The Impact Of Marketization And Technological Progress On The Share Of Labor Income

In the report of the Nineteenth National Congress,General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out that we should insist on the simultaneous growth of residents’ income and economy,and the simultaneous improvement of labor remuneration and labor productivity.China’s economy has developed rapidly since the reform and opening up,but its share of labor income has not increased synchronously with the economic growth.Labor remuneration is the main source of income for Chinese residents.Promoting the simultaneous increase of labor income share and economic growth is conducive to the harmonious development of China’s labor relations.From the perspective of Marxist political economy,productivity decides relations of production,relations of production react on productivity,relations of production determine distribution,and distribution reacts on production.The problem of the asynchrony between income share and economic growth seems to belong to the field of distribution,and its essence belongs to the study of the relationship between productivity and production.China’s gradual improvement of production relations takes the form of deepening market reform and releasing productive forces in the form of actively developing science and technology.In the process of perfecting production relations,it also reacts on productivity,which is embodied in the influence of market-oriented reform on technological progress.Although a series of adjustments on productive forces and production relations have greatly promoted economic growth,the inconsistent adjustment rhythm has also changed the technological structure of combining labor with means of production,affected the contradictory movement between productive forces and production relations,and impacted the distribution relationship,which is directly reflected in the fact that the share of labor income is not synchronized with China’s economic growth.Therefore,only by dealing with the problem of productive forces and production relations from the source,clarifying how market-oriented and technological progress affect the contradictory movement between productive forces and production relations in the process of improving and developing productive forces,can we finally deal with the relationship between labor income share and economic growth.At present,the existing literature on the share of labor income is mostly based on the theory of Western economics.These literature studies discuss the reasons for the reduction of labor income share from the perspectives of industrial structure,capital deepening,international trade and technology bias.From the perspective of Marxist political economy,few literatures have explored the mechanism of market-oriented reform and technological progress on China’s labor income share.Based on the above background,from the perspective of Marxist political economy,this paper aims to explore the internal logic between marketization,technological progress and China’s labor income share,and to explore the reasons for the change of China’s labor income share with new ideas.This paper first combs Marx’s analysis of capital exploiting labor from capitalist exchange process,production process to reproduction process,then extracts and sums up the mechanism of market-oriented and technological progress influencing labor income share,and puts forward the theoretical hypothesis of market-oriented and technological progress influencing China’s labor income share combined with the characteristics of China’s development.Finally,the panel data of 30provinces(municipalities directly under the Central Government and autonomous regions)in China are selected and the two-stage least squares model and dynamic panel model are used to test the theoretical hypothesisThe empirical test results well support the theoretical hypothesis proposed in this paper.The results show that:(1)Marketization has a significant role in promoting the share of labor income.(2)The positive impact of the scale effect of China’s technological progress on the share of labor income at the present stage is enough to compensate for the negative impact of its substitution effect on the share of labor income.(3)The positive incentive effect of marketization on technological progress is not enough to compensate for the negative impact of insufficient property rights protection on technological progress,so the common effect of marketization and technological progress on labor income share is negative.According to the above conclusions,the policy implications are as follows: First,we should continue to deepen the market-oriented reform and better play the role of government in the process of market-oriented reform.Second,we should optimize the way and intensity of income regulation in the reallocation area.Thirdly,we should constantly improve the patent protection system,strengthen the protection of intellectual property rights and patent technology,and help enterprises establish the awareness of patent protection and protection of rights.Fourthly,we should optimize the transformation path of industrial structure and take human capital and R&D innovation as the new driving force of high-level industrial upgrading.Fifth,we should improve the personnel training mechanism,strengthen the retraining of workers’ skills,increase the supply of high-quality human resources,and encourage enterprises to tap the market demand in depth to open up new industrial sectors to absorb employment.In addition,the relationship between ownership reform,human capital level and China’s productivity and production relations is also very close,which will affect China’s share of labor income to a large extent.This paper lacks of research on this,which is the shortcoming of this paper,and also provides a direction for further research in the future.