Well, Tom, I always enjoy your posts. So I see that by "reproduction" you were referring to strategic changes in the reproduction of total social capital. I am wondering whether your analysis has been inspired by Tony Negri's writings on the social factory, which I have myself not read. There is a very good discussion of the social impact of the acceleleration in the turn-over of capital in Geoffrey Kay's marvelous introduction to marxist economic theory *The Economic Theory of The Working Class*). By the way (and of course), surplus profits on the world market do not only obtain from a competitive redistribution of surplus value to imperialist capitals from semi-colonial ones; one imperialist capital can gain "technological rents" from another. And it is new forms of state support of such profit that some have taken to be the defining feature of the state today, as the Keynesian apparatus withers away (e.g., the attempt to bolster profits through inflation may fail if cheaper foreign goods can be easily imported due to advances in transportation and telecommunications). At least, something like this is part of Bob Jessop's characterization of the shift from the Keynesian welfare state to the Schumpeterian workfare state. I thought you were referring to new functions the state may play in the regulation of the reproduction of labor power . Well, for my part, I do think that reproduction, as a social problem, is one of the strategic sites of modern capitalism, and David Horn's book on *Social Bodies* is a fascinating read. Many of its insights and concepts can be applied to the contemporary debate on the underclass for example-- also a group, like the professoriat, outside the material labor process and traditional marxist critique but very much the victim and object of state intervention, as argued for example by Sanford Schram in *Words of Welfare* (Minnesota, 1995). Well, to think about the debate as Jerry has outlined it, I am reading the relevant chapters (esp. "A Taxonomy of Teacher Work")in Aronowitz and DiFazio's *The Jobless Future*. (Minnesota, 1994). Oh, oh, that's too many books from the Univ of Minnesota Press for an economics conference. rakesh
