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:
> Mike L wrote:
>
> > But, Jerry, yesterday you wrote the following:
> > >Assuming that commodities are sold at their value
> and assuming
> > >competitive  conditions,  productivity increases
> should result in
> > > declining
> > >commodity prices, including declining prices for
> means of consumption
> > >for workers. A given real wage, under these
> circumstances,  requires
> > >*declining money wages*.
>
> Right.  My (implicit) point was that the assumption
> of a given real wage
> when  productivity was increasing produced an
> *absurd* result:  falling
> money wages.
>
> > Under these conditions (ie., falling commodity
> prices), won't real wages
> > grow with productivity--- unless something has
> produced a fall in money
> > wages?
_____________________

This proposition makes no sense to me. Why should
money wages fall with the rise in productivity and
real wages being fixed? I think one can point out not
one but several cases, including the USA in the last
ten to twenty years, where real wages have remained
constant or even declined but money wages almost
invariably have been on the rise. I think your
proposition sounds more absurd that what you are
declaring to be absurd. Cheers, ajit sinha
___________________________
>
> I don't think this is a meaningful result as it is
> entirely dependent
> on the assumption that the composition of capital
> remains constant.
>
> One need only contrast the 'picture' in   Chapter
> 25, Section 1  of
> Volume 1 of _Capital_ to the 'picture' that emerges
> (beginning in
> Section 2) in the rest of that chapter to see how
> critical this
> assumption becomes.  If we want to explain changing
> wages within a
> *dynamic* context then I don't think that the TCC,
> the VCC, and
> the OCC can remain constant.  Even before the degree
> of separation
> of workers becomes a variable, the theory must
> explain the
> general movement of wages where the composition of
> capital
> changes.
>
> In solidarity, Jerry


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