This post will not be about Postone, for Gil's criticism of value theory is
quite confusing.
He argues quite rightly that individual capitalists are motivated by
profit, not surplus value. He notes as well that value operates at the
level of the system as a whole: on the one hand, he reduces this to the
Ricardian insight that the value produced by an individual capitalist
depends on average skill only in that particular branch; at other times,
Gill warms up to Marx and recognizes that the unintended consequence of the
productivity increases effected by *profit*-motivated capitalists will so
lower the unit unit *values* of the commodities that enter the workers'
consumption that the systemic production of *relative surplus value*
becomes possible. That is, depsite the logical problems he finds in value
theory, Gil himself makes use of it to understand the dynamics of the
system as whole.
And of course it is wholly possible that while the growth of every single
capitalist depends on the production of relative surplus value, it is not
the intent of any one capitalist to make its production possible; indeed
increases in productivity that were restricted to individual capitalists
would only have a neglible effect on the value of labor power. Far from
being a damning critique of value theory, Gil seems to be inching his way
towards it, as in these quotes:
> Thus, for example, a single
>capitalist under such conditions cannot possibly create relative surplus
>value. What the capitalist *can* do is increase individual profits for
>*given* values.
>Now it is of course *possible* that the cumulative effect of such an
>innovation, once generally adopted, is to increase surplus value. But that
>is a (contingent) consequence of the original motivation, and should not be
>confused with that motivation itself.
Capitalists strive to increase
>productivity because this increases profits, and don't (can't) care what is
>the ultimate effect of their individual actions on surplus value, which
>pertains to the system as a whole.
What Gil is intimating here has been wonderfully articulated by Geoffrey Kay:
"..the success or failure of the indivuidual capitalist enterprise becomes
incresaingly dependent on upon success or failure of social capital as a
whole. The fact that individual capitalist may be unaware of this, and hold
on to a philosophy and practice of competition that lays all the onus on
individual enterprise, is besides the point. Here, as elsewhere, everything
appears to be the opposite of what it really is, and the competition among
capitalists and their mutual opposition to each other, is nothing more than
the curious manner in which they unite together to form a regular masonic
society in the face of the the working class upon which they all depend."
The Economic Theory of the Working Class. St Martins, 1979.
But of course the ceaseless efforts to increase productivity implie upward
pressure on the organic composition of capital. Of course that very cause
which has brought forth this tendency brings forth the countertendency of
an increased rate of exploitation, as well as the emergence of new
labor-absorbing branches of production in which ever greater masses of
surplus value are pumped out--whatever the ecological consequences.
That the tendency does not always manifest itself because the very cause
that enforces it enforces the countertendency as well does not mean of
course that the tendency is not operative in capitalist development. (It of
course raises the question of why Marx thought that the tendency would work
its way, so to speak, through the countertendency.)
I think in a reference to the upward pressure on the OCC implied by the
ceaseless efforts of individual capitalists to increase productivity, Gil
writes:
> When reproduced in the aggregate, that decision may hurt
>capitalists *as a whole*, but to insist that therefore individual
>capitalists will avoid it is precisely to commit the fallacy of division.
As I understand it, this is the basis of Shaikh's critique of the Okishio
Theorem.
I cannot comment on the rest of the post as I have not yet figured out what
Postone means to theorise by the transition from labor time as a measure of
wealth to disposable time as that measure. In many ways, I think Postone is
struggling with the problem that baffled John Stuart Mill: why is it that
despite the introduction of technologies with which labor can both be
minimized and made worthy of human nature, humanity has not overcome the
condition of alienated and hierachical and ever more intensified working
conditions and deprived creative leisure (overwork for some, the pressure
of unemployment for others)--and now with looming ecological catastrophe to
boot.
Without a better understanding of this, I think it will be impossible to
respond to the important criticisms you raise.
Rakesh
