En europeisk vändpunkt för löner 1870?

lönetillväxt minus BNP per capita-tillväxt i Norge 1830-1910, sjuåriga medelvärden. Om värdet är under 0 så växer lönerna långsammare än BNP, om värdet är över 0 växer lönerna snabbare än BNP. Ur mitt paper om löner i Skandinavien 1800--1910. 1840-74 är lönernas ökningstakt ungefär 1 procent under BNP:s; 1875-99 ökar lönerna istället lite snabbare än BNP, ungefär 0.1 procent snabbare per år.

klurigt uträknade löne- och kapitalandelar i Frankrike 1820--1910 från Thomas Pikettys Capital in the 21st Century. Figuren nedladdad här.

Eric Hobsbawm skriver i introduktionen till The Age of Empire, hans tredje bok om “det långa 1700-talet” 1776 till 1914 efter The Age of Revolution 1789–1848 och The Age of Capital 1848–1875, om den gemensamma tankeramen för den oplanerade trilogin. Och nedan är ett långt citat om hans periodisering, men det som jag framför allt är intresserad av är hur han karaktäriserar perioden 1848 till 1875 som den period i modern europeisk historia med minst antal socialister och oppositionella, som den period då kapitalet härskade allena. Detta intresserar mig speciellt eftersom jag försökt utröna förhållandet mellan lönearbetarnas välstånd (mätt i löner) och det allmänna välståndet i Skandinavien från 1800 till 1910*, och det verkar som att det sker ett väldigt tydligt brott 1870: innan dess har vi 20-40 år då lönerna stagnerar medan det allmänna välståndet växer (dvs välståndet fördelas ojämnt); efter 1870 växer lönerna istället i takt med BNP. Och en speciell sak är att Robert Allen finner ungefär samma sak (dock redan 1840) i Storbritannien, och Thomas Piketty  (2014, s 225ff) samma sak i Frankrike -- länder som var väldigt olika de skandinaviska, och på mycket olika utvecklingsvägar och -stadier. Har då alla dessa länder ändå något gemensamt, en samhällsekonomisk vändpunkt ca 1870? Och skulle i så fall Hobsbawms analys kunna användas?

För Skandinaviens del har jag tänkt inte minst på emigrationen (till USA m m) som en orsak till att lönerna växer snabbare än BNP efter 1870, framför allt i Norge och Sverige som ju var ledande emigrationsländer i Europa. Jag har också funderat på om det kan ha med deflation och sticky wages att göra, som t ex i Storbritannien på 1820-talet (eller omvänt -- inflation och fallande reallöner -- USA på 1830-talet eller 1860-talet) då fallande matpriser gav stigande reallöner för arbetare. Och det verkar delvis funka, men inte alls så mycket som man skulle kunna tro: även om man brukar tala om en europeisk "kris" 1873--1896 så är deflationen inte särskilt kraftig och framför allt inte ihållande i Skandinavien under 1800-talets tre sista decennier. Jag har också funderat på om det har med fackföreningsrörelsens spridning men har haft det svårt att matcha tider av facklig frammarsch med löneutvecklingen. Och vad gäller emigrationen så stämmer visserligen timingen -- men Frankrike såg inte samma emigrationsutveckling, men ett liknande skifte i löne-till-BNP-ration. Så vad kan då vara den gemensamma faktorn? Kan det ha med vad Hobsbawm pratar om att göra? Eller ett gemensamt teknologiskt skifte? Helt enkelt: vad har Skandinavien och Frankrike -- och kanske Storbritannien -- gemensamt ca 1870 som kan ha påverkat lönernas utveckling jämfört med det allmänna välståndet?

“Essentially the central axis round which I have tried to organize the history of the century is the triumph and transformation of capitalism in the historically specific forms of bourgeois society in its liberal version. The history begins with the decisive double breakthrough of the first industrial revolution in Britain, which established the limitless capacity of the productive system pioneered by capitalism for economic growth and global penetration, and the Franco-American political revolution, which established the leading models for the public institutions of bourgeois society, supplemented by the virtually simultaneous emergence of its most characteristic- and linked - theoretical systems: classical political economy and utilitarian philosophy. The first volume of this history, The Age of Revolution 1789-1848, is structured round this concept of a 'dual revolution'. It led to the confident conquest of the globe by the capitalist economy, carried by its characteristic class, the 'bourgeoisie', and under the banners of its characteristic intellectual expression, the ideology of liberalism. This is the main theme of the second volume, which covers the brief period • between the 1848 revolutions and the onset of the 1870s Depression, when the prospects of bourgeois society and its economy seemed relatively unproblematic, because their actual triumphs were so striking. For either the political resistances of 'old regimes', against which the French Revolution had been made, were overcome, or these regimes themselves looked like accepting the economic, institutional and cultural hegemony of a triumphant bourgeois progress. Economically, the difficulties of an industrialization and economic growth limited by the narrowness of its pioneer base were overcome, not least by the spread of industrial transformation and the enormous widening of world markets. Socially, the explosive discontents of the poor during the Age of Revolution were consequently defused. In short, the major obstacles to continued and presumably unlimited bourgeois progress seemed to have been removed. The possible difficulties arising from the inner contradictions of this progress did not yet seem to be cause for immediate anxiety. In Europe there were fewer socialists and social revolutionaries in this period than at any other. The Age of Empire, on the other hand, is penetrated and dominated by these contradictions. It was an era of unparalleled peace in the western world, which engendered an era of equally unparalleled world wars. It was an era of, in spite of appearances, growing social stability within the zone of developed industrial economies, which provided the small bodies of men who, with almost contemptuous ease, could conquer and rule over vast empires, but which inevitably generated on its outskirts the combined forces of rebellion and revolution that were to engulf it. Since 1914 the world has been dominated by the fear, and sometimes by the reality, of global war and the fear (or hope) of revolution - both based on the historic situations which emerged directly out of the Age of Empire. It was the era when massive organized movements of the class of wage-workers created by, and characteristic of, industrial capitalism suddenly emerged and demanded the overthrow of capitalism. But they emerged in highly flourishing and expanding economies, and, in the countries in which they were strongest, at a time when probably capitalism offered them slightly less miserable conditions than before. It was an era when the political and cultural institutions of bourgeois liberalism were extended, or about to be extended, to the working masses living in bourgeois societies, including even (for the first time in history) its women, but the extension was at the cost of forcing its central class, the liberal bourgeoisie, on to the margins of political power. For the electoral democracies, which were the inevitable product of liberal progress, liquidated bourgeois liberalism as a political force in most countries. It was an era of profound identity crisis and transformation for a bourgeoisie whose traditional moral foundation crumbled under the very pressure of its own accumulations of wealth and comfort. Its very existence as a class of masters was undermined by the transformation of its own economic system. Juridical persons (i.e. large business organizations or corporations), owned by shareholders, employing hired managers and executives, began to replace real persons and their families owning and managing their own enterprises. There is no end to such paradoxes. The history of the Age of Empire is filled with them. Indeed, its basic pattern, as seen in this book, is of the society and world of bourgeois liberalism advancing towards what has been called its 'strange death' as it reaches its apogee, victim of the very contradictions inherent in its advance. /…/” (s 8–10)

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