From: Rakesh Bhandari (rakeshb@STANFORD.EDU)
Date: Thu May 29 2003 - 16:37:01 EDT
> > >If we make the parsimonious assumption that a non-zero >percent of profit is accumulated, then if the working population >is stagnant - once the country has undergone demographic >conversion for example - we will get a falling rate of profit. >This makes no assumptions about technology. Paul, I am sorry that I don't have time to think through this reply. But at the least I hope it prompts you to make further comments about the meaning and causes of what you call demographic conversion..... What do you mean by demographic conversion? And why do you treat the rate of population growth as an exogeneous variable? On classical doctrine, population growth is an endogeneous variable, no? If real wages increase, should not population grow as well? Or are real wage gains dissipated in increased consumption of luxuries rather than an increase in population? But then why? Are the joys of new commodities better advertised than the joys of children? Is the demographic transition--viz. zero or negative populationg growth-- a combined result of stagnation in real wages and rising costs of child rearing, e.g., average school times and thus the period of economic dependence of children have risen (I wish I remembered the argument of Sydney Coontz's book on population)? But if the absolute or relative stagnation in real wages is a cause of demographic transition, then it must itself be explained. And if it is explained by capital's attempt to enforce a rising s/v in order to counteract a rising OCC in the course of accumulation, then the demographic transition, i.e., zero to negative population growth, cannot itself be the explanation for the rising OCC by which the profit rate is reduced: while the demographic conversion may put a limit on the rise in s/v and give further impetus to profit rate- reducing, capital-intensive growth, the demographic conversion is itself the prior consequence of the rising rate of exploitation achieved by capital in the course of capital-intensive accumulation, no? Didn't Lenin of castigate as decadent or degenerate those proletarians who chose to remain childless in order not to reduce their own consumption even as capital gave them no other choice than children or the consumption levels to which the working class had become accustomed? Again, I wish I had time to consult again the literature on this topic. Yours, Rakesh
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