In his "Measuring the Wealth of Nations," Anwar Shaikh has precise measurements of the organic composition of capital until 1988. He also explains his methodology carefully, so that anyone interested can update his data.
Edwin Dickens -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Doug Henwood Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2008 12:50 PM To: Progressive Economics Subject: Re: [Pen-l] Query on Henryk Grossman 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 _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
