Distribution of Farm Productivity Gains

Jim heartfield jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk
Thu Sep 30 17:59:05 PDT 1999


In message <v04210103b4187b893c87@[24.6.249.56]>, Brad De Long <delong at econ.Berkeley.EDU> writes
>>
>>Of course the form of social organisation of the capitalist farm means
>>that the lion's share of productivity gains are translated into profits,
>>not wages.
>>
>>--
>>Jim heartfield
>
>Ummm....
>
>The wage share was still above 60% when I last looked. The lion's
>share of productivity gains are translated neither into (farm)
>profits nor into (farm) wages but into cheap food...

I agree with you on cheap food, but you cannot have missed that this means that a lot of agricultural labour is surplus to production. Increased productivity reduces the wage bill in the farming sector.

Furthermore, cheaper consumer goods means that the share of income dedicated to wages over all can be kept as low as sixty per cent. If food was dearer, wages would have to be higher just to allow the waged labourers to live.

Bear in mind to that the big shakeouts in the farming sector before the second world war were some of the most profound social costs born by anyone. The dust-bowl disaster and the great black migration were both consequences of the shake-out in American agriculture (as the massacre of the Kulaks was in the USSR).

If the current crisis is not so profound in the West it is only because there are not so many people to effect. In India, farm incomes have been dropping precipitately, while around seventy per cent of the population still lives on the land. The consequences of that impending social transformation will not be advantageous to agricultural workers. -- Jim heartfield



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list