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There were a couple of responses to my brief comments about the
utility of Marx's theory of wages, and consequently of any 'surplus'
approach to economic theory to which I would like to respond. The
cans of worms waiting to be opened here are numerous, so I will both
try to stick to the specifics and confine myself to indicating why I
think a coherent account of wages can be extracted from Marx's
writings..
First, Anthony Brewer made a number of careful points.He wrote:
> The remark I made which Michael Williams has picked up [Marx was
confused
> - he tried to abandon Malthusian demographics but kept the
> subsistence wage.] was telegraphic and, I admit, provocative. It
> was an aside, which was not part of the main argument. Let me spell
> it out a little. Marx certainly asserted that wages had a 'historical
> and moral element'. But bare assertions don't get very far.
> What I would claim is that Marx never provided any coherent
> mechanism which would keep wages at this historically and
> morally determined level.
Indeed not - rather he pointed out repeatedly that the dynamics of
decentralized capital accumulation would continually tend to push
wages below the level required for the reproduction of an adequate
supply of labour-power, off set only be worker-resistance
(industrial, social and political), that in turn may sometimes push
wages above that level, or even lead to its social reconstitution at
a higher datum.
Tony continues:
> Cantillon, for example, did provide
> a coherent story - people would not marry unless they could
> raise the resulting children at what they regarded as an
> adequate level of living. Here the historical and moral factors have a
> definite behavioural consequence with the required demographic results.
Tony, as usual, knows what he is talking about and I have no quarrel
with this description. However, the social/historical/moral
element in wage determination does refer to an actual social
determinant in terms of historically and socially specific
acceptability of minimum wages. This is susceptible to specific
historical investigation. (In any conjuncture, does it include
notions of a 'family' wage? is it closely related to notions of a
minimum subsistence bundle of goods and services? is it primarily
'absolute' or 'relative'? and so on.) The famous Rowntree studies are
an obvious example of such detailed empirical study. The wealth of
theoretical and empirical work on the identification of a 'poverty
line', a 'living-wage'. etc, in social or labour-market policy
discussion also speaks to the same issue. Marx himself makes detailed
references to extant studies (for example in Sections 5b&c of the
very ch. XXV of *Capital*, vol 1 to which Tony later adverts). Most
'relative' measures can be seen as attempts to capture the socially
acceptable minimum level required for the agent (or family) to take
part in the general life style of her society. Depending on the moral
climate of the time, this is surely related to the socially
acceptable minimum reproductive wage. No doubt these kinds of
attempts to establish the quantitative significance of the 'social
and moral' element in wage determination are fraught with difficulty
and ambiguity - but almost every social-policy change implies the de
facto answer of extant society to the question of the appropriate
level.
So, there is more than 'bare assertion' on this issue, first of all
in Marx, and second in subsequent Marxist work that has, IMO,
contributed to the kinds of social-policy discussions indicated
above. In Marx himself, the impact of the historical and moral
elements in wage determination are woven into many parts of the
arguments in *Capital* and elsewhere: 'Wages' were to be the subject
of one of the unwritten 6 books of Marx's project.
But I guess Tony's main interest is in the role of wages in
macrodynamics rather than social policy. He went on:
> What is, to my mind, the only coherent mechanism Marx provided to
> determine wages in the long run (and it is an interesting and
> significant one) is in Chapter 25 of Vol 1 of Capital. 'Either
> the price of labour keeps on rising, because its rise does not
> interfere with the progress of accumulation ... Or ...
> accumulation slackens ... the price of labour falls again.'
> 'The rate of accumulation is the independent, not the dependent
> variable' etc. My point here is that 'historical and moral'
> factors play no part in this story.
I would beg to differ - see below. Ch. XXV ('The General Law of
Capitalist Accumulation') is in Part VII of vol 1, that follows
directly an extended discussion of 'The transformation of the value
(...) of Labour-Power into Wages' (ch. XIX) in Part VI.
Tony again:
> If labor productivity is
> rising over time, this mechanism is likely to generate rising
> wages which will leave subsistence behind. There are then two
> options. Either drop all the stuff about the value of labor power
> and the historical and moral element, or define the 'historical
> and moral element' to be whatever wages actually are.
Again, I have no further quarrel with this summary of Marx's ch. 25
account of wage determination and accumulation. I do, however,
disagree with the posed options. I can see absolutely no conflict
between Marx's discussion of wage determination by the course of
capitalist accumulation, and the underlying presupposition of social,
historical and moral elements in the determination of the average
level of wages required for social reproduction - that Marx called
the value of labour-power. If Tony is saying it is difficult to
*model* such complex determination, then I can only say that that
indicates the limitations of modelling as a tool of social analysis.
Anyway, the difficulty is not obvious: if one wanted to deploy
orthodox economic models (that I would not necessarily recommend),
then the cyclical course of capital accumulation (itself a complexly
determined outcome of the imperatives of capitalism, technical
change, the balance of class forces, etc) can be modelled on the
demand side of the market for labour power, and the 'historical and
moral elements' appear as part of the determination of the
'supply-price'. Alternatively such determinations can be seen as
constraints that have to be met if the system is to successfully
reproduce itself, modelled as determinants of cyclical downturns
after overheated accumulation.
The modern Marxist view is that labour-power is, at best, a very
peculiar commodity (labour markets are relevantly different from
those for baked-beans) and concomitantly that the wage is a very
peculiar price. It is indeed a complexly determined variable, being
not only a market price, but also the largest element of what makes
demand effective, and the income of 'last resort' (abstracting
from the welfare state) for those who do not control sufficient
production-relevant property - the working-class.
Tony goes on:
> Either way, I would argue that Marx was confused. He took over the
> subsistence wage from the classics, and wanted to keep it (with as many
> 'historical and moral' elements as you like), because it fitted his
> notions of value/value of labour power/surplus value, but once he
> dropped the demographics (if he did - it has been claimed that he
> didn't, but I can't find a textual basis for this claim), it was left
> without a basis.
Thus this conclusion is unsupported. There are elements of a
perfectly coherent treatment of wages in Marx that includes both
their role in his macrodynamics of capitalist accumulation, and a
significant role for a historical and moral element in the
determination of the average reproductive wage at any conjuncture.
There are several different contemporary Marxist accounts along these
lines. The establishment of the extent to which Marx's own comments
on wages etc. can be construed as coherent in themselves would, in
the absent of the missing book on 'Wages', require a more detailed
archeology of the published texts than I can attempt here. That Marx
intended to discuss these kinds of issues in the proposed book on
'Wages' is indicated by such asides as: "... for a full elucidation
of the law of accumulation, his [the worker's] condition outside the
workshop must also be looked at, his condition as to food and
dwelling." (*Capital* vol. 1, ch. XXV, L&W 1970, p. 611).
Tony goes on:
> Let me try to be clear (because I know how easy it is to be
> misunderstood in this area). Either wages are determined
> simultaneously with profits, growth rates, etc., as in Ch 25, in
> which case 'historical and moral elements' have no role, or wages
> are determined independently and prior to profits etc., as Marx
> claimed (I think) in the discussion of the value of labour power, in
> which case the mechanism has to be explained, and the story of Ch 25
> has to be abandoned.
I do not see the basis for asserting this dichotomy. Actual average
wages over the course of accumulation can be determined along with
profits etc., in interaction with a changing back ground of
historical and moral elements. (Btw, I would not interpret Marx as
concerned primarily with simultaneous determination as Tony
suggests here, but rather with conceptualising a temporal and
dynamic process - but that is another issue.) Perhaps further
aspects may arise as a result of Tony's up-coming editorial on this
list.
Indications of a defence of the continued relevance of 'surplus'
absent a simple subsistence theory of wages in Marx must await
another post, in response to Claudio Sardoni.
Dr Michael Williams
Department of Economics
School of Social Sciences
De Montfort University
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