Red (prior): : :
[F]or the most part US workers, though paid more, are more exploited than Chinese
workers, who produce less surplus value.Barry (prior): :
This is nonsense.
: Why, exploitation is measured as a ratio of wages to surplus produced, it is not some subjective or raw estimate based on working conditions and living standards...
Exploitation not based on working conditions. This 'logic' shows (to my satisfaction) one of the central failings of (later) Marxist theory, a one-dimensional economic model of the world devoid of 'feelings,' 'values,' and 'perspective'---the very charges you have laid upon behaviorism (by the way). To say that 'exploitation' is determined (only or primarily) by the amount of surplus appropriated, and not by the living conditions of the worker is to promote an excessively functional view. Such a mechanistic view behaviorism (in contrast to logical positivism) negates. To wit, Skinner: 'How people feel is often as important as what they do.'(1) The latter Marxian view (as interpreted by you) seems to fall short regarding this important consideration. Your reluctance to recognize the difference between the 'exploitation' of the Western 'proletariat' (TV, automobile, heat, running water) and the 'exploitation' of the 'Third World' 'proletariat' (none of the above), I believe, points to the many incongruities in W.S.M. policy.
Barry (prior): :
Because constant (and fixed) capital tends to increase in cost (thus reducing profits), according to Marx's theory, (surplus) labor must be continually 'squeezed' to offset the 'tendential fall in the rate of profit'...
Red :
Or exports increase, thus gaining extra value, and thus brining in cheap imports, which can lower the costs of a capitalists variable capital...
'Or exports increase.' And do not exports, like most commodities, tend to increase by an increased intensity of labor in either man-power or technological advance? And do not these factors contribute (to some degree) to worsening work conditions or reducing employment (which drives wages down)?
: Just out of interest, I don't recall bus drivers being part of the valorization process, would you say, on the basis of the above, that they are not working class?
Socially necessary labor is, simply put, whatever it takes to realize surplus value. My point has been that as technology increases, circulation costs increase, which thus reduces profits, which then applies new pressures upon capitalists to realize surplus-value. Concerning transporation's role in the valorization of capital specifically, here is Marx:
Quantities of products are not increased by transportation. Nor, with a few exceptions, is the possible alteration of their natural qualities, brought about by transportation, an intentional useful effect; it is rather an unavoidable evil. But the use-value of things is materialized only in their consumption, and their consumption may necessitate a change in location of these things, hence may require an additional process of production, in the transport industry. The productive capital invested in this industry imparts value to the transported products, partly by transferring value from the means of transportation, partly by adding value through the labor performed in transport.(2)
To sum: I would submit that the computer industry (to name but one possible component of the increasing circulation sphere) is subject to the same reasoning as Marx put forward with the above principle. '[A]n additional process of production' is the exact phrase. This process, as I have mentioned in my prior post, decreases the profit level of the capitalist order which, in turn, necessitates increases in the 'rate of exploitation' of the workers to compensate. Whether or not the circulation sphere is true 'valorization' (in specific Marxian terminology) or not does not directly pertain to my point; what does pertain is the distinction between working and middle class workers (especially in geographical terms) because those distinctions offer the reason that 'global revolution' is not feasible (voluntarily)...
Notes:
1. Skinner, 'The Place of Feeling in the Analysis of Behavior,' Recent Issues in the Analysis of Behavior (Merrill, 1989), p. 3.
2. Marx, Capital, vol. II (International, 1967), pp. 149-50.
