What was exceptional about East Asian capital accumulation was its explosiveness accompanied for long periods with very slow growth in the real wage. In the context of the advance of the productive forces (the level of 'civilization' achieved) and the intensification of the labor process, even rising real wages lagged far behind the value of labor power for long periods (it seems that minimum capital requirements in the world market were so high that most of the value produced had to be used for fixed capital especially the latest machine models to ensure competitiveness; even then there was massive resort to debt in relation to equity). This immiserating growth could only be maintained through extreme authoritarianism (think of Kwangju; here we'll have to consult the work of Deyo, Bello, Hart Landsberg, Cumins). There was eventually explosive wage growth allowed by political openings but this was a matter of securing wages that finally approximated the value of labor power; at any rate, even as wages rose, labor share of value added seems to have continued to fall (Indonesia, Malaysia, South Korea). The social misery of the working class rose throughout.
It's helpful here to remember Marx's praise of Ricardo:
"It's one of Ricardo's great merits that he examined relative or proportionate wages, and established them as a definite category. Up to this time wages had alwasy been regarded as something simple and consequently the wokers was considered an animal. But here is concerned in his his soical relationships." Quoted by Rosdolsky, p. 294
Now the labor process is being intensified again without real wage gains. This is immiseration in no less sense than reduced incomes unable to the minimum caloric intake required to reproduce life (what you are calling absolute immiseration). The factory proletariat of Nigeria, Egypt, Kenya and South Africa--the four corners--is surely enduring the same kind of offensive.
This global offensive as defended by the World Bank has been ably critiqued by Jan Breman in "Labour, Get Lost: A Late Capitalist Manifesto" Economic and Political Weekly, Sept 16, 1995:
"What ultimately becomes clear is that future propsects for workers in the global economy can only be bright if they are prepared to behave with maximal felixibility, i.e., to forego most forms of security and protection. After a balancing act, summing up the well known pros and cons, the verdict [of the World Bank] is that minimum wages are difficult to justify, particularly in low and middle income countries. The same applies to most other gains, often the outcome of long last lasting struggles., which mainly if not solely benefit that segment of the laobur force which is relatively better skilled and organized. The message is abrupt, short and clear: the privilged treatment enjoyed by the formal secotr workers should be abolished in order to put an end to the obnoxious state of labour market dualism. Has not experience taught that capital, forced by the need for continuous economic adaptability in the rapidly changing world economy, is only interested in flexible work contracts? Well labour had better fall into line. Dictated by highly volatile market conditions, this means the acceptance of casual rather than permanent employment, of fluctuating instead of steady wage rewards, of variable contrary to stable hours and fixed length of the workday. Last but not least workers should make little claims or none at lall to secondarly laobur rights. In exprssing a preference for such a work regime, the World Bank goes to the extent of even rejecting as untenable, both in principle and practice, the introduction of safety regulations at the site of employment.
"'Needy workers in those countries often are not reached by protective labour legislation. They benefit from public action that attempts to improve the working environment in the rural and informal sectors--e.g, through th eprovision of drinking water, improved sanitary conditions, or eradication of infectious diseases.'
"Reflecting on the miserable plight of labour in Surat, the location of my urban fieldwork in west Inda and a bulwark of informal cpaitalism, which has witnessed pogrom and plague in quick succession during the last few years, I find this statement in the WB documents to be intolerably naive and quite objectionable."
Yours, Rakesh