Unwittingly you have asked about the key point. Why the wages are significantly higher in Western countries?
Ideal models are the mental tools, at best good approximations. The actual reality almost always deviates from them, even in physics.
These deviations often point to something else and it is fruitful to investigate them.
Marx (among other things) had in common with freemarketeers the strong and blind belief in Smith/Ricardo theories. So he logically concluded that workers will be reduced to the subsistence, that capital will become monopolized/concentrated, that global trade will fuse the world economy into one and that capitalism will reach dead end.
Freemarketeers differ from Marx that they do not look into the logical consequences of their theory. They see free market in isolation, ahistorically like a some pagan timeless myth.
But we know that things did not go the way Marx predicted or freemarketeers wanted. Why?
Well, the other "irrelevant" factors "distorted" the ideal. One is plain human solidarity, whether national or inspired by Christian care or by political prudence/necessity or personal generosity of the wealthy.
Another is organized struggle of labor (trade unions) and progressive organizations which managed to wrest the important concession like 40 hours work week, prohibition of child labor, retirement funds, abolishment of slavery, progressive taxation etc, etc ...
Good example of the "utopian" reformist attitude is Charles Dickens. In his Christmas Carol he laid down the solution transcending narrow minded inhumane "realism" of market worshipers. It is not surprising that his works earned hostility and contempt from many Marxists.
History has proven Dickens right. Human beings cannot be forced to fit into made up theoretical schemes. Poetry can be a better tool of understanding than tedious scribblings of winners of the Noble Prize in Economics.
Could it be related to higher productivity? Which might be related to those evil money grubbing capitalists providing that filthy capital?
Marx (among other things) had in common with freemarketeers the strong and blind belief in Smith/Ricardo theories.
Marx had blind belief in the theories of Smith?
So he logically concluded that workers will be reduced to the subsistence, that capital will become monopolized/concentrated, that global trade will fuse the world economy into one and that capitalism will reach dead end.
Smith believed these things?
Freemarketeers differ from Marx that they do not look into the logical consequences of their theory.
What are the logical conclusions of these free trade theories? And we should be more like Marx with his deep look into the future? ROFLOL!
But we know that things did not go the way Marx predicted or freemarketeers wanted.
We know that things haven't worked the way your buddy Marx wanted. What exactly went wrong with what freemarketeers wanted?
That rejected and discredited notion you embrace is the labor theory of value.
It is why we reject the Marxist vision of the future of free exchange.
Far from a "pagan timeless myth", our analysis is based on hard facts.
marx's scenario cannot occur, because it is based on the flawed economic theory mentioned above.
Sometimes its no use argeueing with these people who support "free" trade. They believe what Limbaugh, the WSJ op ed pages and their ilk tell them to believe. The so called mainstream conservative movment is every bit as bankrupt as liberalism was by the late 70s. The fact "free" traders can not follow though on simple logic, much less have any sense of history shows me their ideas are bankrupt.
Here, here!!! That's the most intelligent piece of commentary I've read on Free Republic this past week. Good job A. Pole.
P.S. Check out my new tag line: