: 1. This question has intrigued me, Red. According to you, the middle classes---management, white-collar, and 'upper strata of proletariat'---gain nothing from the intense labor and low wages of workers in 'Third World' countries. Yet when I see an American (say, union-made) hammer at a hardware store, it is $25 while a Chinese-made hammer of similar quality is only $12. I know union wages, and I have heard horror stories about Chinese wages. Am I to believe that purchasing the cheaper hammer (which will make my American wages 'go further' than if I bought the more expensive hammer) in no way involves me in 'imperialistic' gain? You say that the 'surplus does go to the capitalist' yet I feel that some of it has come my way...1:Exploitation is measured by teh relation of surplus extracted to wages, not absolute wages themselves, so for the most part US workers, though paid more, are more explited than chinese workers, who produce less surplus value.
2:What factors for currency differences are you allowing for in this example- unless teh chinses have a more efficient production system, the labour time taken to produce the hammer will be the same as in teh US, and so it must be sold for the same value, unless dififerences in strenghs of currency interefere. There is no way, then, that Am4ericans higher wages could acount for teh higher price.
: 2. Note the index categories for 'classes' in the Penguin edition of Capital. 'Capitalist class; Farmers; Peasants; Slavery; Working class.' No mention of a middle class, which is not especially surprising consider that Capital was written in the 19th century. Does Marx's class analysis contain all that is necessary to know about the middle class since automation in the latter half of this century exponentially increased their ranks? Lenin (and many others who may or may not have 'talked shit') felt that the spreading unionization throughout the West in the 1900s called for some revisions in the Marxian class analysis.
An many Marxists ackowledge that teh salaried working class are just that, unionisation does not effect teh relations of teh working class to the good and productive base of society in such a way as to change their class position. Incidently, in Marx's day teh middle class was another name for bourgeoisie.
: 3. Marx said that '[t]he labor of exploiting is just as much labor as exploited labor,'(1) but is this really credible when considering the differences between the manager and the worker?
Yes, considering often taht management is skilled labour, as produced at a certain value by teh eductation system, otehr sorts of skilled labour pull in simuilar wages to most management types.
: 4. I would submit that almost everyone in Western 'service' jobs are part of what Marx called the 'circulation sphere.' Some Marxists maintain that circulation costs---like the supervisory costs of management---are also operating expenses, not surplus. Ernest Mandel, however, conceded that '[p]art of the wages bill of unproductive labor [services & administration workers]...is financed out of currently produced surplus-value.'(4) This, as they say, is the smoking gun...
This was something recognised by Morris et al when formulating teh program for teh socialist league, this did not stop them from thinking that such folks were part of the working class- their relations to teh means of production are still preidcated upon their sale of waged labour, and are more stronglyu tied to the interests of teh productive minority (now) of teh working class than to teh interests of teh employers...
: 5. 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.' One way to do this is to move plants to countries with lower standards of living with workers willing do the same work as Western workers, only for less. However, the circulation sphere costs increase as export costs affect more and more products; remember, those 'Third World' workers cannot afford the products they are assembling. Here it seems reasonable that---using Marx's criteria---the increase of the circulation sphere necessitates increased pressures upon labor, which means that as more 'Third World' workers enter the production process and more Western workers leave the production process to work in the circulation sphere, indeed the latter are 'exploiting' the former.
No, because they are merely having to work on the terms as dictated by the employers. Further, most production still occurs in teh devloped world- those workers who will work for less mean increased profits for the capitalists. The argument you are trying to make is like saying that the pipe maker exploits the furnace operator in a toilet factory, because the former relies on the latter for his jobs existence.
: 6. According to Paul Fussell, about 80% of Americans consider themselves to be middle class.(5) (As I stated before, middle class is quite relative; a 'proletariat' in Pakistan would find a 'proletariat' in Germany to be very middle class.) In Marxist literature, class interests of working class and middle class people are often glossed over, perhaps for the sake of inclusive agitation. I hope that some of my thoughts have shown you that such unity is, in fact, precarious because the middle class (circulation sphere workers) do materially gain from the intensified labor of the working class (production process workers), and therefore will tend toward ideological justifications of their position (identification with the bourgeoisie).
Actually, as mecahnisation increases (and production grows faster than population) more and more of teh population become redundant, surplus to requirments, and thus service insustry becomes a rather shaky way of allowing them to earn a living within capitalism, but it is stiill waged labour, and still exploitation.
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: Notes:
: 1. Marx, Capital, vol. III, (International, 1967) chapter xxiii, p. 383.
: 2. Ibid., p. 387.
: 3. Ibid.
: 4. Mandel, Introduction to the Penguin Edition of Capital, vol. III, p. 49.
: 5. Fussell, Class
