>On Wed, 25 Apr 2001, Rakesh Narpat Bhandari wrote: > >> I still think the annual rate of surplus value is not a mere >> arithematical side effect, as Allin puts it; with this concept it >> can be clarified that if with a halving of production time workers >> are not successful in doubling their wages or the flow of variable >> capital, they have allowed capital to use their own product to >> exploit them at a higher rate.... > >This is not a clarification, Rakesh, it's a confusion. You're >conflating the calendar "time of production" (as in my wine example) >with the worker-hours it takes to produce stuff. But I am interested in precisely those increases in labor productivity which reduce production time. You have just fixated on an weird reduction in production time which does not result from increased labor productivity. And then you claim that since in wine making a reduction in production time clearly does not stem from increased labor productivity--though it indeed allows for a reduction in stock and thus the OCC--*any* increase in profitability from reduced production time should be ascribed to a reduced OCC. But this is just a fallacy of generalizing from the clearly idiosyncratic. > If the winery >workers' wages were doubled, when the labour-time required to produce >a bottle of wine has not changed, the rate of exploitation would be >substantially reduced (e.g. if s/v were 100% originally, it would now >be zero and there would be no profits at all). Yes but in my example wages would have to increase if the annual rate of surplus value were not to change and the rate of profit not to increase. > Marx clearly and >consistently links "the rate of exploitation" to the "real rate of >surplus value", s/v; and it's not just what Marx said -- he's right! > >Allin. Even if this is true, Marx did not refer to the annual rate of surplus value as flim flam or a mere arithmetical calculation or subjective or any less real. Moreover, he referred to the real and annual measures as both rates of surplus value, suggesting to me that the latter is only a more developed, complex index of what the former was trying to measure once turnover time is introduced--that is, the rate of surplus value is supposed to measure capital's effectiveness in appropriating a sum of surplus value from the working class in terms of the variable capital which capital had advanced. We can go over this again, but a rise in profitability from reduced production time is in my opinion better explained by understanding the increased annual rate of surplus value as heightened exploitation itself rather than as an expression of a reduced OCC. But there are obviously other options here. Rakesh
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