From: Jerry Levy (Gerald_A_Levy@MSN.COM)
Date: Thu Nov 30 2006 - 08:53:07 EST
> The object of capital is to control as much surplus value as possible. > His/her personal choice thereafter regarding how much to use for luxury > consumption is just that, but a capitalist who likes luxury consumption > too much is violating his/her social function and that is NOT virtue. > That's in Marx, but I don't feel like finding the exact passage in > 'Conversion of Surplus Value into Capital'. Hi Paul Z (and Dogan, for reasons that become clearer in the following): I agree, but think that its important to note that this subject is returned to by Marx at another level of abstraction, namely, that of capitalist production as a whole. In Volume I there is the character mask/capital personified assertion, but later where 'many capitals' are taken into account, there is another argument. In the context of competitive branches of production, any capitalists who increase individual consumption at the expense of the productive re-investment of their money capital in more C & V run the risk of being uncompetitive and being driven out of the market and hence for them is not a 'virtue'. In this sense, there is a somewhat modified 'invisible hand' argument: capitalists are led as if by an invisible hand to productively re-invest (and engage in technological changes in constant capital) at a greater scale. Unlike the Smithian argument, though, the social-economic consequences are not all or basically positive. In this sense, I think that his presentation of the law of the tendency for the general rate of profit to decline (LTGRPD) is implicitly a critique of Smithian doctrine. But, I admit that there isn't textual evidence to show that Marx intended the LTGRPD in part to be a critique of Smith. At a still more concrete level of abstraction (one that goes beyond _Capital_) it could be claimed that corporations must invest in R&D now if they expect to remain competitive over the longer-term. Of course, there is risk in such expenditures since monies allocated for R&D are in a sense speculative to the degree that corporations do not know whether their research will pan out in terms of new product technologies or advances in the quality of means of production. In this sense also, firms are driven to undertake these expenditures in order to remain competitive and these monies mean that there is less left over (in the short-run) for individual consumption. One can also argue that firms for competitive reasons are driven to increase some *unproductive* expenditures. For example, firms in oligopolistic markets tend to spend heavily on advertising and marketing. This (if there aren't price increases as a result of increased market power) reduces the possible amount of monies which can be used for individual consumption _and_ reduces the amount of monies that can be used for productive investment. From the perspective of individual firms the above seems entirely rational; from a broader social perspective (which Dogan has been interrogating) it is another question. In solidarity, Jerry
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