Reproduction Of Labor Power Research Articles

Skilled Labour in Value Theory

This paper reviews various treatments of the skilled labour problem in value theory. It argues that skilled workers' own labour embodies the same amount of labour substance of value as do unskilled workers in a unit of labour time. This is an egalitarian view which impacts on a number of debates. Some of these ramifications are illustrated with discussions of international trade and unequal exchange, socialism and inequality, and the reproduction of labour power under different arrangements for funding the costs of education and training.

THE WELFARE STATE AS A REPRODUCTION CONDITION OF CAPITALISM: WHAT DOES THIS EXPLANATION TELL US?

The reproduction conditions of capitalism are hard to specify, the phrase itself being too abstract to be meaningful. Another way to find the specific distinguishing features of capitalist reproduction conditions is to seek the same conditions in a socialist economy. Socialists will tend to want a more comprehensive welfare state, but the lack of a welfare state will not mean that the economy is not socialist. Reproduction conditions of both types of economy would be very similar, the reproduction of labour power being achieved by a variety of arrangements either more or less harsh, or more or less comprehensive, without damaging the economy. The welfare state is seen as a desirable feature of socialism in its own right, rather than because of its economic contribution.

Karl Marx and the Satanic Mills: Factory Politics Under Early Capitalism in England, the United States, and Russia

This paper sets out from a theoretical paradox in Marx's analysis of capitalism: that the working class is the victim of the logic of capitalism: that the working class is the victim of the logic of capitalism and at the same time os supposed to rise up against that logic. Traditional resolutions of this paradox are inadequate; the resolution proposed here involves the distinction within the sphere of production between the labor process and the factory regime. By a series of comparisons of textile industries in 19th-century England, United States, and Russia, the article highlights four factors that shape factory regimes: the labor process, market forces, the reproduction of labor power, and the state. It shows how an examination of factory regimes can account for the absorption of working-class radicalism in England after 1850 and the deepening of working-class radicalism in Russia after 1905, culminating in the revolution-ary movements of 1917. Finally, it presents the implications for Marxism of this distintion between the strictly economic elements of production and its political and ideological institutions.

The Subsistence Fund and the Reproduction of Labor Power

When we study the sources of expenditures on the reproduction of labor power, we find expenditures from the family budget and the state budget. The magnitude and structure of these expenditures can be determined in various ways: the corresponding items of expenditure in the state budget are known, representative budget studies can be made to ascertain family expenditures, and the size of the consumption fund in national income can be calculated. All this information makes it possible to determine the kind of resources and the quantities of these resources that are used for the reproduction of labor power in socialist society. But this is only the prerequisite to the more extensive examination of the problem and to the determination of the magnitude of the necessary product. This requires the resolution of a number of theoretical problems. Among them in particular is the following: Is it appropriate to single out the subsistence fund, which is formed from the producers' necessary product, as an independent economic category? If we agree with those authors who maintain that the necessary product under socialism is produced directly as the consumption fund' or with the premise that the latter takes the specific form of wages and social consumption funds, we will have to admit that there is no place in socialist economic theory for the "subsistence fund" category.

Rethinking Gentrification: Beyond the Uneven Development of Marxist Urban Theory

In this paper, I make a critical assessment of the ways that issues relating to the ‘gentrification’ of inner-city neighbourhoods have been conceptualised, especially in North America, in both positivist and extant marxist work, I aim to rethink the processes generating ‘gentrification’ and ‘gentrifiers' and our ‘ways of seeing’ the results of these processes, First, I address epistemological problems of neoclassical and marxist approaches to this subject. Second, I critically appraise the problématique of marxist work on gentrification, emphasising its lack of attention to the interrelationships of employment restructuring and changes in the reproduction of labour power. From this, I argue that gentrification is a ‘chaotic concept’ and that the processes and elements it comprises need to be thought through again. I begin tills task by attempting to disaggregate the concept with empirical reference to North American metropolitan inner cities, I hypothesise that the upsurge of renovation activity by and for moderate-income households and those with so-called alternative life-styles is produced by the interaction of changes in production and reproduction. Further research is needed in this area. Finally, I explore the possibility that such ‘marginal gentrifiers' and those they now displace may have similar needs that could be met by different kinds of neighbourhood revitalisation.

Disposable nannies: domestic servants in the political economy of South Africa

Roughly 89 per cent of domestic servants in South Africa are black and of these about 88 per cent are women. Domestic service accounts for the employment of 38 per cent of black women whose conditions of work are the least protected within one of the most regimented labour forces in the world. The institution of black domestic labour socialises whites into the dominant ideological order of race and exposes servants to its most humiliating practices. Black servants are coerced into dependency upon their employers but white women are also dependents within the patriarchal structures of capital. In this article the author explores the ideas generated by the domestic labour debate to understand the role of domestic labour in South Africa in the reproduction of labour power and examines some of the contradictory trends in the conditions of reproduction within the capitalist economy.

Welfare State and Reproduction of Labour Power: Notes on the Effect of State Policy on the Structure of Reproduction

This presentation outlines a theoretical analysis of the reproduction of labour power in contemporary capitalism. The starting point is the critique of political economy as developed by Marx, especially the analysis of the forms of reproduction in capitalism. As wage work (Lohnarbeit) is seen as the central determining aspect of reproduction, a short exercise is made outlining the dominant types of problems of reproduction connected with the two main types of capital accumulation in the theory by Marx: exten sive and intensive. A short theoretical discussion of state intervention in the reproduction of labour power is given. The last part of the article is not an empirinal analysis but a demonstration of how the theoretical concepts in discussion make it possible to grasp the more fundamental changes in the structure of reproduction, and shows how to analyse the new and specific forms of appearance for the general contradictions in capitalism, making state policy more complicated but leaving the central relations in capital unchanged.

Manuel Castells' The Urban Question A Review Essay

The Urban Question, by Manuel Castells, is an important contri bution to the growing Marxist critique of urban studies. The book's central criti cism is that the histoncal relativity of the term "urban" makes the urban field one without a rigorously defined object. As such, urban studies becomes an ideology which masks social relations with environmental determinism. Castells puts for ward the hypothesis that the term "urban" refers to the ideological apprehension of the collective reproduction of labor power in capitalist societies. He under takes several empirical and theoretical studies that are not very useful because they rely on an eclectic, formalistic empiricism. The hypothesis that the "urban" is an ideology reflecting reproduction requires a rigorous formulation of the specificity of "reproduction," "ideology," and the "urban" in relation to the mode of production. The so-called "ideological instance" actually refers to particular relations produced in the capitalist mode of production. I suggest that the "urban" simultaneously refers to the processes of socialization of production, realization of surplus value, and collective reproduction of labor power.

A Study of the Living Standard of the Rural Population

The comprehensive study of the living conditions of the rural population is required for the consistent and purposeful elimination of socioeconomic differences between town and country and for eliciting and resolving the most acute problem pertaining to the reproduction of labor power in the countryside. The present article used materials of a sociological study of a sample group of heads and secondary members of families (in the absence of the first members at the time of the poll) of two rural soviets in Novosibirsk Oblast.

Rural Women's Subsistence Production in the Capitalist Periphery

Rural women's subsistence production in the capitalist periph ery allows semi-proletarian male workers to sell their labor power to capitalist units of production for less than a subsistence familial wage. Thus, women's contribution toward the maintenance and reproduction of labor power within the rural labor reserve permits the non-capitalist mode of production to absorb the costs of production and reproduction of labor power. The division of labor by sex, based on the articulation between modes of production, serves to lower the value of labor power for capital, enhancing the relative rate of surplus value for peripheral capital accumulation.

Family Needs and Societal Institutions: Potential Empirical Linkage Mechanisms

Family and institutionalized mechanisms are considered as potential concepts for the analysis of the interrelationship between family and society. Two ,fundamental input-output linkages between the family and society are defined as the reproduction of labor power and ideological perpetuation of society, related on the family level to the four universal functions of biological, economic, social, and spiritutal reproduction of man. These functions are also considered in terms of associated needs. It is also assumed that in all societies there are some institutionalized inputs that support the family as an institution, conceptually elaborated as linkage mechanisms. The possibility of developing social indicators for concrete descriptions of family and mechanisms is empirically illustrated by using statistical data from 24 European countries. The countries are divided into highly industralized and developing industrialized countries and categorized according to and levels qof 'familism, based on indices constructed from various empirical measures. Correspondingly, indices of 'family needs and 'family are developed and the congruency between family and family welfare is explored. The results suggest that most countries fall into two types of congruent groups of high family welfare-high family needs and low family welfare-low family needs.

Ways Of Creating Social And Economic Conditions For The Reproduction Of Labor Power In The New Regions Of The West Siberian Plains

In most general form, the social and economic basis of the reproduction of labor power can be represented as the complex of living conditions that promote this reproduction process. These conditions must be examined on a broad plane and in their relationship to one another. For example, working conditions include sanitation and hygiene of the workplace, the mechanization and automation of labor, shifts and the duration of the work day, and breaks in the work. Social demands include the need for certain relations within the production collective and the need for social contacts among people outside the collective. When we know the magnitude and structure of the population's needs, we can control the reproduction of labor power to some degree by regulating the degree of satisfaction of those needs.

Studies of Migration of Skilled Personnel in Agriculture

The migration of the rural population today exerts a many-sided influence on the reproduction of labor power in the countryside, including skilled rural workers. The specific economic assessment of migration and its consequences depends on the specific situation, place, and time. In regions with a labor surplus it will be different from rural regions with an acute shortage of labor power.

Problems in the Reproduction of Labor Power and Ways of Improving the Utilization of Labor Resources in the USSR

In our nation, problems pertaining to the reproduction of labor power have always been at the center of attention of economicscience and the practice of socialist construction, These problems are at present acquiring especially great importance;and to a great extent the manner in which they areresolved will determine further successes in the building ofcommunism: acceleration of technical progress, increases insocial labor productivity, improvements in the quality of output, increases in profitability of production, increases in thecultural and technical level of workers, and elimination ofsocial and economic differences and of contradictions betweenmental and physical labor and between city and village.

Concerning Expanded Reproduction of Skilled Labor in the USSR

The character of the reproduction of labor power in each society is determined by the mode of production and reflects the essential features of production relations.