Joan Robinson is terrific. I was thinking about quitting my dissertation when I met her, but she is not a Marxist. She was sympathetic to Marx but she thought that anything useful in Marx can be found in Keynes.
On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 9:17 AM, Jim Devine <[email protected]> wrote: > I've decided that it's a mistake to quote Joan Robinson saying when > she says that “the misery of being exploited by capitalists is nothing > compared to the misery of not being exploited at all” (ECONOMIC > PHILOSOPHY, Doubleday: 1962, p. 45) to explain Marx's theory of > exploitation. (If Marx had something like that, it would not be a > mistake.) > > In context, she finds that "to call investable resources > 'exploitation' or 'unpaid labor'" is "somewhat embarrassing." Then, > she gives the well-known quote, followed immediately by "Here the _law > of value_ develops a kind of squint that leaves one deeply confused" > [her emphasis]. Her point is that she rejects Marx's law of value (as > in her ESSAY ON MARXIAN ECONOMICS) -- and that the fact that workers > "nowadays in South-East Asia or the Caribbean" volunteer to be > exploited is an empirical strike against that "law." If people are > happier (less miserable) being exploited than not being exploited, > then it really isn't exploitation. Or rather that's it's deeply > confusing to think of it as exploitation. > > Unlike Marx, her viewpoint is quite microeconomic. In her book on > imperfect competition, she used the following definition: “a group of > workers are being exploited when their wage is less than the marginal > physical product that they are producing, valued at the price at which > it is being sold.” That is, a worker is exploited only if a worker is > paid less than the wage that would prevail with perfect labor-power > markets (in the capitalist utopia). Barriers to worker mobility > between jobs which cause monopsony (a single buyer, the buyer's > equivalent of monopoly) and Robinson's exploitation. > > In contrast, Marx's theory of exploitation is macroeconomic: under > capitalism, workers (as a class) have no way to support themselves and > their dependents without selling their labor-power to the capitalists > (as a class), so they end up doing more labor than is required to pay > for the cost of the provision of that labor-power (the cost of its > reproduction over time). Mobility between specific jobs and problems > of imperfect competition in labor-power markets are the problem, > except that the normal existence of the reserve army of labor creates > a _general_ barrier to mobility. Monopsony does exist, but it isn't > necessary to Marx's theory. > -- > Jim Devine / "When truth is nothing but the truth, it's unnatural, > it's an abstraction that resembles nothing in the real world. In > nature there are always so many other irrelevant things mixed up with > the essential truth." -- Aldous Huxley > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 530 898 5321 fax 530 898 5901 http://michaelperelman.wordpress.com _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
