To clarify, superexploitation is not production of relative surplus-value.
Increases in the rate of exploitation achieved by raising the organic
composition of capital is not "superexploitation." Workers in
capital-intensive sectors who produce more surplus-value than workers in a
labor-intensive sectors are not "superexploited." In fact, these workers
are privileged workers, largely whites in the core.
Superexploitation occurs when workers provide a substantial part of
socially necessary labor themselves and the capitalist reaps more than
surplus generated in production, such as when semiproletarians must work a
plot of land beside their village to reproduce their labor power, or when
workers with the same skill level doing the same job are paid different
wages based on caste, such as race or gender. In both cases, wages do not
cover reproduction and the affected sector sinks down into relative
poverty, while the capitalist appropriates more wealth that was generated
strictly in production, hence the term *superexploitation*.
The term *superexploitation* is only meaningful in this way. It is
ludicrous to argue that privileged workers in high-wage, capital- and
knowledge-intensive industries are superexploited because of the relative
difference between surplus and wage. This not only leads to all sorts of
absurd conclusions--for example, that white workers who earn more than
black workers in high-wage industries are superexploited--but is also
contrary to the Marxian theory of surplus-value, especially in the
distinction between absolute and relative surplus-value.
Andy Austin
--- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
