Featured Post

MABUHAY PRRD!

Saturday, July 2, 2011

The Supply and Demand of Labor

I wonder if these parameters continue to apply even more with the current globalization of capital, technology and information. Or Marx's Theory of Wages:

According to E. Mandel, Marx deduced that though the mimimum limit of wages can be "more or less exactly" defined, there is no limit to it as long as the a level of profit is met, but below it the capital will "no longer be interested in hiring workers". Mandel continues:

"Among these Marx mentions first and foremost the fluctuation in the supply and demand of labor, which gives him occasion to explain that, in relatively underpopulated countries like the United States where the labor market is 'being continuously emptied by the continuous conversion of laborers into independent, self-sustaining peasants', the supply and demand favors the worker and enables him to obtain higher wages than in Europe... How do the supply and demand of labor evolve in countries that are industrialized? By the constant replacement of workers by machines, the constant increase in the organic composition of capital. Marx believed that the long-term tendency is thus one of imbalance between supply and demand in favor of the capitalists to the disadvantage of the workers." (Ernest Mandel, Marx's Theory of Wages, Communist Manifesto, pp. 168-169)

While the global economy among some emerging markets is characterized by hybrid systems such as market socialism. The reaction to the imbalance from the past that produced counter measures by workers gaining benefits through insurance protection, collective bargaining and union organizations seemed to be weak in those economies. The strong arm of the State in emerging markets of the 'Socialist world' have created a retro situation wherein depressing the wages of workers to attract investments is necessary to cut costs in production.

Thus the goal of Marx in his utopian ideal of "radical economic and political democratization: a full freedom of development for each individual (not class or party or any other mediator among individuals)" seem to be truer in systems that enhance "inequality" because of competition than central planning. Could this be true? Or is it the more reason that the libertarian ideal of individual responsibility is correct.

For Marx's theory of wages applied to the market place in the public functions of central governments are really the tools for private property because of elitism as a consequence of political power. What then is the relevance of the Commune or Centralism in the Commune when public service has to be done at workman's wages for instance when it didnt necessarily brought forth the expected results of individual liberty and democracy? Are we really seeing globalized elitism that manipulates the supply and demand of labor that both Socialist and Capitalist play?

bangkaw

No comments: