>I have no doubt that the government economists and statisticians do not
>intend the unemployment rate to measure human deprivation to the extent I
>am pushing it. However, the Marxist economists I have read and studied do
>use it in this way. The fact that Marxist economists must rely on
>government figures to an extent, though with modifications, does not mean
>that they limit the significance of its social, political and economic
>impact the way the other economists do.
>
>In _Superprofits and Crises: Modern Capitalism_ (1988) Victor Perlo says.
>
>" Unemployment is one of the most severe hardships capitalism inflicts on
>the working class. It deprives millions of both the material means of life
>and the psychological, moral requirements of socially useful activity.
>Unemployment has been a constant feature of modern industrial
>capitalism..."
Yes, but.... I thought Marxists criticized the whole wage relation and the alienating nature of work under capitalism. Overwork is at least as much a feature of U.S. economic life as is unemployment. Don't you want to fish in the morning and be a critical critic in the afternoon?
>The monthly newsletter _Economic Notes_ ( put out by Labor Research
>Association in NYC) prints an official unemployment statistic and a real
>unemployment statistic. Its definition of "real unemployment" is "
>official unemployment + discouraged workers + those with special
>employment needs + involuntary parttime workers calculated for hours
>lost". The rule of thumb I have heard from Perlo and others often is that
>the real rate is double the official rate.
This sounds very much like what I posted here yesterday from the BLS:
>U-6 Total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers,
>plus total employed
>part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the
>civilian labor force plus
>all marginally attached workers....................... 7.1
But I'm still not sure what your point is. Yeah, life can be real sucky for the working class, even in "good" times like these. But this U-6 figure was a lot higher 5 years ago. The level of the unemployment rate may not be all that revealing, but the trend does tell you something.
Doug