Date: Fri, 15 Mar 1996 21:06:42 -0800
To: marxism-AT-jefferson.village.virginia.edu
From: djones-AT-uclink.berkeley.edu (rakesh bhandari)
Subject: Re: The minimum wage. Dividing the Question.


Ken wrote:

>  COMMENT: I have never encountered any instance of tying an increase in
>the minimum wage to welfare reform. Have you some examples? 

No.

Several social liberal academics however have argued for an abandonment of
welfare for exclusive promotion of universalistic, job-related programs, 
which presumably could include a rise in the minimum wage. 

 At base, the question is the proper relation between income and work.
Social liberals tend to assume that they should remain coupled (as
Aronowitz and diFazio demonstrate), no matter how massive the assault of
automation and how shitty and useless the available jobs; thus, they tend
to support programs which facilitate entry and participation in the labor
market, not those that guarantee income independent of one's working
status.     

In Words of Welfare (Minnesota, 1995), Sanford Schram reviews the positions
of several reform-minded thinkers and argues:

"Proponents of a more universalistic social welfare state would replace
welfare with policies on which all families could rely.  Poor people would
then be getting a hand up, not a handout.  The universal availability of
decent schools, adequate child care, affordable health insurance, and
meaningful job training, coupled with a concerted effort to develop
non-poverty-wage jobs, would go a long way to creating that sustained
foundation....In fact the emphasis on universalistic programs can
contribute to the negelct and even delegitimation of welfare programs for
the poor.  Even liberals have become uncomfortable with welfare and have
talked in ways that may not be very helpful in protecting public assistance
>from further cutbacks....In spite of the fact that most unemployment
continues to be structural...this belief in the power of the 'free market'
continues ot feed the all-too-convenient attitude that the state must
tighten welfare eligibility and cut benefits so as to promote a willingness
to take work."(172-3)

I am not saying that bourgeois think tanks or reform-minded liberals have
explicitly agreed to the tradeoff of universalistic reforms of job-related
assistance (training or higher minimum wages)  for welfare cuts.  But I can
easily see some such agreement between the good and evil guys in the
future.

Also, it seems to me that given the deepening crisis of capitalism that the
only way the minimum wage could be increased is as a part of package which
overall will intensify the attack on the working class. In other words,
following Nietzsche, we must now begin to think beyond good and evil. In
short the question of real power and the sociological forms through which
it can be achieved must now move to the top of the agenda, though even this
will require new discourses and methods.  

Just something to think about.  Which is not to express support for welfare
as it exists today.  Perhaps there really is something to Milton Friedman's
irresponsible speculations, as boddhivasta argued. 

Rakesh

for those interested in a brilliant, non-technical introduction to the
economic theory of unemployment, see Alexander Gourvitch, 1941. Survey of
Economic Theory on Technological Change and Employment. Reprint. Augustus
Kelley.  

There is also a book by John Garraty Unemployment in History which I have
not yet read. 

I have also just picked up an undergraduate introduction to the labor
market: Ingrid Rima, Labor Markets in a Global Economy. ME Sharpe, 1996. 
>From what I have read, it is wonderfully lucid and engaging and  requires 
Marxist engagement.   




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