Marx's story is one of _relative_ immiseration (a rightward shift in the distribution of income) as wages fall relative to labor productivity and the rate of surplus-value rises. To get _absolute_ immiseration, you need to introduce the idea that capitalism increases human needs (that Mike Lebowitz emphasizes), so that wages fall relative to needs.
On 9/11/06, Charles Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Here is M's outline of process of absolute general law of capitalist accumulation in creating poverty. CB "The greater the social wealth, the functioning capital, the extent and energy of its growth, and, therefore, also the absolute mass of the proletariat and the productiveness of its labour, the greater is the industrial reserve army. The same causes which develop the expansive power of capital, develop also the labour-power at its disposal. The relative mass of the industrial reserve army increases therefore with the potential energy of wealth. But the greater this reserve army in proportion to the active labour-army, the greater is the mass of a consolidated surplus-population, whose misery is in inverse ratio to its torment of labour. The more extensive, finally, the lazarus-layers of the working-class, and the industrial reserve army, the greater is official pauperism. This is the _absolute general law of capitalist accumulation_. Like all other laws it is modified in its working by many circumstances, the analysis of which does not concern us here"
-- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante.
