Labor Money Research Articles

What Are Post-Fordist Wages? Simmel, Labor Money, and the Problem of Value

In a context of wage repression, indebted labor, and a pervasive gap between what labor earns and what it needs to spend, in this essay I ask: what are post-Fordist wages? I suggest that the key features of the post-Fordist wage should be understood in terms of broad transformations to the capacities of money, transformations that have rendered wages an unstable measure of value, including any value that may be constituted by labor. Such transformations demand a focus not on what wages should measure and comprise but on their potentiality, that is, on what they can do. In this regard, I suggest that Georg Simmel’s understanding of money as an in-motion surface, as well as his critique of “labor money,” finds important points of resonance for the post-Fordist present. In addition to highlighting the renewed relevance of Simmel’s social theory, I further ask: What are the implications of these transformations to wages for the development of a relevant politics of the post-Fordist wage? Can post-Fordist wages be challenged from within?

Can farmers extend their cultivation areas in urban agriculture? A contribution from agronomic analysis of market gardening systems around Mahajanga (Madagascar)

The rapid urbanization in developing countries implies an increasing pressure on urban agriculture for production. As most perishable food products come from this agriculture in close proximity to population concentrations, we analysed from an agronomic point of view how market-garden farmers can meet this increasing urban demand. This work took place in the case of Mahajanga, a secondary city with high increasing demographic rate on the Northwest coast of Madagascar. Based on preliminary surveys to characterize the farming systems (on a sample of 91 farms), 11 market-garden farmers chosen in the three main agricultural zones of the urban area were surveyed during two years. Surveys aimed at understanding their decision rules in crop choices, crop allocation to land and resource management, and to estimate their room for manoeuvre to increase their leafy vegetable areas under cultivation. The wholesalers and retailers who buy the farmers’ produce were also surveyed. A previous model of decision rules regarding crop location on farm territory was used to analyse the on-farm surveys and cartographic methods (GIS and on-farm manual representations) were used to quantify the land use. We highlight the following major points. (1) The leafy vegetable production in the surveyed farms already intensively uses land: farmers have complex decision rules largely depending on the water dynamics in the two main environments (lowlands and lakesides) where leafy vegetables are cultivated during the dry season. (2) The scarcity of farmers’ resources (labour money and water) leads to very little internal room for manoeuvre to increase the leafy vegetable production in the farms. (3) At territorial level however, some land reserve exist in one of the lowlands, but not on lakesides. The water availability for agriculture must be better informed through specialized hydrologic studies, as one of the main constraints nowadays to extend the agricultural area. An extrapolation to other cases of urban agriculture is then discussed as well as the role of agronomy to help urban planners to consider the place of agriculture in the urban development.

Interest-Group PACsmanship: An Analysis of Campaign Contributions, Issue Visibility, and Legislative Impact

In this article the effects of special-interest campaign contributions, party, and constituency (mediated by issue visibility on prolabor and probusiness legislative outcomes) are examined for the 99th Congress. Labor contributions have marginally greater impact than business contributions on legislative outcomes, although labor money “counts” less for high-visibility labor issues. Labor money also has more of an impact against probusiness voting. Party is the most important predictor of legislative outcomes and is not conditioned by issue visibility. One interpretation of the findings is that labor is marginally better than business in achieving its goals. An alternative interpretation is that business has less of a stake than labor in legislative outcomes because of its greater involvement in politics outside of the electoral process, which partly explains labor's success on some issues of marginal importance and its failure on more significant ones.