From: rakeshb@STANFORD.EDU
Date: Sun Apr 27 2003 - 15:13:08 EDT
Michael, Brenner does in fact delve into the debate about whether there has been a productivity revolution, and has been skeptical of claims of a new economy for years--long before the NASDAQ bubble crashed and US government agencies began downward revisions of productivity growth. While your notes on product innovation suggests how difficulties in the realization of surplus value are in part overcome--if demand for the extant product set is saturated, it may take some time for capital to develop new products and to convince consumers through psycho-technics to purchase them (OPE-L member Paolo Cipolla has worked on this problem)-- the emphasis on the expansion of capital's valorization base through the incorporation of new workers underlines that capital increases the production of surplus value not only through the achievement of a higher rate of surplus value on a fixed population. You also write: _____________ Another point -- Arrighi writes: "It is hard to see how this situation can be reproduced for any length of time without transforming into an outright tribute, or Œprotection payment‚, the $1 billion (and counting) that the United States needs daily to balance its current accounts with the rest of the world. But it is even harder to envision the kind of system-wide social and political convulsions that are necessary to make the extraction of such a tribute the foundation of a new, and for the first time in history, truly universal world empire." What is called a "tribute" here is no tribute, and the US is not an "empire". The flow of capital into the US is attracted by possibilities of return on capital, whether it be direct investment, the stock market, the bond market or something else. The markets continue to act as attractors (that could change); it is not a movement coerced by superior force, but a further aspect of capitalist competition among economies. Perhaps the US state has been clever in manoeuvring and arm-twisting to keep the dollar attractive, but what accounts for the continuing underlying attractiveness of the US economy for the rest of the world? _____________ But this is not what Arrighi said. He did not claim that the US was presently collecting tribute; he claimed that the present inflow of capital into the US would have to be converted into a kind of tribute if that inflow was to continue. Of course this raises the question of why Asian central banks in particular have been willing to support the dollar and the way of the debt-happy US. It could be that they want to weaken their own currencies relative to the dollar to maintain export competitiveness (I tried to emphasize this factor months ago on OPE-L); it could be that they are fearful that otherwise the US could close off the market through explicit protectionist legislation; they could fear that grave US financial difficulties would force the US to reduce its military presence in the region; they could fear that the US would otherwise use its military power to establish more pro US, less multilateral governments in Southeast Asia . The US probably intends to make a statement by marginalizing a non-cooperative France in the new Iraq. Such fears could also motivate Japan in particular to allow the US to dictate IMF policy to which it would otherwise be opposed, e.g., capital account liberalization which seems to benefit the US financial sector alone. Like Susan Strange, I tend to think the US ability to run a current account deficit for years with impunity is sign of US power, not US decline. Which is not to say that I think the US is a hegemonic power. We'll need to get straight the meanings of hegemony. Rakesh
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