Well, and there was another well-known author (especially among pen-pals) who gave a comprehensive summary of Ricardo's chapter on machinery:
*** [...] since machinery is continually seizing upon new fields of production, its temporary effect is really permanent. Hence, the character of independence and estrangement which the capitalist mode of production as a whole gives to the instruments of labour and to the product, as against the workman, is developed by means of machinery into a thorough antagonism. [118] Therefore, it is with the advent of machinery, that the workman for the first time brutally revolts against the instruments of labour. The instrument of labour strikes down the labourer. This direct antagonism between the two comes out most strongly, whenever newly introduced machinery competes with handicrafts or manufactures, handed down from former times. But even in Modern Industry the continual improvement of machinery, and the development of the automatic system, has an analogous effect. [118] "The same cause which may increase the revenue of the country" (i.e., as Ricardo explains in the same passage, the revenues of landlords and capitalists, whose wealth, from the economic point of view, forms the Wealth of the Nation), "may at the same time render the population redundant and deteriorate the condition of the labourer." (Ricardo, l. c., p. 469.) "The constant aim and the tendency of every improvement in machinery is, in fact, to do away entirely with the labour of man, or to lessen its price by substituting the labour of women and children for that of grown-up men, or of unskilled for that of skilled workmen." (Ure, l. c., t. I., p. 35.) *** Jim was polite enough to omit the passage of Wolff's mini-tutorial where Wolff shows that he misinterpreted Marx (see below). Wolff does not seem to understand that the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall is paralleled by the tendency of the amount of profit to increase - or in the words of Ricardo: the increase of revenues of landlords and capitalists. At 15:37 06.02.2013, you wrote: >from >http://robertpaulwolff.blogspot.com/2011/11/ricardos-principles-mini-tutorial.html > >Saturday, November 19, 2011 >RICARDO'S PRINCIPLES A MINI-TUTORIAL CONCLUSION > >It seems appropriate that I should bring this mini-tutorial to a >close with a discussion of Ricardo's brief but extraordinary chapter >on Machinery. His argument there, it seems to me, shows him at his >very best, while also exhibiting the theoretical and ideological >limitations of the Classical school to which Marx directed his most >penetrating criticism. Ricardo's purpose in including the chapter is >to correct a mistake of which, he says, he had previously been >guilty. This in itself sets him off from the common run of >theoreticians in a variety of disciplines these days, who think it a >death blow ever to acknowledge that they have been mistaken. > >The question at issue, Ricardo says in the first sentence of the >chapter, is "the influence of machinery on the interests of the >different classes of society." Take a moment to examine the phrasing >of that question. I venture to suggest that there is not a single >established economist in America today, including such liberal icons >as Robert Reich and Paul Krugman, who could ever bring himself or >herself to write a sentence in which appears the phrase "the >interests of the different classes of society." Even to utter such a >combination of words would be to elicit hysterical charges of "class >warfare," and yet Ricardo writes the sentence with no suggestion >that he intends to be provocative or to deviate from accepted norms >of polite intellectual behavior. In this, as in many other ways, the >mathematically sophisticated discourse of our modern professional >economists exhibits a marked falling away from the understandings >that the first Political Economists had achieved by the beginning of >the nineteenth century. It is instructive in this regard to read >Marx's discussion of those early figures in the three volume >Theories of Surplus Value with which Capital concludes. Despite his >strong disagreements with the best of them -- Quesney, Destutt de >Tracy, Smith, Ricardo and the rest -- Marx is extremely respectful >of them, and goes out of his way to acknowledge where they have been >correct. This stands in striking contrast to his dismissive and >mocking treatment of those whom he calls "vulgar economists," like >Nassau Senior, for whom he has nothing but contempt. [...] >Ricardo defends this new position by working out an elaborate >numerical example, which I shall not try to summarize. He draws from >his example four conclusions. The first is that "the discovery, and >useful application of machinery, always leads to an increase in the >net produce of the country, although it may not, and will not, after >an inconsiderable interval, increase the value of that net produce >[as measured in units of embodied labor -- ed.]" .... Here Wolff continues: This is actually a very interesting inference, because it is directly contrary to the claim by Marx that an increase in the ratio of Constant Capital ]machinery and such] to Variable Capital [labor] has a tendency to drive the profit rate down [the famous thesis of the Falling Rate of Profit.] For a very long time, a belief in The Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall was a touchstone of Marxist orthodoxy, separating the true believers from the Apologists for Capitalism [or the Petit Bourgeois Running Dogs of Imperialism, as I was once labeled by a Soviet journal, Literaturnaya Gazyetta.] However, in 1961, a Japanese economist, Nobuo Okishio, proved that under plausible theoretical conditions, a profitable labor-saving innovation by one capitalist would, when it had been adopted by all the other capitalists in that line of production, inevitably lead to a rise in the profit rate. [See my Autobiography for a nice story about Sam Bowles and Okishio's theorem.] _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
