Patrick Bond wrote: > Perhaps the most serious of capitalist self-contradictions, most > thoroughly embedded within the capital accumulation process, is the > general tendency towards an increased capital-labour ratio in > production--more machines in relation to workers--which is fuelled by > the combination of technological change and intercapitalist competition, > and made possible by the concentration and centralisation of capital. > Individual capitalists cannot afford to fall behind the industry norm, > technologically, without risking their price or quality competitiveness > such that their products are not sold. This situation creates a > continual drive in capitalist firms towards the introduction of > state-of-the-art production processes, especially labour-saving > machinery. With intensified automation, the rate of profit tends to > fall, and the reasons for this are worth reviewing. Profit correlates to > "surplus value" which is only actually generated through the > exploitation of labour in production.
I don't have time to respond to Patrick's entire missive, but I wanted to relate an example of the the rising OCC. It's reasonable on some levels to treat an entire country as a "social factory." One of the "services" that the US produces (for our rulers) is war. In recent decades -- i.e., since the 1960s -- US wars have become increasingly capital-intensive: the increasing "capital intensity" of the US military is seen in the rise of "smart bombs," "small, mobile, special forces," and the like. During the Cold War, this seemed partly or mostly the result of competition with other powers (the USSR). But there's also a class dimension. Increasing capital intensity is the result of (1) the end of conscription and (2) the continuation of the "Vietnam syndrome" (which militates against labor-intensive wars that kill "our" boys and girls). We can even see over-accumulation in this process: Field Marshall Rumsfeld's effort to conquer Iraq on the cheap lead to an obvious disaster. On the other hand, it seems wrong to see the rising military OCC as inevitable or persistent. Just as supply should never be considered without demand, the "tendency" should never be considered without its "counter-tendencies." (The rising OCC only has its impact "all else constant.") If the US can have its high-tech weapons produced in China, for example, it would lower the OCC. So would improved techniques in the production of weapons. (Part of the rise of the OCC here is the blatant inefficiency of the arms industry corporations.) Another way to avoid the rising OCC is to widen and deepen the use of mercenaries. That is, Blackwater _et al_ (or their future incarnations) could do fighting of the old fashioned-sort (getting beyond killing obvious civilians) and -- more importantly -- could bring in more and more cheap labor from outside the US (say, from Mexico). All else constant, this would lower the military OCC. -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante.
