> There is overproduction and more workers than jobs.
> If society cannot provide enough jobs,
> (and I don't even go into the issues of individually
> and socially satisfying jobs),
> the "work ethic"
Eva
Greider's "One World, Ready or Not: The Manic Logic of Global Capitalism" has a great
deal on this subject, and the dynamics that creates it. It's not just a simple case of
greed.
"The challenge of managing supply to match the market demand and to maintain profit
levels is the heart of what preoccupies every business manager ...Revolutionary change
has unhinged those basic calculations.
"The great virtue of capitalism ...is its ability to yield more from less... But this
expanding potential to produce more goods also poses the enduring contradiction for
capitalist enterprise: how to dispose of the surplus production...
"When companies adopt the technologies that reduce costs and protect their market
shares, the inescapable result is to enlarge productive capacity... Someone somewhere
will have to eat the losses...
"What if the expanding system is moving further and further out of balance as it
grows? That is the global experience to date. Enormous supply surpluses are
accumulating across nearly every major sector of industry...
"Unless the fundamentals of capitalist enterprise have somehow been repealed, the
system cannot continue on its present trajectory...The world is on new ground. Nobody
really knows the likely outcome."
These are just introductory remarks. In a section discussing surplus in autos, he
states:
"In 1995, the major American car company recalculated its supply-demand projections
and it found ...a worldwide productive capacity that would exceed demand in 2000 by 27
percent. .. The global overcpacity in cars by 2000 would be equivalent to the entire
North American industry, only larger ... one quarter of the world's auto factories were
redundant." !!!
He actually has some suggestions in the last chapter or two of the book. I don't think
I'm capable of discussing them. But I did want to point out how big the surplus
problem apparently is, and how wasteful it is.
