Isn't the worldwide reserve army pretty damn big and isn't it this fact that scares the northern labor aristocracy in their more xenophobic moments? It would seem that Capital is more worried about the excessive risk and uncertainty surrounding potentially profitable "overseas" outlets for investment due to fragile banks, corrupt governments etc. especially if per unit labor costs there can be rather easily controlled. Once all that "foreign" and US capital sees opportunity for greater rates of return in the peripheries then we'll see some interesting things happen here in the US.
Ian
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> [mailto:owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com]On Behalf Of Rakesh Bhandari
> Sent: Thursday, April 06, 2000 5:17 PM
> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> Subject: Corrected: Greenspan IQ query
>
>
> I don't know how that last message got sent off. This is the version which
> I meant to send. It's pretty much the same.
> _____________
>
> Just to clarify. Even assuming that unit labor costs were not to rise as
> the entire US based industrial reserve army of labor is called
> into action,
> capital still confronts a looming labor shortage due to the immensity of
> the capital that is being accumulated--Greenspan is only being
> honest here.
>
> This has given a special virulence to the drive to open up abroad zones of
> exploitation to which constant capital that would otherwise build up as
> excess capacity due to a domestic labor shortage can be exported and
> valorized--I think this is the most important context in which the China
> question should be considered.
>
> Of course the shameless exploitation of human labor there will only result
> in a squandering of human life that will intensify the shortage of labor.
>
> Now if unit labor costs do rise sharply in the US as reserve army of labor
> is further exhausted, this will exacerbate the shortage of labor which can
> be exploited at an adequate rate and only add to the virulence of
> imperialist politics aimed at overcoming the labor shortage
> (tight monetary
> policy is no real solution to this problem; its only aim can be to slow
> down the rate of accumulation until capital actually solves the problem of
> making available to itself sufficiently exploitable labor).
>
> I only emphasize again that the effective cause of possible crisis
> here--as Greenspan clearly recognizes-- is not underconsumption or
> realization difficulties (Marx was not an underconsumptionist) but
> difficulties in exploitability in that hidden abode of production.
>
> Yours, Rakesh
>
>