1. For all the complexity in and of those awe and fear inspiring first chapters of Capital, Marx really isn't trying to complicate matters. He's engaged in a radical distillation, almost but not quite a simplification, of the moments of value expression; of the commodity as the condition of social labor.
Marx is not engaged in creating an abstract model of capitalism; Capital is no thought experiment. The method, the examination of capital as it comes into being is more of a decomposition, a pulling apart, both rending and rendering the tissues of accumulation, by "pushing" the commodity through the iterations of the forms of value-- forms that can only be expressed in and to the universe of commodities; a universe where value and the expansion of value are the organizing principles of social reproduction; a universe such as ours.
Much has been made by many of Marx's method of abstraction, some of it has been made by Marx himself. However, the "abstraction," such that it is, exists in and only because of its concrete expression in the conditions of production. If the production of commodities as useful objects is a complex product, developed and refined through the applications of research, technique, energy, the production of the commodity as value is but a single process, the appropriation of human labor power in its acute, clarified manifestation as time. Abstract labor is the concrete of capital.
From this fusion, this "two-fold" configuration of labor, Marx draws two definitions, two practical measures of wealth: "An increase in the quantity of use-values is an increase of material wealth," and (in his Economic Manuscripts) "wealth is the disposition over time."
2. The question, or one of the questions, Marx uses as scalpel in his exploration is: How is it that the use value of an object can be expressed as the value in exchange with all other objects? What generates, not simply equivalence, but transformation of use into exchange, of each into the other? One answer Marx gives is that all the commodities share a common trait, a common quality, which provides a platform for measurement, ratios, exchange-- human labor.
It's not just human labor that endows these objects with the powers of exchange. It's the condition of that labor itself, as deprived, dispossessed; as useless other than as a means of exchange; useless other than as value exchanged for the commodities necessary to its subsistence, the conditions of its own reproduction as a commodity.
This leads Marx, as opposed to political economists, to identify the real task of critique-- to expose "Why labour is represented by the value of its product and labour time by the magnitude of that value."
Marx gets there from here where he states: "Every product of labour is, in all states of society, a use-value; but it is only at a definite historical epoch in a society's development that such a product becomes a commodity, viz., at the epoch when the labour spent on the production of a useful article become expressed as one of the objective qualities of that article, i.e. as its value."
Then the production of useful articles, material wealth, is subjugated to the need for the accumulation of value, time claimed, time sold, time absorbed. The aggrandizement of labor-time pulls the expansion of material wealth along in its wake, yet the wealth is always produced in an inadequacy of time, in the diminishing of time, in its loss.
The material objects carry the accumulation of value through the only process by which that value can be expressed-- in exchanges with other commodities. Value eats time.."the appropriation of ever more and more wealth in the abstract becomes the sole motive of his operations."
We move from the commodity as the condition of living labor to labor-commodity as the determinant of value. We get the means of production organized as capital, appropriating labor-time's capacity for surplus as a "self-expansion," as valorisation, as accumulation of nothing other than the alienated essence of time, money. We've reached M-C-M'. We are ready to begin.
S. Artesian
October 15, 2013
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
Thursday, September 05, 2013
Smooth...And By the Numbers 4: Christmas in July, Snowballs in Hell
"Hold on baby" --Freddie Scott
1. This past July, the EU parliament voted to repeal the law capping bonuses and other payouts to its poor, exploited, downtrodden, huddled masses of investment bankers. The deciding votes securing the repeal were cast by two representatives from Greece, both of whom just happened to be members of the Communist Party of Greece, the Kommounistikó Kómma Elládas (KKE). Said the sponsor of the original legislating that had capped the bonuses, "The Stalinists were half the problem."
And there in three words is the short-version of almost 100 years of class struggle. The Stalinists have been and continue to be half the problem.
Of course, the truth, as certain thinkers and revolutionists have pointed, is the whole. The whole problem is capitalism which has been able to reward itself bonus after bonus thanks to the timely support of the Stalinists.
So it was Merry Christmas in July. It was goody time for the bankers. And for everyone else?-- there was an overproduced lump of coking coal in those stockings, made in Bangladesh, hung-up over the fireplace.
2. However, and there is always the "however" when it comes to capitalism, if Christmas came early, so did the New Year, washing in, and up, on the waves of overcapacity that dog the steps of "growth" everywhere-- in Europe, North America, the emerging markets, the BRICS.
Shortly after the Greek Stalinists voted to uncap those bonuses, the Stalinists of the State Council of China announced:
The statement itself was punctuated by the actions of China's 3rd largest shipbuilding corporation, China Rongsheng Heavy Industry Group, which, effectively bankrupt, appealed for government financing, laid off 40% of its workforce, and simply neglecting to pay the wages of those not laid off. Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year.
3. Meanwhile, North American automakers were decking the halls, although many fewer halls than before. After closing 27 factories, reducing employment levels by 30%, lowering payment rates for overtime by initiating payments after 40 hrs per week, rather than 8 hrs per day, and tiering the wage structure so that new hires make about 50% less than those hired before 2008, profitability was the gift under this smaller tree. Sales for 2013 are running at 15.8 million units, down a bit from the 2005 record of 17.5 million units, but with 27 fewer factories and the reduced wage bill, the less than record sales are no price to pay. It's goody time.
It's not so goody time for Detroit, however, once upon a time the center of US auto manufacturing. The "emergency manager" of the city-- a non-elected appointee of the governor-- pushed Detroit into Chapter 9 bankruptcy for the specific purpose of voiding the city's outstanding obligations to retirees, past, present, and future.
Of course, once the pension fund is designated as an unsecured claimant, available revenues can and will be diverted to securing payments to those holding the municipal debt. God bless our brave bondholders! United the Asset Managers Stand! Give me liquidation, and give them death!
When questioned about reports of his meeting with 2 Greek representatives of the EU parliament who were members of the KKE, the emergency manager had no comment.
Well, you know what they say about meat and poison, bankruptcy and windfall, vultures and carrion, vermin and plagues....
4. US bankers, knowing never to leave well enough alone, have decided that the time is ripe to jump back into the asset-backed securities market, buoyed by the fact that defaults on credit card and auto loans have stabilized. Our brave asset managers issued $332 billion in ABS in the first half of 2013. Sure that was just a fraction of the 2007 sum of $1.2 trillion in ABS, but $332 billion in this six months, and another $332 billion in that six months........well, it adds up, doesn't it? Pretty soon, there's serious money involved.
However, back in Europe, ABS offerings were a levels even below that of 2009, which underscored the pleas of poverty coming from bankers addressed to the EU parliament.
Meanwhile, Wolfgang Schäuble welcomed the early Christmas with a speech to businessmen in Athens, where he initiated them into the fine points of a German Christmas. Gazing out at the freshly scrubbed faces of these captains of industry, Herr Schäuble advised them "not to expect any debt forgiveness from Berlin." Frohe Weihnachten
«Πες μας κάτι που δεν ξέρουμε», σκέφτηκε το κοινό του, σε αρμονία.
"Sagen Sie uns, was wir nicht wissen", dachte sein Publikum, im Einklang.
"Tell us something we don't know," thought his audience, in unison.
Indeed. Since the bailout will cost the EU almost e240 billion, expect no debt forgiveness from Berlin. Ευτυχισμένο το Νέο Έτος. Glückliches neues Jahr. Happy New Year.
Barely a month later, Jolly Old Wolfgang, reprising his role as Weihnachtsmann, made the mistake of admitting that Greece would need another bailout in 2014, precipitating consternation among the German electorate. He thus became the first man in history to jeopardize the re-election of his party's leader by letting a dead cat out of the body bag, and not getting it to bounce.
5. It was Christmas in July. Signs of recovery were detected in Europe by holding a mirror under the nose of the comatose body and observing the condensation.
It was New Year's in August. Eurozone property prices hit a 7 year low.
It was Christmas in July. For the first time since 2007, the advanced countries, Japan, North America and the European Union contributed more to the growth in the global economy than that emerging market economies plus the BRICS.
The emerging markets, the "global South," and the BRICS were getting the North American version of a German Christmas, courtesy of the US Federal Reserve, that withered arm holding the invisible hand of the alleged fictitious capital belonging to the so-called decrepit, hollowed-out, unproductive, archaic, obsolete, no longer central, etc.etc.etc. US capitalism.
And how did the Fed inflict this misery on the vibrant, emerging, newly industrialized, emerging market countries? Did it cancel its currency swap lines with other central banks? Nope. Did it raise its Fed funds rate? Nope. Did it tighten the rules of collateral in the repo markets? Nope. All the Fed did was indicate that it was closely monitoring the US economy for signs that the economy was strong enough to allow the Fed to reduce its purchases of US Treasury debt and FNMA/FMAC mortgage backed securities.
Testifying before the joint economic committee of the US Congress on 22 May, Bernanke said this:
Brazil's airline rousted the government for aid, and in dollar denominations. None of that unreal real currency for them. And why in dollars? Because 57% of its operating costs are denominated in dollars.
Fuel purchases, equipment leases, equipment servicing contracts across the globe are denominated in dollars. Purchases of aircraft, computer servers, work stations, pharmaceuticals are denominated in dollars, so when the money flowing from the "decrepit" advanced capitalist countries, when the "fictitious capital" from the fictitious capital asset management funds reverses course, the EM currencies bolstered by the flow decline. Revenue follows currency, and the depreciation of the EM currencies amounts to a transfer of profits to the advanced capitalist enterprises.
This is not a case of "unequal exchange," or rather, it is no more a case of unequal exchange than any of the other of capital's exchanges within any market, global or domestic, where the more advanced capitals claim a portion of the value proportional to their size and at the expense of smaller, less efficient capitals.
This is no more, and no less, a case of "unequal exchange" than that which occurs between industry and agriculture, where the increased value of the machinery required for and engaged in farm production lowers the value, and the price, of the farm products.
This is no more unequal exchange than any exchange in capital in that exchange is never just exchanges of commodities, but always exchanges of commodities as vectors, vehicles, representatives of capitals claiming profits with exchange being the mechanism of distribution.
So is that all it takes, one bearded central banker in Washington, DC cautiously suggesting a "tapering" in the quantities of debt instruments to be added monthly to the bank's balance sheet to reverse five years of money flow?
Of course not. No alteration in central bank asset purchases is ever made in isolation, and no decision by asset managers is ever made independent of the specifics of accumulation-- specifically independent from the rate of return, or "yield" that the asset managers think they can appropriate in the emerging, or developing markets.
In this instance, it is not just an impediment to continued accumulation that confronts the emerging markets if the Fed begins tapering. It is the already existing accumulation that impedes rate, ratio, relation, increment of profit, that allows, actually compels, the private asset managers of the advanced capitalist countries, who control $54 trillion, 90% of the world's stock of reserve currencies, to change course.
The impediment is overproduction and it is acutely manifested in China. China accounts for 15% of Brazil's exports. China's significance as a market-maker for both exports and imports is critical for the other emerging market economies. And China is where the overproduction of fixed assets has outstripped the ability of capital to sustain profitability, and support the credit markets. It is not the overproduction of "fictitious capital"-- in property values, credit instruments, in special investment vehicles that threatens China's accumulated productive apparatus. It is the accumulated value of this apparatus that depresses profitability and undermines all values.
After 2008, China's government, its ruling class in formation, announced, and has attempted to execute, a policy of internal development, turning to "domestic consumption" rather than fixed asset accumulation for export production. The policy has failed. Domestic consumption is a smaller portion of the Chinese economy today than it was in 2007. The limits of that domestic market have been, and are, the low level of agricultural productivity in China, which is a product of the small average plot size, and which binds 40% of the population to rural life.
Without the transformation of this agricultural base, China cannot truly create a domestic market capable of valorizing, profitably reproducing industrial output. China cannot transform this organization of agriculture without uprooting hundreds of millions, without dispossessing these producers who are in essence small property holders, and it cannot uproot these millions without threatening every aspect of its social organization of labor; without threatening the FDI enterprises; without threatening the privately owned corporations; without threatening the state owned factories, mines, and transport networks which rely on exploitation no less severe than that of the private sector.
China remains, in a very real sense, the world's largest maquiladora. FDI enterprises in China account for over one quarter of all value added in the country's industrial production; and that portion climbs to 66% in the high technology industries. The FDI enterprises account for 90% of China's high technology exports (see Peter Nolan's Is China Buying the World? Polity Press 2012).
China has no more control over direction of capital accumulation and devaluation than any other "asset manager"-- and considerably less than some.
So it was Christmas in July all right.
However, the bourgeoisie have themselves a snowball's chance in hell at a Happy New Year 2014.
S.Artesian
1. This past July, the EU parliament voted to repeal the law capping bonuses and other payouts to its poor, exploited, downtrodden, huddled masses of investment bankers. The deciding votes securing the repeal were cast by two representatives from Greece, both of whom just happened to be members of the Communist Party of Greece, the Kommounistikó Kómma Elládas (KKE). Said the sponsor of the original legislating that had capped the bonuses, "The Stalinists were half the problem."
And there in three words is the short-version of almost 100 years of class struggle. The Stalinists have been and continue to be half the problem.
Of course, the truth, as certain thinkers and revolutionists have pointed, is the whole. The whole problem is capitalism which has been able to reward itself bonus after bonus thanks to the timely support of the Stalinists.
So it was Merry Christmas in July. It was goody time for the bankers. And for everyone else?-- there was an overproduced lump of coking coal in those stockings, made in Bangladesh, hung-up over the fireplace.
2. However, and there is always the "however" when it comes to capitalism, if Christmas came early, so did the New Year, washing in, and up, on the waves of overcapacity that dog the steps of "growth" everywhere-- in Europe, North America, the emerging markets, the BRICS.
Shortly after the Greek Stalinists voted to uncap those bonuses, the Stalinists of the State Council of China announced:
We will strictly prohibit providing new credit supply or direct financing in any form to illegal construction projects with overcapacity so as to avoid reckless investment exacerbating the problem of excess production capacity.Meaning, of course.........we've supplied credit and direct financing in excess for years, funding overcapacity and exacerbating the conflict of industrial development with low agricultural productivity. It's too late to do anything about it now, so we'll issue this statement.
The statement itself was punctuated by the actions of China's 3rd largest shipbuilding corporation, China Rongsheng Heavy Industry Group, which, effectively bankrupt, appealed for government financing, laid off 40% of its workforce, and simply neglecting to pay the wages of those not laid off. Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year.
3. Meanwhile, North American automakers were decking the halls, although many fewer halls than before. After closing 27 factories, reducing employment levels by 30%, lowering payment rates for overtime by initiating payments after 40 hrs per week, rather than 8 hrs per day, and tiering the wage structure so that new hires make about 50% less than those hired before 2008, profitability was the gift under this smaller tree. Sales for 2013 are running at 15.8 million units, down a bit from the 2005 record of 17.5 million units, but with 27 fewer factories and the reduced wage bill, the less than record sales are no price to pay. It's goody time.
It's not so goody time for Detroit, however, once upon a time the center of US auto manufacturing. The "emergency manager" of the city-- a non-elected appointee of the governor-- pushed Detroit into Chapter 9 bankruptcy for the specific purpose of voiding the city's outstanding obligations to retirees, past, present, and future.
Of course, once the pension fund is designated as an unsecured claimant, available revenues can and will be diverted to securing payments to those holding the municipal debt. God bless our brave bondholders! United the Asset Managers Stand! Give me liquidation, and give them death!
When questioned about reports of his meeting with 2 Greek representatives of the EU parliament who were members of the KKE, the emergency manager had no comment.
Well, you know what they say about meat and poison, bankruptcy and windfall, vultures and carrion, vermin and plagues....
4. US bankers, knowing never to leave well enough alone, have decided that the time is ripe to jump back into the asset-backed securities market, buoyed by the fact that defaults on credit card and auto loans have stabilized. Our brave asset managers issued $332 billion in ABS in the first half of 2013. Sure that was just a fraction of the 2007 sum of $1.2 trillion in ABS, but $332 billion in this six months, and another $332 billion in that six months........well, it adds up, doesn't it? Pretty soon, there's serious money involved.
However, back in Europe, ABS offerings were a levels even below that of 2009, which underscored the pleas of poverty coming from bankers addressed to the EU parliament.
Meanwhile, Wolfgang Schäuble welcomed the early Christmas with a speech to businessmen in Athens, where he initiated them into the fine points of a German Christmas. Gazing out at the freshly scrubbed faces of these captains of industry, Herr Schäuble advised them "not to expect any debt forgiveness from Berlin." Frohe Weihnachten
«Πες μας κάτι που δεν ξέρουμε», σκέφτηκε το κοινό του, σε αρμονία.
"Sagen Sie uns, was wir nicht wissen", dachte sein Publikum, im Einklang.
"Tell us something we don't know," thought his audience, in unison.
Indeed. Since the bailout will cost the EU almost e240 billion, expect no debt forgiveness from Berlin. Ευτυχισμένο το Νέο Έτος. Glückliches neues Jahr. Happy New Year.
Barely a month later, Jolly Old Wolfgang, reprising his role as Weihnachtsmann, made the mistake of admitting that Greece would need another bailout in 2014, precipitating consternation among the German electorate. He thus became the first man in history to jeopardize the re-election of his party's leader by letting a dead cat out of the body bag, and not getting it to bounce.
5. It was Christmas in July. Signs of recovery were detected in Europe by holding a mirror under the nose of the comatose body and observing the condensation.
It was New Year's in August. Eurozone property prices hit a 7 year low.
It was Christmas in July. For the first time since 2007, the advanced countries, Japan, North America and the European Union contributed more to the growth in the global economy than that emerging market economies plus the BRICS.
The emerging markets, the "global South," and the BRICS were getting the North American version of a German Christmas, courtesy of the US Federal Reserve, that withered arm holding the invisible hand of the alleged fictitious capital belonging to the so-called decrepit, hollowed-out, unproductive, archaic, obsolete, no longer central, etc.etc.etc. US capitalism.
And how did the Fed inflict this misery on the vibrant, emerging, newly industrialized, emerging market countries? Did it cancel its currency swap lines with other central banks? Nope. Did it raise its Fed funds rate? Nope. Did it tighten the rules of collateral in the repo markets? Nope. All the Fed did was indicate that it was closely monitoring the US economy for signs that the economy was strong enough to allow the Fed to reduce its purchases of US Treasury debt and FNMA/FMAC mortgage backed securities.
Testifying before the joint economic committee of the US Congress on 22 May, Bernanke said this:
The second policy tool now in use is large-scale purchases of longer-term Treasury securities and agency mortgage-backed securities (MBS). These purchases put downward pressure on longer-term interest rates, including mortgage rates. For some months, the FOMC has been buying longer-term Treasury securities at a pace of $45 billion per month and agency MBS at a pace of $40 billion per month. The Committee has said that it will continue its securities purchases until the outlook for the labor market has improved substantially in a context of price stability. The Committee also has stated that in determining the size, pace, and composition of its asset purchases, it will take appropriate account of the likely efficacy and costs of such purchases as well as the extent of progress toward its economic objectives.
At its most recent meeting, the Committee made clear that it is prepared to increase or reduce the pace of its asset purchases to ensure that the stance of monetary policy remains appropriate as the outlook for the labor market or inflation changes. Accordingly, in considering whether a recalibration of the pace of its purchases is warranted, the Committee will continue to assess the degree of progress made toward its objectives in light of incoming information. The Committee also reiterated, consistent with its forward guidance regarding the federal funds rate, that it expects a highly accommodative stance of monetary policy to remain appropriate for a considerable time after the asset purchase program ends and the economic recovery strengthens.And then on July 17, in the semi-annual report to Congress on the condition of the economy, Big Ben stated:
The Committee's decisions regarding the asset purchase program (and the overall stance of monetary policy) depend on our assessment of the economic outlook and of the cumulative progress toward our objectives. Of course, economic forecasts must be revised when new information arrives and are thus necessarily provisional. As I noted, the economic outcomes that Committee participants saw as most likely in their June projections involved continuing gains in labor markets, supported by moderate growth that picks up over the next several quarters as the restraint from fiscal policy diminishes. Committee participants also saw inflation moving back toward our 2 percent objective over time. If the incoming data were to be broadly consistent with these projections, we anticipated that it would be appropriate to begin to moderate the monthly pace of purchases later this year. And if the subsequent data continued to confirm this pattern of ongoing economic improvement and normalizing inflation, we expected to continue to reduce the pace of purchases in measured steps through the first half of next year, ending them around midyear. At that point, if the economy had evolved along the lines we anticipated, the recovery would have gained further momentum, unemployment would be in the vicinity of 7 percent, and inflation would be moving toward our 2 percent objective. Such outcomes would be fully consistent with the goals of the asset purchase program that we established in September.
I emphasize that, because our asset purchases depend on economic and financial developments, they are by no means on a preset course. On the one hand, if economic conditions were to improve faster than expected, and inflation appeared to be rising decisively back toward our objective, the pace of asset purchases could be reduced somewhat more quickly. On the other hand, if the outlook for employment were to become relatively less favorable, if inflation did not appear to be moving back toward 2 percent, or if financial conditions--which have tightened recently--were judged to be insufficiently accommodative to allow us to attain our mandated objectives, the current pace of purchases could be maintained for longer. Indeed, if needed, the Committee would be prepared to employ all of its tools, including an increase the pace of purchases for a time, to promote a return to maximum employment in a context of price stability.That was it. Done, complete, finito. Apparently, that was enough to reverse the currency flows of the last 5 years. The currencies of the 20 largest emerging market economies all tumbled in synch in relation to the US dollar, conjuring painful memories of the "Asian Tigers" crash of the 90s.
Brazil's airline rousted the government for aid, and in dollar denominations. None of that unreal real currency for them. And why in dollars? Because 57% of its operating costs are denominated in dollars.
Fuel purchases, equipment leases, equipment servicing contracts across the globe are denominated in dollars. Purchases of aircraft, computer servers, work stations, pharmaceuticals are denominated in dollars, so when the money flowing from the "decrepit" advanced capitalist countries, when the "fictitious capital" from the fictitious capital asset management funds reverses course, the EM currencies bolstered by the flow decline. Revenue follows currency, and the depreciation of the EM currencies amounts to a transfer of profits to the advanced capitalist enterprises.
This is not a case of "unequal exchange," or rather, it is no more a case of unequal exchange than any of the other of capital's exchanges within any market, global or domestic, where the more advanced capitals claim a portion of the value proportional to their size and at the expense of smaller, less efficient capitals.
This is no more, and no less, a case of "unequal exchange" than that which occurs between industry and agriculture, where the increased value of the machinery required for and engaged in farm production lowers the value, and the price, of the farm products.
This is no more unequal exchange than any exchange in capital in that exchange is never just exchanges of commodities, but always exchanges of commodities as vectors, vehicles, representatives of capitals claiming profits with exchange being the mechanism of distribution.
So is that all it takes, one bearded central banker in Washington, DC cautiously suggesting a "tapering" in the quantities of debt instruments to be added monthly to the bank's balance sheet to reverse five years of money flow?
Of course not. No alteration in central bank asset purchases is ever made in isolation, and no decision by asset managers is ever made independent of the specifics of accumulation-- specifically independent from the rate of return, or "yield" that the asset managers think they can appropriate in the emerging, or developing markets.
In this instance, it is not just an impediment to continued accumulation that confronts the emerging markets if the Fed begins tapering. It is the already existing accumulation that impedes rate, ratio, relation, increment of profit, that allows, actually compels, the private asset managers of the advanced capitalist countries, who control $54 trillion, 90% of the world's stock of reserve currencies, to change course.
The impediment is overproduction and it is acutely manifested in China. China accounts for 15% of Brazil's exports. China's significance as a market-maker for both exports and imports is critical for the other emerging market economies. And China is where the overproduction of fixed assets has outstripped the ability of capital to sustain profitability, and support the credit markets. It is not the overproduction of "fictitious capital"-- in property values, credit instruments, in special investment vehicles that threatens China's accumulated productive apparatus. It is the accumulated value of this apparatus that depresses profitability and undermines all values.
After 2008, China's government, its ruling class in formation, announced, and has attempted to execute, a policy of internal development, turning to "domestic consumption" rather than fixed asset accumulation for export production. The policy has failed. Domestic consumption is a smaller portion of the Chinese economy today than it was in 2007. The limits of that domestic market have been, and are, the low level of agricultural productivity in China, which is a product of the small average plot size, and which binds 40% of the population to rural life.
Without the transformation of this agricultural base, China cannot truly create a domestic market capable of valorizing, profitably reproducing industrial output. China cannot transform this organization of agriculture without uprooting hundreds of millions, without dispossessing these producers who are in essence small property holders, and it cannot uproot these millions without threatening every aspect of its social organization of labor; without threatening the FDI enterprises; without threatening the privately owned corporations; without threatening the state owned factories, mines, and transport networks which rely on exploitation no less severe than that of the private sector.
China remains, in a very real sense, the world's largest maquiladora. FDI enterprises in China account for over one quarter of all value added in the country's industrial production; and that portion climbs to 66% in the high technology industries. The FDI enterprises account for 90% of China's high technology exports (see Peter Nolan's Is China Buying the World? Polity Press 2012).
China has no more control over direction of capital accumulation and devaluation than any other "asset manager"-- and considerably less than some.
So it was Christmas in July all right.
However, the bourgeoisie have themselves a snowball's chance in hell at a Happy New Year 2014.
S.Artesian
Saturday, August 24, 2013
Smooth...And By the Numbers 3
[Again, all figures from, or derived from US Census Bureau's Quarterly Financial Report and the Bureau's Annual Survey of Manufacturers]
1. Say hello to a not so little old non-friend, the petroleum industry. Prior to the Great Recession, US petroleum producers accounted for, on average, about 20% of the total net property, plant, and equipment in the manufacturing sector. The size of this investment is also characterized by the reduced value of living labor that engages, reproduces, expands this property plant and equipment.
The ratio of annual wages of production workers to the net PPE is approximately 1 to 4.5, $1 in wages for every $4.5 in net PPE, for the manufacturing sector as a whole. The ratio measures about 1:69 in the petroleum sector (and coal manufacturing, as the industries are not separated in the NIPA tables).
Similarly, an examination the relation of production worker wages to total value of shipments shows that the petroleum sector ratio of 1:160, $1 of wages for every $160 of product shipped, far "outperforms" the manufacturing rate of 1:17.
Profitability, however, does not follow easily in the wake of this "super-productivity." The size of the petroleum industry's investment creates a chronic (not permanent, not continuous, but chronic, an immanent condition, sometimes expressed in acute phases, sometimes expressed in its very remission) oscillation between two of capital's dynamics-- (1)that profits accrue proportionate to the size of the capitals employed and (2) the greater the mass of accumulated value in the means of production in relation to the living labor required to engage that mass, the greater the tendency for the rate of profit to decline.
Achieving (1) is not always sufficient to offset (2). The offset is essential to accumulation itself. The offset requires the transfer of portions of the total realized surplus value, the total social profit, to the petroleum industry. The mechanism for this transfer is price, or more exactly, the differential between price and value.
So for 2012, the petroleum sector's operating profits amounted to 14.1% of operating expenses. However, the petroleum sector's operating profits amounted to 38% of the operating profits realized in the manufacturing sector. Good for petroleum? But not so good for the sector as a whole which experienced an overall decline in both the mass and rate of its profits.
The cost of product for the upstream (extraction) petroleum manufacturers has averaged around $10 per barrel of oil equivalent. The price of product that the upstream manufacturers obtain in markets is usually between $91 and $100 per barrel of oil equivalent. This disparity is the market distributive process at work. Only through the distribution and redistribution of value does capital tend to create an average rate of profit which offsets the declining rate in certain sectors by imposing that decline as a limit, a barrier, to the reproduction of all other sectors.
2. These processes, reproduction/disproportion/distribution, have taken their acute forms in the oil price spikes of 1999, 2001, 2003. Of particular significance, however, is the US petroleum sector's performance in 2007 and 2008, years of the great oil price blowout culminating in....the Great Recession. In both years, the sector's profits accounted for 25% of total manufacturing profits, in synch, in proportion (almost) to its 20% portion of net property, plant and equipment. However in both 2007 and 2008, the ratio of operating income to operating costs in the sector was significantly below that ratio for manufacturing as a whole.
In 2007, the petroleum sector's ratio of operating income to operating expense measured 6.2%, while for manufacturing sector registered an 8.8% ratio. In 2008, the petroleum sector registered a 4.2% ratio, while the manufacturing sector achieved a 7% ratio. Capital is incapable of maintaining balance, proportion among the conflicting tendencies it itself spawns in the pursuit of value, in the need to accumulate, in the need to aggrandize greater ratios of surplus value. .
S. Artesian
1. Say hello to a not so little old non-friend, the petroleum industry. Prior to the Great Recession, US petroleum producers accounted for, on average, about 20% of the total net property, plant, and equipment in the manufacturing sector. The size of this investment is also characterized by the reduced value of living labor that engages, reproduces, expands this property plant and equipment.
The ratio of annual wages of production workers to the net PPE is approximately 1 to 4.5, $1 in wages for every $4.5 in net PPE, for the manufacturing sector as a whole. The ratio measures about 1:69 in the petroleum sector (and coal manufacturing, as the industries are not separated in the NIPA tables).
Similarly, an examination the relation of production worker wages to total value of shipments shows that the petroleum sector ratio of 1:160, $1 of wages for every $160 of product shipped, far "outperforms" the manufacturing rate of 1:17.
Profitability, however, does not follow easily in the wake of this "super-productivity." The size of the petroleum industry's investment creates a chronic (not permanent, not continuous, but chronic, an immanent condition, sometimes expressed in acute phases, sometimes expressed in its very remission) oscillation between two of capital's dynamics-- (1)that profits accrue proportionate to the size of the capitals employed and (2) the greater the mass of accumulated value in the means of production in relation to the living labor required to engage that mass, the greater the tendency for the rate of profit to decline.
Achieving (1) is not always sufficient to offset (2). The offset is essential to accumulation itself. The offset requires the transfer of portions of the total realized surplus value, the total social profit, to the petroleum industry. The mechanism for this transfer is price, or more exactly, the differential between price and value.
So for 2012, the petroleum sector's operating profits amounted to 14.1% of operating expenses. However, the petroleum sector's operating profits amounted to 38% of the operating profits realized in the manufacturing sector. Good for petroleum? But not so good for the sector as a whole which experienced an overall decline in both the mass and rate of its profits.
The cost of product for the upstream (extraction) petroleum manufacturers has averaged around $10 per barrel of oil equivalent. The price of product that the upstream manufacturers obtain in markets is usually between $91 and $100 per barrel of oil equivalent. This disparity is the market distributive process at work. Only through the distribution and redistribution of value does capital tend to create an average rate of profit which offsets the declining rate in certain sectors by imposing that decline as a limit, a barrier, to the reproduction of all other sectors.
2. These processes, reproduction/disproportion/distribution, have taken their acute forms in the oil price spikes of 1999, 2001, 2003. Of particular significance, however, is the US petroleum sector's performance in 2007 and 2008, years of the great oil price blowout culminating in....the Great Recession. In both years, the sector's profits accounted for 25% of total manufacturing profits, in synch, in proportion (almost) to its 20% portion of net property, plant and equipment. However in both 2007 and 2008, the ratio of operating income to operating costs in the sector was significantly below that ratio for manufacturing as a whole.
In 2007, the petroleum sector's ratio of operating income to operating expense measured 6.2%, while for manufacturing sector registered an 8.8% ratio. In 2008, the petroleum sector registered a 4.2% ratio, while the manufacturing sector achieved a 7% ratio. Capital is incapable of maintaining balance, proportion among the conflicting tendencies it itself spawns in the pursuit of value, in the need to accumulate, in the need to aggrandize greater ratios of surplus value. .
S. Artesian
Thursday, August 22, 2013
Smooth...And By the Numbers 2
1. You can tell how bad things are by what registers as good news. So just the other day (14 August), we get this bit of good news from the Eurostat press office:
-0.7% and -0.2% respectively compared with the second quarter of 2012
Flash estimate for the second quarter of 2013Euro area and EU27 GDP both up 0.3%
-0.7% and -0.2% respectively compared with the second quarter of 2012
Dry your eyes my little European Union friend. Jubilation in the European Land. Francois get ready, Angela rock steady, As Wolfgang strikes up the band.
Zero point three percent growth and the 18 month recession is over. Just like that. Acabado, finito, gatavas, críochnaithe, Ολοκληρώθηκε, fertig, lest, завършен, done and dusted, färdiga befejezett, gotov, hotový, færdig, готов, afgewerkt, valmis, päättynyt, terminé, pabeigts, gotowy, finisat, končano. Zero point three percent growth compared to the previous quarter. Compared to the previous year, well, the churlish might think the Great Recession is a little ways away from being acabado.
But 0.3% is close enough to growth for government work because the GDP in the first quarter 2013 was 1.1 % below the 2012's first quarter. So things must be getting better, because it's not as bad as it was and as we expected it to be. It's getting less worse more slowly. That's good news.
Pointing out that EU GDP is still about 2% below its 2008 measure-- that's just being, well, churlish. And don't even think about mentioning GDP per capita, you malcontent you.
In the United States, an economy, and with a ruling class, less encumbered than the Europeans by the notion that an economy is anything other than an ATM for a very select clientele, the good news was exactly that-- the ATM was spitting out money for a very select clientele only. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was above 15,000 (operative word-- was). Fracking shale was doing for oil production what fracking shale had done for natural gas production. Petroleum imports were down, refinery profits were up.
Earnings growth, expected to expand some 27 percent in the second half of the year, was being revised downward to 15 percent, but compared to Europe?
However, there were signs, indications that the churlish pointed to..like the 3 month moving average of the rate of growth of exports had moved from 10% during 2012 to 0% in 2013 for the US....and for Germany and China and India and Brazil and Mexico...
...while the generous pointed to the same moving averages for the same period moving from -8% to +8% for Japan and from +10% to -4% to +7% for Great Britain.
Good news, bad news, generous, churlish, optimistic, pessimistic, bulls, bears... it's all the same; that is to say all this good and bad, best of times worst of times is nothing but taking a position in the markets. It's the long and the short of it. It's buying and selling.
2. The determinant of capital, that relation of the labor process to the valorization process is based in the relation of necessary labor time to surplus labor time. The determinant is manifested by labor organized as value-producing, as wage-labor, which has no use other than when engaged by the means of production organized as commodities.
The determinant is oblivious to news good and bad; knowing nothing more than the need for the reproduction of itself; which is to say the accumulation of the means of production as a mass of expanded values which is the condition of labor, the condition of labor organized as a commodity, as value-producing. The circle is complete, even as it breaks apart.
3. Last time around, in the not-so-Great Recession of 2001-2003, the US bourgeoisie confronted, they though, too much. Too much capital, too many fixed assets, too many works, too high wages. So they took a short course in accelerated disaccumulation.
[All figures below either taken directly or developed from the US Census Bureau's Quarterly Financial Report and/or Annual Surveys of Manufacturers]
In the 1Q of 2001, the value of of the net property and equipment (PPE) in manufacturing peaked at $1.177 trillion. By the 4Q 2003, the PPE value had decline to $1.123 trillion. This was not a paper devaluation, a "moral depreciation," but rather involved real consumption of capital; real restraint of capital expenditure; and real decline in the fixed asset replacement rate.
Further, this decline in value was not due to a divergence between the technical composition of capital and its value composition, where the mass of the means of production employed continued to expand, while the value of the means of production declined due to improved efficiency, reduced costs of new fixed assets. We're talking about recession remember. We're talking about capitalism remember. The "thing"-- actually the relation-- to keep in mind is that for capital, value and physical capability are fused, as use and exchange are fused in an antagonistic identity, and are indissoluble. A generalized contraction of capital, generalized overproduction is exactly that antagonistic identity.
The reaccumulation after the recession ended in 2003 was painfully slow, even under the whips of the devalued dollar, the oil price spikes, and the invasion of Iraq. The old 2001 peak in net PPE was not exceeded until the 4Q 2006, after capital spending had to be resumed to replace the capital already consumed, and this itself correlates so neatly with a downturn in the rate of profitability for US manufacturing.
The accumulation of fixed assets continued through the 4Q 2008, one year after the onset of the recession itself. The "lag," this asynchronous aspect to capitalists response to the condition of capital is another expression of capital's tendency to becoming the immanent barrier to the further accumulation of capital-- with the further accumulation of capital being the expression of generalized overproduction.
Anyway, as asynchronous as the processes of accumulation appear to be, sooner or later they all converge, and converge these did once Lehman Brothers was denied admission to the Fed's emergency medical insurance program.
The devaluation of fixed assets in this iteration of generalized overproduction, in this "Great Recession" has been less severe, and of shorter duration than that of the 2001-2003 recession. In that not so great recession the devaluation amounted to 6% of the estimated value or $69 billion. In the Great Recession, the devaluation, 2008 peak to 2010 trough, has been $45 billion; and while it took almost six year, 1Q 2001- 4Q 2006, for fixed asset accumulation to recover completely the value lost, it has taken only two years, 4Q 2008-4Q 2010 during this current period.
What has made the Great Recession "great," is its severity, persistence, expansiveness.. and the ability of the US bourgeoisie to shift almost the entire burden, the entire costs, the entire "loss" of value unto the living component of capitalist reproduction, labor.
Production workers' wages declined 17%, 2007 peak to 2009 trough. Production worker wages in 2011 were still 11% below the 2007 peak. The peak to trough (2000-2003) decline in the previous cycle was 9 percent. Most significantly, that 2000 peak for production workers wages in the US has never been exceeded. As a result the rate of growth of value added to production has declined. Between 1990 and 2000, that growth was 46.5% or about 4% annually. Between 2000 and 2011 that growth measures 16% or about 1.2% annually
What characterizes the contraction in the US is what has characterized the recovery in the US and accounts for the tenuous and shallow nature of the recovery-- the rapid recovery and expansion of fixed assets; or... the failure to devalue enough capital quickly.
What characterizes the contraction in the US is the continuity of that contraction with the overall trend since 2000, the convergence of capitalist recovery and capitalist contraction. In every sense, capital is still grappling with the changes brought about by the applications of advanced technology in the 1992-2001 period; to the changes this has brought to the relations of necessary to surplus labor-time; to the expulsion of labor from the valorization process; to relations between the value components of capital.
S.Artesian
Next: Smooth...And By the Numbers 3.
But 0.3% is close enough to growth for government work because the GDP in the first quarter 2013 was 1.1 % below the 2012's first quarter. So things must be getting better, because it's not as bad as it was and as we expected it to be. It's getting less worse more slowly. That's good news.
Pointing out that EU GDP is still about 2% below its 2008 measure-- that's just being, well, churlish. And don't even think about mentioning GDP per capita, you malcontent you.
In the United States, an economy, and with a ruling class, less encumbered than the Europeans by the notion that an economy is anything other than an ATM for a very select clientele, the good news was exactly that-- the ATM was spitting out money for a very select clientele only. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was above 15,000 (operative word-- was). Fracking shale was doing for oil production what fracking shale had done for natural gas production. Petroleum imports were down, refinery profits were up.
Earnings growth, expected to expand some 27 percent in the second half of the year, was being revised downward to 15 percent, but compared to Europe?
However, there were signs, indications that the churlish pointed to..like the 3 month moving average of the rate of growth of exports had moved from 10% during 2012 to 0% in 2013 for the US....and for Germany and China and India and Brazil and Mexico...
...while the generous pointed to the same moving averages for the same period moving from -8% to +8% for Japan and from +10% to -4% to +7% for Great Britain.
Good news, bad news, generous, churlish, optimistic, pessimistic, bulls, bears... it's all the same; that is to say all this good and bad, best of times worst of times is nothing but taking a position in the markets. It's the long and the short of it. It's buying and selling.
2. The determinant of capital, that relation of the labor process to the valorization process is based in the relation of necessary labor time to surplus labor time. The determinant is manifested by labor organized as value-producing, as wage-labor, which has no use other than when engaged by the means of production organized as commodities.
The determinant is oblivious to news good and bad; knowing nothing more than the need for the reproduction of itself; which is to say the accumulation of the means of production as a mass of expanded values which is the condition of labor, the condition of labor organized as a commodity, as value-producing. The circle is complete, even as it breaks apart.
3. Last time around, in the not-so-Great Recession of 2001-2003, the US bourgeoisie confronted, they though, too much. Too much capital, too many fixed assets, too many works, too high wages. So they took a short course in accelerated disaccumulation.
[All figures below either taken directly or developed from the US Census Bureau's Quarterly Financial Report and/or Annual Surveys of Manufacturers]
In the 1Q of 2001, the value of of the net property and equipment (PPE) in manufacturing peaked at $1.177 trillion. By the 4Q 2003, the PPE value had decline to $1.123 trillion. This was not a paper devaluation, a "moral depreciation," but rather involved real consumption of capital; real restraint of capital expenditure; and real decline in the fixed asset replacement rate.
Further, this decline in value was not due to a divergence between the technical composition of capital and its value composition, where the mass of the means of production employed continued to expand, while the value of the means of production declined due to improved efficiency, reduced costs of new fixed assets. We're talking about recession remember. We're talking about capitalism remember. The "thing"-- actually the relation-- to keep in mind is that for capital, value and physical capability are fused, as use and exchange are fused in an antagonistic identity, and are indissoluble. A generalized contraction of capital, generalized overproduction is exactly that antagonistic identity.
The reaccumulation after the recession ended in 2003 was painfully slow, even under the whips of the devalued dollar, the oil price spikes, and the invasion of Iraq. The old 2001 peak in net PPE was not exceeded until the 4Q 2006, after capital spending had to be resumed to replace the capital already consumed, and this itself correlates so neatly with a downturn in the rate of profitability for US manufacturing.
The accumulation of fixed assets continued through the 4Q 2008, one year after the onset of the recession itself. The "lag," this asynchronous aspect to capitalists response to the condition of capital is another expression of capital's tendency to becoming the immanent barrier to the further accumulation of capital-- with the further accumulation of capital being the expression of generalized overproduction.
Anyway, as asynchronous as the processes of accumulation appear to be, sooner or later they all converge, and converge these did once Lehman Brothers was denied admission to the Fed's emergency medical insurance program.
The devaluation of fixed assets in this iteration of generalized overproduction, in this "Great Recession" has been less severe, and of shorter duration than that of the 2001-2003 recession. In that not so great recession the devaluation amounted to 6% of the estimated value or $69 billion. In the Great Recession, the devaluation, 2008 peak to 2010 trough, has been $45 billion; and while it took almost six year, 1Q 2001- 4Q 2006, for fixed asset accumulation to recover completely the value lost, it has taken only two years, 4Q 2008-4Q 2010 during this current period.
What has made the Great Recession "great," is its severity, persistence, expansiveness.. and the ability of the US bourgeoisie to shift almost the entire burden, the entire costs, the entire "loss" of value unto the living component of capitalist reproduction, labor.
Production workers' wages declined 17%, 2007 peak to 2009 trough. Production worker wages in 2011 were still 11% below the 2007 peak. The peak to trough (2000-2003) decline in the previous cycle was 9 percent. Most significantly, that 2000 peak for production workers wages in the US has never been exceeded. As a result the rate of growth of value added to production has declined. Between 1990 and 2000, that growth was 46.5% or about 4% annually. Between 2000 and 2011 that growth measures 16% or about 1.2% annually
What characterizes the contraction in the US is what has characterized the recovery in the US and accounts for the tenuous and shallow nature of the recovery-- the rapid recovery and expansion of fixed assets; or... the failure to devalue enough capital quickly.
What characterizes the contraction in the US is the continuity of that contraction with the overall trend since 2000, the convergence of capitalist recovery and capitalist contraction. In every sense, capital is still grappling with the changes brought about by the applications of advanced technology in the 1992-2001 period; to the changes this has brought to the relations of necessary to surplus labor-time; to the expulsion of labor from the valorization process; to relations between the value components of capital.
S.Artesian
Next: Smooth...And By the Numbers 3.
Friday, August 16, 2013
Interlude: Radio Nowhere
It all, and mall, makes me wonder. I feel it myself, this urge, to put every thing in its place, in a row like ducks, assigning ordinal numbers. Putting things in order, order being a market position, putting things
in order being a marketing strategy-- this better than that; this even
better; and this being best, or close to, until a new product, a new
advert emerges.
First, second, third... we get caught up in it. Who doesn't have a list of the "top ten greatest rock and roll tunes" playing pretty much 24 hours a day in his or her head? Whoever you are, I feel sorry for you if you don't. Maybe you feel sorry for me because I do.
But I do. Listen, when Indeep released "Last Night a DJ Saved my Life" (1981 Sound of New York Records), it may have been the worst song with the greatest tag line ever. See? There I go again. Number 1. Number zero. And with a bullet. Nevertheless, look me straight in the eye and tell me you never felt that way? That all that was standing between you and the bottomless pit of despair brought on by hormones, high school, pimples, parents, siblings, relatives of all sorts, drill sergeants, jobs, lack of jobs, girlfriends, boyfriends, lack of either/both, lack of money-- pick one or more--wasn't something on the radio, something beamed out that did the screaming, or the whispering, or the jumping (up, or out the window) for you. And since you could count on it being played once more in an hour, and the filler songs weren't too terrible, you decided to give it, and yourself, another hour and a half.
Maybe you did that everyday for years. I know I did. Maybe you still do that. I know I do. Now of course, I'm my own DJ, with my own list.
That's where the marketing hits home. You, or I have a need. Capital puts it in a package. I get my hands on some money, by any one of a number of ways which, in the end, all come down to ...some sort of labor, either my own or somebody else's. I exchange the money for my need in a package. That, basically, is the "surface loop" of capital's circulation, that's M-C-M'. The magnitudes of M, and C, and M' are determined in the production process, through accumulation as a whole, through the iterations of these exchanges.
Capital needs to expand? The VP of Sales wants more money? Time to poke deeper into needs, time to reproduce, materialize those needs faster, and in bigger quantity. And when that doesn't do the trick? Time to fragment the market for needs. Create niche markets. Every individual a DJ. Every phone a radio station.
So my list goes like this, and I'll leave the numbers out-- except for the song I consider to be the single greatest ever, forever, never to be duplicated again in the history and future of rock and roll:
"River Deep, Mountain High" --Tina Turner
After that....well after that I suppose some would say or could say, "who cares?" I do.
So there's: "You're Gonna Miss Me"-- 13th Floor Elevators; "Since I Lost My Baby"-- Temptations; "I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You"--Aretha; "I Can't Explain"--The Who; "Willie and the Hand Jive"--Johnny Otis; "One Nation Under A Groove"--Funkadelics; "Heard It Through The Grapevine"-- Marvin Gaye; "Say You"-- Monitors; "Tallahassee Lassie"-- Freddie 'Boom Boom' Cannon; "Are You Lonely For Me Baby"--Freddie Scott; "Jumpin' Jack Flash"-- Rolling Stones (pains me to admit it-- that I like the music of the group I hate, but hell, that's rock and roll); "We Got the Beat"--Go-Gos; "God Save the Queen"--Sex Pistols; "Just Like Romeo and Juliet"--Reflections.
What? That's more than ten? Who's counting?
S.Artesian
First, second, third... we get caught up in it. Who doesn't have a list of the "top ten greatest rock and roll tunes" playing pretty much 24 hours a day in his or her head? Whoever you are, I feel sorry for you if you don't. Maybe you feel sorry for me because I do.
But I do. Listen, when Indeep released "Last Night a DJ Saved my Life" (1981 Sound of New York Records), it may have been the worst song with the greatest tag line ever. See? There I go again. Number 1. Number zero. And with a bullet. Nevertheless, look me straight in the eye and tell me you never felt that way? That all that was standing between you and the bottomless pit of despair brought on by hormones, high school, pimples, parents, siblings, relatives of all sorts, drill sergeants, jobs, lack of jobs, girlfriends, boyfriends, lack of either/both, lack of money-- pick one or more--wasn't something on the radio, something beamed out that did the screaming, or the whispering, or the jumping (up, or out the window) for you. And since you could count on it being played once more in an hour, and the filler songs weren't too terrible, you decided to give it, and yourself, another hour and a half.
Maybe you did that everyday for years. I know I did. Maybe you still do that. I know I do. Now of course, I'm my own DJ, with my own list.
That's where the marketing hits home. You, or I have a need. Capital puts it in a package. I get my hands on some money, by any one of a number of ways which, in the end, all come down to ...some sort of labor, either my own or somebody else's. I exchange the money for my need in a package. That, basically, is the "surface loop" of capital's circulation, that's M-C-M'. The magnitudes of M, and C, and M' are determined in the production process, through accumulation as a whole, through the iterations of these exchanges.
Capital needs to expand? The VP of Sales wants more money? Time to poke deeper into needs, time to reproduce, materialize those needs faster, and in bigger quantity. And when that doesn't do the trick? Time to fragment the market for needs. Create niche markets. Every individual a DJ. Every phone a radio station.
So my list goes like this, and I'll leave the numbers out-- except for the song I consider to be the single greatest ever, forever, never to be duplicated again in the history and future of rock and roll:
"River Deep, Mountain High" --Tina Turner
After that....well after that I suppose some would say or could say, "who cares?" I do.
So there's: "You're Gonna Miss Me"-- 13th Floor Elevators; "Since I Lost My Baby"-- Temptations; "I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You"--Aretha; "I Can't Explain"--The Who; "Willie and the Hand Jive"--Johnny Otis; "One Nation Under A Groove"--Funkadelics; "Heard It Through The Grapevine"-- Marvin Gaye; "Say You"-- Monitors; "Tallahassee Lassie"-- Freddie 'Boom Boom' Cannon; "Are You Lonely For Me Baby"--Freddie Scott; "Jumpin' Jack Flash"-- Rolling Stones (pains me to admit it-- that I like the music of the group I hate, but hell, that's rock and roll); "We Got the Beat"--Go-Gos; "God Save the Queen"--Sex Pistols; "Just Like Romeo and Juliet"--Reflections.
What? That's more than ten? Who's counting?
S.Artesian
Sunday, August 11, 2013
Smooth.....And By The Numbers, Part 1
1. When Marx speaks of "monopoly," he is speaking of the monopoly of capital, the monopoly by capital of the means of production. He is speaking of the organization of those means as private property of the capitalists. His critique of capital applies to that monopoly. Whether there is one capital or 101 capitals is immaterial to Marx's critique as it is immaterial to the inherent dynamics of capital accumulation.
There is, and is always, the monopoly by capital. There is almost never monopoly capital. And where and when there is, it isn't for long, and it doesn't matter. Competition is the external expression of capital's internal compulsion to expropriate surplus value; to accumulate, accumulate, accumulate; to exchange as much as itself with labor-power for as little as possible.
Monopoly by capital, producing concentration and centralization of capitals can no more supersede or suspend the dynamics, forces of its own reproduction, its own laws of value than a human can jump over his or her own head while firmly grasping both ankles.
2. The "vulnerability" of capital, the limit to its reproduction, is not that capital becomes incapable of "expanding the means of production;" that it can no longer amplify the productivity of human labor. "Historical limits" are not time-clocks, or "sell-by" dates. Historical limits are the boundaries of a specific social organization of labor. Historical limits are posited, absorbed, repeated, reproduced throughout capital's existence.
These limits do not suddenly appear when capital has "fulfilled its purpose, its so-called historic mission" because indeed capital has only had a single purpose, the expansion of value through the expropriation of surplus value. It's only historical mission has been the reproduction of capital. "Progress" is an ideological obfuscation of value, and has no meaning to capital apart from value.
Because capital does not lose its need for self-expansion, the limit to that expansion must be in its origin-- in the accumulation of the means of production as expanded value; as the condition of labor in opposition to labor itself. The historical limits of capital move through its history, erupting at the moments, during the periods when the very expansion of the means of production as capital has impaired their continued valorization. The labor process and the valorization process, the labor process as the valorization process becomes the mode of destruction.
"Progress," "stages," "development" have no meaning apart from this conflict between the labor process and the valorization process, a conflict where each recognizes itself in the other as loss..
Capital is at the very least not necessarily more "progressive" or more "productive" than the modes it demolishes.
Value is more destructive, of that there is no doubt.
3. It's the real accumulation of real assets that provokes, excites the conflict between means and relations of production, between production and valorization, not the proliferation of securities; not some explosion of speculative debt instruments; not asset-backed securities. The movements in these markets are derived, derivative, from the revalorization of accumulated capital. Assets, after all, maintain their value only to the extent that they give their value up incrementally, transfer it, in the valorization process; in the expansion of production. Assets maintain value only to the extent that profitability outpaces devaluation.
The original, the mother, the grand-daddy of all asset-backed securities is.....the bank.
4. "Things" are beginning to look up for capital, according to the reports in the bourgeoisie's favorite journals. Industrial production is recovering, even in Europe, although overproduction in the auto industry has hardly been remedied.
"Getting better" can mean the rate of deceleration has slowed; it can mean the rate of deceleration has gone to zero; it can mean some sectors see some improvement; it can mean some countries have seen some improvement.
It can also mean the attacks on wages, on living standards, on employment, liquidating the savings and assets of the once and now again poor have produced a revenue stream, a cash flow, just capable of re-floating, just for the moment, the good ship Lollipop.
It can mean that 2014 is going to be a very important year; when the debt embodied in commercial real estate mortgage backed securities cannot be repaid, not refinanced. It can mean that the decline in commodity prices, providing a bit of boost to industrial production, becomes a collapse in prices. It can mean the expansion of oil and gas production which has driven energy prices down becomes yet another threat to the rate of return on production and investment for the major petroleum companies... and we know what happens after that.
It can mean that 2014 is the year when the overproduced chickens come to their underwater homes to roost.
It can mean, The Shirelles to the contrary notwithstanding, that the darkest hour is just after the hint of dawn.
S. Artesian
There is, and is always, the monopoly by capital. There is almost never monopoly capital. And where and when there is, it isn't for long, and it doesn't matter. Competition is the external expression of capital's internal compulsion to expropriate surplus value; to accumulate, accumulate, accumulate; to exchange as much as itself with labor-power for as little as possible.
Monopoly by capital, producing concentration and centralization of capitals can no more supersede or suspend the dynamics, forces of its own reproduction, its own laws of value than a human can jump over his or her own head while firmly grasping both ankles.
2. The "vulnerability" of capital, the limit to its reproduction, is not that capital becomes incapable of "expanding the means of production;" that it can no longer amplify the productivity of human labor. "Historical limits" are not time-clocks, or "sell-by" dates. Historical limits are the boundaries of a specific social organization of labor. Historical limits are posited, absorbed, repeated, reproduced throughout capital's existence.
These limits do not suddenly appear when capital has "fulfilled its purpose, its so-called historic mission" because indeed capital has only had a single purpose, the expansion of value through the expropriation of surplus value. It's only historical mission has been the reproduction of capital. "Progress" is an ideological obfuscation of value, and has no meaning to capital apart from value.
Because capital does not lose its need for self-expansion, the limit to that expansion must be in its origin-- in the accumulation of the means of production as expanded value; as the condition of labor in opposition to labor itself. The historical limits of capital move through its history, erupting at the moments, during the periods when the very expansion of the means of production as capital has impaired their continued valorization. The labor process and the valorization process, the labor process as the valorization process becomes the mode of destruction.
"Progress," "stages," "development" have no meaning apart from this conflict between the labor process and the valorization process, a conflict where each recognizes itself in the other as loss..
Capital is at the very least not necessarily more "progressive" or more "productive" than the modes it demolishes.
Value is more destructive, of that there is no doubt.
3. It's the real accumulation of real assets that provokes, excites the conflict between means and relations of production, between production and valorization, not the proliferation of securities; not some explosion of speculative debt instruments; not asset-backed securities. The movements in these markets are derived, derivative, from the revalorization of accumulated capital. Assets, after all, maintain their value only to the extent that they give their value up incrementally, transfer it, in the valorization process; in the expansion of production. Assets maintain value only to the extent that profitability outpaces devaluation.
The original, the mother, the grand-daddy of all asset-backed securities is.....the bank.
4. "Things" are beginning to look up for capital, according to the reports in the bourgeoisie's favorite journals. Industrial production is recovering, even in Europe, although overproduction in the auto industry has hardly been remedied.
"Getting better" can mean the rate of deceleration has slowed; it can mean the rate of deceleration has gone to zero; it can mean some sectors see some improvement; it can mean some countries have seen some improvement.
It can also mean the attacks on wages, on living standards, on employment, liquidating the savings and assets of the once and now again poor have produced a revenue stream, a cash flow, just capable of re-floating, just for the moment, the good ship Lollipop.
It can mean that 2014 is going to be a very important year; when the debt embodied in commercial real estate mortgage backed securities cannot be repaid, not refinanced. It can mean that the decline in commodity prices, providing a bit of boost to industrial production, becomes a collapse in prices. It can mean the expansion of oil and gas production which has driven energy prices down becomes yet another threat to the rate of return on production and investment for the major petroleum companies... and we know what happens after that.
It can mean that 2014 is the year when the overproduced chickens come to their underwater homes to roost.
It can mean, The Shirelles to the contrary notwithstanding, that the darkest hour is just after the hint of dawn.
S. Artesian
Wednesday, July 24, 2013
Full Disclosure, Self-Criticism (from a confidential source)
From a message to a friend:
To be honest, I'm not all that happy with "Overproduction, Overcapitalization 2." The point I'm trying to make, or trying to account for in the piece is the actual price increases that accompany increased capital formation, the growth of fixed assets, and the increased capital expenditures that precede and accompany periods of downturns.
To me, this is not just a question of speculation-- but the purpose speculation serves in distributing the profits. Certainly there's speculation: the Financial Times estimated that 70% of all price moves in the commodity markets are the results of computerized trading programs responding to other computerized trading programs-- but such programs are triggered by, and conform with, certain changes in the size of the capitals dedicated to mining, petroleum, etc.
So that's what I want to get at. I think the price increases are "deliberate" but inherent, planned but determined, by the changes in capital formation-- not by speculators, "monopolists" etc.
I think this might help explain the transition after the end of the "long deflation" in/around 1898 and the movement to syndicates, trusts, where/when prices move much differently than they do in the 1873-1898 period.
Wish I weren't so lazy, and so bored,by "economics." I might actually be able to tolerate doing the research such a thesis requires.
If I knew of anyone interested, I'd hire him/her to sort it out.
(author's name withheld by request by the author, S.Artesian)
To be honest, I'm not all that happy with "Overproduction, Overcapitalization 2." The point I'm trying to make, or trying to account for in the piece is the actual price increases that accompany increased capital formation, the growth of fixed assets, and the increased capital expenditures that precede and accompany periods of downturns.
To me, this is not just a question of speculation-- but the purpose speculation serves in distributing the profits. Certainly there's speculation: the Financial Times estimated that 70% of all price moves in the commodity markets are the results of computerized trading programs responding to other computerized trading programs-- but such programs are triggered by, and conform with, certain changes in the size of the capitals dedicated to mining, petroleum, etc.
So that's what I want to get at. I think the price increases are "deliberate" but inherent, planned but determined, by the changes in capital formation-- not by speculators, "monopolists" etc.
I think this might help explain the transition after the end of the "long deflation" in/around 1898 and the movement to syndicates, trusts, where/when prices move much differently than they do in the 1873-1898 period.
Wish I weren't so lazy, and so bored,by "economics." I might actually be able to tolerate doing the research such a thesis requires.
If I knew of anyone interested, I'd hire him/her to sort it out.
(author's name withheld by request by the author, S.Artesian)
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