On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 11:06 AM, c b <[email protected]> wrote: > Is this evidence of Marx's absolute general law of capitalist > accumulation still in effect ? > > > Census: 1 Out Of 2 Americans Are Poor > Written by Associated Press on December 15, 2011 7:34 am > WASHINGTON (AP) — Squeezed by rising living costs, a record number of > Americans – nearly 1 in 2 – have fallen into poverty or are scraping > by on earnings that classify them as low income.
the headline contradicts the lede. The lede says that nearly 1/2 of people in the US are poor or near-poor, while the headline leaves out the near-poor. But no matter. The date do fit Marx's absolute general law of capitalist accumulation. As I read that "law," it says that (all else constant) those who own capital are able to use the surplus-value they get to accumulate more capital -- which allows them to reap more surplus-value, etc., as part of a vicious circle; this is backed by the normal tendency of capitalism to create and re-create unemployment while deskilling workers. The only problem with the "law" is with the "all else constant" clause: there may be countervailing tendencies. In fact, there have been: during the period in US history when soft social democracy (the warfare-welfare state) reigned and unions still had some clout, those institutions were able to block the operations of Marx's "law" (especially since the US was "on top of the world"). With the end of soft social democracy and unions (outside the government sector and the crafts), the capitalist genie is out of the bottle. -- Jim Devine / "In an ugly and unhappy world the richest man can purchase nothing but ugliness and unhappiness." -- George Bernard Shaw _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
