>>> Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> 06/18/99 01:16PM >>>
Charles Brown wrote:
>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?
(((((((((((((
Charles: I am not sure why you say "but". There is no contradiction between criticizing mass UNemployment, the creation of an empoverished reserve army of unemployed, and criticizing OVERwork, the generation of absolute surplus-value by capitalists lengthening the workday, contributing to mortification of the body ( today this is largely in long overtime). Marx criticizes both in _Capital_.
The solution is both full-employment and shorter workweek with not cut in pay. They complement each other. Giving jobs to the unemployed would allow those already employed to have less onerous workdays. I have never heard of a Marxist or even left (maybe DSA dropped full employment) program that didn't call for both full employment (More Jobs) and a shorter workweek ( May Day !).
In fact, preventing full-employment and shorter workweek also complement each other from the other standpoint, that of the bourgeoisie , who want to keep the working class diverted from politics and divided. The division between the employed working class ( who consider themselves "middle class") and unemployed empoverished working class ( "underclass") is perfect as far as the bourgeoisie are concerned, as a major factor preventing working class unity.
>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.
Doug: 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.
((((((((((
Charles: The Point ??!! Surely you are familiar with left and working class political economists' concerns about permanent mass unemployment.
Working class and left economists going back to Karl Marx have always considered permanent mass unemployment one of the major socio-economic problems with capitalism; so understatements of the level of unemployment understate the negative impact of capitalism. Some of the specifics of this fundemental left conception are briefly described in the quote of Perlo above. Mass unemployment is a major and root cause of almost all important personal and social ills : mass poverty, hunger, homelessness, urban crisis, crimes, alcoholism , drug addiction, all around disease, lack of health care, suicide, divorce, wife abuse, child abuse, etc. For example, the bourgeois press has itself has been attributing recent drops in the crime rate among Black men to a drop in unemployment. The implication is that unemployment is an important cause of crime.
If there were no unemployed, where would the capitalists go to get scabs to break strikes ? In other words, unemployed competing for jobs of the employed is a major pressure to keep wages down. This is very important for left and working class economic analysis of the quotidien class struggle. This is reflected in the conception of "tightness of labor market" as mentioned on this thread. The working class wants a completely tight labor market. The bourgeois want a loose labor market ( as I understand the metaphor). The fewer unemployed, the fewer competing for jobs of the employed , the less the capitalists can threaten to higher unemployed as a tactic in wage bargaining.
Don't you recall the devastation on the working class of plantclosings in the in the 1980's ? We certainly do in Detroit. One of the most important negative effects of recessions are that unemployment goes up. That was a major story of the Great Depression.
The higher unemployment, the greater an indication of the worst impact of capitalism on the working class. The rate is not the only way to reflect this. The absolute number is important in itself, because it is permanently at a massive level. The fact that the rate has gone down SOME does not ameliorate the horrendous impact of the mass absolute figure. The social and economic devastation of 8 million unemployed does not lessen proportionally because the 8 million is a fraction of 130 million instead of 120 million (hypothetically).
That capitalism means permanent , mass unemployment is one of the major "points" of left politicaleconomic critique. Full employment is a major goal of socialism, the first phase of communism in which the rule of thumb is from each according to ability and to each according to WORK - still. Fishing in the morning and critical criticism in the afternoon sounds more like the second phase of communism.
Charles Brown