I think the set of *Grundrisse* inspired objections to the possibility of
total automation suggested by Simon Mohun in his entry on automation in
the Bottomore dictionary is much more reasonable. However, there are
passages from the first and third volume I would have quoted to suggest
Marx's argument about why capitalist relations of production become ill
suited to the development and the application of the highest forms of
machinery. The Grundrisse passages are to my mind much less analytically
clear. This could be due to the insufficient development of the
labor/labor power distinction there that is the pivot of the argument as
it is developed in Capital I: "The use of machinery for the exclusive
purpose of cheapening the product is limited by the requirement that less
labour must be expended in producing the machinery than is displaced by
the employment of that machinery. For the capitalist, however, there is a
further limit on its use. Instead of paying for the labour, he pays only
the value of the labour power employed; the limit to his using a machine
is therefore by the difference between the value of the machine and the
value of the labor power replaced by it." p.515
Again the labor/labor power distinction that Ajit would have us expunge
turns out as the above passage unfolds to be crucial in understanding the
limits on the capitalist choice of technique, which evidently falls within
one of his three problematics of economics.
Rakesh