat dog, rat race dimensions of the workplace of the employed is immiserating. This overlaps with alienation. Also, I'd say that victims of crime are immiserated. Those who are not poor, but live in "center cities" suffer immiseration by all the dimensions of "urban decay". Mass poverty immiserates the non-poor who are in the proximity of the poor. Similarly, the families , loved ones and friends of those who are imprisoned are immiserated by that imprisonment. Then some people support a lot of others, and suffer a drop in income that doesn't make them poor, but they are immiserated by their inability to do what they were able to do before. This is sort of your expectations gap point, or loss of the standard of living to which one was accustomed. Just many essays chronicling specific stories of the above types of relationships , and tracing their systemic links, and showing that the stories are examples of mass phenomenon, not rare cases, would be a consciousness raising service that leftists could perform. Demonstrating that the social system creates this as a "general law", and that it is not rooted in individual "choice" is critical. And I'd say demonstrating this is a main "job" of leftists. I very much agree that many of the poor are least able to do something about their situation. This is why some radicals have always focused on the employed, or non-impoverished sectors of the working class. Of course, the problem with the employed and well paid sectors of the working class is that they are not inclined to change the status quo, the famous opportunism of the labor "aristocrats" or bourgeoisified/"middle class" workers. But with respect to the more general question of propagandizing about the business cycle vs propagandizing regarding poverty/misery secular trends, sure we should do both, but the latter seems absent from our literature these days. This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
