Jerry wrote in 5414: > >[PS to Rakesh on signifying 'thingifying': >there is a time for all things. Neither Marx nor >Cottrell viewed time as a 'thing'. Time is not a >'thing'. It is a dimension, along with space, in >which things exist.] In accounting for the variance in profit rates in my simple example, I had read Allin as initially attributing it not to a change in the OCC or the rate of surplus value but to a reduction in turnover time. Turnover time then seemed to me be no less an independent (thingified) variable than the OCC and the rate of surplus value in accounting for variance in the profit rate. I may have misunderstood Allin, and he is now arguing that the changes in the OCC account for the variance in the profit rate. But certainly it would not be uncommon to account for said variance in terms of time not as a dimension but as an independent variable. And I am uncomfortable with that. I still think the annual rate of surplus value is not a mere arithematical side effect, as Allin puts it; with this concept it can be clarified that if with a halving of production time workers are not successful in doubling their wages or the flow of variable capital, they have allowed capital to use their own product to exploit them at a higher rate, as revealed in the greater profitability which the capitalist class is enjoying at their expense. Yours, Rakesh
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