Thanks to Roger Odisio for correcting my error in using the term "rate of exploitation" when what I meant was "rate of profit". I knew I should have checked terminology before sending my post, but the debate has been creative.
I think James is correct that broad statistics can now be analysed to some extent to suggest aggregate trends in exploitation and distribution of surplus value.
The gap in the figures presented here seems to be that of c - the constant capital. If James has aggregate data to permit such a statement:
>In Britain in 1999 24 million people ... created first goods and services
>to an
>equivalent of their wages, £491.3 billion, and then an additional value
>of £787.4 billion for their employers.
this implies that there is a figure of £1,279 billion for the total price of the goods and services on which these workers worked.
Is that correct? How was the figure derived?
Are there separate figures which are close enough proxies for constant capital (raw materials, rent, power, etc), which are not included in the figure of £1,279 billion?
Is there any other way of deriving them, for example from the GDP of the economy that year?
If the UK government is now publishing aggregate "Gross Added Value" are their calculations reasonable from a marxist point of view or are they deceptive?
____
B Branded Added Value
Regarding James's interesting argument discussing the latest fashion in explaining surplus value, I accept the general argument that these fashions may reflect aspects of the development of the means of production, reflected in social thinking.
I am sure James is correct in saying:
> however much the
>environmentalists might wish it, the condition in which, according to
>the Household Survey basics like food have been reduced to a mere 15 per
>cent of household expenditure in Britain, and cultural goods and
>services enhanced to 20 per cent is not going to be reversed - not
>without a savage assault on working class wages. The view that such
>consumer goods are not 'real needs' is otherworldly. If we are more than
>animals to be fed and watered, then we really do need those trainers,
>for all the social cachet they bring.
Moralism should not be used just to create a reactionary criticism of capitalism's increasing tendency to focus on commodities which feed a need of the mind rather than just of the body. Instead our criticism has to focus on what needs of the mind and how are they met.
Certainly I accept that the comparison of social cachet derives from a fundamental process whereby all individuals look for what they can get out of social interaction, and what it is wise to contribute in return. Although this usually gets analysed in individualistic terms, it is actually a highly complex social process which contributes to how human beings have always reproduced themselves as social groups and not just as individual packets of genes.
A marxist argument could be constructed for the current dominance of brands.
If we allow that the circulation of commodities and money in an economy is not entirely smooth, it is easy to argue that brands give capitalists a certain advantage in creative a relative temporary monopoly.
In this respect it is similar to the position enjoyed by a capitalist who discovers a way of producing a commodity with less labour power, and who can sell it at a compromise between the old price and the ultimate price that would prevail when the new means of production become uniform throughout the economy. The marxist term for this sort of surplus is that it is one of the forms of relative surplus value. (Capital Vol 1 Ch 15 Section 3b)
The relative monopoly enjoyed by brands is created by the management of the limited purchasing power of the masses. It is undercut of course by fake branded goods. If anything this seems to accelerate rather than reduce the rush to be among those who will pay above the price of production for the cachet of a genuine branded good.
Chris Burford
London