Impoverishment theory

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Under impoverishment theories theories which, in an impoverishment of the proletariat in the course of industrialization , or the working class under capitalism assert relations of production.

A distinction must be made, on the one hand, between a theory of absolute impoverishment , which assumes a constant decline in real wages and living standards of workers, and, on the other hand, a theory of relative impoverishment , according to which the income gap between the poor and the rich continues to increase.

The impoverishment theory could not be confirmed by the social development in the highly developed industrial countries. The theory of absolute impoverishment is no longer upheld today, today the scientific question about the standard of living no longer revolves around whether the industrial revolution made people better, but when it did it. The long-term increase in the wage share from the 19th century to the 1970s is used against the relative impoverishment theory . According to Erich Arndt, "this very long-term increase [...] is not only due to the effect of a balance of power between the trade unions in the labor market, but above all to the relative increase in the number of employees."

History of theory

First approaches

The first approaches to the formulation of a legal impoverishment of workers with a simultaneous increase in the production produced by them can be found in Turgot as early as 1766 . In its tradition, theorists in England and France continued to deal with this topic, while in Germany it was not until the second half of the 19th century that a debate about the social question , triggered by pauperism , began.

Karl Marx's lifetime were all (classical) economists believe that will determine the level of wages for work by the subsistence ( living wage ) and at most could deviate briefly under specific supply and demand constellations of it. Adam Smith saw the reason for this in the power of entrepreneurs, David Ricardo and Thomas Robert Malthus in population dynamics. Following the theory of Ricardo and Malthus, Ferdinand Lassalle formulated the iron wage law .

Impoverishment with Marx and Engels

Marx and Engels did not use the term “impoverishment theory”; the name was probably first introduced by Eduard Bernstein . According to Paul M. Sweezy , Marx formulated a 'general law of capitalist accumulation' at a high level of abstraction with the tendency of the proletariat to become increasingly impoverished, but which should not be interpreted as a "concrete prediction". According to Wolf Wagner, a theory can be substantiated from the Marxian writings “which says that capitalism in its development necessarily worsens the situation of the proletariat, and that this process of impoverishment creates awareness and the will among the proletarians, capitalism as that To abolish the source of their misery ”. Wagner refers, among other things, to the following text by Marx, which made the impoverishment theory for the workers' movement, which was based on Marx's theory, a central and constitutive part of a worldview:

“One understands the folly of economic wisdom which preaches to the workers that they should adapt their numbers to the needs of capital. The mechanism of capitalist production and accumulation constantly adapts this number to these valorization needs. The first word of this adaptation is the creation of a relative overpopulation or industrial reserve army, the last word the misery of ever-growing strata of the active workers' army and the dead weight of pauperism. [...] within the capitalist system all methods for increasing the social productive power of labor are carried out at the expense of the individual worker; [...] It follows, therefore, that as capital accumulates, the condition of the worker, whatever his payment, high or low, must deteriorate. Finally, the law, which always keeps the relative overpopulation or industrial reserve army in equilibrium with the volume and energy of accumulation, forges the worker more firmly to capital than Prometheus forges the wedges of Hephestus to the rock. It requires an accumulation of misery corresponding to the accumulation of capital. The accumulation of wealth on one pole is thus at the same time the accumulation of misery, labor agony, slavery, ignorance, brutalization and moral degradation on the opposite pole, ie on the side of the class that produces its own product as capital. "

- Karl Marx, Das Kapital, Volume 1, MEW 23, p. 674 f.

Marx related the impoverishment to the entire life situation of the worker, not only his income situation, but also his situation in the work process (inhuman working conditions, alienation , submission). The impoverishment theory is not only a theory about the development of the situation of the working class, but above all a theory about the consciousness development of the working class. According to Wagner, it is only as such a theory about the emergence of anti-capitalist consciousness that it becomes of central importance for a view of history that understands capitalism not as an eternal natural necessity, but as a transitional stage in an overall historical development. However, according to Wagner, this theory must not be interpreted as a prognosis or even a prophetic prediction about the development of the actual situation of the working class, which necessarily follows from the entire Marxian theory and the failure of which would mean a refutation of this theory.

Interpretations as a tendency

Karl Kautsky , one of the most important Marxists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, interpreted Das Kapital in such a way that Marx viewed his theory not as an unconditional truth, but as a tendency. Marx himself pointed out the importance of the trade unions as a counteraction. The Trotskyists Ernest Mandel and Roman Rosdolsky also took the view that Marx had not formulated an absolute theory of impoverishment. In his work on the history of the origins of Marx's capital, Rosdolsky tried to refute the thesis that Marx assumed that the workers would inevitably go into poverty. For example, Marx B. Lassalle's so-called Iron Wages Act was expressly rejected because he saw social conditions as the cause of misery and rejected the idea of ​​poverty as an unchangeable law of nature. According to Theodor Geiger , this interpretation of the Marxian doctrine is without any support. Only real impoverishment could contribute to the collapse of capitalism. For if the conditions of existence of the working class were to be more favorable, despite the tendency towards poverty, their effectiveness as a political-social factor would be nullified.

Interpretations as relative impoverishment

Jürgen Kuczynski vehemently opposed all attempts at interpretation, "that absolute impoverishment is only a tendency that cannot prevail, because there are counter-tendencies that are stronger." According to him and his wife Marguerite , the situation of the worker has worsened and his relative purchasing power has fallen because his wages make a smaller part of the national product available to him than before.

According to Helmut Arndt , the impoverishment theory is only valid under certain conditions. An increase in real wages with labor productivity is the case in all economies in which the protection of strong and independent trade unions is guaranteed. He concludes: “If the worker is passed out, it [the impoverishment theory] applies. If, on the other hand, power is evenly distributed in the labor market, the worker participates in the increase in prosperity. "

Heinz-J. Bontrup takes the view that the impoverishment theory can be verified for many capitalist countries, even if for various reasons this does not lead to the instability of capitalism predicted by Marx. He also brings the impoverishment in connection with psychological stress in the world of work and points out that there is mass unemployment and welfare recipients even in Germany.

Reception of the impoverishment theses

The impoverishment theory could not be confirmed by the social development in the highly developed industrial countries. Hans Werner Holub cites the impoverishment theory as an example of "how Marxist dogmatists protected hypotheses that could not be reconciled with reality from falsification." Thus, physical impoverishment - which was no longer tenable in western industrialized countries - became statistical also difficult to maintain relative , then the normative fictional and finally the psychological impoverishment.

Discussion of absolute impoverishment

The poverty of the workers in the 18th and 19th centuries is linked in literature with the progress of the industrial revolution. It was z. For example, Eric Hobsbawm paints the coherent picture of a transition of upheaval from the old to the new world in a fateful interplay of technical innovations and irresponsible laissez-faire politics that have plunged large populations into unimaginable misery. This view was first challenged by John Harold Clapham , who emphasized the process character of economic change. The worker in the cotton mills and the steam engine from 1830 were not the prototype of the epoch, as the classics have shown. These so-called "pessimists" of the industrial revolution relied primarily on testimonies from contemporaries who were directly affected (especially the Tories' Blue Books), i. That is, they concentrate their attention on visible consequences and hardly on the causes of the epoch. Until 1851, not even a profound change in the technical area had taken place, and thus the poverty theory should be rejected as a legend, according to Clapham. According to Peter Wende, this occupied the two positions between social and economic change, between which the historical judgment is still made today. Even Theodor Geiger speaks in a dispute with the immiseration theory of Marxism from a legend. The position and position of the worker within capitalist society has become considerably more favorable. Marx attributed the impoverishment theory purely deductively to capitalism. According to Geiger, however, it does not lie in the reality of capitalism, but in Marx's idea of ​​capitalism.

Clark (blue) and Feinstein (red) estimates of real wage developments in England, 1750–1890 (1860 = 100)

As the population grew, impoverished rural populations streamed into the cities and asked for work. Logically, if the demand for labor does not keep pace in this process, wages in the factories cannot rise, so that gradual industrial improvements will take time to rectify this situation. Clark Nardinelli says on the one hand: Today the scientific question about the standard of living no longer revolves around whether the industrial revolution made people better off, but when it did it. On the other hand, a controversy remains open as to what can be defined as living standards and how real wages are compared. The work of Charles Feinstein (Living Standards during Industrial Revolution, 1998) has received general acceptance.

Friedrich August von Hayek speaks of the "legend" of the impoverishment of the masses in the beginning liberalism or in the first phase of industrialization at the beginning of the 19th century and continues:

“The widespread emotional aversion to 'capitalism' is closely linked to this belief that the undeniable increase in wealth - brought about by the competitive order - has come at the price of a lower standard of living for the weakest social classes. That this is so was indeed once taught far and wide by economic historians. However, a more careful examination of the facts has led to a thorough revision of this doctrine. But now that this controversy has been resolved, the old idea continues to be held in common belief a generation later. "

That instead of the predicted impoverishment there was a certain prosperity for everyone , Joseph Schumpeter also formulated with the words "The" terrible suspicion "dawns on us that large companies and capitalism may have contributed more to raising the living standards of the masses than to their impoverishment." German social historian Hans-Ulrich Wehler points to the empirical development of the lower income classes in the German Empire , where incomes more than doubled from 1895 to 1912. The share of the lowest income class with a nominal annual income of 900 or 950 marks fell in this period from 75.2% to 50.1%, so it fell by a third: "Here the vulgar Marxist theory of impoverishment was most persistently denied".

Discussion of relative impoverishment

Development of the wage share in Germany, the USA and Japan from 1960 to 2005

Heinz-J. Bontrup claims that the impoverishment theory in the highly developed industrial countries is refuted by the development of the wage share. According to Bontrup, the result of the distribution of labor yields has changed in favor of workers and employees, particularly through the formation of trade unions , which developed an opposite pole to capital on the labor market. In Germany, the gross wage share rose from 43.1 percent in 1780 to 60.2 percent in 1930 and was 54.9 percent immediately before the start of World War II . It peaked in 1981 with 75.3 percent, but by 2006 it fell to 65.6 percent. Nevertheless, a positive long-term development of the wage share can be stated. According to Erich Arndt, “this very long-term increase [...] is probably due not only to the effect of a balance of power between the unions on the labor market, but above all to the relative increase in the number of employees. After this balance of power came into effect after the First World War , the fluctuations are much lower in the long term ... The fact that the autonomous nominal wage policy of the associations on the labor market, in particular the trade unions, is by itself not able to achieve a sustainable, over the productivity rate of the Raising real wages beyond the national economy gives rise to another task of social policy ”.

According to Bontrup, “massive redistributions from bottom to top” were responsible for the drop in the wage share from 1981 to 2006. The Duden Economy sees the reduction in working hours and rising unemployment as the main reasons for the drop in the wage share. In the future, a change from an industrial society to a more employment-intensive service society and therefore an increase in the wage share are seen as likely for Germany.

Contrary theories

Diametrically opposed to the impoverishment theory is the trickle-down theory , which is often traced back to Adam Smith . The “trickle-down effect” describes the thesis that economic growth and general prosperity of the rich would gradually seep into the lower strata of society even without social legislation. Another thesis is the Kuznets curve , which describes a hypothetical relationship between development and social inequality, in which the inequality initially increases in the form of an inverted U-curve and then decreases again as development increases. The term elevator effect brought up by Ulrich Beck describes a growth in prosperity that extends to the entire population and has eliminated the proletariat .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wolf Wagner : Verelendungstheorie - the helpless criticism of capitalism . Fischer Taschenbuchverlag, Frankfurt / Main 1974, ISBN 3-436-02203-9 , p. 13 .
  2. ↑ Heinz-J. Bontrup: wages and profits: economic and business basics. 2nd Edition. 2008, ISBN 3486584723 , p. 52
  3. ↑ a b Wolf Wagner: Verelendungstheorie. The helpless criticism of capitalism. Fischer Taschenbuchverlag, Frankfurt / Main 1974, ISBN 3-436-02203-9 , p. 14
  4. ↑ Werner Hofmann : Income theory. From mercantilism to the present . Socio-economic study texts, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1965., p. 150.
  5. ↑ Theory of Capitalist Development. Bund-Verlag, Cologne 1959, p. 13.
  6. ↑ a b Wolf Wagner: Verelendungstheorie - the helpless criticism of capitalism. Fischer Taschenbuchverlag, Frankfurt / Main 1974, ISBN 3-436-02203-9 , p. 20
  7. ↑ Wolf Wagner: Verelendungstheorie - the helpless criticism of capitalism. Fischer Taschenbuchverlag, Frankfurt / Main 1974, ISBN 3-436-02203-9 , pp. 18-19
  8. ↑ Thieß Petersen, Karl Marx anthropologically oriented criticism of industrial society, in: Uwe Carstens and Carsten Schlüter-Knauer, Der Wille zur Demokratie. Lines of Tradition and Perspectives., Duncker & Humblot GmbH; 1st edition 1998, ISBN 978-3428088010 , pages 466, 467
  9. ↑ Wolf Wagner: Verelendungstheorie - the helpless criticism of capitalism. Fischer Taschenbuchverlag, Frankfurt / Main 1974, ISBN 3-436-02203-9 , p. 16
  10. ↑ Wolf Wagner: Verelendungstheorie - the helpless criticism of capitalism. Fischer Taschenbuchverlag, Frankfurt / Main 1974, ISBN 3-436-02203-9 , p. 83
  11. ^ Karl Kautsky: Speech against the revisionist views of Eduard Bernstein (September 1901) , accessed on July 22, 2017.
  12. ^ Theodor Julius Geiger: The class society in the melting pot , Ayer Publishing Verlag, 1949, ISBN 0405065051 , pp. 59-60
  13. ↑ Wolf Wagner: Verelendungstheorie - the helpless criticism of capitalism. Fischer Taschenbuchverlag, Frankfurt / Main 1974, ISBN 3-436-02203-9 , p. 48
  14. ^ Theodor Julius Geiger, The Class Society in the Melting Pot , Ayer Publishing Verlag, 1949, ISBN 0405065051 , p. 66
  15. ↑ Arndt: Market and Power. Tübingen 1973, p. 173 (quoted from Heinz-J. Bontrup: Volkswirtschaftslehre. 2nd edition. Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, 2004, ISBN 3486575767 , p. 339).
  16. ↑ Heinz-J. Bontrup: Economics. 2nd Edition. Oldenbourg, Munich 2004, p. 396.
  17. ↑ Hans-Werner Holub : An introduction to the history of economic thinking . Volume 4. Volume 9 of Introductory Economics. Münster, 2007, ISBN 3700006977 , pp. 231f.
  18. ↑ Peter Wende: "Great Britain 1500-2000". Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, 2001 p. 151.
  19. ↑ cf. z. B. Lutz Niethammer, Werner Trapp: “Life experience and collective memory: d. Practice d. "oral history" ". Syndikat, 1980. p. 55. (Original: University of Michigan); GJ Alder: "The" Garbled "Blue Books of 1839 - Myth or Reality?", Historical Journal, 1972.
  20. ↑ turn. P. 152.
  21. ↑ Compare other contemporary literature such as: Theodor Geiger , Die Klassengesellschaft im Schmelztiegel, Ayer Publishing Verlag, 1949, ISBN 0405065051 , chap. 4: "The so-called impoverishment theory", pp. 57–73
  22. ↑ Michael Jäckel, Sociology, VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften , 2010, ISBN 3531168363 , p. 117
  23. ↑ Nicole Burzan, Social Inequality, VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2011, ISBN 3531175343 , p. 18
  24. ↑ Feinstein, Charles (1998): Pessimism Perpetuated: Real Wages and the Standard of Living in Britain during and after the Industrial Revolution. The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 58, No. 3.
  25. ^ Clark, Gregory (2005): The Condition of the Working Class in England, 1209-2004. Journal of Political Economy, 2005, Vol. 113, No. 6th
  26. ↑ Clark Nardinelli. "Industrial Revolution and the Standard of Living." The Concise Encyclopedia if Economics. Liberty Fund, Inc. 2008.
  27. ↑ Roderick Floud et al. "The Changing Body: Health, Nutrition, and Human Development in the Western World Since 1700". Cambridge University Press, 2011. p. 8.
  28. ^ Friedrich August von Hayek: "Economic history and politics". In: ORDO, Volume 7, pp. 3-22. (1955), p. 8.
  29. ^ Gerhard Willke: Capitalism . Campus Verlag, 2006, ISBN 3593381990 , p. 94.
  30. ↑ Hans-Ulrich Wehler: German history of society, Vol. 3: From the “German double revolution” to the beginning of the First World War 1845 / 49–1914 . CH Beck, Munich 1995, p. 709 f.
  31. ↑ a b Heinz-J. Bontrup: wages and profits: economic and business basics. 2nd Edition. 2008, ISBN 3486584723 , p. 53
  32. ^ Erich Arndt, social policy and wage policy , in: Erik Boettcher, social policy and social reform , ISBN 978-3163024526 , pages 268-269.
  33. ↑ Duden Economy from A to Z: Basic knowledge for school and study, work and everyday life. 4th edition Mannheim: Bibliographisches Institut 2009. Licensed edition Bonn: Federal Agency for Civic Education 2009, keyword wage quota
  34. ↑ Peter Marcotullio and Gordon McGranahan: Scaling urban environmental challenges: from local to global and back. Earthscan, 2007, ISBN 1844073238 , p. 24.

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