 Classical political economy: the subsistence wage, and job guarantee concernsJournal of Post Keynesian Economics, 2015, vol. 38, issue 2, 280-301 Abstract: In the theoretical framework of classical political economy, including the revisions of Marx and the more recent work of Piero Sraffa and others, the concept of the subsistence wage figures prominently. Here, following a recounting of this concept and demonstrating its significance not only for classical theory but also for larger social concerns, I argue that the “base wage” (as it is sometimes termed) as articulated within a “Job Guarantee” program, is (or should be) comparable to the subsistence wage but requires modification to make it (roughly) equivalent. It will be demonstrated that adherents of the classical approach did not rest their wage theory on a quasi-neoclassical supply–demand approach (with some primitive marginal productivity notion lying behind a supposed demand for labor schedule), but understood wages as socially determined where institutional and historic forces established a normative standard around which market wages gravitated. Such an approach was shared by, among others, Thorstein Veblen and John Maynard Keynes. Date: 2015 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mes:postke:v:38:y:2015:i:2:p:280-301 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from DOI: 10.1080/01603477.2015.1075357 Access Statistics for this article More articles in Journal of Post Keynesian Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals |
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