law are soooooo last season anyway. all the best people are doing tendencies now.......
is the finished "article" appearing on-line?
Jul 12 2012 16:58
Jul 13 2012 11:25
Naw. Nowhere near a finished idea at the moment. Ideally I would like to use the exploration and critique of the OCC as an entry point to look at the whole question of immanent contradictions in the systemic dynamics of capital (Krisentheorie). But that's a much bigger project really. For instance, we need to factor in the question of employment - if rising productivity (TCC) is simply used to lay off workers, rather increasing output, then the crisis becomes one of unemployment rather than an environmental one. The one-sided attachment to one or other side of that tendency leaves us with the current antagonism between the ecological anti-capitalists and the "more jobs & growth now" left. An antagonism that can only be transcended, imo, by a more complete, many-sided critique. Anyway, I need to review more stuff first (including Shortall, and Heinrich, if my copy ever arrives...) and some empirical data might be useful also.
Jul 13 2012 12:55
yeah, waiting for my Heinrich too.
Where's Angelus when you need him eh?
Aug 30 2012 00:41
OK,
On the Heinrich thread, Ocelot seems to have injected arguments that go back this old thread. For me the interesting part of Artesian's critique of Heinrich was his challenging of Heinrich's position that Capital could reproduce itself indefinitely (the relative versus absolute debates don't really seem important to me).
Heinrich wrote:
Capital, self-valorizing value, has no intrinsic limits to valorization, and for that reason no rate of valorization, once reached, is sufficient.
Artesian wrote:
Uhhh.........no, the point of Marx's critique of capital is to illuminate what the intrinsic limits, the inherent restrictions to valorization are.
So the question seems to be the falling rate of profit (apologies avoiding the opaque cant of "tFRoP" ) . The falling rate of profit itself turns on the question of the rising organic composition of capital (OCC), argued about at length on this thread but most usefully by the Oisleep in his previous post and Ocelot here.
I'd been meaning to come back to this post by Ocelot for a while anyway but this gives me more impetus.
ocelot wrote:
oisleep wrote:
The point of this big detour however, is that when looking at the social level and particular in relation to things like resources, oil, energy, food etc.. - the productivity increases in these areas (due to natural restraints etc..) are never likely to keep pace with the production processes that use them as inputs, so increases in productivity in relation to production inputs are never going to improve in relative terms as much as the increases in productivity in the production processes that use those inputs. So this has to always lead to an increasing TCC & OCC and an increasing (but at a lower rate) VCC ......(snip)
1). If the TCC is growing slower in the primary sectors than the secondary or tertiary ones, then, over time, we should see an increase in the proportion of the workforce in the primary sector, relative to the other two. The historical trend is clearly the other direction.
...(snip)
4) The historical sequence of progression from primary to secondary to tertiary production, appears to show that productivity is first developed in the oldest or pre-existing sectors and then subsequently move to the newer sectors in turn. At a pure guess, I would imagine the most common shape for productivity over time, would be some form of S-curve.5) See also Australian mining and other examples of this sorta thing - http://www.economywatch.com/files/imagecache/story/story/Giant_Mining_Machine_-_SCARY.jpg
...(numbering correct)...
One might be tempted to simplify this argument to "capital saving automation has appeared which allows the value of capital goods to decline and thus OCC to decline" though that might not be all that's here. The "capital-saving-automation" argument itself seems a fairly plausible and I think mainstream economists make it regularly.
However, I claim here that these arguments are by no means the last word. Some counter-counter arguments would be:
1) If mining now becomes heavily automated then it is no longer a simple "primary sector", Indeed, it is now contributing to total constant capital as well (a further effect that by itself increases OCC). The question isn't really whether mining etc is becoming more automated but whether it is becoming productive (whether the same quantity of good involves less labor or not). I can't find any strong sources but this crude chart suggests commodity prices haven't been declining for the last twenty years at least. Price is only crude measure of value of course but this is suggestive. It is possible that the automation of raw material extract is making up for the resource-exhaustion which would otherwise cause the price of mined materials to increase over time. To expand, the automation of "primary" industries means that nothing is primary in the sense of only supplying other industries, all the industries now depend on each other - the production process no longer involves a chain but a matrix of interdependencies and this makes the question of whether and which bottlenecks and limits exist complex.
2) Perhaps the key consideration in this whole discussion is whether a given technical change reduces the cost of reproducing labor power. The point that different sectors increase in productivity at different rates is again crucial I believe. If laborers consume three kinds of commodities, the kind of commodity which is produced by a sector with a low rate of productivity increase will tend to become relatively more dear over time. Thus it seems reasonable that the raw productivity increase in the sector experiencing the fastest increases will not contribute a decrease in the cost of labor proportionate to its increased productive. If there is sector of survival goods that experiences no productivity increases at all, its cost serves as a "floor" for the cost of labor.
3) Now, going back to "capital saving improvements". Again assuming heterogeneous changes in different industries, it is reasonable to assume some industries experience more capital saving improvements and some experience less. The thing is that those industries that experience enought increased productivity and capital saving improvements will more or less vanish - they don't need labor and they don't need capital, they become "the one village in XXX that supplies the world with YYY". Thus we may be able to assume the "industries under consideration" are those where either no improvement has happened or some productivity increases have happened along with some increase in OCC. The point is that "capital saving improvements" and "labor saving improvements" aren't a seesaw. The industries that involve massive increases in OCC for their increased productivity aren't countered directly by those that experience capital-saving-improvements (since later more or less "vanish from consideration").
I might be tempted to call this a "proof" but I'll step back and just claim that it is a plausible argument that OCC may indeed be subject to secular increase. More concrete investigation naturally is needed. I tend to think the present world crisis of capital might constitute something like empirical evidence.
Aug 30 2012 08:06
Quote:
it is reasonable to assume some industries experience more capital saving improvements and some experience less. The thing is that those industries that experience enought increased productivity and capital saving improvements will more or less vanish - they don't need labor and they don't need capital, they become "the one village in XXX that supplies the world with YYY".
have no clue what you are talking about here. "they don't need labour" implies complete automation. "they don't need capital" is ambiguous given it could be taken to mean "they don't need physical means of production" if capital is taken to be a "thing". this seems a nonsense. Alternatively, if capital is seen as a social relation of production this would seem to imply said industries have become non-capitalist oases. In either case the supporting argument that leads from the proposition to the conclusion - that they "vanish" when considering the OCC of aggregate social capital - is absent AFAICS
at another level, it is impossible to conceive of a situation where an absolute monopoly on the supply of a given commodity such as is implied by your "one village that supplies the world with YYY" would occur, except (perhaps) in the supply of a peripheral luxury good. without wishing to get into the whole "state debate" if we think of the state as acting in the interests of capital as a whole allowing a fraction of the capitalist class the strategic power this monopoly position would imply would be foolish in the extreme.
Aug 30 2012 09:11
Before we go any further, let's clarify some basic terminological confusion:
"capital saving automation"
This makes no sense, either in marxist terminology or in non-marxist, bourgeois economic terminology.
1) In marxist parlance, esp. in vol II, Section 1,all the factors of production are capital. The cycle of capital (value in process) passes through a succession of stages, but the stage where it passes from money capital to the commodities necessary for the production process - labour, raw & auxiliary materials, tools & machinery, etc - all of these are components of capital. The raw & auxiliary materials consumed in a single production cycle, together with that portion of fixed capital (machinery, etc) used up in "wear and tear" for that cycle, constitute constant capital (cc or just c). The labour power hired constitutes the variable capital (vc or just v). But both are equally components of productive capital. Hence the idea of framing the changing the ratio of variable to constant capital in the composition of the different inputs of production as "capital saving" makes no sense whatsoever in the marxian schema.
2) In conventional bourgeois economics, it is common to characterise different ratios between living labour and constant capital in production in terms of "labour-intensive versus capital-intensive" polarities. But within that schema, automation is understood as a factor of making the process more "capital intensive" - i.e. as a "labour-saving" device, reducing the portion of living labour in the ratio. So here, again, the notion of "capital-saving automation" is a contradiction in terms.
"Does not compute!", in summary.
Aug 30 2012 10:17
RedHughs wrote:
However, I claim here that these arguments are by no means the last word. Some counter-counter arguments would be:
1) If mining now becomes heavily automated then it is no longer a simple "primary sector", Indeed, it is now contributing to total constant capital as well (a further effect that by itself increases OCC).
Red, I hate to be negative, but this next proposition (after the categorical abortion that is "capital saving automation" as discussed above), is also un-parseable gibberish. Primary industries do not become any more or less primary by dint of the level of the TCC (or "automation" if you prefer). It's unclear here whether "total constant capital" is meant in technical or value terms (a common confusion with OCC-abusers). If technical, then that the rise of TCC in one sector, contributes to total mass of constant capital is not a "further effect", and that this "in itself" contributes to the rise of the VCC (again, you are abusing the OCC here, when you mean VCC), simply does not follow. To say your statement is begging the question, is to afford it more coherence than it has.
RedHughs wrote:
The question isn't really whether mining etc is becoming more automated but whether it is becoming productive (whether the same quantity of good involves less labor or not).
"More automated" means increasing the TCC (i.e. the ratio of the mass of constant to variable (labour) capital), which is the same thing as increasing unit productivity. As to what "becoming productive" means in this context, christ only knows (unless "becoming productive" is meant in the Deleuzian sense of becoming-other, but I suspect not).
And so it goes on... To be honest, in order to respond to your contribution properly, it would first be necessary to translate it into something coherent and comprehensible. Other than that I can only try and guess at what you are trying to get at, and so far, unsuccessfully.
RedHughs wrote:
I might be tempted to call this a "proof" but I'll step back and just claim that it is a plausible argument that OCC may indeed be subject to secular increase.
I'm sorry mate, but it's nothing of the sort. It is an un-parseable, incoherent mess. Please try again.
Jul 25 2013 16:28
I'm just tagging this on the end of this defunct thread so's I don't lose it when I come around to writing this all up. I think they confused themselves by going for a dept I & II sectoralisation, rather than an explicitly sequential one (although they introduce a sequential assumption that dept I doesn't use any outputs from dept II as inputs). The tie to the historical development of capitalism is much simpler if you use a Fourastié-style primary, secondary, tertiary sectoralisation.
Rowthorn, Harris: The Organic Composition of Capital and Capitalist Development
Jul 29 2013 10:32
Oooh! Interesting article, thanks for that.
Despite the risk of incurring the wrath of mikus I have to say that Kliman's online interventions in the debate with Heinrich are laughable. He has treated every criticism as a personal affront, made accepting his argument a precondition of intellectual honesty and generally flounced about like a petulant child.
I had some respect for the bloke up to now but f*ck me is he annoying. Persecution complex much?!
Aug 1 2013 15:07
Andy. I agree generally that Kliman's affect of petulant polemic does get in the way of taking his critique seriously. That said I think we need to be careful not to let lack of sympathy with an arguing style that comes across as dickish, get in the way of assessing the actual arguments. For the record I do think there is a problem with the specific argument that Heinrich makes in the paper based on (s/v)/(c+v). I.e. Heinrich's maths is not as good as his Marx. s/v is not a normal fraction based on two independent variables, but the formal expression of a ratio that can only go up to 100% of hours worked - a point Kliman makes (and shows that Marx also made, nb). Heinrich makes the mistake of accepting tendentially increasing value composition of capital - from which the "law of the tendency" is simply a logical result. The point is that tendentially increasing VCC is not demonstrated at all. But I'm not going to go too far into the comparison between the Heinrich paper and the Kliman critique, because that belongs more properly on the other thread.
Aug 1 2013 16:18
Ocelot--
Thanks for the article. FWIW, I think Kliman is right in arguing against "inevitability"-- as inevitability is completely unnecessary to Marx's critique and the significance of the tendency of the rate of profit to decline.
That's the important thing, I mean relation, to me. Kliman's "style" is not of significance because in the final analysis Roberts'-- on whose site the debate is currently being conducted-- really does think "inevitabilty" is essential,necessary to the operation of the tendency.
But yes...belongs in another thread. I think Heinrich's misapprehension of Marx is truly staggering.
Aug 2 2013 14:13
SA - I've gone back to the "Heinrich contra the law of the falling rate of profit" thread for a fuller consideration of the Kliman response (and Heinrich's paper).
I'd be interested in a link to Roberts' (who he?) site, if there's an ongoing debate on the topic there.
Aug 2 2013 15:11
OK
Aug 10 2013 14:02
My two cents on the OCC/TCC question here:
http://spiritofcontradiction.eu/rowan-duffy/2013/07/29/tendency-of-the-rate-of-profit-to-exasperate
Aug 10 2013 16:41
jacobian wrote:
My two cents on the OCC/TCC question here:http://spiritofcontradiction.eu/rowan-duffy/2013/07/29/tendency-of-the-rate-of-profit-to-exasperate
You might want to check out the snitstorm at http://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2013/07/28/heinrich-a-small-rejoinder/. Then again, maybe not. And the thread here
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You are, of course, correct. I may have to downsize from an iron law to a mere tendency
.
Having said that, I haven't entirely given up hope of strengthening that bit. Both from an internal logic point of view (the diminishing returns of re-engineering relative to expansion of production) and by re-engagement with the other pole of the category - i.e. it's capitalist nature - that only profitable changes are made, not "technically rational" ones, from a sustainability point of view. i.e. we are talking about the technical composition of capital, not the technical composition of production in general, trans-historically speaking.