...and not from me, at least not so much. Michael Roberts, in his blog has taken a run at Heinrich's re-formation, or reform-ation, of Marx's analysis of capital and the tendency of the rate of profit to decline.
I recommend Roberts' article not only for his countering of Heinrich's speculations but equally for the comments the article has elicited from readers. The comments not only extend the critique of Heinrich but sustain the quality of the critique over some 20 individual responses.
Almost enough to make someone an optimist-- that someone not being me.
S.Artesian
May 20, 2013
Monday, May 20, 2013
Sunday, May 19, 2013
Of Profit Rates and Paper, as opposed to Paper Rates and Profit
I strongly recommend Alan Freeman's paper "The Profit Rate In the Presence of the Financial Markets" available here.
It was, for me personally, great fun to read (fun? that's my idea of fun? I need to get out more). Alan Freeman argues that by accounting for finance as capital, as integral to the cost and the price of value production (1) there has been no sustained recovery in the rate of profit since (pick one)
1970, 1973, 1980, 1986, etc. {although I do think there was a temporary uptick,
which did not exceed previous highs, in the 1994-1998 period} (2) a clear and insightful exploration of “fictitious capital” and (3) in the last paragraph on page 18 regarding rent—that rent is part of, essential to, the
equalization of profit rates—the same conclusion I reached after studying the
impact of the oil price spikes (and collapses) in the recent decades (see: http://thewolfatthedoor.blogspot.com/2011/08/of-forests-and-trees-2.html
section 3.4).
I wrestled long and hard with Marx’s analysis of rent, and
couldn’t quite integrate it until I linked it to the equalization process. It's nice to read something that makes me feel a little bit less alone in my conclusion, and being a little less alone really is my idea of fun.
S.Artesian
May 19, 2013
Monday, May 13, 2013
A Minimal Program
It's not often that I read the articles on the New York Times Op-Ed page. And I can't remember ever recommending any such article to anyone for any reason. But today, May 13, 2013, I read and I recommend "How Austerity Kills" by David Stuckler and Sanjay Basau.
I don't think I can summarize the evidence, the findings or conclusions in the article. That would be like summarizing the findings of an investigation into conditions at Auschwitz-- and I'm not kidding. Stuckler's and Basau's piece deserves to read, absorbed, understood in its entirety
But here are my conclusions: Clearly, small "c" communists are not even advancing a minimal program when, where, and if, they advocate exit from the EU and even renouncing debts. The minimal program is one that proposes international workers solidarity through the immediate dissolution of the European Union, the liquidation of the European Central Bank, the abolition of the European Commission, termination of all economic agreements with the IMF, and expulsion of EU and IMF officials.
And it's a dead cinch certainty that the later it takes small "c" communists to announce such a minimalist program, the sooner some fascist-sentimentalist slug/goon would-be (Louis) Bonapartist/Peron wannabee (Berlusconi? The Northern League?)will as a program for "national salvation" that will squarely target class struggle as the primary obstacle to "national"-- that is to say corporate--unity.
S.Artesian
May 13, 2013
I don't think I can summarize the evidence, the findings or conclusions in the article. That would be like summarizing the findings of an investigation into conditions at Auschwitz-- and I'm not kidding. Stuckler's and Basau's piece deserves to read, absorbed, understood in its entirety
But here are my conclusions: Clearly, small "c" communists are not even advancing a minimal program when, where, and if, they advocate exit from the EU and even renouncing debts. The minimal program is one that proposes international workers solidarity through the immediate dissolution of the European Union, the liquidation of the European Central Bank, the abolition of the European Commission, termination of all economic agreements with the IMF, and expulsion of EU and IMF officials.
And it's a dead cinch certainty that the later it takes small "c" communists to announce such a minimalist program, the sooner some fascist-sentimentalist slug/goon would-be (Louis) Bonapartist/Peron wannabee (Berlusconi? The Northern League?)will as a program for "national salvation" that will squarely target class struggle as the primary obstacle to "national"-- that is to say corporate--unity.
S.Artesian
May 13, 2013
Sunday, May 12, 2013
Now Back to our Subject: Pardon the Extrusion, 2
I. Now back to our subject. Marx, concludes his Notebook VI of the Grundrisse with an extended discussion of circulation, the impact of fixed assets, machinery, on the turnover of capital, the impact of fixed capital on the labor process, and the impact of circulation time on the reproduction of capital. Writes our friend Karl:
The circulation of capital is the change of forms by means of which value passes through different phases. The time which this process lasts or costs to bring about belongs among the production costs of circulation, of the division of labor of production based on exchange. (Grundrisse, Penguin Books, 1973, p. 626).Pretty straightforward, right? The physical commodity, for the capitalist owner, is but the bearer of the surplus value appropriated in production. It represents cost plus- value -which was, at one time, money without the plus. Now the commodity has to circulate, prove itself exchangeable, in order to perform the magic of its transubstantiation, in its simultaneous disappearing and realization act, materializing as mo' money. This transformation is both physical and "beyond" physical. It is social. The transformation requires some time. Time isn't always money. But the appropriation of labor time cannot be sustained without its conversion into money. Money is the alienation of time.
The process by which any single capitalist realizes the expanded value in commodity production requires that capital as a social organization expand; that the markets "officiate" at the process of transubstantiation for all, or most, or a really good portion of the commodity/supplicants.
The economic metamorphosis requires social time and space. The movement of value through different phases is accompanied by the movement of the commodities through space.
The longer the circulation time, the slower the turnover of capital, then the more encumbered is the original production process as its rate of realization, its rate of return drags upon the need for uninterrupted production to maximize the efficiency of, and circulate the overhanging costs of the increased fixed assets.
Marx has identified fixed capital as that portion of the constant capital "whose" value is transferred to the commodities only incrementally, over numerous cycles of production. To complete the transference of the value in the fixed assets requires, more or less, the complete extinguishing of its use value-- its inability to function any longer as capital, actually. This is a pretty serviceable distinction, and one that doesn't require much elaboration, covering as it does structures, equipment, software, rolling stock.......rolling stock? Yes, for those of us who take pleasure in the little ironies that accompany, like pilot fish accompany the shark, the big ironies of capitalism in which we take no pleasure, it is precisely in the means of circulation, the means of communication and transportation, that fixed capital finds its home always away from home.
Now back to Marx. He continues:
Hence to the extent that circulation time determines the total mass of production time in a given period of time, and to the extent that the repetition of the production process, its renewal in a given period depends on the circulation time, to that extent is it itself a moment of production, or rather appears as a limit of production. This is the nature of capital, of production founded on capital that circulation time becomes a determinant moment for labour time, for the creation of value. The independence of labor time is thereby negated and the production process is itself posited as determined by exchange so that immediate production is socially linked to it and dependent on this link--not only as a material moment but also as an economic moment, a determinant, characteristic form. (Grundrisse, p. 628, 629)Sometimes, when I think about just how great the passages from the Grundrisse (and the other manuscripts written between 1857 and 1864) are, I almost conclude that just listening to, reading, linking, reproducing those passages should be..well, should be enough to shake capitalism to its core; should be enough to make it clear, that Marx is never just describing, analyzing the metabolism of capital, but is always analyzing the metabolic process of capital that are at one and the same time the limitations to and ultimately the abolition of capital.
Then again, if that it were the case, the that it being that just reading, quoting those passages from Marx which lift the veils covering and displaying the secret to the commodity were enough, it could only be the case when and if capitalist commodity production had already been abolished.
While you ponder that conundrum, back to our subject. So what's Marx going on about here? First and foremost, Marx is moving from analyzing the limitations and restrictions upon the expansion of any particular capital in isolation to the limitations and restrictions on all capitals based on their existence as particular capitals. Circulation time of any and all individual capitals becomes a determinant, an economic determinant, in that immediate production gets socially linked, and becomes socially dependent upon the circulation time of all capitals.
Increasing the relative exploitation of wage-labor, reducing necessary labor time in order to maximize surplus labor time, displaces living labor through the substitution of fixed assets, machinery, which transfer their value only incrementally and over long periods of time, so that the rate of turnover for the capital as a whole, declines.
The differentials in production times are carried forward into and inform the differentials in circulation time which encumbers the profitability of capital as a whole. To mitigate this dissonance, this inherent, essential, disequilibrium in capitalist production, capital focuses on reducing the cost and time of circulation, the physical and economic and temporal distance to be spanned, through improvement in transportation, communication, and........the miracle of capitalist transubstantiation which we know as credit.
This, circulation, turnover,is about the tendency, the moments, when capital confronts itself as not yet capitalized; as expanded value not yet realized.
This is about the vesting of capital in the means of communication and transportation and of credit; the vesting of capital as the means of communication and transportation and credit, and thereby reproducing the limitation to accumulation directly within these modes, these phases of value. And that limitation is simply, complexly, immanently, always that the more capital accumulates and exchanges itself with wage-labor, the proportionately less of itself is exchanged with wage-labor.
II. Now back to our subject. The rapid growth of railroads in the US begins prior to the Civil War. By 1860, there the over 30,000 miles of track, with 20,000 miles having been built since 1850. Impressive, for then, of course, but not for what was about to come: by 1899 main line mileage amounted to 190,000, reaching a peak of 254,000 miles in 1916.
Railroads were by necessity organized by and around continuous, almost compulsory, overbuilding. The expansion of "free soil farming" into and beyond the former Northwest Territories, and the improved productivity of the soil which appeared, almost as gift simply by the act of expansion created an expanding, and diffusing agricultural platform for the movement of commodities between city and countryside. Population densities in the US were so low that two simultaneous, seemingly contradictory "strategies" were required for the "lacing" together of countryside and city, for the establishment of the domestic market, and of the domestic market as the gateway to the world market: capital costs, the costs of the materials of the railroad itself-- rails, ties, etc-- had to be controlled through utilizing what would have been considered inferior, unsuitable materials in Europe and capital had to be extended to bring the rail service to as many individual outposts, and individuals, as possible.
Financing schemes were exactly that for US railroads during the 19th century, with the terms "financing" and "schemes" pretty much interchangeable. Alongside that was the use of "strap rail," or wooden rail with only the area of contact with the rolling stock wheels, the "ball" or "head" of the rail covered with iron. A dollar saved is a derailment waiting to happen, but delay, postponement, deference were essential to improving turnover.
During US Civil War, the federal government transformed and accelerated the land grant program. First grants were awarded directly to the railroads, not to the states, or the territories. California, the area of the greatest population density was the prize and railroads there were awarded almost 12 million acres. Grant totaling 200 million acres were made to US railroads between 1850 and 1871. Grants were usually made in a checkerboard pattern, alternating along either side of the railroad's proposed route. The land grants were secured by US government issue bonds that acted as a lien against the railroad's property, including its track, rolling stock etc.
Secondly none of the land in these grants, or the land circumscribed by the areas granted were subject to the terms of the Homestead Act, the theory being that so eloquently expressed in the film Field of Dreams: "If you build it, they will come" and if they come, you can raise the prices on the seats, or the land.
The expansion of credit and credit schemes were not a case of "fictitious capital" being employed with no corresponding "hard assets" underlying the "paper values." On the contrary, the problem was to no small degree that the hard assets were "outproduced" and outproducing the ability of the social development of the capitalist economy to provide an adequate rate of return. To this dilemma, capital admitted only one "panacea"-- further expansion. What it did not admit was that further expansion required and produced contraction, collapse, retrenchment, bankruptcy-- all of which is only capital consolidating itself.
Growth in "hard assets" grew alongside the credit system designed to both circulate the value of those assets and to bridge the delay imposed on the turnover, the reproduction of that capital, by the differentials in the capital costs concentrated in railroad development, and the diffusion of capital, capital costs, across capitalist farm production in the rural US.
The land grant program attempted, with no little success, to reconcile the differences in intensity, a frequency of capital costs by capitalizing land, imputing to land the value that could be derived from labor set in motion by land organized as a commodity, as an instrument and social relation of production for exchange. The distinguishing characteristic of capital's relation to land is not ground rent, differential and/or absolute. The distinction is in the "alienation" of land; its organization as an exchangeable commodity, or more correctly, as if it were an exchangeable commodity.
The French Revolution had its assignats; the US bourgeoisie, its land grants.
Indexes of railroad output, inputs, productivity and traffic earnings for the period 1870-1890, as reported in Historical Statistics of the United States, Millennial Edition, Volume 4 (Cambridge University Press, 2006, Series Df) show output increasing approximately by a factor of 5, capital (track and equipment) increasing 3.5 times, and total revenues up 2.5 times. Eventually the faster you go, the more the slowdown catches up to you.
III. So much for history. Now back to our subject: circulation, turnover, fixed assets, or as we know it, history. So, the great trek westward, or mid-westward, the movement of goods people, requires greater speed than what can be provided by river, canal, and wagon. Turnover time, trip time, time-to-market are a cost to production time. Therefore, greater capital investment reducing per unit (ton-miles) charges, yielding reduced trip time, reduced time-to-market, are socially necessary for capital even if not, economically supportable. Part of the economic support comes through and from the devaluation of the other means of circulation: boat, barge, and wagon. Part comes from efficiencies generated in the new mode, reducing costs, while expanding the service network. This part of the solution reproduces, in structural form, what was heretofore imagined as a purely cyclical movement of capitalist enterprises, over-expansion and declining profits.
We know how this works: Great expansions, altering the relation between living labor and the conditions of living labor, that is to say the objectified labor accumulated as value-appropriating machinery, become great slowdowns leading to great consolidations.
For US manufacturing as a whole, the great consolidation compressed into the period from 1895 to 1904. During that time approximately 1800 manufacturing firms were consolidated into 157 corporations. The consolidation period concentrated tremendous market power, and market share. Forty of these post-merger corporations controlled 70 percent of the market share for their respective industries. (see Naomi R. Lamoreaux The Great Merger Movement in American Business, 1895-1904, Cambridge University Press 1985)
The consolidation period also inaugurates the great population shift in the US from rural to urban based. Population in urban areas quadruples between 1870 and 1910, and finally overtakes the number in rural areas around the start of WW 1.
Railroads had built the fields of dreams; they, the people had come; and the fields were no longer fields but urban production centers where stations and small switching yards were inadequate. The shift to terminals and production yards, represented increased capital investment in car handling versus haul distance. Road-owned main line trackage peaked in 1916 at approximately 254,000 miles. The rate of growth of main line trackage between 1901 and 1916 was about 30 percent. Yard trackage doubled during the same period. Freight cars in service expanded by 50 percent, dictating the increase in yard track availability.
Those "things," (relations) necessary for capital reproduction as a whole, increased circulation of commodities, reduced costs of circulation of commodities, more rapid turnover of the "vehicles" carrying the incremental values transferred by the fixed value, were exactly the requirements for the railroads engaged in meeting the needs of that reproduction as a whole. The railroads in satisfying their "social" "economic" function undermine their very own business purpose. Operating ratios, the portion of operating revenues consumed by operating expenses, increased from 64.86 percent in 1901 to 72.91 percent in 1914 for the US railroads. By 1919, the ratio was above 85 percent. The network was now extensive and intensive. And it cost too much. The increment of profit declined.
IV.
"The facts of life...to make an alteration in the evolvement of an organic life system is fatal. A coding sequence cannot be revised once it has been established."
"Why not?"
"Because by the second day of incubation, any cells that have undergone reversion mutation give rise to revertant colonies, like rats leaving a sinking ship; then the ship sinks."
"What about EMS-3 recombination?"
"We've already tried it-- ethyl methane sulfinate as an alkylating agent and a potent mutagen; it created a virus so lethal the subject was dead before it even left the table."
"Then a repressor protein, that would block the operating cells...."
"Wouldn't obstruct replication; but it does give rise to an error in replication so that the newly formed DNA strand carries with it a mutation, and you've got a virus again...but this, all of this is academic. You were made as well as we could make you."
"But not to last."
"The light that burns twice as bright burns for half as long-- and you have burned so very, very brightly, Roy. Look at you: you're the Prodigal Son; you're quite a prize!"
"I've done...quest..ionable things."
"Also extraordinary things; revel in your time."
"Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for?" Blade Runner, 1982, directed by Ridley Scott
V. Now, back to our subject. Between 1890 and 1980, the number of operating railroad companies declined from 1013 to 64 corporations. Revenue ton-miles per mile of railroad increased from 487,000 to 5.75 million. Employment declined 70 percent between 1924 and 1980. The operating ratio for railroads exceeded 93 percent. Between 1970 and 1979 the average rate of return for the industry was around 2 percent. Prior to 1980 almost 21 percent of main line trackage was held in receivership or railroads nearing bankruptcy.
The critical "event" was the 1970 bankruptcy of the Penn Central Railroad. The collapse of the PC threatened the entire industry, and the entire economy of the US with paralysis. The railroad was kept alive in receivership as the US government applied eighth and quarter measures to the problem-- for example, relieving the PC and other railroads of the financial burden of long-haul passenger service. But eighth and quarter measures are just that and by 1973 the trustees of the bankrupt PC threatened to end all operations if government subsidies were not provided. The Association of American Railroads submitted a plan to Congress to transform the PC (and other roads) into a government funded corporation. That plan known as the Regional Rail Reorganization Act ("3R") became law in 1974.
The 3R Act created the United States Railway Association which, essentially, became the banker and the administrator for the bankrupt properties, charged with developing the plan for the actual Consolidated Rail Corporation. Most importantly, the USRA superseded the authority of the ICC in determining the advisability of, and providing authority for the bankrupt railroads to abandon unprofitable lines. "Deregulation" well precedes the rise of so-called "neo-liberalism" and is at origin a government subsidized program.
The USRA developed its plan for a Consolidated Rail Corporation, which was designed so that only lines with current or potential profitability would form part of the system. Other lines and services, such as commuter operations were to be transferred, sold, ceded to states or local authorities or other operators or...abandoned. This plan enacted into law as the Railroad Revitalization and Regulatory Reform Act ("4R") of 1976 established the Consolidated Rail Corporation as of April 1, 1976, known in the industry as "C" (for conveyance) day.
Now you don't hear railroad management refer very much to either the 3R or the 4R bills, but you can't step them from talking about the Staggers Act of 1980. Railroad management in general regards the Staggers Act with a reverence, and hype, equal to that of the NRA when referring to the 2nd amendment to the US Constitution. You would think the Staggers Act had been written by Jesus Christ or Adam Smith or both, using Staggers as a host. The fact that this divinely inspired piece of deregulatory genius was drafted, nominally, by a Democrat member of Congress, and signed into law by a Democratic president is simply one of those awkward moments in the ideology of liberalism, neo-liberalism, conservatism, "Keynesianism" that tells us how unimportant ideology is to the real actions and directions of capital and to the real dictates of cash flow. Behind every pose of every enlightened, humanitarian Democrat, there's the issue of cash flow. Behind every raving Tea Party Ayn Randist free marketeer, there's the same issue of cash flow. The struggle between the two, and of everyone in between those two, is nothing but another market mechanism for parceling out the readies.
Anyway, what the Staggers Act did, in fact all it did, was to recognize the accumulated overbuilding of railroads throughout the Northeast and Midwest which the OPEC price spikes had made so painfully clear to the most casual observers, even those as casual and unobservant as elected politicians. The law curtailed the former Interstate Commerce Commission's (now Surface Transportation Board) regulatory oversight of shipper-railroad contracts, rates and pricing, the elimination of service, and the abandonment of lines that did not provide current profitability and which were determined, by the railroads, to offer little opportunity for future profitability.
The Great Expansion had morphed into the Great Slowdown leading to the Great Consolidation giving way to the Great Bankruptcy which would reappear as the Great Divestment; the Great Liquidation; the Great Spin-off.
(A word on "class": Railroads can be designated by "Class"-- 1, 2, or 3, and that designation is determined by annual revenues. Class 1 railroads have annual revenues equal to or greater than approximately $380 million; Class 2 railroads have revenues greater than $20 million but less than the Class 1 threshold; Class 3 railroads --the actual short-lines-- less than $20 million. The AAR utilizes the Class 1 distinction, but designates other railroads not by class but as "regional" "local" or "switching/terminal" railroads)
Despite its legendary status as the "4Rs and an S" Act, the Railroad Resuscitation Resurrection Redemption and Salvation Act, the Staggers Act did not accomplish miracles immediately. Between 1980 and 1982, the Great Double Dip Recession drove revenue ton-miles on the Class 1 railroads down some 13 percent. Between 1980 and 1986, total freight traffic decline 6 percent, but....... but the railroads were able to divest, abandon, and spin off lines, and employees, to secondary railroads-- the "short-line" roads. As the major railroads use the divestment to "rationalize" their operating plants, the short-line spin-offs used the great divestment to negotiate work-rule changes to "rationalize" labor costs among the work force.
Between 1986 and 1996, the Class 1s reduced their main line track by about 25 percent, and today main line road mileage is about 160,000 miles. The number of Class 1s has declined, due to merger/bankruptcy to seven operating freight railroads in the US. Employment has declined from about 450,000 in 1980 to about 158,000 in 2012. The number of freight cars owned by the Class 1s has fallen from over 1 million to less than 400,000 today.
"Productivity" measures for the Class 1s soared as a consequence. In 1978, railroads produced, or serviced, 1.8 million revenue ton-miles per employee. In 2004, the figure was 10.5 million revenue ton-miles per employee. Revenue ton-miles per locomotive grew 250 percent while revenue ton-miles per freight car expanded 450 percent.
These are not "fictitious gains" or "paper gains"-- nor can they be attributed solely to the spin-off of labor and assets to the short-lines. Real capital investments, reducing the asset base, offset the customary drag of accumulated capital on profitability. Real rationalization of traffic and traffic management reduced circulation times of railroad assets themselves. This is usually attributed by our Staggerists to the divine, but invisible hand of the Harley's act, taking hold in 1986.
Those of us with less religious inclination might find the resurrection in a couple of more earthy events, one being the Powder River Basin coal fields, the other being containerization. The coming online of both allowed for the accelerated growth of "unit consist" trains-- trains made up a single type of freight vehicle, carrying the loads of a single shipper. ICC regulations had restricted the ability of railroads to offer unit consist service to shippers; prohibiting discounting rates to the shipper in return for the improved efficiency, and in intermodal (container and trailer) service, prohibiting the reserving of "spots" at the intermodal facility for the loading/unloading of containers for a single shipper.
The Staggers Act did ease those restrictions, but the economy made the business big business. With coal being what coal is-- 43 percent of railroad business, and with container service being the fastest growing sector of rail freight, dedicated unit consist train service has expanded to 37 percent of freight traffic.
The advantages to railroads was immediate and sustained. Switching costs decline when the train is loaded at one location and moved intact to its final location. Terminal "dwell" (the elapsed time a freight car spends in yards before being "delivered" to the consignee declines. Car handling costs decrease, terminal congestion declines, faster turnaround of locomotives and equipment is realized by, in, and with the reduction in the proportion of the labor required to animate the operation.
The resulting productivity gains for US railroads provided for increased profits and reduced rates to shippers. Ton-mile rates averaged 6.9 cents in 1981; 2.7 cents in 2001 and then......And then, the gains due to the rationalization of plant, the reduction in labor, the spin-offs, the better asset management, the unit trains played themselves out, that is to say the increases in productivity could not be sustained at a rate necessary to offset not only the increased capital investment in productivity improvements, but the accumulated and accumulating maintenance costs of the rationalized plant, the improved asset management, the increased costs of fuel that countered improved tonnage capacity of high tractive effort locomotives.
In 2007, the ton-mile rate had increased to 3.1 cents, and in 2011 it measured 3.7 cents per ton-mile.
None of this, of course, amounts to "decay" of capital. None of this amounts to a "permanent" or "final" crisis of capital. None of this portends doom for railroads What this does reflect is that continuous interpenetration, identity, and conflict between "improved productivity" and the devaluation of accumulated capital. Before the Staggers Act "great recovery," as part of the Staggers Act great recovery came the devaluation of massive accumulations of fixed assets. In its attempt to augment profitability through the reduction of labor and the expansion of improved techniques, capital in effect devalues previous accumulations of fixed capital. Capital accomplishes this devaluation at different rates, and in different modes. Some devaluation is accomplished as the value of the"older" assets cannot be recovered before its use value is extinguished as the prices necessary for that recuperation are higher than the market prices resulting from the application of improved technologies.
Some devaluation is accomplished as the turnover time for the mass of capital value employed in production (or in circulation) lengthens; or is hampered by the inherent unevenness and disequilibrium of capitalism.
General devaluation occurs when the application of the improved technologies, the accelerated intensification of the exploitation of labor is no longer accelerating-- but has become the new standard, the new average, the new general rate of profit. At a certain point, capital again has to find a way to reduce trackage by 30 or 40 percent; find a way to reduce its labor costs by an even greater amount. That is a general devaluation.
VI. Two political-economists explains the tendency of the rate of profit to decline:
In a competitive industry economic profits would be zero in the long run. This implies that all productivity gains in the long run would be passed on to the consumers in the form of lower prices and higher quality products. However, if an industry starts out in disequilibrium with insufficient revenues then movement toward a competition-like equilibrium would require the industry to retain a fraction of the productivity gains. "The Distribution of the Post-Staggers Act Railroad Productivity Gains, B. Kelly Eakin, Philip E. Schoech, Christensen Associates, Madison, Wi., (Dec 2010)
VII. Now back to our subject. In the beginning, circulation and circulation time appear to be distinct, independent, of labor-time, of the socially necessary labor-time for reproduction. When we examine the means of circulation, the appearance disappears as the mechanisms are determined, informed, subject to the very same exchange between capital and wage-labor, the very same measure of socially necessary labor-time of reproduction, due to their very existence as capital. In the end, as in the beginning, it is the alteration of the proportion between necessary labor-time and surplus labor-time, which is manifested in capital because it is capital as the proportion between objectified labor and living labor; it is the alteration in the relation between the labor accumulated in the commodities that are the means of production and wage-labor; it is the conflict between labor and the conditions that determines capital.
S. Artesian
May 12, 2013
Of Possible Interest
Just received this from a friend:
I've just stumbled across this slide show on
the current state of the MEGA II project which I thought might interest you: http://www.slideshare.net/LeftStreamed/the-mega-project-and-the-end-of-marxism
It gives a very good summary of where the
project has got to.
The long version:
Now back to our subject.....
Wednesday, May 08, 2013
Filling the Space While Working Towards the Reproduction of Time
I wouldn't want to make a living following Louis Proyect from "intervention" to his next "intervention" to his next performance piece pointing out what a simpleton he is, but it sure is diverting when working on things a bit complicated to read the simpleton's simple-minded blog and point out how much of a simpleton he really is.
After woofing at a university professor who had the good sense to tell our Arnold Twerpenegger to get to the point, if he had one, Proyect then had to explain to his readers othat he wasn't serious; that anyone who thought he really meant to do physical harm to said professor was "insane" even though he, Proyect, had indicated that he would do something to make the professor regret ever having encountered said twerp. Now, right, I'm sure many people regret having encountered Proyect without Louie ever raising anything that could possibly be construed as a threat. I am not one of those people as I have derived some bit of mirth and entertainment from this self-styled faux Norman Mailer, faux Howard Stern, faux doofus hipster's blatherings.
Then, because Louie had woofed at the professor, and was being roundly rounded on for having so woofed, he had to prove what a shock jock he is by publishing this: Guest speakers at the 2013 Socialist Rapist Conference where he wrote, quoting from and riffing on the "official guide":
Paul Le Blanc
Paul Le Blanc is an author and activist flying in from the United States for Marxism 2013. His many books include “Lenin and the Revolutionary Party”, and “Black Liberation and the American Dream”. He will speak on “The history and future of Lenininism” [Is that anything like Troskyismism?]
Gilbert Achcar
His many publications include “The Arabs and the Holocaust”. His new book “The People Want: a Radical Exploration of the Arab Uprising” is out this year.
Plus Alan Freeman and Radhika Desai who seem to live for these things.
and then this:Response to Gilbert Achcar statement
where he wrote
(My [meaning Proyect's] comments are in italics.)
On 5/8/13 2:42 AM, Gilbert Achcar wrote:
WHY I DECIDED TO MAINTAIN MY PARTICIPATION IN THE SWP’S *MARXISM 2013*
Gilbert Achcar
The campaign against the SWP is taking a regrettable turn. It now includes attempts at intimidating those participating in Marxism 2013, including myself, into withdrawing from the conference. The SWP is being described as a “socialist rapist party” and taking part in the conference as an “apology of rapism”.
You can call the SWP whatever you want but the fact is that a key leader of the party was protected from the consequences of the most brutal act of violence against women.
Whatever one thinks of the crisis in the SWP and the behaviour of its leadership, such terms applied to a whole party – the largest on the British radical left – and to the open forum that the party organizes each year are outrageous. They reveal the regrettable persistence of a certain mindset on the left, a mindset the origin of which is known all too well and for which anathemas and excommunication are substitutes for political fight.
Nobody advocates “anathema and excommunication”, as if that term applied. Instead, it is a reaction by some leading figures on the left to refrain from accepting invitations to speak at their Summer Carnival of Marxism because of the failure of the SWP leadership to clean up its act. “Anathema and excommunication” would instead describe what happened to the Trotskyist movement for most of the 30s through the 50s when it was routinely blocked from joining social movements, trade unions, etc. by a hegemonic Communist Party.
I do not recall any such attitude towards innumerable left parties the leaderships of which are guilty of much worse than what the SWP is accused of. To give but one example, I have accepted in the past invitations by the French Communist Party to their annual Fête de l’Humanité, as do regularly countless intellectual and activists who are deeply critical of that party. Had I regarded participating in such open forums as an endorsement of the party’s political, organisational or ethical record, which I deem to be incomparably worse than that of the SWP in all respects, I would have never accepted. Instead, I regarded my participation as an opportunity to engage with the public who attend such events, be they party members or non-members, and defend my own views, which differ from those of the party. No one ever blamed me for that.
This is a bogus analogy. The CP in France was not responsible for repression in the USSR. By the 1960s the CP’s in capitalist countries had evolved into social democratic type formations whose connection to the Moscow Trials, etc. mostly consisted of a refusal to disavow their own history. If the French CP, on the other hand, was as tiny as the SWP and had 9 rape investigations on its record, that might be another story.
I do firmly believe that the crisis in the SWP is a worrying symptom of a deeply-rooted problem pertaining to a vitiated conception and form of organisation. Regrettably, a few of the SWP’s opponents worldwide are taking this same vitiated tradition to extremes in the way they practice SWP-bashing. It is high time for the radical left to get rid entirely of that tradition if it is ever to regenerate.
8 May 2013
Sorry, Gilbert, the “tradition” we need to get rid of is thuggery on the left. When a minority faction in the SWP was formed to clean house, its members were shouted down and threatened with violence. Meanwhile, Alex Callinicos–author of 27 books–speculated that “lynch mobs” might arise if the minority refused to abide by the rules shoved down its throat by an anti-democratic majority. If that is the kind of gathering you want to attend, be my guest. [END]
Priceless, no? Proyect woofs at a professor at conference and then he decides to prove that he's no goon, the real goons are elsewhere at other conferences, like the British SWP's May Pole Dance of Marxism.
Full disclosure: I don't care for the British SWP, never have, never will.Took the time during the great SWP rape controversy to point how ignorant and arrogant the British SWP leadership and membership were to think a "disputes committee" was somehow competent, appropriate, and empowered to investigate a matter of felonious assault, instead of immediately and permanently suspending the accused from all party activity and then advising both individuals to obtain competent legal advice.
Point being.... I have no idea if "comrade X" raped "comrade Y" and neither does Proyect. I do know how a Marxist party, should, must act when such an accusation is raised.
BUT... to call the Socialist Workers Party the "Socialist Rapist Party" as if the organization were an organization of socialist rapists is something worthy of --not Howard Stern-- but the real shock jock of shock jocks... Rush Limbaugh (and maybe Rupert Murdoch's stooges at The New York Post, Fox News etc.).
Achar makes a valid point in his response: Nobody ever squaked, when the historians and academics appeared with and for and at CP sponsored conferences. Certainly not Proyect. No, Louis thinks making that point is a "bogus analogy" because the "CP in France wasn't responsible for the repression in the USSR." Well, guess what, the members of the SWP are not responsible for the actions of comrade X toward comrade Y. Moreover, the French CP directly supported the repression in the USSR. The French CP directly supported the physical liquidation of militants adhering to other organizations, or no organizations, in France and elsewhere. Call me a fussbudget, but I think that qualifies as the "most brutal act of violence."
The French CP was directly responsible for the repression and liquidation of revolutionists in Vietnam during the time of the popular front in France. The French CP ordered its Vietnamese cohorts to arrest, and cause to be arrested, Vietnamese small c communists.
The Vietnamese CP again at the behest of its French "elder brothers" suppressed the workers revolution at the close of WW 2, "welcoming" more or less the return of imperialism. The Vietnamese Stalinists proclaimed that theirs was a bourgeois revolution-- with them, btw, acting the role of the bourgeoisie and murdering workers, breaking strikes, liquidating peasant organizations etc. etc.
Proyect, who ranks Ho Chi Minh as "a great revolutionist," thinks that by the 1960s, the CP had evolved into a social-democratic type party. Really? Indeed. And does Proyect know the role the official social democratic party of France played in breaking the strikes of dockworkers and other workers in the 1940s and 1950s? Does Proyect know that the "official" social democratic party of France made itself the willing, and well-compensated, instrument of the US CIA in its great struggle against the "communist menace"? This guy's ignorance would fill volumes. And cost lives.
So here's the thing... when you start selling woof tickets, you never know who just might step up and buy one, or more than one, or maybe buy them all. Then you, the woofer, unless you are ready to take responsibility for what you said, how you said it, and what it means-- for its consequences-- wind up being the woofee, and you wind up having to eat the whole batch.
You'll be able to recognize Proyect at his next intervention. He'll be the guy channeling Rush Limbaugh.
Now back to our subject-- circulation, circulation time, fixed assets and the reproduction of capital.
After woofing at a university professor who had the good sense to tell our Arnold Twerpenegger to get to the point, if he had one, Proyect then had to explain to his readers othat he wasn't serious; that anyone who thought he really meant to do physical harm to said professor was "insane" even though he, Proyect, had indicated that he would do something to make the professor regret ever having encountered said twerp. Now, right, I'm sure many people regret having encountered Proyect without Louie ever raising anything that could possibly be construed as a threat. I am not one of those people as I have derived some bit of mirth and entertainment from this self-styled faux Norman Mailer, faux Howard Stern, faux doofus hipster's blatherings.
Then, because Louie had woofed at the professor, and was being roundly rounded on for having so woofed, he had to prove what a shock jock he is by publishing this: Guest speakers at the 2013 Socialist Rapist Conference where he wrote, quoting from and riffing on the "official guide":
Paul Le Blanc
Paul Le Blanc is an author and activist flying in from the United States for Marxism 2013. His many books include “Lenin and the Revolutionary Party”, and “Black Liberation and the American Dream”. He will speak on “The history and future of Lenininism” [Is that anything like Troskyismism?]
Gilbert Achcar
His many publications include “The Arabs and the Holocaust”. His new book “The People Want: a Radical Exploration of the Arab Uprising” is out this year.
Plus Alan Freeman and Radhika Desai who seem to live for these things.
and then this:Response to Gilbert Achcar statement
where he wrote
(My [meaning Proyect's] comments are in italics.)
On 5/8/13 2:42 AM, Gilbert Achcar wrote:
WHY I DECIDED TO MAINTAIN MY PARTICIPATION IN THE SWP’S *MARXISM 2013*
Gilbert Achcar
The campaign against the SWP is taking a regrettable turn. It now includes attempts at intimidating those participating in Marxism 2013, including myself, into withdrawing from the conference. The SWP is being described as a “socialist rapist party” and taking part in the conference as an “apology of rapism”.
You can call the SWP whatever you want but the fact is that a key leader of the party was protected from the consequences of the most brutal act of violence against women.
Whatever one thinks of the crisis in the SWP and the behaviour of its leadership, such terms applied to a whole party – the largest on the British radical left – and to the open forum that the party organizes each year are outrageous. They reveal the regrettable persistence of a certain mindset on the left, a mindset the origin of which is known all too well and for which anathemas and excommunication are substitutes for political fight.
Nobody advocates “anathema and excommunication”, as if that term applied. Instead, it is a reaction by some leading figures on the left to refrain from accepting invitations to speak at their Summer Carnival of Marxism because of the failure of the SWP leadership to clean up its act. “Anathema and excommunication” would instead describe what happened to the Trotskyist movement for most of the 30s through the 50s when it was routinely blocked from joining social movements, trade unions, etc. by a hegemonic Communist Party.
I do not recall any such attitude towards innumerable left parties the leaderships of which are guilty of much worse than what the SWP is accused of. To give but one example, I have accepted in the past invitations by the French Communist Party to their annual Fête de l’Humanité, as do regularly countless intellectual and activists who are deeply critical of that party. Had I regarded participating in such open forums as an endorsement of the party’s political, organisational or ethical record, which I deem to be incomparably worse than that of the SWP in all respects, I would have never accepted. Instead, I regarded my participation as an opportunity to engage with the public who attend such events, be they party members or non-members, and defend my own views, which differ from those of the party. No one ever blamed me for that.
This is a bogus analogy. The CP in France was not responsible for repression in the USSR. By the 1960s the CP’s in capitalist countries had evolved into social democratic type formations whose connection to the Moscow Trials, etc. mostly consisted of a refusal to disavow their own history. If the French CP, on the other hand, was as tiny as the SWP and had 9 rape investigations on its record, that might be another story.
I do firmly believe that the crisis in the SWP is a worrying symptom of a deeply-rooted problem pertaining to a vitiated conception and form of organisation. Regrettably, a few of the SWP’s opponents worldwide are taking this same vitiated tradition to extremes in the way they practice SWP-bashing. It is high time for the radical left to get rid entirely of that tradition if it is ever to regenerate.
8 May 2013
Sorry, Gilbert, the “tradition” we need to get rid of is thuggery on the left. When a minority faction in the SWP was formed to clean house, its members were shouted down and threatened with violence. Meanwhile, Alex Callinicos–author of 27 books–speculated that “lynch mobs” might arise if the minority refused to abide by the rules shoved down its throat by an anti-democratic majority. If that is the kind of gathering you want to attend, be my guest. [END]
Priceless, no? Proyect woofs at a professor at conference and then he decides to prove that he's no goon, the real goons are elsewhere at other conferences, like the British SWP's May Pole Dance of Marxism.
Full disclosure: I don't care for the British SWP, never have, never will.Took the time during the great SWP rape controversy to point how ignorant and arrogant the British SWP leadership and membership were to think a "disputes committee" was somehow competent, appropriate, and empowered to investigate a matter of felonious assault, instead of immediately and permanently suspending the accused from all party activity and then advising both individuals to obtain competent legal advice.
Point being.... I have no idea if "comrade X" raped "comrade Y" and neither does Proyect. I do know how a Marxist party, should, must act when such an accusation is raised.
BUT... to call the Socialist Workers Party the "Socialist Rapist Party" as if the organization were an organization of socialist rapists is something worthy of --not Howard Stern-- but the real shock jock of shock jocks... Rush Limbaugh (and maybe Rupert Murdoch's stooges at The New York Post, Fox News etc.).
Achar makes a valid point in his response: Nobody ever squaked, when the historians and academics appeared with and for and at CP sponsored conferences. Certainly not Proyect. No, Louis thinks making that point is a "bogus analogy" because the "CP in France wasn't responsible for the repression in the USSR." Well, guess what, the members of the SWP are not responsible for the actions of comrade X toward comrade Y. Moreover, the French CP directly supported the repression in the USSR. The French CP directly supported the physical liquidation of militants adhering to other organizations, or no organizations, in France and elsewhere. Call me a fussbudget, but I think that qualifies as the "most brutal act of violence."
The French CP was directly responsible for the repression and liquidation of revolutionists in Vietnam during the time of the popular front in France. The French CP ordered its Vietnamese cohorts to arrest, and cause to be arrested, Vietnamese small c communists.
The Vietnamese CP again at the behest of its French "elder brothers" suppressed the workers revolution at the close of WW 2, "welcoming" more or less the return of imperialism. The Vietnamese Stalinists proclaimed that theirs was a bourgeois revolution-- with them, btw, acting the role of the bourgeoisie and murdering workers, breaking strikes, liquidating peasant organizations etc. etc.
Proyect, who ranks Ho Chi Minh as "a great revolutionist," thinks that by the 1960s, the CP had evolved into a social-democratic type party. Really? Indeed. And does Proyect know the role the official social democratic party of France played in breaking the strikes of dockworkers and other workers in the 1940s and 1950s? Does Proyect know that the "official" social democratic party of France made itself the willing, and well-compensated, instrument of the US CIA in its great struggle against the "communist menace"? This guy's ignorance would fill volumes. And cost lives.
So here's the thing... when you start selling woof tickets, you never know who just might step up and buy one, or more than one, or maybe buy them all. Then you, the woofer, unless you are ready to take responsibility for what you said, how you said it, and what it means-- for its consequences-- wind up being the woofee, and you wind up having to eat the whole batch.
You'll be able to recognize Proyect at his next intervention. He'll be the guy channeling Rush Limbaugh.
Now back to our subject-- circulation, circulation time, fixed assets and the reproduction of capital.
Sunday, April 28, 2013
What You Can't Make Up
Louis Proyect, unrepetant marxist, moderator of the Marxmail chat room, and a man who imagines himself to be some sort of genetically modified organism, seamlessly combining the acquired? inherited? implanted? traits of a radio shock jock and Marxist militant with his senior citizen ranking as one grumpy Alter Kocker, didn't have a very good day yesterday, Saturday, April 27, 2013.
First, he decided he would attend the Historical Materialism conference being held at NYU. Attending almost anything at NYU, an institution that in relation to the lower Manhattan communities in which it resides makes Robert Moses look like Jane Jacobs, is a mistake and will, or at least should, induce nausea, vertigo, fever, and rash in those lacking proper immunization.
Then, while performing his usual trick of misrepresenting the analysis Robert Brenner has offered for the origins of capitalism in Britain, and the reason British agriculture was able to support a productivity of labor, a population growth, a commercial and, sooner rather than later, a manufacturing network superior to other countries in Europe, some professor, a mere academic mind you, had the temerity to act like... well like a militant, and actually "interrupt" our Howard Stern/James Cannon/Billy Crystal fusion candidate, suggesting Howard/James/Billy "get to the point."
Can you imagine? Oh the outrage! The audacity! The arrogance. Oh, the horror, the horror! Oh, the humanity! The humanity! (that last part boiling up from memories of films of the Hindenburg disaster).
Well, Louis wasn't about to allow that to go unchecked......at least not for more than 8 hours or so because at around 9 PM, Howard/James/Billy decided he'd get in touch with another member of his DNA recombinant fusion ticket, Arnold Schwarzenegger. And so he posted this:
Dear Professor Chibber,
I have established that you were the person who interrupted me during the discussion period during the workshop on Neil Davidson's new book on the bourgeois revolution this morning at the Historical Materialism conference at NYU. I didn't quite hear what you were saying, but it sounded something like "What is your question...get to the point."
Of the three workshops I attended today, not a single chairperson said something along those uncharitable lines. By and large, people made much longer comments than me and far more in the name of some sect--the sort of thing that wastes time.
It was all the more unexpected to hear this from you since you were not a chairperson, number one, and number two you were going to be speaking at a closing plenary session on Sunday night to an audience of hundreds. Frankly, I thought it was very petty for you to interrupt me in that manner considering the power you exercise both at NYU in your capacity as associate professor and as someone who has written dozens of articles in places like the HM journal or NLR on the questions under debate. You couldn't wait for me to complete my 3 minute intervention while you have had the opportunity to defend your ideas on the Brenner thesis to a broad swath of the left community owing to your hard earned intellectual capital as a recipient of many highly coveted and prestigious awards.
I honestly don't know why you walked out immediately after making your remarks because I would have liked to take them up with you face to face. Don't worry, I have no interest in taking them up with you any further since I have said all I have to say at this point on the Marxism mailing list. My only advice is not to pull this bullshit on me ever again or you will truly regret it.
Yours truly,
Louis Proyect
Short version: "Fuck you, asshole." and "I'll be back."
Me? I particularly like the the "take them up with you face to face" part. Why? Well, years ago, when I used to periodically appear on Proyect's list only to get unsubbed or unsub myself, Proyect and I carried on, behind the scenes, a nasty bit of e-correspondence where I repeatedly offered to give him the opportunity to say to my face what he, apparently, only would say from behind the screen of his computer. Louis wasn't in touch then with his inner Arnold, or his implanted Arnold, then so he declined my offers as immature, childish, worthy of a high-school lunchroom, etc. etc. etc., which, by the way, they were. Why, once, I even journeyed up to his neighborhood, rang his doorbell to invite him to the nearest Starbucks where over espressos, or milk and cookies, we could settle our differences properly, like adolescents, Starbucks being the closest thing approximating a high-school lunchroom. Alas, Louis wasn't at home.
Anyway, I've mellowed over time, with age, and with two outstandingly dazzling beautiful brilliant granddaughters. Have I told you about my brilliant beautiful granddaughters? Plus I figure I've got a limited number of civil wars, throwdowns, punch-ups left in me, and I want to save them for when they really count-- like maybe getting one in smack on the gob of someone big and more than just self-important, like maybe Henry Kissinger.
But Proyect... nah....there's just no percentage in it. I mean I've debated him on a few lists about his studied mis-apprehension of Brenner, his slavish me-tooing of Peak Oil-ism, etc. etc. but really, when you get right down to it, I've been called worse things by people better than Proyect so I'm not going to waste my Metrocard on a trip to his neighborhood, that's for sure.
But what's got into our Alter Kocker? Steroids, you think? Can't be. Makes the joints brittle. Ask ARod. Or Canseco. or Giambi. Odds are, for Louie to throwdown like that, Chibbers must either be confined to a wheelchair or legally blind. OR.......or Louie is just peacocking like he tries to do when making his so-called interventions, or writing his movie reviews, or moderating his list.
If only I had known that all it takes to put our Louie, Louie in a fighting mood is a bit of heckling, well back in the days before I mellowed, and before I had two dazzling, brilliant, beautiful granddaughters (did I mention my granddaughters?), I would have followed Louis around from conference to conference heckling to the best of my ability.
And you can take that to the lunchroom.
S.Artesian
High School Class of 1965
April 28, 2013
First, he decided he would attend the Historical Materialism conference being held at NYU. Attending almost anything at NYU, an institution that in relation to the lower Manhattan communities in which it resides makes Robert Moses look like Jane Jacobs, is a mistake and will, or at least should, induce nausea, vertigo, fever, and rash in those lacking proper immunization.
Then, while performing his usual trick of misrepresenting the analysis Robert Brenner has offered for the origins of capitalism in Britain, and the reason British agriculture was able to support a productivity of labor, a population growth, a commercial and, sooner rather than later, a manufacturing network superior to other countries in Europe, some professor, a mere academic mind you, had the temerity to act like... well like a militant, and actually "interrupt" our Howard Stern/James Cannon/Billy Crystal fusion candidate, suggesting Howard/James/Billy "get to the point."
Can you imagine? Oh the outrage! The audacity! The arrogance. Oh, the horror, the horror! Oh, the humanity! The humanity! (that last part boiling up from memories of films of the Hindenburg disaster).
Well, Louis wasn't about to allow that to go unchecked......at least not for more than 8 hours or so because at around 9 PM, Howard/James/Billy decided he'd get in touch with another member of his DNA recombinant fusion ticket, Arnold Schwarzenegger. And so he posted this:
Dear Professor Chibber,
I have established that you were the person who interrupted me during the discussion period during the workshop on Neil Davidson's new book on the bourgeois revolution this morning at the Historical Materialism conference at NYU. I didn't quite hear what you were saying, but it sounded something like "What is your question...get to the point."
Of the three workshops I attended today, not a single chairperson said something along those uncharitable lines. By and large, people made much longer comments than me and far more in the name of some sect--the sort of thing that wastes time.
It was all the more unexpected to hear this from you since you were not a chairperson, number one, and number two you were going to be speaking at a closing plenary session on Sunday night to an audience of hundreds. Frankly, I thought it was very petty for you to interrupt me in that manner considering the power you exercise both at NYU in your capacity as associate professor and as someone who has written dozens of articles in places like the HM journal or NLR on the questions under debate. You couldn't wait for me to complete my 3 minute intervention while you have had the opportunity to defend your ideas on the Brenner thesis to a broad swath of the left community owing to your hard earned intellectual capital as a recipient of many highly coveted and prestigious awards.
I honestly don't know why you walked out immediately after making your remarks because I would have liked to take them up with you face to face. Don't worry, I have no interest in taking them up with you any further since I have said all I have to say at this point on the Marxism mailing list. My only advice is not to pull this bullshit on me ever again or you will truly regret it.
Yours truly,
Louis Proyect
Short version: "Fuck you, asshole." and "I'll be back."
Me? I particularly like the the "take them up with you face to face" part. Why? Well, years ago, when I used to periodically appear on Proyect's list only to get unsubbed or unsub myself, Proyect and I carried on, behind the scenes, a nasty bit of e-correspondence where I repeatedly offered to give him the opportunity to say to my face what he, apparently, only would say from behind the screen of his computer. Louis wasn't in touch then with his inner Arnold, or his implanted Arnold, then so he declined my offers as immature, childish, worthy of a high-school lunchroom, etc. etc. etc., which, by the way, they were. Why, once, I even journeyed up to his neighborhood, rang his doorbell to invite him to the nearest Starbucks where over espressos, or milk and cookies, we could settle our differences properly, like adolescents, Starbucks being the closest thing approximating a high-school lunchroom. Alas, Louis wasn't at home.
Anyway, I've mellowed over time, with age, and with two outstandingly dazzling beautiful brilliant granddaughters. Have I told you about my brilliant beautiful granddaughters? Plus I figure I've got a limited number of civil wars, throwdowns, punch-ups left in me, and I want to save them for when they really count-- like maybe getting one in smack on the gob of someone big and more than just self-important, like maybe Henry Kissinger.
But Proyect... nah....there's just no percentage in it. I mean I've debated him on a few lists about his studied mis-apprehension of Brenner, his slavish me-tooing of Peak Oil-ism, etc. etc. but really, when you get right down to it, I've been called worse things by people better than Proyect so I'm not going to waste my Metrocard on a trip to his neighborhood, that's for sure.
But what's got into our Alter Kocker? Steroids, you think? Can't be. Makes the joints brittle. Ask ARod. Or Canseco. or Giambi. Odds are, for Louie to throwdown like that, Chibbers must either be confined to a wheelchair or legally blind. OR.......or Louie is just peacocking like he tries to do when making his so-called interventions, or writing his movie reviews, or moderating his list.
If only I had known that all it takes to put our Louie, Louie in a fighting mood is a bit of heckling, well back in the days before I mellowed, and before I had two dazzling, brilliant, beautiful granddaughters (did I mention my granddaughters?), I would have followed Louis around from conference to conference heckling to the best of my ability.
And you can take that to the lunchroom.
S.Artesian
High School Class of 1965
April 28, 2013
Saturday, April 27, 2013
Pardon the Extrusion, Part 1
1. Marx undertakes his critique of small "c" capital prior to, during, and after his critique of big "C" Capital as an object lesson of sorts for the "Theses on Feuerbach":
Then comes the famous XI: Die Philosophen haben die Welt nur verschieden interpretirt, es kommt darauf an sie zu verändern.
Well, we know how this works. No sooner is interpretation critiqued and exposed as more than inadequate but rather as an actual condition of alienation, of alienated labor, than the critique and exposition are themselves recuperated through interpretation. "Marx meant this...Marx meant that...Marx really meant something else."
What Marx meant, the interpretation of Marx is nothing. The conditions, the path of Marx's own labor in developing his critique are everything. Marx's begins with the collapse of Hegel's attempt to account for history as the product of reason; with the failure of reason to reproduce itself, and be reproduced in social humanity.
From this wreckage, from the capitulation of Hegel's system to things as they are, Marx extracted the irreconcilability of production and need, of surplus with subsistence; of the labor process and the value process despite, or because, each existed only in the organization of the other; both existed as one.
II. Back in the day when she knew she was talking, Margaret Thatcher, the late Margaret Thatcher, the too little too late late Margaret Thatcher was quoted as saying, "There is no such thing as society," which amounts to, I guess, the damned Dame's anti-thesis on Feuerbach...more or less.
But give the devil his due, and his baroness, Thatcher almost knew what she was talking about. She most certainly knew what she wouldn't talk about, and that was class struggle. She wouldn't talk about it because she was waging it. So she dropped the "no such thing as society" in as a place-holder for the anti-love that dare not speak its name. No society, because society is a historical product and we know that the bourgeoisie imagine themselves, recognize themselves, kiss mirror reflections of themselves while shaving, as the end to history. Was, but not now. Was, but won't be, won't ever be.
"There is no such thing as society," said Thatcher, channeling Jeremy Bentham. Bentham said: "The community is a fictitious body, composed of the individual persons who are considered as constituting as it were its members. The interest of the community then is, what?—the sum of the interests of the several members who compose it," thus establishing that nothing is quite so important to the ideology of class society than the denial of class.
Bentham, dead since 1832, but with head and skeleton preserved, dressed, and padded with hay, is kept on public display as the so-called "auto-icon" at the University College of London. On the 100th, and again on the 150th anniversary of the founding of the College, its directors had the corpse rolled into to its meetings where auto-Jeremy was asked its opinion on the current state of Britain. No record of Bentham's response has been released, but could there ever be a more perfect representation of the status of British capitalism than the one provided by the directors of the University College? Asking it's own corpse for advice?
So anyway, in her death as in her life, Thatcher established herself as the most perfect offspring of the coupling of British political economy and British empiricism. The greatest ignorance, pettiness, venality is the greatest good.
So there's no society and definitely no history, there's only nature, and nature's most perfect, and natural, creation, the market.
Ahistorical, timeless, eternal, powerful, just, merciless, a place for everything, and everything finds its place in the market-- if I didn't know better, I'd think the bourgeoisie were pantheists.
Labor is posited then as wealth-producing, as social only in its own opposition; in its subjugation by objectified labor; in the opposition of labor to the conditions of labor.
The point here? That "irrationality" is an historical condition, a manufactured product, a social organization of the labor process. Willkommen in der Welt von Wert
IV. Marx's critique of capital is the opposition of labor to the conditions of labor; that is the immanence in his immanent critique of capital. At some point every self-contradiction, every manifestation of conflict, every moment of capital gets traced back, and move ahead, to the opposition of labor to the condition of labor. And there are many, many moments of conflict which, because they are moments, can be more or less acute.
The severity of the conflicts in any particular moment depends on the overall development of capital- the "breadth" so to speak of its exploitation of wage-labor; the intensity of its development in any one sector, locale, region country--the "depth" so to speak of its exploitation of wage-labor; and the obstacles capital has created to expanding its breadth by its breadth; the obstacles it has created to increasing its intensity of exploitation by the intensity of exploitation; and not only the obstacles it creates, but the obstacles it accommodates and integrates by absorbing all exchange, all circulation, into its circulation. All conditions of appropriated labor, all objectified property becomes basic to capitalist appropriated labor; to capitalist property.
V. Everything you need to know about "developed" capitalism, "developing" capitalism, "equilibrium," the organic composition of capital, the value composition of capital, necessary labor-time, surplus labor-time is here:
VI. Some things that might reflect on overproduction, circulation, time of circulation, profitability and disproportion are here:
The accumulation of capital is the conversion of the appropriated surplus value into the conditions of future labor-- which is to say the capitalization of profit as the means and material of production, which is to say the realization of the value encapsulated in those molecules of capital called commodities as money and the conversion of additional living labor into objectified labor through the exchange with money. The market for the commodity is all other commodities
Capital realizes itself as capital only by the reengaging of wage labor. However it can only achieve this realization through the exchange of all capitals, with the products of other capitals. This not just and not simply a metamorphosis of capital, a change in form. Rather, the change in form is a validation of any individual capital's viability. And more. The metamorphosis is a process of distribution; it is an allocation of the total social surplus value to particular capitals according to the efficiency and the size of the capitals employed.
This is the process that establishes an average rate of profit, and not just. It is the means whereby capital reproduces itself as a whole simultaneously with and at the expense of the reproduction of its constituent parts, its individual capitals. At one and the same time, capital can only realize itself through the reproduction of all capitals while each capital achieves its share of that reproduction-- profit-- through the exclusion of portions of other capitals. Reproduction and devaluation, exchange and exclusion are the determinants and the negations of capital.
It is in this process, this circuit of capital, that capital, all capital, sees its own realization as an obstruction, an obstacle, a barrier to the expropriation of surplus labor-time, to surplus value. Circulation time, the time it takes to transform the commodity into money, is the time that is not, or not yet, money. It is non-production time, and as such, in the attempt to reduce circulation time, every capital tends to overproduction, pushing more commodities into the markets to realize some portion of surplus value, quickly enough, to sustain more production. As a consequence, equilibrium, proportion, balance, are conspicuous only in their necessary absence. Equilibrium, proportion, balance may in fact occur, but only by chance, just as a commodity's value and price may coincide. Imbalance, disproportion, lack of equilibrium are essential to the reproduction of capital.
Reductions in the circulation time of commodities through improved transportation of the physical commodities into the networks of exchange is accompanied by improved networks for transmitting the abstraction of the commodity, its value, through these networks-- through the development of the instruments of credit.
The capitalist credit system specifically comes into being as a result of the separation, the differential, the conflict between production time and circulation time. This system specifically does not come into being as a means of swindle or looting. The credit system is not the result of capital's self-devalorization. Origin and function are one, and that one is to quicken the metamorphosis of capital into the money form, even at a discount, especially at a discount, as the discount can be offset, so every capitalist thinks, is compelled to think, by the increased production that has been already compelled by the each previous recapitalization of the extruded surplus-value.
Next: Part 2, A Study of Railroads
S. Artesian
April 27, 2013
IX. The highest point reached by contemplative materialism, that is, materialism which does not comprehend sensuousness as practical activity, is the contemplation of single individuals and civil society.
X. The standpoint of the old materialism is civil society; the standpoint of the new is human society, or social humanity.
Then comes the famous XI: Die Philosophen haben die Welt nur verschieden interpretirt, es kommt darauf an sie zu verändern.
Well, we know how this works. No sooner is interpretation critiqued and exposed as more than inadequate but rather as an actual condition of alienation, of alienated labor, than the critique and exposition are themselves recuperated through interpretation. "Marx meant this...Marx meant that...Marx really meant something else."
What Marx meant, the interpretation of Marx is nothing. The conditions, the path of Marx's own labor in developing his critique are everything. Marx's begins with the collapse of Hegel's attempt to account for history as the product of reason; with the failure of reason to reproduce itself, and be reproduced in social humanity.
From this wreckage, from the capitulation of Hegel's system to things as they are, Marx extracted the irreconcilability of production and need, of surplus with subsistence; of the labor process and the value process despite, or because, each existed only in the organization of the other; both existed as one.
II. Back in the day when she knew she was talking, Margaret Thatcher, the late Margaret Thatcher, the too little too late late Margaret Thatcher was quoted as saying, "There is no such thing as society," which amounts to, I guess, the damned Dame's anti-thesis on Feuerbach...more or less.
But give the devil his due, and his baroness, Thatcher almost knew what she was talking about. She most certainly knew what she wouldn't talk about, and that was class struggle. She wouldn't talk about it because she was waging it. So she dropped the "no such thing as society" in as a place-holder for the anti-love that dare not speak its name. No society, because society is a historical product and we know that the bourgeoisie imagine themselves, recognize themselves, kiss mirror reflections of themselves while shaving, as the end to history. Was, but not now. Was, but won't be, won't ever be.
"There is no such thing as society," said Thatcher, channeling Jeremy Bentham. Bentham said: "The community is a fictitious body, composed of the individual persons who are considered as constituting as it were its members. The interest of the community then is, what?—the sum of the interests of the several members who compose it," thus establishing that nothing is quite so important to the ideology of class society than the denial of class.
Bentham, dead since 1832, but with head and skeleton preserved, dressed, and padded with hay, is kept on public display as the so-called "auto-icon" at the University College of London. On the 100th, and again on the 150th anniversary of the founding of the College, its directors had the corpse rolled into to its meetings where auto-Jeremy was asked its opinion on the current state of Britain. No record of Bentham's response has been released, but could there ever be a more perfect representation of the status of British capitalism than the one provided by the directors of the University College? Asking it's own corpse for advice?
So anyway, in her death as in her life, Thatcher established herself as the most perfect offspring of the coupling of British political economy and British empiricism. The greatest ignorance, pettiness, venality is the greatest good.
So there's no society and definitely no history, there's only nature, and nature's most perfect, and natural, creation, the market.
Ahistorical, timeless, eternal, powerful, just, merciless, a place for everything, and everything finds its place in the market-- if I didn't know better, I'd think the bourgeoisie were pantheists.
III. Marx knew what he was talking about
too. And what he was reading. If history was not a product of
reason, and vice-versa ; if society did not function as a manifestation of
reason-- then how were history and society produced? And how did human
beings become both producers and products of such "irrationality"?
In essence, Marx
begins, not with a labor theory of value, but with the labor theory of
history-- human beings appropriate the
material world through their labor--and that labor activity, that laboring
activity, is social. It is mediated, organized, configured by the social
relations compelling, permitting, enabling, or expropriating that
labor.
History has no telos,
no purpose, but the labor process does, and that purpose is the
satisfaction of human needs. It is the peculiar, unique, specifically
human characteristic of human labor, that in seeking to satisfy those needs, that labor produces more than what is needed
and more needs. Both, the production of surplus and the development
of more needs occur and only have meaning because of the social character of
that labor process.
That human labor
that can be objectified, embodied not simply in objects fashioned by
human hands, but embodied in conditions that convert the objects of labor
into property, into the property of others.
Labor is posited then as wealth-producing, as social only in its own opposition; in its subjugation by objectified labor; in the opposition of labor to the conditions of labor.
The point here? That "irrationality" is an historical condition, a manufactured product, a social organization of the labor process. Willkommen in der Welt von Wert
IV. Marx's critique of capital is the opposition of labor to the conditions of labor; that is the immanence in his immanent critique of capital. At some point every self-contradiction, every manifestation of conflict, every moment of capital gets traced back, and move ahead, to the opposition of labor to the condition of labor. And there are many, many moments of conflict which, because they are moments, can be more or less acute.
The severity of the conflicts in any particular moment depends on the overall development of capital- the "breadth" so to speak of its exploitation of wage-labor; the intensity of its development in any one sector, locale, region country--the "depth" so to speak of its exploitation of wage-labor; and the obstacles capital has created to expanding its breadth by its breadth; the obstacles it has created to increasing its intensity of exploitation by the intensity of exploitation; and not only the obstacles it creates, but the obstacles it accommodates and integrates by absorbing all exchange, all circulation, into its circulation. All conditions of appropriated labor, all objectified property becomes basic to capitalist appropriated labor; to capitalist property.
V. Everything you need to know about "developed" capitalism, "developing" capitalism, "equilibrium," the organic composition of capital, the value composition of capital, necessary labor-time, surplus labor-time is here:
Like many of his Inca ancestors, Juan Apaza is possessed by gold. Descending into an icy tunnel 17,000 feet up in the Peruvian Andes, the 44 year old miner stuffs a wad of coca leaves into his mouth to brace himself for the inevitable hunger and fatigue. For 30 days each month Apaza toils, without pay, deep inside this mine dug down under a glacier above the world's highest town, La Rinconada. For 30 days he faces the dangers that have killed many of his fellow miners--explosives toxic gases, tunnel collapses--to extract the gold that the world demands. Apaza does all this, without pay, so that he can make it to today, the 31st day, when he and his fellow miners are given a single shift, four hours or maybe a little more, to haul out and keep as much rock as their weary shoulders can bear. Under the ancient lottery system that still prevails in the high Andes, known as cachorreo, this is what passes for a paycheck: a sack of rocks that may contain a small fortune in gold or, far more often, very little at all. ["The Real Price of Gold," Brook Larmer, National Geographic Magazine January 2009].and here:
Even at showcase mines, such as Newmont Mining Corporation's Bau Hijau operation in eastern Indonesia, where $600 million has be spent to mitigate environmental impact, there is no avoiding the brutal calculus of gold mining. Extracting a single ounce of gold there--the amount in a typical wedding ring--requires the removal of more than 250 tons of ore...
...Nur Piah is part of that force itself. Pulling a pink head scarf around her face, the mother of two smiles demurely as she revs the Caterpillar's [model 793 truck, 21 feet tall, 43 feet long], 2337-horsepower engine and rumbles into the pit at Batu Hijau...
Most inhabitants of Sumbawa are farmers and fisherman who reside in wooden shacks built on stilts, their lives virtually untouched by the modern world. But inside the gates of Batu Hijau, Newmont has carved out...an American-style suburb, where some 2,000 of the mine's 8,000 employees live. Along the smoothly paved streets there is a bank, an international school, even a broadcast center...Families arrive in SUVs for free-pizza night at a restaurant overlooking a lush golf course.
...Higher prices and advanced techniques enable companies to profitably mine microscopic flecks of gold; to separate gold and copper from rock at Batu Hijau, Newmont uses a finely tuned flotation technology that is nontoxic, unlike the potentially toxic cyanide "heap leaching" the company uses in some of its other mines. Even so, no technology can make the massive waste generated by mining magically disappear. It takes less than 16 hours to accumulate more tons of waster here than all of the tons of gold mined in human history.
...Nur Piah is focused more on the present than the future...Her husband makes some money as a timber trader bu Nur Piah's salary--about $650 month--paid for their two story concrete home. As if in tribute, she has hung on one wall a large painting of the yellow Caterpillar 793.[Larmer]and here:
Rosemery Sanchez Condori is just nine years old, but the backs of her hands are burnished like aged leather. That's what happens what a girl spends time pounding rocks under the Andean sun. Ever since Rosemery's father fell ill in the mines of La Rinconada eight years ago, her mother has worked 11 hour days collecting rocks near the mines and hammering them into smaller bits to find flecks of overlooked gold. On school holidays, Rosemery sometimes helps her mother on the mountain....
In small scale mines around the globe, searching for gold is a family affair. Of the world's 12 to 15 million artisanal gold miners, an estimated 30 percent are women and children...
...Remote and inhospitable.... [La Rinconada] is, nevertheless growing at a furious pace... a visitor first sees the glint of the rooftops under the magnificent glacier....Then comes the stench. It's not just the garbage dumped down the slope, but the human and industrial waste that clogs the settlement's streets. For all its growth--the number of mines perforating the glacier has jumped in six years from 50 to around 250--La Rinconada has few basic services: no plumbing, no sanitation, no pollution control, no postal service, not even a police station. The nearest one, with a handful of cops, is an hour down the mountain. This is a place that operates, quite literally, above the law.
La Rinconada's frenzied expansion has been fueled by the convergence of rising gold prices and, in 2002, the arrival of electricity. Miners use pneumatic drills now with their hammers and chisels. Traditional leg-driven rock grinders have given way to small electric mills. Electricity hasn't made mining any cleaner; if anything mercury and other toxic material are being released into the environment more rapidly than ever before. But nearly everyone agrees that La Rinconada has never produced so much gold.
Many miners at La Rinconada don't officially exist, either. There are no payrolls--just those bags of rocks--and some mine operators don't even bother writing down workers' names...The manager at one of La Rinconada's larger operations says his mine yields 50 kilos every three months-- more than $5 million worth of gold each year. His workers, on their monthly cachorreo, each pull in an average of about ten grams of gold, or around $3000 a year.
...In small-scale gold mining, UNIDO estimates two to five grams of mercury are released into the environment for every gram of gold recovered...According to Peruvian environmentalists, the mercury released at La Rinconada and the nearby mining town of Ananea is contaminating rivers and lakes down to the coast of Lake Titicaca, more than a hundred miles away. [Larmer]
VI. Some things that might reflect on overproduction, circulation, time of circulation, profitability and disproportion are here:
The accumulation of capital is the conversion of the appropriated surplus value into the conditions of future labor-- which is to say the capitalization of profit as the means and material of production, which is to say the realization of the value encapsulated in those molecules of capital called commodities as money and the conversion of additional living labor into objectified labor through the exchange with money. The market for the commodity is all other commodities
Capital realizes itself as capital only by the reengaging of wage labor. However it can only achieve this realization through the exchange of all capitals, with the products of other capitals. This not just and not simply a metamorphosis of capital, a change in form. Rather, the change in form is a validation of any individual capital's viability. And more. The metamorphosis is a process of distribution; it is an allocation of the total social surplus value to particular capitals according to the efficiency and the size of the capitals employed.
This is the process that establishes an average rate of profit, and not just. It is the means whereby capital reproduces itself as a whole simultaneously with and at the expense of the reproduction of its constituent parts, its individual capitals. At one and the same time, capital can only realize itself through the reproduction of all capitals while each capital achieves its share of that reproduction-- profit-- through the exclusion of portions of other capitals. Reproduction and devaluation, exchange and exclusion are the determinants and the negations of capital.
It is in this process, this circuit of capital, that capital, all capital, sees its own realization as an obstruction, an obstacle, a barrier to the expropriation of surplus labor-time, to surplus value. Circulation time, the time it takes to transform the commodity into money, is the time that is not, or not yet, money. It is non-production time, and as such, in the attempt to reduce circulation time, every capital tends to overproduction, pushing more commodities into the markets to realize some portion of surplus value, quickly enough, to sustain more production. As a consequence, equilibrium, proportion, balance, are conspicuous only in their necessary absence. Equilibrium, proportion, balance may in fact occur, but only by chance, just as a commodity's value and price may coincide. Imbalance, disproportion, lack of equilibrium are essential to the reproduction of capital.
Reductions in the circulation time of commodities through improved transportation of the physical commodities into the networks of exchange is accompanied by improved networks for transmitting the abstraction of the commodity, its value, through these networks-- through the development of the instruments of credit.
The capitalist credit system specifically comes into being as a result of the separation, the differential, the conflict between production time and circulation time. This system specifically does not come into being as a means of swindle or looting. The credit system is not the result of capital's self-devalorization. Origin and function are one, and that one is to quicken the metamorphosis of capital into the money form, even at a discount, especially at a discount, as the discount can be offset, so every capitalist thinks, is compelled to think, by the increased production that has been already compelled by the each previous recapitalization of the extruded surplus-value.
Next: Part 2, A Study of Railroads
S. Artesian
April 27, 2013
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