Re: (OPE-L) Re: indirect labor, the real wage, and the production of surplus value

[ajit sinha <sinha_a99@xxxxxxxxx>]

--- gerald_a_levy <gerald_a_levy@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> Replying to Mike L, Ajit wrote:
>
> > In Marx's theory real wages are
> > taken as given at any point of time, as the real
> wages
> > are supposed to be determined in a long term
> > socio-historical context (and not just class
> > struggle).
>
> Let me ask you a 'non-Marx question' first:
> If real wages only change in the long-term,  then
> when
> the purchasing power of money wages changes over
> the short-run or medium-term during inflationary or
> deflationary periods,  what is the name for that?
> If 'real wages' haven't changed, then what has?
>
> In solidarity, Jerry
________________________

First of all, it is not true that money wages are
always constant. Many wage contracts may be indexed to
changes in cpi. Workers and capitalists do annually or
biannually renegotiate their wage contracts. But in
any case, if real wages change or may change over a
long period of time, it must imply that there must be
some changes in the short period of time. Long periods
don't suddenly fall from heaven, they are made up of
short periods only. So the long period point is that a
perceptible or large enough change that would vitiate
the predictions of the theory does not happen in a
short periods of time. Taking real wages as given also
mean that it is abstracting from market period
fluctuations in it--nobody is denying that on daily
basis economic variables could fluctuate due to
infinite causes. Cheers, ajit sinha


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