[PEN-L:27342] Re: LTV, income disparity, and world systems

["Justin Schwartz" <jkschw@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> >>>Furthermore, there is no link between
> >>>capitalist productivity and the increase of "use values", ie., goods
> like
> >>>clothing, food, etc, detached from their role as commodities.
>
> >No link at all? So the general rise in living standards in the
> industerial
> >nation is due to what?
>
> I understand this exchange only dimly.
>
> I would think that as non-proletarian farmers and craftspeople are sucked
> into the capitalist system as wage workers, their production of use values
> would decrease, since now they are spending their time working for wages
> rather than for their own sustainance.
>
> Also, since studying wallerstein and the world systems perspective of
> capitalism, i have understood the general rise in living standards in the
> industrial nations to be due to their status as "core" with the power to
> exploit the "periphery" through all their many legal (legalized by the core
> themselves, of course) and illegal devices to accumulate surplus value at
> the
> expense of the poor.

So your theory is that the sole or main explanation of the meteroric rise in
living standards in the industrialized countries is that impoverishment of
the South. It's a simple transfer, take away from Guatemalan peasants, give
to Norwegian workers. This silly idea has so many things wrong with it its;
hard to know where to begin.

First of all, the living standards (in classical Marxist terms, consumption
of use values) in thea dvanced countries have increased far far more than
the amount of wealth transferred from the South to North. Of course there is
exploitation of the South--cheap labor and raw materials extorted by
comprador regimesa and predatory corporations.

But as a matter of fact, second,  the main engine of wealth production
(value production if you like--I think value theory's not useful here) is in
the North. Norwegian, American, Japanese workers add most of the value
that's added. And they enjoy a lot of the benefits. Capitalist enterprise in
the North produces CD players, cars, toothpaste that enhances the living
standards of Northern workers. It's true that there is no _necessary_
connection between the production of use values and things that are actually
useful (though notice that in classical Marxsit terms, bombs, tobacco,
handguns, crack cocaine, etc. are use values--they are just rather nasty
ones), but as a matter of fact value won't be realized and profits won;t be
made if capitalists don't make things that will sell, and they only will
sell if they have use value.

There's a foolish line going around that the North is utterly parasitical;
all goods things come from the South, which produces all wealth and is
merely impoverished because of it. I don't believe that is what Wallerstein
says,and if it is, then he's a fool. There's also a foolish line going
around that capitalsim has been making things worse for everyone but handful
of privileged labor aristocrats since 1848. This is nonsense. In the North
capitalism has made thingsa  lot better for almost everyone--a kower middle
class standard of living today would in many ways bethe envy of all but the
very rich 100 years ago. That doesn't mean things are good, but if you want
to undersatnd why in part there is reluctance to flock to radical banners,
you have to understand the economic realities. In the South the situation is
very varied--it ranges from the NICs, where living standards are approaching
Northern levels (Taiwan) to more wobby situations like Brazil, with extremes
of wealth and poverty, to disaster stories like much of Africa. Capiatlsim
has been beneficial in some of these places, harmful in others.

jks

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