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

["michael a. lebowitz" <mlebowit@xxxxxx>]

At 15:39 21/11/2003 -0500, jerry 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?
>
> I don't think this is a meaningful result as it is entirely
> dependent
> on the assumption that the composition of capital remains constant.

        

I'm not
certain that I understand this. What does the composition of capital have
to do with Marx's discussion of the theory of relative surplus value in
Vol. I, Ch. 13? 

> 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.

        

I have no
difficulty in seeing the relevance of changes in TCC. That, in fact, is
my point in asking people to distinguish between the case of productivity
increases that drop from the sky (Vol I, Ch13) and those that occur
through the displacement of workers by machines. Specifically, what I
have argued in the book is: 'The basis, in short, for relative surplus
value is not the growth in productivity.... Only an increased
degree of separation among workers initiated by the introduction of
machinery ensures that productivity will rise relative to the real wage '
(115).

        

in
solidarity,

        

michael

---------------------

Michael A. Lebowitz

Professor Emeritus

Economics Department

Simon Fraser University

Burnaby, B.C., Canada V5A 1S6

Office Fax:   (604) 291-5944

Home:   Phone (604) 689-9510