--- Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> wrote: >
(lots of things, but the extract below is representative)
> _If_ white workers can gain jobs, credit, housing,
> etc. _only_ at the
> expense of black & other discriminated-against
> workers, yes, but
> _even under capitalism_ economy (whether one sees it
> nationally or
> internationally) does not have to be seen as a
> zero-sum game
Whether a game is zero-sum or not, depends on how you define the game (which is why game theory isn't much use for anything except mobile phone license auctions, but thereby hangs another tale). My reading of Heather Boushey's article is that the effect of the dual wage curve is that black workers absorb variability in employment and incomes which would otherwise be absorbed by white workers.
Effectively, the black workers are being made to write unemployment insurance for the white workers. This is a real benefit to the white workers, which would not be available to them under any system (including a non-capitalist system) which was not also racist. They have someone else to bear the brunt of fluctuations in the business cycle. Since this is potentially a very great benefit indeed (the natural tendency to underestimate the value of risk-bearing made a lot of people very rich), and since it is probably unrealistic to suppose that risk will be abolished under socialism, I think we have to admit the possibility that the value of the implicit insurance policy to white workers is greater than the value of the (putative) income they may have lost through lack of solidarity in wage bargaining with black workers.
dd
===== "Imagine the Duchess's feelings You could have pierced her with swords To find her youngest son liked Lenin And sold the Daily Worker near the House of Lords" -- Noel Coward
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