Development, productive sophistication, labour-value and wages

Abstract

This paper, first, discusses the historical (not the normative) concept of economic development or growth, distinguish it from human development, reassert its identification with industrialization or structural change or productive sophistication. Second, it argues that the increase of wages in an integral part of the concept of growth, and offers three explanations for this: (a) wages are part of effective demand, (b) wages may increase with productivity, while the rate of profit tends to be constant in the long-term, and (c) in the growth process, the labor-value of labor increases as the social cost of reproduction of labor increases, productive sophistication or the cost of educating and training workers and technobureaucrats increases. Third, it argues that in developing countries the increase of the productivity of labor due to the transference of labor from low valued added per capita to high value added is more important than its increase in the same industry. Finally, it argues that the relations between growth and distribution as well as between growth a protection of the environment are more positive than negative.