jim o'connor: absolute and relative surplus value

rc-am rcollins at netlink.com.au
Mon May 31 22:17:05 PDT 1999


jim wrote:


>Has anyone seen any study indicating that temp and part-time employment,
>speed-ups and stretch-outs, longer hours, forced overtime and other modes
>of extracting absolute surplus value themselves increase or multiply during
>or after industrial restructuring of various kinds that aims to lower unit
>labor costs.

I can't recall any such research offhand, but there is certainly enough evidence about that there is an increasing resort to the strategies of absolute s-v extraction, but I would maybe ask the question of what the relation of this is to relative s-v strategies, such as competerisation over the last decade or so. that both seem to have taken place suggests that the question is really one of the changes in the proportions b/n necessary and surplus labour, and the historical reasons for why they have accompanied eachother in a way that they didn't, say in australia after WW2. I'd be interested to know what people see as the reasons for this, or indeed if they accept the premises.

Angela --- rcollins at netlink.com.au



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