Quoting Shane Mage <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
Fred Moseley wrote:
Hi Gernot, thanks for your message.
Are you suggesting that services generally have a lower [organic]
composition of capital than manufacturing, so that a shift from
manufacturing to services will reduce the aggregate [organic]
composition of capital (or slow down its increase)? If so, I think
you are right, and this has been a factor in the recovery of the
rate of profit in recent decades, which has nothing to do with
fiscal policy.
This is far from evident, because it depends not only on the
capital-intensivity of the service sector, but also on how much of
the service sector is productive of surplus value (transportation,
food service, etc.) and how much unproductive (retailing, merchandising,
finance, insurance, etc.). Any relative increase in the portion of
total capital in the unproductive sector will directly increase the
overall
mass of constant capital while, employing by definition no variable
capital, representing a pure increase in the overall organic composition
of capital. Thus, unless the organic composition of capital in the
productive part of the service sector is very very much less than in
manufacturing, any shift from manufacturing to services will tend to
increase the aggregate organic composition of capital.
Hi Shane, I agree with the thrust of what you say, although I disagree
on your classification of unproductive capital as constant capital (I
remember this disagreement from reading your great dissertation many
years ago). I (along with most other people, I think) argue that
constant capital and variable capital (and thus the composition of
capital) refer only to productive capital.
But I agree that much of the service sector is unproductive, and that
an increase of this part of the service sector has a negative effect on
the rate of profit. I was thinking more of the productive part of the
services sector in my last comment.
Comradely,
Fred
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