[OPE-L:3420] Re: TSS and Tech Change

Duncan K. Fole (dkf2@columbia.edu)
Tue, 15 Oct 1996 09:40:54 -0700 (PDT)

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>In reply to Duncan's ope-l 3381:
>
>Measurement difficulties notwithstanding, my point was that rises in the
>technical and organic compositions of capital are perfectly compatible with
>"capital-saving" technical change, once value is conceived as temporally and
>not simultaneously determined.

I can see why you believe this, given the way you calculate price and
profit rate paths with technical change. As you know, I remain unconvinced
that this method is relevant to the problems I think Marx was trying to
address.

>Hence, although Marx clearly did think that
>technical change is generally of the TCC/OCC-increasing variety in capitalism,
>this cannot be taken as evidence that he thought technical change is
>"capital-using." Nor does there seem to be any other evidence that he thought
>this.

Do you take the increasing composition of capital to be purely a price
effect in Marx? I think he also, like most 19th century observers, was
extremely struck by the enormous increase in the means of production set in
motion be individual workers.

Duncan

Duncan K. Foley
Department of Economics
Barnard College
New York, NY 10027
(212)-854-3790
fax: (212)-854-8947
e-mail: dkf2@columbia.edu