Jim, this will not do. We are arguing about the tenability of Grossmann's increasing misery thesis which should not be conflated with Kautsky's or the iron law of wages. You are missing the central question: how is increased misery possible if the real wage increases or has increased? How can an improved real wage still fall below the *value of labor power*? How is the value of labor power then determined? Especially that historico-moral element? And don't forget Grossmann's explanation for both why the real wage needs to increase over time and why that is possible in the course of accumulation. That is, please don't stick him with an iron law of wages. Grossmann was not Lassalle.
Whether [Grossmann]
> had it right or not hardly bears upon the central question, is it
> possible for the mass of use-vales secured by the wage to increase while
> the value of labour power falls. I think Marx already answered this, a
> point you now seem to accept.
Jim, you are missing Grossmann's argument. Again at first Grossmann assumes that the rate of exploitation remains constant, so the real wage increases in the course of accumulation. Then on the basis of Bauer model of accumulation he finds that a constant rate of exploitation is incompatible with further accumulation; however, a rising real wage is indeed required if it is not to fall below the value of labor power--this is why the assumption of a constant rate of exploitation is a tenable simplfying assumption. Of course rising real wages can be secured even if the rate of exploitation is increased. But real wages can't be kept stagnant as the labor process is intensified if they are not to fall below the value of labor power and thereby increase the *physical* and social misery of the working class.
The effort required to secure a given level of use values increases beyond the customary limit while the workers' relative social standing falls. This is increasing misery, and there is no mention here of workers' wages having fallen to some minimum physiological level--the crude thesis of immiseration is completely alien to Grossmann's theory. I wish you would clarify that, instead of repeating falsities about his work.
Now we know all those Okishio exercices in comparative statics work on the assumption of a constant real wage. This is a much more fanciful and misleading assumption than to begin with a constant rate of exploitation in the analysis of the tendencies of accumulation.
> If you don't rate Rosdolsky, that's your loss. I did particularly like
> this salutary comment of Mattick's:
It's not a question of not liking Rosdolsky (like the chapters on rationalisation, critique of Joan Robinson, method, etc); it's that he does not understand how the value of labor power is determined (what Grossmann's criticism of Rosa was)and that he resurrects Bukharin's theory of absolute immiseration. That is, he does not understand that the wage does not have to fall to some physical minimum for misery to increase (that's why he turns to the neo Bukharinist theory to locate immiseration abroad in the third world); the wage only has to fall below labor power's value. Which then raises the question of how that is determined, but he makes no progress on the question. Which is understandable. Only Grossmann and Giusanni have.
> and this, that you choose not to engage with
>
> 'All social progress is based upon the ability to produce more with less
> labour. Capitalism is no exception.' p31
I did deal with this--the difference between the basis and the criterion of progress,etc. Perhaps I did not respond to you adequately. I am trying.
Yours, Rakesh