From: Paul (clyder@gn.apc.org)
Date: Tue Aug 27 2002 - 06:37:25 EDT
> >Nothing inherently malthusian about the effects of >zero percent interest rates on the direction of capital >accumulation. Rakesh: I thought the question is why there would be a kind of overaccumulation of capital in the sense that the ratio of the physical surplus to the physical to the physical stock of capital would fall. Do zero percent interest rates explain this kind of overaccumulation? Paul: They are both an reflection and a cause of it. Accumulation is not regulated by an average rate of profit but by the portion of the profitability PDF that is higher than the prevailing rate of interest. If this is low enough it will generate higher capital composition ratios. -------------------- > >Note that this economy is in simple reproduction but has a potention >von-Neumann growth rate of 100% since this is the expansion ratio >of the basic goods sector. A capitalist economy cannot in fact have a potential growth rate of 100% since that would imply the capitalist class lives on air as the entire surplus value would be capitalized. Otto Bauer was right to build a column for capitalist consumption into his revised reproduction schemes, for if capitalist consumption were eliminated in the the course of accumulation process--as Grossmann showed it would be on his assumptions--accumulation would have no meaning to the capitalist class and would cease forthwith. In Bauer's scheme this happens around period 21. ------------------------- von Neumanns concept is that the maximal rate of profit and the maximal growth rate are equivalent. Assume some small temporary reduction in consumption, and for a period accumulate any profit over and above this reduced consumption level. The growth rate will accelerate up to the limit set by the maximal rate of profit. At any rate less than this the capitalist consumption can then be set to grow at this rate. For instance allow an initial 5% reduction in capitalist consumption. then after a sufficient delay you could set capitalist consumption to grow by 95% a year. ------------------------------------ > > >This is in no way contrary to the labour theory of value. If >there is no human labour input, the labour theory of value >simply does not apply to this case. As Pack presents the case, what this 'model' shows is that the elimination of living labor from the process of production need not lead to a collapse in the rate and mass of profit and thus the breakdown of the capitalist system. --------------------------------------- I dont see anything controversial about this other than the hypothesis that living labour can be completely eliminated. >Why on earth should there be no profit in a fully automated >economy? If profit is just another name for a form of unpaid living labor then one would expect that the elimination of living labor would mean the end of profit. -------------- No, because we are talking about two different modes of production. The capitalist mode of production employs labour and exploits the labourers to make profits. The hypothetical future mode of production involves only a class of rentiers who employ robots to make profits. Under these circumstances robot activity would become the source of profit. > >What price structure could the above economy have that >entailed not profit? Prices could be assigned to goods, but would there be a tendency towards the market's own generation of so called prices of production in a fully automated economy? ------------------------------ I am skeptical about prices of production even in capitalist economies. The issue is not that however, it is whether the mean profit ratio, whatever the sectoral distribution of profit ratios, could be anything other than positive given the i/o matrix you specified. -- Paul Cockshott paul@cockshott.com
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