In reply to my comments, Bill Burgess wrote,
>If we agree that nation states are still important, isn't it important
>to also identify exactly who has power in them, and specifically whether
>domestic or foreign capital predominates?
Yes, it's important to identify who has power but, since the exercise of
power will have different consequences in different situations, I don't see
the need -- or even in many cases the feasibility -- for exact calculation
of the domesticity or otherwise of capital. At any rate, I'd be hard pressed
to see Conrad Black as somehow more benign that, say, the Body Shop just
because he's Canadian, eh?
>Not long waves, but the notion that there are longish periods of growth
>and then stagnation, and that the shift from one to the other is the
>backdrop for increased capitalist "aggression" (rather than growth in
>foreign penetration, globalized production, etc.)
I do accept the notion of longish periods of growth and stagnation -- even
long waves -- with the qualification that the factors contributing to any
particular period of growth or decline are unique to that period and only
identifiable after the fact. In other words, I think long waves or periods
have enormous descriptive and heuristic value and are virtually worthless
for prediction.
What follows should not be construed as an argument against anything Bill
said, but as more general thoughts on the issue of productivity raised by
Bill's comments and earlier by Dean Baker's article.
More important than whether productivity growth and/or real profits have
stagnated or boomed is the fact that "productivity" has come to mean
something different. Instead of being seen as an index of performance,
productivity growth has come to be seen as a litmus test for policy
prescription -- perhaps the ultimate litmus test. It may seem like a subtle
difference, but it's the difference between keeping score and gatekeeping.
(A parallel is the controversy over the CPI, or for that matter the GDP).
What gets especially lost in this shift from index to litmus test is any
acknowledgement that "productivity growth" is a somewhat arbitrary
measurement of relationships that ultimately can't be measured (because the
changes are qualitative as well as quantitative). The fact that the
measurement may show stable trends over a long period of time is no
guarantee that "the same thing" is being measured over the course of that
period.
Still on the topic of productivity growth, I'm looking at two documents: one
a 1962 pamphlet from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce; the other a newspaper
column written last month by Fraser Institute economist Michael Walker (the
Fraser is the local "free enterprise" think tank). The notion of
"productivity" plays a central role in both documents. And the view of
productivity hasn't changed one iota in 35 years. So much for the "neo" in
neo-liberalism.
For both authors, increases in productivity result from actions by
capitalists (investment in new technology) and passivity by workers (not
resisting the new technology, refraining from demanding too great a share of
the proceeds). At most, raising productivity requires an "active passivity"
from workers: adapting to the new technology, retraining to acquire the
appropriate skills.
Such a view of productivity would be laughable, if it wasn't for the fact
that it goes largely uncontested by the left. The left generally shares a
reified view of productivity in which measures of output per worker hour can
be taken as an index of productivity and in which "class struggle" at the
point of production is reflected in worker resistance to automation and
speed-up.
I'm afraid that factoring in a "whole whack of unproductive labour" does
nothing to challenge the ideological equation of capital=active,
worker=passive. And I'm guessing that by unproductive, Mosely is referring
to the production of surplus value. Under such a distinction, a teacher
would be unproductive if employed in the public education system yet
productive if employed by a profit-oriented private academy.
I suspect that what is at the heart of the reification of productivity, is a
unexamined belief that "science and technology" is some kind of eternal,
self-perpetuating realm that acts on production processes without itself
being acted upon. 'Belief' is probably too strong a word for what might
better be described as avoidance of an issue that's exceedingly ambiguous.
The importance of passivity and of an unmoved mover in the reified notion of
productivity should be a more than sufficient clue that we're dealing with
theological positions and not empirical analysis. Not only is it theology,
it's _bad_ theology. Perhaps it would be more useful to counter bad theology
with better theology than to try to answer it with more refined empirical
analysis.
Regards,
Tom Walker
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