> >if output/person-hour is the measure then it all depends on whether the per >hour output is constant, rising or falling. Dear Professor Mitchell: Here is an attempted reply; if it is incompetent, please be honest. I am suggesting that the productivity measure should be output/person-hour at a given level of intensity. If that person-hour becomes twice as intense, then the denominator should be doubled. Perhaps intensification shows up in the statistics indirectly-- a rise in industrial accidents, for example. But this is only the beginning of the problem if we work from Marx's theory of value. Intensification leads to increased output and total value produced, to be sure, but unit values would remain the same as the greater mass of output would have been purchased through a de facto prolongation of the working day (e.g., what was downtime is now working time.) This would only be another way of saying productivity has *not* increased. However with an increase in productivity, unit values would decline. What are the implications? With intensification, if the value of labor-power remains the same, the worker would not be able to consume a greater mass of use-values as unit values have not declined. Even increasing the value of labor-power would not enable much greater consumption. There is a threat here of the wage being insufficient to. compensate labor for the enforced intensified expenditure of its energy. The result is different with an increase in productivity. With the same value of labor power, workers could consume more use-values if unit values of consumer goods have declined sufficiently. Great increases in productivity of course can even make possible a simulateneous reduction in necessary labor time (the value of labor power) and an increase in the real wage. This is not true with intensification. So the question becomes: is it inherent in capital to depend on intensification at a late stage of its development? If that can be demonstrated, then perhaps the much maligned theory of increasing misery need not be revised, and the meliorist position would become untenable. If my argument is incompetent, it is doubtless an unfortunate result of my incomprehension of Geoffrey Kay, 1979. The Economic Theory of the Working Class. London: 72ff (Kay introduces the concept of the "value of labor" to clarify the argument). Kay's position is not as deterministic as Henryk Grossmann's; see Kenneth Lapides, 1994. "Henryk Grossmann on Marx's Wage Theory and the 'Increasing Misery' Controversy", History of Political Economy, 26, 2: 239-266. If I may say, I think it is very important for those with the competence (Jerry, Blair, you and others) to continue this discussion about productivity, intensification and the theory of the wage. I'll be listening in... Rakesh Bhandari
