Date: Sat, 10 Jan 98 5:36:57 EST
From: boddhisatva <kbevans-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Economic crisis and crisis theory






		Rakesh,


	I have always had a problem with a theory that assumes advances in
productivity require greater net capital outlay.  What about capitalism's
constant search for *cheaper* production methods?  Think of all the things
that are made from plastic now - often cheaper as a material but nearly
always cheaper to mold.  Yes, it takes investment to come up with
technologies that require less investment, but that does not mean that
there is no net reduction in capital outlay per use-value.  Indeed we
almost have to assume this if capitalism was to make the rapid strides in
developing new classes of goods that it has.  As the number of industries
expands, requiring fewer workers for each industry, technological
development cannot mean a more and more expensive versions of every new
factory (that's relative expense, keep in mind, not nominal).  Sure,
semiconductor plants are getting more expensive, but steel mills are going
down per use value produced.  Otherwise the growth in capital expense
would exceed use-value growth, maybe exponentially. 



	Frankly, I think the use of surplus value here confuses things. 
You know very well what I think of value theory - it's bogus.  If you
can't show that labor value is retained in any specific good, and can
demonstrate without question that labor can be spent without any value to
show for it, then you should use another concept.  Labor value tempts one
to try and make a static equation where X+Y+Z is greater than A+B+C and
therefore capitalism is doomed.  Meanwhile socialism will have to make the
same modernization decisions as capitalism, committing the same amount of
money to labor-saving technologies if not more.  The compositions of
capital will change in the same way.  Socialism could even (if it wanted)
pay all the players the same amount.  It still wouldn't be capitalism,
because capitalism allows a tiny minority to make economic decisions on
the basis
of ownership and against the interest of their own consumers and socialism
consults the greatest number of economic stake-holders for a given economic
decision.  It is more rational to the market by design.  *Any* economic
decision-making oligopoly will cause similar crises simply because it is
possible and likely that they will do so.  They need not rationalize their
decisions with the largest number of stake-holders possible, so we must
assume that they eventually will not.  Add to that (if appropriate) the
distorting effects of greed (although greed can have rationalizing effects
too, but causes a net distortion) and you have capitalist crisis without
imbalances something that you can't demonstrate even exists. 




	peace





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