On Fri, 27 Oct 2000, you wrote: > >On Tue, 24 Oct 2000, you wrote: > > Paul > >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. > > > Rakesh > 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. Paul This seems the obverse of what Farjoun and Machover argue. They argue that it is technical change which is constantly disrupting the profit rate. I dont see why capital mobility should be low if technical change is slow. In the absence of technical change investors can have pretty accurate idea of which branches of production are the most profitable and can transfer funds into these. This is what is supposed to equalise the rate of profit. If you dont know what production conditions will be like next year, movement of capital will be much more driven by guesses than accurate foresight and will be less effective in equalising rates of profit. -- Paul Cockshott, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, Scotland 0141 330 3125 mobile:07946 476966 paul@cockshott.com http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/people/personal/wpc/ http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/index.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Oct 31 2000 - 00:00:12 EST