Date: Thu, 25 Aug 1994 10:46:32 -0500 (EST)
From: wesley david cecil <wcecil-AT-indiana.edu>
Subject: Re: schumpeter help


First, I do not see why speculative investment creates a crisis, it would 
seem to be a really good way of dealing with a falling rate of profit and 
also a nifty means to increase the concentration of wealth in the hands 
of the wealthy.  Also consider that the Dowj now cannot fall more than 
50[I think it is 50 maybe someone else can confirm this number] 
points in one session(about 1.5%) before computer trading is shut off 
effectively insuring that the dow cannot lose more than 70 or so points 
in a single day, about 2%, while there is no limit on how much it can 
rise.  So while individual stocks can rise and fall quie dramatically, 
overall the game is seriously rigged towrds stability.  In fact, many 
brokers have complained of the "Chinese Water Torture" effect of recent 
market changes which tend to hover between 3 and 10 points a day with the 
occasional 40 point swing on major announcements(still only about 1%).  

Onthe question of how technology effects value, that is hard to say, I 
would think, particularly in the context of the many long discussions of 
calue that have already taken place.  Basically, however, it would seem 
to connstantly reduce the number of workers necessary to produce any 
single item while simultaneously creating new products and the desire for 
them, thus forcing the creation of new jobs(notice the Clinton Admin has 
penned all of their hopes for employment growth on this latter 
pehnomenon).  Certainly it is easy to imagine that the ability to produce 
will outstrip the ability to stimulate consumption, so I see no reason 
why technology does not function quite nicely even in very fundamentalist 
views of the coming crisis of Captialism.
Wes

 On Wed, 24 Aug 1994, donna jones 
wrote:

> I would still be happy to receive some comments or citations on how to
> study the impact of modern science and technology on the value-determined
> capitalist production process.  Does capitalistically endogeneous technical
> change modify or destroy the objectivist or fundamentalist theory of the
> law of accumulation and breakdown of the capitalist system?  
> 
> Also what do people think of the critique of subjectivist or, more
> precisely, psychological theories of crisis." As capitalist production is
> the *production of capital* via the production of commodities, a lack of
> new investments can only have one cause, namely, the fear that such
> investments may prove to be unprofitable and therefore senseless.  This
> fear is not a psychological phenomenon but derives directly from the fact
> that the rate of profit on the functioning capital already shows a strong
> tendency to decline."(Mattick Sr, 1983, 133)
> 


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