Lakshmi Rhone wrote: > The class struggle was at least partially displaced from the workplace to > the state which became the site in and through which contending parties > fought over the social wage. Contrary to appearances, Shaikh and Tonak have > argued that the social wage actually represented mostly a redistribution > within the working class while the state remained fundamentally an > institution for the support and accentuation of inequality produced within > what was only an apparently autonomous economic sphere.
To choose a specific example, in the US, workers' contributions to unemployment insurance (which include what's officially called the employers' contributions) by and large & over the long haul equal the benefits that workers receive. This simple story sums up the Shaikh/Tonak theory. But that doesn't suggest that this element of the "social wage" is just a matter of appearances, a mere redistribution. The unemployment insurance system provides the benefits of having insurance, something that's very difficult for individual workers to provide for themselves (beyond their immediate families). Of course, if we has nation-wide, large, and powerful labor unions, they could provide unemployment insurance benefits without state involvement, but that's another issue. -- Jim Devine / "As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality." -- Albert Einstein _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
