Ravenstone writes,
“It is the “wants” of the poor which “constitute his” (the rich man’s) “wealth… When all were equal, none would labour for another. The necessaries of life would be overabundant whilst its comforts were entirely wanting” (op. cit., p. 10).” (p 261)
But, of course, as Marx points out, were it not for the historically progressive role of capitalism, in continually revolutionising the economy of use of labour-time, so as to drive up surplus labour, and thereby accumulate capital, so as to drive up efficiency even further, the quantity and quality of use values produced, the wealth of society, would not have grown, and nor would the living standards of workers. It's easy to see why those writing in the early part of the 19th century would arrive at such conclusions, because the rapid growth of the factory towns, the demand for long hours of work, and low wages to meet the requirements of a rapidly mechanising production, gave the impression that the affluence of the rich could only be achieved as a consequence of an immiseration of the workers – a similar rationale is used to argue that the wealth of developed economies is achieved by the immiseration via super-exploitation and unequal exchange with less developed economies. The huge influx of labour thrown off the land, along with the sharp rise in population, added to that perception, as it appeared that the supply of cheap labour was endless.
It results in ideas such as Lassalle's Iron Law of Wages. A similar theme can be seen in the writing of Daniel De Leon. But, as Marx demonstrates, these concepts about the immiseration of the workers are false. Capitalism, by developing the forces of production, raises, not lowers, workers' living standards. It not only creates whole new ranges of goods and services, but is led to stimulate, amongst the workers, ever new desires for them, so as to expand its markets; it must expand the workers' horizons, not just for necessaries, but for ever new types of commodity, for culture and so on. As Marx describes it, in the Grundrisse, this its Civilising Mission.
Capital does not make workers poor, or increase their exploitation by reducing their standard of living. Quite the opposite. It increases their exploitation by raising the level of social productivity, via capital accumulation, and investment in labour-saving technology. That higher level of productivity means that wage goods become cheaper, so a smaller part of the working-day is required as necessary labour, increasing the proportion and amount of surplus labour. And, that very process, of cheapening wage goods, also leads to the range of wage goods expanding, so that even as the proportion of necessary labour to surplus labour shrinks, the amount of wage goods, represented by it, the standard of living of workers, expands.
As Marx puts it, in opposition to the Lassallean Iron Law of Wages.
“Since Lassalle's death, there has asserted itself in our party the scientific understanding that wages are not what they appear to be -- namely, the value, or price, of labour—but only a masked form for the value, or price, of labour power. Thereby, the whole bourgeois conception of wages hitherto, as well as all the criticism hitherto directed against this conception, was thrown overboard once and for all. It was made clear that the wage worker has permission to work for his own subsistence—that is, to live, only insofar as he works for a certain time gratis for the capitalist (and hence also for the latter's co-consumers of surplus value); that the whole capitalist system of production turns on the increase of this gratis labour by extending the working day, or by developing the productivity—that is, increasing the intensity of labour power, etc.; that, consequently, the system of wage labour is a system of slavery, and indeed of a slavery which becomes more severe in proportion as the social productive forces of labour develop, whether the worker receives better or worse payment. And after this understanding has gained more and more ground in our party, some return to Lassalle's dogma although they must have known that Lassalle did not know what wages were, but, following in the wake of the bourgeois economists, took the appearance for the essence of the matter.
It is as if, among slaves who have at last got behind the secret of slavery and broken out in rebellion, a slave still in thrall to obsolete notions were to inscribe on the program of the rebellion: Slavery must be abolished because the feeding of slaves in the system of slavery cannot exceed a certain low maximum!”
(Marx – Critique of the Gotha Programme)
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