On Mar 19, 2008, at 12:00 PM, Shane Mage wrote:
On Mar 19, 2008, at 10:57 AM, Louis Proyect wrote:
...the current crisis, which does not involve an increasing
organic composition of capital...
Don't be so sure of that. No real Marxist study of the organic
composition of capital in the US economy has been done since 1962,
but the huge increase in the proportion of "socially necessary but
unproductive labor"
in the economy is reflected in a huge increase in the fixed capital
needed for its employment (examples: Office skyscrapers,
Megamalls, etc.). All this is included in the organic composition
(C/v+s). If, as I strongly suspect, the falling tendency of the
rate of profit underlies the real stagnation of the US economy
since the 1980's and the explosion of "fictitious capital," the old
Marxian ratios are more relevant than ever.
There was a tremendous recovery in profitability, by bourgeois
measurements, between 1982 and 1997. It fell back into 2002, and then
rose again into 2006. But I realize that since these stats haven't
been put through the magic value machine, they don't reveal the deep
truths of capitalism, which apparently no one knows because no one's
done the work in 46 years.
Again using bourgeois stats, the ratio of tangible capital to GDP for
nonfinancial corps in the flow of funds accounts has been rising
since the mid-90s, hitting last year an all-time record since the FoF
numbers begin in 1945. Tangible capital was 131% of GDP in 2007, up
from 92% in 2000, and higher even than the 111% average in the 1950s.
Much of that increase, though, was in real estate. Total tangible
capital relative to GDP rose a total of 45 points from 1994-2007,
with 37 points coming from real estate and just 6 points from equipment.
Doug
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