[OPE] Equilibrium

Jurrian has criticised me as believing in equilibrium, which he says is
a bourgeois ideology.
The webpage that we recently put up on the equilibrium rate of profit
uses the concept in the sense of a dynamic equilibrium:

   1. The equilibrium the rate of profit Re is that which, if current
      accumulation shares, growth of the labour force and long run rate
      of technical change hold, will remain stable. It is the solution
      to the accumulation differential equation that you get if you set
      dr/dt =0
   2. It is also the attractor of the real rate of profit, i.e., the
      real rate of profit in year t+1 .. r_{t+1} will tend to be closer
      to Re_{t} than r_{t} was.

I believe our website demonstrates that this actually is the case.
Moreover it focuses attention on the process of establishment of
capitalist relations of production which basically involve drawing more
and more people into the capitalist economy. If you contrast the graphs
for say Egypt, with that for Japan or Switzerland, you see the very
different trajectories of the rate of profit that are generated in high
and low birthrate countries. On the basis of this I would predict that
in 20-30 years time the most rapidly growing areas of capitalist economy
will be in Africa which, relative to the rest of the world has the
greatest reserve army of labour.
_______________________________________________
ope mailing list
ope@lists.csuchico.edu
https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/ope
Received on Wed Jul 15 04:57:53 2009