This gives me something to think about.
I have one question, understanding that
I haven't fully digested all you say. I interject.
Jim says,
Orthodox Marxism (like Shaikh) is rather too influenced by the experiences of the seventies when explaining the 'profit squeeze' was the important battle against revisionism. Over-emphasising the rate of profit (and its tendential fall) as the absolute indicator of capital's regressive tendencies, led to a one-sided reading of Marx' theory of accumulation and crisis. Most pointedly the false prognosis that a rising rate of profit equals a positive development.
The point is that whereas in the seventies a falling rate of profit expressed the barrier of overaccumulation, the economic conditions we inherit from that period are shaped by a decade or more of low growth.
In fact today's historically high surpluses are more indicative of a failure to invest and to revolutionise the means of production. There are some signs of investment in computer technology in the US, but this has been pointedly unimpressive in its effect on output. More to the point there has been no substantial reorganisation of production. That in itself means that more of the surplus is redirected towards stock- market speculation or unproductive consumption.
Chas. - I'm not sure of your time frames, but hasn't
there been a significant restructuring of the means of production in the 80's. I even think it may be so fundamental as a reverse COOPERATION, as discussed by Marx in Capital. In other words, cooperation and mechanization were the main processes by which Marx showed the industrial technological revolution qualitaitively increased surplus value. With the revolution in transportation and communication of our times the capitalists, through long distant rapid and precise commercial transport, no longer need the old cooperation ( a lot of workers concentrated in one place; classic factory) to generate surplus value. Plus, the concentration of workers has always been a political problem. Thus, the territorial dispersal of the points of production , plantclosings and outsourcing from old industrial center cities and regions, smaller plants DO constitute a "substantial reorganization of production, " I'd even say a revolution in a dialectical sense of a qualitative change, as it reverses one of the defining aspects of the organization of production in capitalism at its ascent to prevailence.
Jim- Engels described a similar situation in a letter to Bebel in 28 October 1885
'by choosing to invest his money in this way rather than in new industrial undertakings the money capitalist is admitting how rotten the whole business looks to him. And this fear of new investments and old enterprises, which had already manifested itself in the crisis of 1867, is the main reason why things are not bought to an acute crisis.'
--
Charles Brown