Re: The MIM Debate Reply

[Chris Burford <cburford@xxxxxxxxxx>]

 > Date: Tue, 10 Oct 1995 18:58:18 -0400 (EDT)
 > From: Maoist Internationalist Movement <mim3@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>




 > > Now as technological advances permit the production of
 > > more and more complex commodities, capital requires a higher educated
 > > workforce and can allow some slight reduction in the rate of local
 > > exploitation of this workforce in order to win extra surplus value in
 > > the global market. At the same time the slightly higher relative wages
 > > permit an enhancement of the living conditions of the workers of these
 > > metropolitan areas in terms of commodity use values (although the quality
 > > of their life may decline).
 > >
 >
 > Pat for MIM replies: "Slightly"? "Slightly higher relative wages"?
 > Sri Lankan manufacturing wages are 4% of the same in the United Snakes.
 > The minimum wage in Mexico is $3--a DAY.


The problems here need to be untangled.

There is a vast difference in the use values available to a worker in Sri
Lanka and a worker in the USA.

A separate question is whether there is unequal exchange of *exchange* value
between the two countries.

In the seventies there was a long failure of communication between Third
World marxists on this point and First World marxists. Even when some of
the heat and dust of the exchanges between Pat, Louis and others settle,
this major problems of theory and communication IMO remains.

Chris B



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