>Rakesh, on the other hand, says that wages are normally set at the value of
>LP. He seems to want explain most variation in wages as effects of the
>struggle over what counts as socially necessary in reproducing LP.
Tom, Marx argues that class struggle can determine the value of labor power within a narrow band that is set by the development of the productive forces (it's this intuition to which Giusanni has given the first rigorous demonstration in International Journal of Political Economy vol 22, no3 Fall 1992). So actually I think struggle is secondary to the determination of the value of labor power. This would doubtless strike Jim O Connor (see Accumulation Crisis) as overly objectivistic or fundamentalist reading of Marx--and this indeed is an important criticism.
>The
>skirmishes of this struggle change the value of LP and therefore v. He does
>allow that "certain" workers receive wages > value of LP, but sees this as
>exceptional, and not the normal mechanism of the influence of class
>struggle on wages. Capital, he says, tries to make sure this "does not
>obtain for the class as a whole." Productive workers, then, do not normally
>receive any of s.
Let me argue against myself. Let's say US technological monopolies have been successful in setting 'excessive prices'. If profit rates nonethless equalize, some employees may find their wages supplemented by surplus value--these would be the Silicon Valley employees who are making it impossible for the mass of the working class to live there. This has been a problem for some time. Due to housing costs, the wages of factory workers have been considered too high for more than a decade--which explains the Valley's deindustrialisation from canneries to wafer production.
Moreover, if technology using industries can then only overcome any profitability difficulties through wage cuts which leads to a deflationary spiral in consumer goods production, this would cheapen the goods which enter into the reproduction of the more handsomely paid workers in the tech monopolies, This could count as a second transfer of value. If I remember correctly, this is not too far from Galbraith's idea of how the technology empire works.
Now due to the rationalisation of education a technical worker may now only need a MS where a PhD would have been required before or BS where a MS had hitherto been required, there is constant downward pressure on the wages of the most highly skilled technical workers--to say nothing of that from foreign workers. Yet in order to keep these workers at any one company, wage incentives continue to be offered. So I do think it is possible that a narrow group of productive workers continue to be paid at wages above the value of labor power. But certainly not the American working class as a whole.
>1. What are the implications of building a theory on the proposition that
>productive workers in rich countries regularly receive part of surplus
>value (or not)? What are we better or worse able to see with a theory
>constructed this way?
Well if this group of productive workers is not narrowly defined (and they too are under constant wage pressure), we would end up writing the American working class or white working class off as a whole.
>3. If there is something empirical at stake, is there an empirical way to
>choose among the claims?
We could look at Galbraith's wage clusters.
Thank you very much for your careful commentary.
Yours, Rakesh