Immiseration as a concept

[Die Neue Zeit]

I have two questions regarding the concept of "immiseration of the proletariat":

1) Since the 70s or so, there has been a shift towards negative savings (read: debt) as a means to finance increases in standards of living, as opposed to the high-production model of the immediate post-war era. Can "consumer" debt increases be seen as immiseration (not just because of the interest payments)?

2) This is more of a word thing than anything else, but to me relative immiseration lacks both agitational and propagandist power. Of course absolute immiseration is non-sense ("a rising tide lifts all boats"), but two descriptive words came across my head while at work today: proportionate and disproportionate. The first word sounds more accurate (proportionate to the average increase in standards of living), while the second word has more agitational power (and could give the first word a run for its $$$), like the "death tax" in the U$. Is this another area to update our terminology?

[KC]

1) Since the 70s or so, there has been a shift towards negative savings (read: debt) as a means to finance increases in standards of living, as opposed to the high-production model of the immediate post-war era. Can "consumer" debt increases be seen as immiseration?

Yes and no. Obviously the accumulation of revolving debt contributes to this immiseration, however on a larger level it is certainly more dependent upon the state of the economy than anything. For example, before the economy started falling apart (up to maybe 2002? and for a few years between that recession and this one) credit card debt wasn't really aggressively collected upon. This allowed people to accumulate debt without any real consequences (there was, of course, interest as a consequence, but what I am specifically referring to here is collections). This is because the existence of revolving debt (i.e. the very point of credit) was recognized as necessary to the survival of capitalism. This is also why we saw the mass pushing of credit cards with high interest rates, subprime mortgages, high interest loans and the like. It was necessary to curb the inherent contradiction in capitalism - overproduction.

Of course, now we're starting to see the consequences of the credit bubble, and now that the bubble has burst it is taking the economy with it, which is forcing collections and foreclosures on the very people that the banks were so eager to push these ridiculous financial obligations on.

It is basically as Marx said in Wage Labour & Capital (paraphrased because I'm too lazy to look up the direct quote): When the capitalists are winning the workers are losing the least (however still losing); when the capitalists are losing the workers are losing the most.


2) This is more of a word thing than anything else, but to me relative immiseration lacks both agitational and propagandist power.

It isn't supposed to be agitational or propagandist. It is the reality of the situation from which you develop your propaganda and organize your agitation.


Of course absolute immiseration is non-sense ("a rising tide lifts all boats"), but two descriptive words came across my head while at work today: proportionate and disproportionate. The first word sounds more accurate (proportionate to the average increase in standards of living), while the second word has more agitational power (and could give the first word a run for its $$$), like the "death tax" in the U$. Is this another area to update our terminology?

No, because your neologisms really are pointless and rather annoying.

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ Forgive me for not being as obvious as I should have been, but there's a reason why Italian socialists named their sons Lassalo and their daughters Marxina at the turn of the century: because of the power of Lassallean rhetoric (in spite of Marx's criticism). For example, Marx criticized the "iron law of wages" (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch02.htm) (that real wages in the long run would trend toward the value needed to keep the workers' population constant (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsistence_theory_of_wages)), but isn't the variable immiseration of labour an "iron law" under bourgeois capitalism, only escapable temporarily through super-exploitation in the developing world and permanently through Arbeiterklassenkampf?