> > > While the absolute immiseration thesis has turned out largely wrong -
> >
> >I'm not aware of Marx putting forward an "immiseration" thesis
> *Sigh*
>
> You should then go read _Wage-Labour and Capital_:
It is true that in WL&C and the Communist Manifesto Marx said that wages tended to the level of bare physical minimum. At this point Marx unquestioningly accepted the wage fund theory, along with most other economists. But this was before Marx began his study of political economy in the 1850s and developed his own theory of value, a theory which specifically rejects the wage fund theory (see Value, Price and Profit).
Although Marx sometimes went on to describe events in ways which suggest immiseration, taken in context these are rhetorical flourishes and not theoretical propositions. Indeed, Marx never used the term "immiseration". But by now it has become an accepted wisdom that Marx did hold it as a thesis, which to question brings forth a sigh of disbelief.
It should be added that the "immiseration thesis" is really a legacy of the Cold War. It was a distortion of Marx used by the Communist parties to "prove" that workers in the West generally would suffer dire poverty if they did not emulate the state capitalist dictatorships. While the latter have been consigned to the dustbin of history, I think Marx's legacy deserves a more honest re-consideration.
-- Lew