Jim heartfield wrote:
> Marx is quite clear that the increase in profits by increased
> productivity cheapens the necessaries of life, making it possible for
> workers to enjoy more use-values, even while the value of labour-power
> is falling (Concept of Relative Surplus Value).
With emphasis on "makes it possible". To be clear, Jim, this is not an automatic effect. The value of labor power can decline with productivity increases, but whether labor benefits or not depends on what happens to wages and employment, not v. Wages are neither fixed nor set at some level of social subsistence. They are negotiated between capital and labor separately from the social determination of v.
It is true that standards of living have risen over time. But this too, isn't despositive; it's not proof that either v has fallen or that things are getting better, as you assert. The value of labor power includes a social element--it's a measure of the social, not physical, subsistence necessary to reproduce labor as social beings--capitalism being a social system. Thus, new, and better, goods and services raises v over time reflecting changes in necesasities for social existence (as the new or better goods become to be considered necessities). Cars, TVs, etc. become part of the subsistence consumption basket of labor, where they were not before.
To oversimplify, productivity increases can both reduce the value of existing items in the subsistence basket, and add new ones. On balance, though, it is clear that v, social subsistence, rises over time. When wages fail to similarly rise, as they have in the US for much of the last 25 years, it is then possible to argue there has been an absolute immerisation of the labor--as measured by the change in wages realtive to the change in v. That is, wages buy less social subsistence than they used to. This has happened at some times recently in the US.
To be more precise, it's not just wages, but the distribution of jobs that matters as well. General wages in manufacturing may rise with the standard of living, but fewer prople may work there; more may toil in lower paying service jobs, e.g. That would have the same effect as stagnant wages on labor immizeration, and it has been working that way lately in the US.
Needless to say, for the last 50 years in the US, there has also been a massive decline in labor's fortunes relative to those of capital. The vast majority of the gains in productivity have inured to capital as surplus value, and have been realized in many ways, besides profits to capital.
> But nobody is denying the fact of inequality. On the contrary, my
> argument is that inequality is increasing (in that the share of the
> total product falls more unequally than before). What is at issue is
> that I argue that the overall position is improving (in that the total
> product is greater, the reduced share can be absolutely more). So you
> can make as many requests as you like, but you cannot say that things
> are getting worse across the board when here is a clear example of them
> getting better.
Here you make the same arguement. Again, a rise in the standard of living for the general populace does not insure against immerisation of labor, if the wages of labor have not kept up or the distribution of jobs has worsened. Your statement does not constitute "a clear example" of things getting better. And the large increase in inequality ought to be a red flag to that effect, in a social system like capitalism. Not some index unconnected to labor's fortunes. It is part of the issue you argue, Jim.
Roger