Re: income & race

[Doug Henwood <dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx>]

Rakesh Bhandari wrote:

>At the same time,  this data shows that inequality in terms of the top and
>bottom quintile groups is greater than between blacks (<20% of the
>population) and whites. The gravest inequalities are not always racial, WEB
>DuBois notwithstanding. As Vicente Navarro has pointed out, there is a
>greater differential in the rate of death by heart disease between blue
>collar and white collar workers than between blacks and whites. Navarro
>then points out that the govt only get these stats by occupation in the
>mid-1980s, while it continues to racialise the data. After all, the govt
>can do something about racial inequality, while it cannot enter into the
>hard-core of bourgeois relations.

[and]

>At any rate, Doug, I think that data on income inequality are pretty
>irrelevant to the empirical confirmation of Marxian theory. It would be
>more important to determine the rate of exploitation through a rejection of
>wage share as its proxy or to determine whether real wage gains are only
>coming at the expense of greater misery with the production process, that
>abode into which bourgeois economists remain reluctant to enter.

My first reaction to this would be, so much the worse for Marxian theory.
First, race is one of the central facts of American life; class is too, of
course, but race has a life of its own. Navarro's evidence aside, mortality
rates for blacks are worse than those for whites even after controlling for
education and income. Black incomes are lower than those for whites even
after all the appropriate demographic controls are applied. And second,
income inequality is an objective and subjective fact of social life. Why
is it "more important to determine the rate of exploitation through a
rejection of wage share" than to explore income polarlization? What does it
reveal? Income is an important (certainly not the only) measure of one's
position in the social hierarchy, and a determinant of it (certainly not
the only one) as well. "Greater misery with the production process"? In
general, "productive" workers are better paid than "unproductive" ones -
who feels and looks more exploited. Value categories may be important for
examining the inner dynamics of capitalist economies, but, as they say in
school, appearance counts. A lot.

Doug