Salariat et plus-value en France depuis la fin du XIXè siècle

When Marx wrote The Capital, it was possible to consider just that portion of the active population which produced surplus value. Since then developed industrial societies hâve become more complex. To the active population producing surplus value hâve been added other substantial catégories of wage earners. It is no longer enough to study variable capital and the rate of surplus value to explain the évolution of the capitalist wage relation and its effect on profits. The author proposes to measure the rate of exploitation, then the rate of distribution between wages and profits so as to understand the yield of ever larger wage catégories. The three rates are obtained by associating profit producers of profit to producers of surplus value (the first basic category), and then to the addition of the two, the producers of domestic and administrative services. Using long-term statistical research, Jean-Claude Delaunay broadens the theory and shows that while there is a long-term trend of a growing rate of surplus value, the rates of exploitation and distribution tend to décline. At a time when Marxism seems to hâve fallen into disuse, this new contribution to the study of the économie crisis in France and in developed capitalist societies will no doubt cause surprise and interesting debates.