On Dec 25, 2011, at 9:31 AM, Louis Proyect wrote:
http://www.zcommunications.org/a-marxian-interpretation-of-the-economic-crisis-by-richard-d-wolff
On Dec 25, 2011, at 9:31 AM, Louis Proyect wrote:
http://www.zcommunications.org/a-marxian-interpretation-of-the-economic-crisis-by-richard-d-wolff
If Wolff had even an elementary understanding of Marxian economic analysis he would never have written this: " From the early 1890s to the late 1970s, two key trends emerged in industry. In one, the real wage of workers in manufacturing rose by about 1.8 percent per year and, in the other, workers' productivity in manufacturing steadily rose at an even higher rate amounting to 2.3 percent per year. Roughly interpreting these two trends in terms of Marxian value theory, we conclude that the rate of surplus value in the United States— the growth of real output per industrial worker relative to the real remuneration per industrial worker—rose steadily for almost ninety years."
But the Marxian rate of surplus value, as Marx devotes whole chapters to its demonstration, has nothing to do with the gross output/wages ratio. It is the ratio between the total of property-derived incomes and the total income of the class of productive laborers (s/v). Wolff makes the very same error for which Marx castigates Smith: he resolves the value of output not into c+v+s but into v+s alone. Thus he treats the national income (which, as Marx emphasizes, is produced only by productive labor) as providing nothing at all to everyone in the category of what Marx termed "unproductive but necessary" labor--and not even anything at all to replace the value of fixed capital used up in producing the income. This wouldn't matter if there was no rising trend in those two categories (which together make up Marx's "c"), but that is very much not the case. The rising organic composition of capital, fundamental to Marx's analysis of capitalist development, forces a rise in the share of product represented by capital consumption. But far more spectacular is the increase in the proportion of labor--*unproductive* labor--engaged in retail sales, office work, government administration and enforcement, merchandizing, etc. etc.
This ignorance is why Wolff ends with the howler that the rate of surplus value in the US "rose steadily for almost ninety years." The fact is that during the heart of that "1890's to 1970's" period, 1900 to 1960, which was the subject of my 1963 dissertation on the fall in the rate of profit, the rate of surplus-value as calculated in labor- value terms (Table VII-1) fell (not "steadily" but steadily fluctuating downward) from about 66% in 1900 to about 25% in 1960!
Wouldn't it be nice if professors who claim to be authorities on Marx would actually study Marx!
Shane Mage "Thunderbolt steers all things." Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64
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