>
>I didn't mention utility, nor was I alluding to it.
>If wages go down and employment goes up, total wages
>could increase (not necessarily the wage share). It
>is possible to construe the aggregate increase as a 'gain'
>for the working class, though equally possible to
>define gain in some other way. The passage seemed
>way too facile. And I'm not even a macroeconomist.
Sorry to have misunderstood you, Max. I just jump to utility when talking to an economist. I take it as an advantage in this discussion that I am not an economist of any sort, but your criticism is most welcome.
Please note that you don't deny that for already employed workers real wages will go down;that if effective demand so increases to eventually bolster wages then the Keynesian prop to a declining marginal efficiency of capital may well undo itself; that Keynes accepts that real wage reduction is the only way to increase employment; that this is the reason his full employment theory was accorded respect by the Nazi state and the press of German finance capital; that there are no limits to the real wage reduction the state could justify in the name of eliminating all 'involuntary unemployment' (that is, Keynesianism is a passage way to totalitarianism, making Keynes' intro to the German trans of his GT hardly surprising); that the real wage reductions could mean real misery because they are now insufficient to reproduce labor power at a given level of effort and intensity; that Keynesianism is only class warfare by other means.
You are reduced to the position of measuring improvement for the working class by whether total wages, not even the wage share, move upward--which is compatible with real wage reductions for already overworked, overexploited workers. You will note that your narrow focus keeps matters within the realm of circulation where bourgeois economists are quite comfortable.
Now it may be possible to define gain in this or that way. What seems to me facile is the shocking unconcern Keynesian theorists show regarding such 'appropriations' of their theory. Absolutely disturbing. At least we Marxists can show that Marx is not responsible for Stalinism. Note that it does not even enter in the bourgeois economist Krugman's mind to consider the class consequences of his inflation target plan through money creation. He blithely recommends it and leftists get all excited because he is not Gregory Mankiw or Robert Lucas. Wow!
>Tight labor markets are good for workers, as the present
>data show.
Not if they are accomplished through reductions in the real wage or real wages are not allowed to increase to compensate workers for any heightened intensity at work (including even further limits on break periods or overtime pay). It is quite possible for working class misery to increase in a tight labor market or even at full employment. As you may want to remind a certain Haider.
yrs, rakesh
ps Christian, I won't be able to reply to your thoughtful message for a few days.