>But you make an important point. Technological improvements allow for a
>virtual "limitess" expansion of surplus value, subject only to capital's
>ability to realize it in the exchange process (in some form or another--not
>simply profits, of course). This seems to be one thing Rakesh has been
>missing in the discussion so far. Surplus value is not limited by labor time.
Implicitly Brenner makes the same point as Roger. Both seem to think the ability to realize profits (or to mark up prices in a Smithean fasion) in the exchange process is fundamentally constrained by some factor--for Brenner, it's the magnitude of international competition. At this econ conference in Boston, Shaikh made the crucial point that Brenner's implicit theory of profit is rather murky and almost surely not a Marxian one.
Now there is this fascinating suggestion by Max Adler from 1933:
"It may be asked what becomes of Marx's theory of surplus vlaue when human labour power, from the exploitation of which surplus value arises, becomes superfluous in tis way, and the process of production can be carried on with a steadily diminishing number of workers. Theoretically surplus value should diminish, as indeed it does, relatively speaking, in accordance with the law of the declining rate of profit, although this is compensated by an absolute increase in the mass of surplus value. But this is only the case when the number of employed workers is increasing. When their numbers decline profit is transformed more frequently into what is always been in a disguised form, NAMELY A GAIN WHICH IS EXTRACTED BY FORCE..." In Austro Marxism, ed. Tom Bottomore, p. 242
What could this mean? Any suggestions?
>
>I believe there has in fact been a tremendous expansion of surplus value
>since WWII, when carefully measured, relative to the other output
>shares--constant and variable capital.
Of course that is true. The mass of surplus value rises though the rate of profit on ever larger investments tends to fall. As Kevin Brien notes in Marx, Reason and the Art of Freedom, Baran and Sweezy seem to have taken a rising mass of surplus value as proof of a declining rate of profit.
>This pool of "potential profits" means that the financial bubble everyone
>has been talking about has a larger foundation than is often thought.
"Profits" that cannot be invested in production profitably or that are insufficient vis a vis min capital requirements become excess capital that contribute to that financial bubble.
>the form of wages in excess of v. When I have more time I want to come back
>to this point about the struggle over the distribution of realized surplus
>value, because I think it is the heart of the matter.
Why is it the heart of the matter? Because excess surplus value is irrationally disposed? Because its upward redistribution generates crises of underconsumption?
>Communism can be defined as the abolition of private property *in the means
>of production* (only). That, I think, is synonymous with elimination of the
>value form.
This is no simple argument. Those who have disagreed with you include Raya Dunayevskaya The Marxist Humanist Theory of State Capitalism and Moishe Postone Time, Labor and Social Domination.
Yours, Rakesh