> >Whose absolute immiseration thesis? Is that a Zizek idea? Karl Marx wrote
> in
> >Volume One of Capital, ". . . be his [sic] payment high or low, the lot of
> >the worker must grow worse."
>
> Well that's just dead wrong, isn't it?
Doug,
What do you think Marx meant by this prediction? If he was wrong, was he stupid to have predicted it? If he wasn't stupid, but was nevertheless wrong, what transpired that was different from his prediction?
Usually the sequence of answers presumes, incorrectly, that Marx predicted absolute immiseration, which he clearly did not, as this passage shows. So those who want to refute Marx have an obligation to explain their understanding of Marx's expectation.
I have always savored this passage precisely because it so soundly refutes Louis Althusser's nonsense about an "epistemological break" in Marx, by which device LA contrived to reject all of pre-Capital Marx on the grounds that Marx was not yet a Marxist. LA's principle target was Marx's view of alienation, which as evidenced here was always the key to Marx's view of workers' suffering, and also the factor that would contribute to their radicalization.
Ken Lawrence