A reply to Paul C's ope-l 3317.
Paul wrote: "If v were 0 then there would be no incentive for capitalists to
accumulate constant capital. It would obviously be cheaper to throw away their
machines and have all the work done by hand. The assumption of free labour
power undermines the premise of accumulation."
None of this is obvious to me. What about sabotage, slowdowns, strikes,
sitdowns, and other S'es? Machines are used to bring an ahuman, "objective"
discipline to the labor process, and the subjection of the worker to this
discipline. This incentive to substitute dead labor for living is *also*
present when v = 0, but since it (this particular incentive) is independent of
wages, it is most clearly seen when v is set equal to 0.
Andrew Kliman