Response to Bruce:
Do capitalists choose the technology that maximizes the mass of surplus
value for their class as a whole, or the technology that maximizes the
profit rate on their individual invested capital? The political economy
tradition, which Marx seems to follow methodologically on these
questions, argued for the profit rate, on the grounds that the individual
capitalist would have no interest in, or knowledge of, the consequences
of his individual decisions for the mass of surplus value.
Duncan