From: Doug Henwood
Charles Brown wrote:
>CB: Hasn't the human population doubled in 150 years ? What is the absolute
>number of poor people today compared with 150 years ago ?
Charles, that's silly.
^^^^^ CB: Yea, silliness. I was thinking I should have asked you whether you are saying:
The number of women who die in childbirth + the number of people who die by age 40 = the number of people immiserated.
^^^^^
The absolute numbers don't matter anywhere near as much as percentages. There are probably more rich people in China today than there were immiserated proles in Engels' Britain. Does that tell us much about the two social systems?
^^^^^^^
CB: Yes , but wasn't the question whether Marx made an accurate prediction that capitalism would increase the numbers of immiserated people ?
Comparison of the two social systems is an interesting question, but that wasn't what was mentioned was it ? Ted said:
The problem is that any attempt - such as Marx's attempt to deduce immiserization from long run changes in the organic composition of capital and the rate of profit - to deduce long run consequences from fixed axioms ignores the feature of reality that makes Marx's materialism "historical," namely that reality is a system of "internal relations." clip-