>On Tue, 24 Oct 2000, you wrote: >> Re Allin's 4258 >> >> >On Tue, 24 Oct 2000, Rakesh Narpat Bhandari wrote: >> > >> >> These equilibrium habits are hard to break. >> > >> >What is the assumption of an equalized profit rate, if not an >> >"equilibrium habit"? >> >> The profit rate is equalized at t-1 as it is equalized at t+1. It >> need not be *exactly the same* equalized profit rate as your >> equilibrium thinking insists against all realism. >> > >The point is that something must happen to cool the >system down and narrow the dispersion of profit rates >if you are going to have a single average profit rate. >The question at issue is not whether the rate is the same >in two time periods, but how you can achieve such >a low entropy in the first place. I would have thought >that it is only concievable over a long time period in >the absence of changes in technology or external >perturbations. Paul C, At a low level of capitalist development, technology would be relatively stable, but even with this 'absence of changes', the system would not move towards an equalisation of profit rates. "Entropy" in terms of the random distribution of profit rates would easily obtain in a relatively stable system: there would neither be the capital mobility nor labor mobility to achieve the order of equalisation of the same average profit rate. The tendency towards equalisation only asserts itself in an advanced capitalist society which is simultaneously disrupting the basis of that equalisation by rewarding the entrepreneurs who among other things have displaced labor from the system, relative to their capital investment, with greater than average profits! Which means that the tendency towards equalisation becomes stronger not just as the tendency towards superprofit on the basis of technical change asserts itself but also as the value relations in terms of which the magnitude of the average rate of profit is determined are themselves now continously revolutionized. ***So in such a system--and this is indeed a great paradox-- we have both the dynamic tendency of ever renewed inequalities in terms of a general profit rate and the tendency towards an equalisation of an ever changing general profit rate.*** Such a system can only one sidedly be characterized as cooling down, narrowing the dispersion, or achieving equalisation of the same profit rate. However, in such a system, the general rate of profit is indeed not simply a a calculated average of the profit rates but a real material force in the system. But... that the equalisation of the profit rate only becomes a real force in an advanced capitalist economy does not imply, as you seem to think, that the system is settling down to a general profit rate which only changes over the long term. (The direction in which it changing however is only clear over longer periods due to random and cyclical fluctuations over the shorter term) "capital arrives at this equalization to a a greater or lesser extent, according to how advanced capitalist development is in a given national society: i.e., th emore the conditions in this country in question are adapted to the captialist mode of production. As capitalist production advances, so also do its requirements that become more extensive, and it subjects al the social precondtions that frame the production processs to its specific character and immanent laws. 'THIS CONSTANT EQUALIZATION OF EVER RENEWED INEQUALITIES is accomplished more quickly, (1) the more mobile capital is, i.e., the more easily it can be transferred from one sperhe andone place to othes; (2)the more rapidly labor power can be moved from one sphere to antoerh and frm one local point of production to another.' capital 3 (vintage), p. 298 One just has to pay attention to the contradictory nature of the formulation, for it expresses a 'real contradiction' of the system of which no one sided characterisation will suffice. It is true of course that Marx often focuses ch 10 on the real tendency towards equalisation in itself but this is NOT to determine long term centers of gravity (contra Ajit and Duncan, there is no such thing) but to elucidate how this tendency does in fact give rise to price phenomena which though completely externalized and prima facie irrational forms of commodity value provide the basis of the notions in the heads of vulgar capitalists and vulgar political economists alike. So the idea of long term natural prices is both accepted for the purposes of immanent critique and rejected as a real premise of the system. All the best, Rakesh
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Oct 31 2000 - 00:00:12 EST