Lou writes:
>You can't tell workers that they are exploited because of a formula in
>Wage-Labor and Capital. Some people, using the math in a perverse fashion,
>have even argued that workers in the US are more exploited than they are in
>places like Mexico since they produce more surplus value here per average
>worker. This obviously is not what Marx had in mind.
Exploitation and oppression are not the same thing, according to
Marx. Those who are more oppressed may produce less surplus value
than those who are less oppressed. Take, for example, a male
chauvinist worker who beats his wife; she doesn't have a job because
her jealous husband doesn't allow her to go outside & work for wages
(he fears that she will flirt with her co-workers or something like
that). She is clearly more oppressed than he is. In fact, he
directly oppresses her, becoming an instrument of sexist oppression.
Nevertheless, he produces surplus value, while she doesn't (though
both of them belong to the working class). Another example. Compare
employed & unemployed workers. Unemployed workers tend to be more
oppressed than employed workers of the same stratum within the same
social formation, but it is the latter, not the former, who produce
surplus value.
Are workers in Mexico on the average more oppressed than workers in
the USA? Clearly yes. They are more politically oppressed, they
experience more economic hardships, etc. Do workers in Mexico
produce more surplus value than workers in America? The second
question is different from the first one. More oppression doesn't
necessarily equal more exploitation & more production of surplus
value, unless you argue that higher real wages = less exploitation =
less production of surplus value, which Marx didn't. Marx thought,
instead: "A rapid growth of capital is synonymous with a rapid growth
of profits. *Profits can grow rapidly only when the price of labor
-- the relative wages -- decrease just as rapidly.* Relative wages
may fall, although real wages rise simultaneously with nominal wages,
with the money value of labor, provided only that the real wage does
not rise in the same proportion as the profit. If, for instance, in
good business years wages rise 5 per cent, while profits rise 30 per
cent, the proportional, the relative wage has not increased, but
decreased" (emphasis added, Karl Marx, _Wage Labour and Capital_ at
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1840/wage-lab/ch08.htm>).
Yoshie
