From: Paul Cockshott (wpc@DCS.GLA.AC.UK)
Date: Tue Oct 04 2005 - 16:10:22 EDT
Neither of these. If the rate of profit is too low relative to long term rates of interest capitalists decline to accumulate constant capital. This prevents extended reproduction and, if nothing is done will lead to contracted reproduction. In either case unemployment will rise significantly. State expenditure on unproductive activities can create additional demand which allows simple reproduction to take place by converting some of the output into commodities which are not accumulated. This corresponds to a shift in the working population out of the production of means of production and into the production of weapons etc. The absorbtion of another part of the population in unproductive financial activities also prevents accumulation since the people who work in stock exchange offices of banks are people who are not working in factories producing means of production. -----Original Message----- From: OPE-L on behalf of Rakesh Bhandari Sent: Tue 10/4/2005 4:26 PM To: OPE-L@SUS.CSUCHICO.EDU Subject: Re: [OPE-L] [Fwd: Re: [OPE-L] basics vs. non-basics and financial services] At 11:35 AM +0100 10/4/05, Paul Cockshott wrote: > >I agree that mature capitalist economies can have a tendancy to spiral >into unemployment, and that the expenditure of the state on weapons >can prevent this. But it prevents unemployment by at the same time >preventing accumulation and shifting the economy from expanded to simple >reproduction. Not following. Prevents higher levels of employment? And how is the state preventing accumulation if the economy is already spiralling into unemployment as a result of slow down in accumulation? Or are you saying that the state causes that downward spiral by, say, regressive taxes or the coddling of labor? Were Thatcher and Reagan right? rb > >-- >Paul Cockshott >Dept Computing Science >University of Glasgow > > > >0141 330 3125
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