Wages (response to Tom W)

[Rakesh Bhandari]

>>>> Rakesh Bhandari <bhandari at mmp.Princeton.EDU> 02/22/0
>>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?
>
>&&&&&&&&&&
>
>CB: For them to "receive part of the surplus" , their wage would have to
>be high enough that they were not exploited at all, no ? Wouldn't they
>have to receive the full value of the commodities they produce plus a
>little more ?
>
>CB

Charles, you are indeed correct, and my blunder an important one.  By
receiving wages over the value of their labor power, some workers may
indeed only be reducing their rate of exploitation, not receiving all of
the surplus value which they  produce--this may be the case with the great
majority of Boeing engineers and technicians now on strike.  Perhaps it's
imaginable that in a tech monopoly the capitalists primarily live off the
extra surplus value while a few workers  do and can (due to skill scarcity)
lay claim to all the surplus value they have produced (a $120,000/yr Boeing
senior engineer?) If this is true it seems not to be true of very many
workers at all.

It's interesting however that what seems to have moved the engineers and
technicians into action is the bonus plan machinists won. One hopes that
this is not an attempt to maintain proper distance between intellectual and
manual labor.

Yours, Rakesh