Relative wage

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The term relative wage is an instrument for calculating the social and economic situation of employees and owners of means of production. The term was developed by Jürgen Kuczynski and served him as the basis for his economic and social studies.

definition

The term "relative wages" was already discussed by Karl Marx in 1849:

Real wages express the price of labor in relation to the price of other commodities, while relative wages express the share of immediate labor in the value newly generated by it in proportion to the share of it that goes to the accumulated labor, capital.

After that, Marx never returned to the idea of ​​relative wages.

The concept of relative wages according to Kuczynski has been described as

the “ expression that sets the wages of the workers or the amount of variable capital in relation to the mass of surplus value of the capitalists ”.

The relative wage index is calculated as the ratio between the income of blue-collar and white-collar workers and the income of all other classes. Since the share of capital owners forms the main share of the income of non-dependent employees, it is possible with the relative wage index to determine the proportion of the shares of the two basic classes in the newly created social wealth under capitalism. A medium and long-term change in this proportion can be shown on the basis of the development over time.

The relative wage should be an instrument for assessing the material situation of the working classes , based on the gross wage . The net real wages for employed workers were taken into account, with the number of unemployed and the development of their incomes being taken into account when calculating the real wages. With the help of the relative wage it should be possible to determine how the share of employees and entrepreneurs in the newly created social wealth was divided. The relative wage index should provide information on how these proportions will change in the medium and long term.

timeline

In contrast to real wages , according to Kuczynski, the relative wage should further develop the instrument of Marx's theory of impoverishment under capitalism. Scientific preparations for relative wages can already be identified in Kuczynski's work from 1926 onwards, while he was working for the American Federation of Labor (AFL). In it he further developed the concept of real wages in order to make more precise statements about the situation of workers. The AFL trade union, which did not claim any Marxist basis for its work, was nevertheless looking for a scientific instrument that could be used to justify arguments for greater participation of workers in the economy at that time ( Roaring Twenties ). In addition, the available statistical bases of the US economy were well suited for such a calculation at the time.

The calculation methods were first published in detail by Kuczynski in the book The Condition of the Worker in Great Britain, Germany and the Soviet Union 1932-1938 , published in London in 1939 .

In the East, the relative wage became an instrument for determining the situation of workers using statistical data. It had a firm place in the analyzes of East German economists and in the economic reference works of the GDR. A leading economic encyclopedia of the Federal Republic of 1990 - Gabler's economics encyclopedia - does not name the term relative wage.

Comparison of the terms real wage and relative wage

The term real wage represented the calculation of the purchasing power of workers taking into account the value of money and other changes in the market, and had become a necessary measure of labor disputes in the 1920s due to inflation .

With the help of initial differentiations, such as the incorporation of increases in working hours, the development of gross wages and consideration of the unemployment figures, Kuczynski tried to get a more precise picture of the situation of employees than was possible with the simpler concept of real wages. The relative wage should represent a further development compared to the real wage insofar as it actually sets the share of the value of a commodity produced by him paid to the worker in relation to the income of the owners of the means of production. So he showed the contradiction between remuneration and added value . The instrument of relative wages was intended to enable Marxist economists for the first time to present the quantity of exploitation they postulated under capitalist production conditions in the long term and to substantiate the thesis that the development was fundamentally to the disadvantage of the workers.

Problems and application

The main problem with the calculation was and is the alignment of the available sources. The evaluation of economic data, wage information from companies, etc. causes difficulties because they are created for fundamentally different interests than those of the users of the relative wage.

During the time of the East-West conflict, there was a strong difference in the reception of Kuczynski's studies: while in the GDR and other countries in the Soviet zone of influence the relative wage was an often used instrument in economic work, it found it in the Federal Republic and Germany western influenced states practically no application. There the wage share was established as a similar instrument, but in fact not used outside of studies by the trade unions and other representatives of the workers.

With the help of the relative wage, a general contradicting development of surplus value and wage development could be demonstrated; it was therefore also understood as an instrument of scientific propaganda and agitation against the interests of capital. With the help of the relative wage, Kuczynski showed that the claim that the economic situation of workers in Germany improved during the Nazi era was not correct, but that it deteriorated. More recently, the historian Götz Aly has revisited the thesis that the situation of workers in Germany had improved between 1933 and 1939; but it has not been confirmed by other economic historians.

Also Arno Peters dealt with the concept of equivalence economy as an economic system and an alternative to the market economy .

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Karl Marx : Lohnarbeit und Kapital , edited by Friedrich Engels 1891, first publication Neue Rheinische Zeitung No. 264, 265, 266, 267 and 269 of April 5, 7, 8 and 11, 1849, Marx-Engels-Werke Vol .6, p. 413
  2. ^ Jürgen Kuczynski: Memoirs. The education of the JK as a communist and scientist , Berlin / Weimar 1973, p. 124, quoted from Roesler: Der Relativlohn (2005), p. 160
  3. ↑ In: Ökonomisches Lexikon , Vol. 2, LZ, Leipzig 1970, p. 554, quoted from Roesler: Der Relativlohn , 2005, p. 161.
  4. ↑ Roesler, pp. 161f.
  5. ^ Werner Krause: Kuczinsky, Jürgen , in Werner Krause, Karl-Heinz Graupner, Rolf Sieber: Ökonomenlexikon , Berlin 1989, pp. 278–279.
  6. ↑ Jürgen Kuczynski, The History of the Situation of Workers in Germany, Vol. II / 1 1933 to May 1945, Berlin (GDR) 1953, pp. 119ff.
  7. ^ Hans Martin Krämer, Marius Schiffer: Conference Report Fascism and Social Inequality . January 14, 2006 - January 15, 2006, Bochum. In: H-Soz-u-Kult, February 10, 2006

literature

  • Jürgen Kuczynski and Marguerite Kuczynski, The Factory Worker in the American Economy , German: Leipzig 1930
  • Jürgen Kuczynski, History of the Situation of Workers under Capitalism (40 volumes)
  • Jörg Roesler, Der Relativlohn (PDF file; 79 kB) in: UTOPIEkreativ 172 (02/2005) pp. 159–165