Reply To: Harry Cleaver replies
Not read the review or the book and just read the comment.
Might do a fuller response to cleavers response.
But just on this albeit with its caveat ; ‘automatically’
…..First, the assertion that success in lowering consumer prices or making some goods and services free automatically implies that wages will fall just doesn’t hold water. This assertion ignores how both the value of labor power and the level of wages/income are determined by struggle. ….
There is this little read but great article by Fred on the [anticipated ‘automatic’ ] and realised impact on wages of the reduction in the price of bread after the removal of tariffs etc.
The Wages Theory of the Anti-Corn Law League
by Engels in the Labour Standard 1881
……… And when you pressed the subject further it usually came out that the money rate of wages might even fall while the comforts supplied for this reduced sum of money to the working man would still be superior to what he enjoyed at the time. And if you asked a few more close questions as to the way, how the expected immense extension of trade was to be brought about, you would very soon hear that it was this last contingency upon which they mainly relied: a reduction in the money rate of wages combined with a fall in the price of bread, etc., more than compensating for this fall.
Moreover, there were plenty to be met who did not even try to disguise their opinion that cheap bread was wanted simply to bring down the money rate of wages, and thus knock foreign competition on the head. And that this, in reality, was the end and aim of the bulk of the manufacturers and merchants forming the great body of the League, it was not so very difficult to make out for any one in the habit of dealing with commercial men, and therefore in the habit of not always taking their word for gospel. This is what we said and we repeat it. Of the official doctrine of the League we did not say a word. It was economically a “fallacy”, and practically a mere cloak for interested purposes, though some of the leaders may have repeated it often enough to believe it finally themselves…..
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/07/09.htm.
Before even starting on the value of labour power and wages etc there is a deeper problem as you usually have to have this discussion with people who aren’t scientists and thus can’t understand how to properly approach the problem.
There are simplified ideal theories or models, as in science.
And there is the real empirical world.
You take the model or theory derived from the empirical world that has a logical consistency and defies further simplification.
And use that to go back an analyse the empirical world to obtain a deeper understanding.
In fact the model has to contradict certain aspects or differing aspects of the empirical world otherwise it wouldn’t be a model or theory.