At 9:56 AM 10/11/96, Paul Zarembka wrote: >No, you are not alone. All (or, all but one) of my neoclassical colleagues >would agree with you. In any case, previously on this list you described >Adolph Reed as a very fine fellow and he was one of the prime movers to >have the Labor Party convention adopt a $10 minimum wage as part of its >platform. So, maybe you may want take the issue up with him. Reed and I >may disagree on some things, but not on this one. The convention, by the >way, found a $10 minimum wage non-controversial and there were 1400 >delegates there. I said it's a good thing; it's also a near-revolutionary demand. If you're advocating the boost as one of those reasonable-seeming but covertly revolutioary demands, then OK. Just don't pretend that the system can cough up a raise that big without choking on itself. >P.S. Please define "faux Marxoid sophistry". That's a new form of >attack. This: >If Bill >Gates spends millions of dollars hiring workers to undertake unproductive >labor at his super mansion in Washington, you fail to recognize that >the wages which go to those workers are from revenue of surplus value. and >In other words, you are looking only at the surface of the national income >accounts, accounts which are constructed to allow dismissal, as >impractical, simple worker class demands like decent wages for all. "Unproductive labor," "revenue," and "surplus value" are all Marxian phrases used to paint me as bourgeois, as is the evocation of the NIPAs. But the kind of wage boost you're talking about would involve lots more than unproductive labor and revenue, but would eat deeply into surplus value. The alleged bourgeois mystifications of national income accounting have absolutely nothing to do with this essential point. Doug -- Doug Henwood Left Business Observer 250 W 85 St New York NY 10024-3217 USA +1-212-874-4020 voice +1-212-874-3137 fax email: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> web: <http://www.panix.com/~dhenwood/LBO_home.html>
