Roger noted:
>I asserted that in the last 25 years wages and work changes have combined to
>produce disposible income that at times lagged the rise in v. If so, this is
>*absolute* immiseration--less money to buy a worker's social subsistence.
The value of labor power rises in the sense that the use values required for its reproduction rises due to a combination of the intensity and historico moral factors, but to the extent that the rate of exploitation rises, the value of labor power falls, to put it tautogously, relative to the value it produces (this is indeed increased social misery, though not quite yet physical misery). I think in the above you confuse variable capital (v) with the value of labor power. By rise in v (traditionally variable capital) you mean the greater quantity of use values that go or must go to ensure the reproduction of labor power, i.e., that labor power sells at its value. The reason for the wage having fallen below the value of labor power may be an insuffiently commensurate increase in variable capital to the growing total number of workers hired out of that variable capital. But the reason for variable capital having fallen in this sense must be sought elsewhere. Grossmann of course locates it in the diminishing flow of surplus value--which is really what governs all of Marxian dynamics.
Yours, Rakesh