Immiseration my eye

[Jim heartfield]

In message <v01540b03b534ea3a9058@[208.58.101.87]>, Jacob Segal
<jpsegal at rcn.com> writes
>(snip)
>>Hence increasing absolute wages accompany relative impoverishment. Marx
>>never had an 'immiseration thesis' in the sense attributed him, that
>>workers wages fell absolutely, or as measured in use-values, only
>>relatively, or as measured in value, or against profits.
>>
>>--
>>Jim heartfield
>
>If so, why does Marx appear to write in the Manifesto that the declining
>living standard is a spur to the revolution.  I hardly think workers would
>so clearly know to revolt if their wages were going up in absolute terms,
>no matter what their share of profits.

The Manifesto was published the year before Wage Labour and Capital, so
we can expect that the latter was a refinement of the ideas in the
former.

The Manifesto says 'the modern labourer on the contrary, instead of
rising with the progress of industry sinks deeper and deeper below the
conditions of existence of his own class'. But as Marx makes clear in
Wage Labour and Capital, Capital and the Grundrisse, 'the conditions of
existence of his own class' is a relative value. The value of labour
power is dependent upon the historical conditions. That is why the
labourer can have more goods, but a smaller share of the social wealth,
or a smaller slice of a larger cake.

Marx thinks that workers will take action according to their *share* of
the total product, rather than according to the absolute quantity of
goods available to them.

So, for example, workers in the 1850s were much poorer than those in the
1880s, but those in the 1880s were much more combative; or similarly,
workers in the 1970s were richer than those in the 1950s, but again were
much more combative.

In message <s90ee983.018 at mail.ci.detroit.mi.us>, Charles Brown
<CharlesB at CNCL.ci.detroit.mi.us> writes
>CB: Hey, good point ! Listening to some of these people, you would wonder why 
>Marx or anybody would think we need a revolution to overthrow capitalism.  I 
>mean humanity is making so much material progress with capitalism only the 
>unabomber would say anything bad about it.

I wonder what Charles makes of Marx and Engels' Communist Manifesto then
with its argument that

'The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of
production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws
all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation' (p38, Peking
ed.)

Or 'The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has
created more massive and more colossal productive forces that have all
the preceding generations put together.' (p39)

Does this praise of the bourgeoisie demonstrate that Marx and Engels
wanted to see their rule perpetuated? Not a bit of it.

-- 
Jim heartfield