Carrol,
See the e-mail Patrick Bond sent to Pen-l early this year:
Subject: [Pen-l] (Fwd) Class profits: new category elucidating US
capitalism (Simon Mohun)
Date: January 18, 2012 9:11:43 AM PST.
Professor Mohun's graphs separate out Production worker wage share from
Supervisory wage share and Capitalist class share.
Gene
On Dec 22, 2012, at 3:53 PM, Carrol Cox wrote:
> This was a recent post on the progressive sociologist list. Does the argument
> hold? Why? Why not?
>
> Carrol
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Progressive and Critical Sociologist Network
> [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Drewk
> Sent: Saturday, December 22, 2012 5:27 PM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: [PSN-CS] wages and productivity; was: imperialism, economics
> sociology and Marxism
>
> Hi Allen,
>
> The notion that real (inflation-adjusted) wages in the U.S. have stagnated is
> based on a failure to count employees’ retirement and health benefits that
> are paid by employers. Employees’ total real compensation, inclusive of these
> benefits, has increased.
>
>
> And it’s increased basically just as fast as output has increased, which
> means that employees’ share of the output (or income) produced has been
> basically constant. The notion that “the American labor market stop[ped]
> giving annual wage increases matching the increase in American productivity
> in the mid-1970's” is very misleading at beat, incorrect at worst. See the
> video of my talk, “Why Trickle-Up Economics Won’t Work,” at
> http://www.marxisthumanistinitiative.org/economic-crisis/video-why-trickle-up-economics-won%E2%80%99t-work.html
> , or at least the graphs showing “the profit share of U.S. corporations’
> output” and “real productivity and real compensation” on p. 3 of the handout
> that’s on the same webpage.
>
> As I said in the talk,
>
> “you might have heard that wages, or employee compensation, haven’t kept pace
> with productivity growth. If it were true that compensation hasn’t grown as
> fast as productivity, it would mean that workers are getting a smaller share
> of the output they produce. But the top graph shows us that it isn’t true in
> the corporate sector. The employees’ share is constant. And it follows from
> this fact––it’s just a matter of simple math––that compensation per hour has
> risen at the same rate of output per hour, or productivity. There are no data
> for hours worked in corporations, so we can’t compute productivity and hourly
> compensation in the corporate sector, but it has to be true. And it’s also
> very close to what has taken place in the private sector, corporate and
> non-corporate, as a whole. As the bottom graph on p. 3 shows, hourly
> compensation and labor productivity have grown at very similar rates.
>
>
>
> “You may have heard the opposite, and you may have seen graphs that seem to
> show the opposite. They’re based on what is essentially a statistical trick.
> One price index is used to deflate output, remove the effect of inflation,
> while a different price index is used to deflate compensation. That results
> in a lopsided distribution. But this procedure is like deflating the tires on
> the left side of your car a little, but deflating the tires on the right side
> a lot, and then complaining that the dealership sold you a lopsided car. It
> wasn’t lopsided before you messed with it, and the productivity and
> compensation growth numbers are also not lopsided until people mess with
> them.”
>
>
>
>
>
> On your comparison of the U.S. with Sweden, Germany, and other Northern
> European countries: a recent masters’ thesis (available at
> http://lup.lub.lu.se/luur/download?func=downloadFile&recordOId=2861473&fileOId=2861474
> ) written by Albin Soderqvist, at the University of Lund (Sweden), estimated
> employees’ share of corporate output in 16 different countries. It replicates
> my finding that their share was constant in the U.S. It rose in Belgium,
> Denmark, and the UK. It fell in Sweden, Germany, Finland, Austria, Ireland,
> the Netherlands. (It also rose in Spain and S. Korea while it fell in France,
> Italy, Australia, and Japan). I don’t think any easy generalizations can be
> drawn from this in geographical terms, or in terms of “neoliberal” vs.
> “social-welfarist” policy regimes.
>
>
>
>
>
> Andrew Kliman
> akliman.squarespace.com: "I Ain't Gonna Work on Piero's Farm No More"
>
> From: Allen Barton <mailto:[email protected]>
> Sent: Thursday, December 20, 2012 10:39 PM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: [PSN-CS] imperialism, [PSN-CS] economics sociology and Marxism
>
> Why did the American labor market stop giving annual wage increases matching
> the increase in American productivity in the mid-1970's, leading to a
> long-term wage stagnation and an economy based on consumer debt and financial
> gimmickry. and the series of bubbles and busts? One thing that happened was
> that OPEC's cartel price manipulation quadrupled the cost of petroleum and
> siphoned off purchasing power, while American corporations oligopoly pricing
> created runaway inflation. Keynesian policy had no way to deal with
> inflation, and the Carter administration turned the problem over to Volcker
> at the Federal Reserve Board, who used monetary macro-economics (high
> interest rates to create massive unemployment) which helped elect Reagan and
> destroyed labor bargaining power. In the same period the restored economies
> of Japan and the growing capitalism of S. Korea, Taiwan, etc. used cheaper
> labor to destroy whole industries in the U.S.- the union strongholds of
> steel, rubber, consumer electronics, automobiles, construction machinery
> (e.g. Caterpillar), and low-wage competitions from China and a whole set of
> third world countries almost completely destroyed the American textile,
> clothing, shoe, toy, houseware and hand tool industries. Walmart and other
> big-box chains profited enormously from this while offering only low-wage
> jobs. Industries that survived did so by seizing on computerized automation
> to keep labor costs down. A global labor market was created by cheap
> container transportation and low-cost sea transportation based on extreme
> exploitation of third-world seamen. One doesn't need contorted Marxian
> economic theories to explain what happened to American wages since the
> 1970's, and why rising consumer and mortgage debt and related financial
> speculation grew to be unsustainable. If American leftists learned to look at
> what went on in other capitalist countries, they would see that some of them
> found better ways of dealing with globalization, inflation, consumer debt
> problems - not just Sweden but Germany and some other north European
> countries, while maintaining superior health and social welfare programs
> (e.g. free child care for working mothers, much longer paid vacations for
> workers.)
>
>
> As to our real estate speculation and bust, we could learn something from the
> great late-19th century radical Henry George and his socialization of land
> values, which would have prevented those problems and provided an important
> tax revenue stream. His principles applied to oil and gas well land would
> have helped too, and provided revenue for environmental protection.
>
>
> Allen Barton
> .
>
> -----Original Message-----
>
> From: Alan Spector
> Sent: Dec 20, 2012 9:27 PM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: [PSN-CS] imperialism, [PSN-CS] economics sociology and
> Marxism
>
> Hey Sam, (ol' buddy...and I'm not being sarcastic),
>
> I did say it was a short answer and finished off with an even stronger,
> so strong that it was grammatically incorrect on purpose in order to
> emphasize its modesty: "Admittedly a very too short comment"
>
> So sure, it did fail to comment on that. There's plenty of room for
> others to add to it!
>
> Alan Spector
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>
> On Thu, Dec 20, 2012 at 7:34 PM, Sam Friedman <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>
> More to the point, this comment fails to comment on the
> continuation of imperialism but the poor economic performance of capitalism
> most places in the world.
>
> >>> Alan Spector 12/20/12 6:49 PM >>>
>
> Short answer:
>
> The major countries that were destroyed or damaged during WW
> II, rebuilt (Germany and Japan, especially) and were able to develop more
> modern productive forces to compete with US products. Their prosperity came
> from having less unemployment (because of the massive loss of life) and "new"
> markets, in the form of rebuilding their countries (that was also an
> important "market" for US products). But everything reaches a limit and
> their cars and their steel began to compete fiercely with that of the US
> corporations, and the secondary powers, especially India, and even Russia,
> Brazil, etc. grew and became more competitive and OPEC got more independent.
> And now mighty China.
>
> Unity is temporary--change is continuous. Rome had spectacular
> technology built on a rotten (literally rotting-rotten)
> social/political/economic base, and so it fell. But the US presses on, trying
> to hold back China by making alliances with India, Japan, Vietnam, and the
> Philippines while Russia tries to cement its relationship with Hungary! and
> Romania, and China continues to buy up Africa and Latin America.....
>
> Admittedly a very too short comment,
>
> Alan Spector
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
> On Thu, Dec 20, 2012 at 4:32 PM, Sam Friedman
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>
> Dear Alan,
>
> I agree that these are connected--and had the
> discussion of post-Keynesianism gone in other directions, it might have made
> sense to do it all in one bundle.
>
> But my mind could not handle it that way as it turned
> out.
>
> The issue I pose for you, though, Alan: You have
> discussed imperialism's role in sustaining the post-war boom. But how does
> it tie into the period since then?
>
> >>> Alan Spector <[email protected]> 12/20/2012
> 5:28 PM >>>
>
> Dear Sam and others,
>
> The reason why I keep bringing imperialism up is
> because I don't see it as a particularly distinct discussion from the
> discussion of capitalist contradictions (although, of course anything can be
> discussed separately in the abstract.) . I, and others, not just Lenin, but
> many, many mainstream economists, see imperialism as a major way that
> capitalism tries to ameliorate its contradictions (crises?). This is not only
> through deficit spending via military expenditures, although that is part of
> it, but also through the actual sustaining of certain rates of profits by
> having the cheap labor/materials as well as markets that are not as readily
> available at home. So that becomes a major part of the "answer" as to why
> nations such as the USA, Canada, and Western Europe were able to be
> (temporarily) so prosperous in the years from 1945 until about the mid
> 1970's, when the rate of prosperity began to decline, leaving us where we are
> today, which is not that prosperous.
>
> Alan Spector
> ============
>
>
> On Thu, Dec 20, 2012 at 5:58 AM, Sam Friedman
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>
> Dear Alan,
>
> I agree with you that it would be worth having
> a discussion here of imperialism and its bases. I would prefer that it not be
> simultaneous with the other discussions, in part because I am extremely busy.
>
> Imperialism and its analysis need revisiting
> every few years since it keeps changing as capitalism does. So I agree with
> you it needs to be discussed.
>
> I might add that in the Keynes discussion, one
> of the weaknesses of Tadit and Stephen and perhaps Andrew has been that they
> have implicitly assumed one national government in their analyses. I
> understand their reasons for doing this, I think, but it is a real limitation
> on what they have been saying.
>
> >>> Alan Spector 12/20/12 12:24 AM >>>
> Just a story. Don't mean to offend anyone.
>
>
> So I had a friend, and I loaned him
> something like thirty dollars. So he comes up to me one day and says: "I can
> get you the thirty back within a couple of weeks." "Cool", I said. Then he
> said: "The only thing is, I just got a new job and I need to have safety
> shoes by tomorrow or I don't get the job. And they cost eighty dollars. Only
> I don't have eighty dollars. But if you loan me eighty more dollars, I'll
> have the whole $110 within two weeks."
>
>
> WELLLL, I understand "priming the pump" as much
> as the next guy. It's science/dialectics -- you have to concentrate your
> efforts to make a breakthrough---if you want to jump up, first you have to
> crouch down--concentrate your energy and all that. So I loaned him the eighty
> dollars, and he got the shoes, and he got the job. And he got fired within
> two days. Anecdotes don't "prove" anything, but sometimes they can help us
> think about things in different ways.
>
> You can bend a paper clip back and forth and
> back and forth and it goes back to its original shape but eventually, it
> breaks.
>
> You can print up all kinds of money, but unless
> new wealth is created???? Getting rid of the profit system and commodity
> production and producing for need could overcome that because the need for
> labor is infinite as humanity could work to continually try to improve
> its/our condition. But as long as the profit system exists, capitalism as we
> now know it, that will be a gatekeeper and there will be all the imbalances
> that lead to collapse.
>
> If my friend robbed someone, he might have been
> able to come up with my $110, but otherwise? By the way, the factory has
> since closed down. Actually, about fifty thousand jobs have left the area
> since then. Falling rate of profit and all that, although cheaper labor
> abroad has resulted in steel being produced more in other countries, (as well
> as locally, somewhat, but with much reduced wages for the local workers.)
>
> Is there a way out? The deafening silence about
> my questions about "imperialism" and the drive to secure higher rates of
> profit abroad and all that entails, that silence continues to amaze me.
>
> What will also amaze me is if someone, anyone,
> somehow finds a way to take offense at this post.
>
> Respectfully,
> Alan Spector
>
> =========================================================================
>
>
> On Wed, Dec 19, 2012 at 8:24 PM, Sam Friedman
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>
> I have spent a large number of hours
> over the last week trying to make sense of the discussion about Marxism and
> post-Keynesian economics. I hoped that with Andrew and Tadit in the
> discussion, we would learn a lot more than I did, at any rate.
>
> My analysis of the process would focus
> on a failure of the post-Keynesians and the Marxists to engage well with each
> other at all. Tadit, especially, seems to argue as if there are only two
> sides--the post-Keynesians who understand economics (and pose exam questions
> for us to answer that focus on the institutional economics of the USA as if
> those on the list had only a US focus--among other problems with it) and
> those who accept the errors of neo-liberalism even if they think they do not.
>
> This may be distorting what Tadit has
> been saying. I think he has been trying to say more, but it gets lost in his
> diatribes against those he thinks do not understand economics.
>
> I think Andrew let himself be caught up
> in his questions to Steve and Tadit and get fixated on their failure to
> engage with him. Having read Andrew's terrific book on the myth of Marx's
> inconsistency, I know he has much more to say on these topics than he
> actually expressed. I had been hoping, for example, that he would be able to
> explain some of the underlying reasons why in spite of Stephen Block's many
> praises of social democratic country's economies, they have been crisis
> ridden and in many cases have extremely high unemployment rates for years at
> a time.
>
> On a more substantive note, as I
> thought about Tadit's failure to engage and what seems to me to be his belief
> that he understands economics in ways that others do not, and his seeing
> Kliman's economics as a version of microeconomics, I think I see a failure to
> understand some of the strengths of Marxism--e.g., Marx's point that people
> make their own history but not under circumstances of their choosing. That
> is, I think most economic thinking has been shaped a lot by determinist
> models and modes of thought.
>
> Relatedly, as I understand Marx's
> economics, and that of the intelligent post-Marx Marxist economists, unlike
> (some?) post-Keynesians and some economists who think of themselves as
> Marxists, and unlike most microeconomists, they try to understand the
> dialectics of micro and macro. Marx in Capital clearly tries to do this with
> his discussions of the rate of profit to equalize and the various equalities
> that at the macro level help keep the anarchy of production from being total
> chaos. I think Marx also understands that governments/States are not so
> sovereign as (some?) post-Keynesians seem to think, but are organizations of
> human beings with ties to classes and their problems and powers. Thus,
> government spending and private spending by corporations are not polar
> opposites in their impact on the macro economy--though clearly they are not
> the same thing either.
>
> I suspect that Tadit, by the way,
> probably knows a lot of useful things about money in its organizational and
> institutional aspects that would be worth knowing. But I would want to
> complement it with some of the useful Marxist insights that the recent
> symposium in Historical Materialism touched upon.
>
> Anyway, these are just some thoughts
> about this discussion. I think it helped me to understand post-Keynesian
> thought to some degree, though much less than it might have.
>
> For those who found the whole thing
> boring, I hope you made ample use of the Delete button. And I think you for
> your forebearance.
>
> best
> sam
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Allen H. Barton, 118 Wolf's Trail, Chapel Hill, NC 27516
> Phone: 919 933 4003 [email protected]
>
>
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