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The issue is not the wage, or wage level, but the individual worker, or the sector of workers, but the social costs of the reproduction of capital as a whole. This is a difficult concept to grasp, although it is the one Marx is working towards in Vol 3 of capital, and you can see it in his essays on the direct results of the production process. War drives consumption levels down, and while expanding production employs more workers, the elimination of workers through military conscription, and the funding of such conscription through taxation, takes that burden off the personal shoulders of the bourgeoisie and makes it an expense paid for in the majority by the workers themselves. The US BLS report on compensation: "Following the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and the ensuing entry of the United States into World War II, the Federal Government mobilized its resources and the country's industrial might. On January 6, 1942, President Roosevelt announced ambitious wartime production goals. In response, all the country's economic sectors came under new or increased Government controls. The Federal Government created a number of agencies, such as the War Production Board (1942), the Office of War Mobilization (1943), and the Office of Price Administration (1942), to increase total production, reallocate production to military uses, and control wages and prices. Increases in military output were obtained, in part, by diverting resources from the production of consumer goods. Manufacture of consumer items-such as automobiles, refrigerators, and housing materials-was forbidden. Controlling output proved easier than controlling wages. Inflationary pressures were created by the shortages of both goods and labor that developed during World War II; the Consumer Price Index (CPI) increased by more than 35 percent at this time. Several attempts were made to create an effective organization to control wages and limit work stoppages. In 1941, President Roosevelt created, by executive order, the National Defense Mediation Board. The Board had jurisdiction over cases referred to it by the Secretary of Labor and was given authority to settle disputes by conciliation, voluntary arbitration, and public recommendations. However, the Board ceased to be useful when the CIO members withdrew in November 1941. The National War Labor Board was created by President Roosevelt, by executive order on January 12, 1942. The Board was established to determine procedures for settling disputes that might affect war production. The Board had the options of offering mediation, voluntary arbitration, and compulsory arbitration to try to resolve controversies but had no power to enforce its decisions. It was also authorized to approve all wage increases, where the total annual remuneration was below $5,000. The Board quickly adopted the so-called Little Steel formula for war time wage changes, i.e., based on a 15-percent rise in living costs from January 1, 1941, to May 1, 1942. In September 1942, the President was given the authority to stabilize wages and salaries, based on September 15, 1942 levels. As a result of wage restrictions, employers who needed to attract labor resorted to providing a growing range of fringe benefits, such as pensions, medical insurance, and paid holidays and vacations. These benefits were considered non-inflationary, as they were not paid in cash and, thus, did not violate the wage ceiling. Additionally, payments for overtime afforded extra income to workers, without violating the limits on hourly wage payments. During the late 1940s, fringe benefits became more common as part of settlements reached in collective bargaining. Despite efforts of the National War Labor Board, the shortage of labor during World War II caused sharp increases in wages. Average hourly earnings of production and nonsupervisory workers in manufacturing more than doubled between 1940 and 1949, with the largest increases during the war years, 1940-44. Hours worked also rose during the War, with average weekly hours for production and nonsupervisory workers rising from 38.1 in 1940 to a high of 45.2 in 1944." ________________ Now that' for the US, which was spared in large part the most severe impacts of the war, since it wasn't fought on US territory, other than some Pacific Islands, and still 500,000 were killed, and you can't get anymore below subsistence levels than being killed --with the cost of that killing, the cost of that social "reproduction" born by the workers themselves. Those who think that the rest of the world's working class experienced anything like the US at home workers, need to look outside their narrow US framework. Look at consumption levels in Europe before and during the war. In a study comparing German and British workers wages to 1938, Stephen Broadburry and Carsten Burhop write: "H owever, by considering levels as well as rates of change of both real wages and labour productivity on a comparative basis, we are able to show that German industrial workers were still poorly paid in an international perspective, given their relatively high productivity." See: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/academic/broadberry/wp/solgeruk7a.pdf Wages were fixed in Germany, to about 30-32 marks a week, under the German labor front, but working hours were also increased. Unemployment dropped from 7 million to 1 million in 1938 due to conscription of large numbers into the military, expulsion of women from the workplace, the ongoing seizure of Jewish property and expulsion of Jews from trades and professions. And living standards did improve for a time. The war itself brought about the deaths of millions of those workers conscripted into the army; tighter controls, if possible, on labor; use of slave labor in the I.G Farben, and other, syndicates; the reduction of living standards throughout occupied Europe; looting-- all those things we associate with primitive accumulation on its "grand" scale. Again it is the totality of the social costs, the living standards for the working class as a whole, and how those costs are apportioned socially, including the cost of dying that is at issue, not the wages of any sector of the class, or number of sectors of the class. This-- the totality of the social costs of reproduction is indeed a difficult concept, but if you work through volumes 33 and 34 [and 30] of MEGA, particularly ADs 1,2,3 to volume 1 of Capital [Volume 33], and the absolutely brilliant chapter 6 and its additions to Capital Vol 1 [Volume 34 of MEGA], I think we can really see what Marx is driving at-- at least that's what I saw and while much more empirical work has to be done to confirm the manifestations he describes, I've pretty much found those already in the period of the "long deflation" 1873-1898, and find them reappearing in the build up to, during, and after the Great Depression-- leading to WW2. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Darrel Furlotte" <darrel.furlo...@gmail.com> <sartes...@earthlink.net> ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
