>Isn't the worldwide reserve army pretty damn big
size in the abstract does not matter; of course there are masses of people in this or that part of the world. the question is whether they can be made available where capital can exploit them. and this requires infrastructure and transportation networks and well developed and stable legal/banking/policing systems along with at least some skilled labor which can repair and use sophisticated machinery. On these grounds much of the so called third world presents no solution at all. So in terms of the availabity of such a complex, capital confronts a problem. That is, despite massive global reserve army of labor bourgeois economics in the voice of Greenspan still express this dread of a shortage of labor to valorize the immense accumulation of capital. It's a real, well grounded fear though interestingly the opposite one that Malthus had. We tend to think that bourgeois fear is one of overpopulation but as Greenspan shows it's the opposite.
and isn't it this fact that
>scares the northern labor aristocracy in their more xenophobic moments?
Actually I think if operations are confined domestically, the machine producing industries in particular could be idled as additional capital cannot be valorized due to a limited population base (US already exports about 40% of its capital goods). As already noted, a working population that is scarce in relation to capital can quickly become a working population which is surplus. The reality is then that the success of capital to expand its population base through the incorporation of Chinese labor in brutal conditions will defer the breakdown tendency, characterized by a juxtaposition of idle capital and idle workers.
It is fine if US labor wants to prevent this brutal expansion, but it should not do so on the pretext that it will save jobs (especially in the machine producing sectors). Indeed blocking access to China will accelerate the movement towards breakdown.
At present, capital needs to be able to exploit Chinese workers in enterprises that it owns and controls, and it wants those enterprises to have some of the market room taken up now by state owned enterprises. Moreover, capital wants to feel free to export its machinery that will otherwise be idled due to shorage of US labor to valorize it. The struggle with China is thus over the terms of privatization and control of enterprise.
At present, I think US labor is only threatening to close off China exports in order to get assurance that China will not prevent US companies from importing crucial inputs and repatriating profits and having an actual place in its market.
This expansion into China will indeed prevent breakdown from a shorage of labor and will further defer it by allowing a leap in the rate of exploitation which can be so high however as to squander human life and quickly compound the problem of a labor shortage.
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.
Doesn't this instability and lack of infrastructure (financial, legal and physical) and lack of governmental respect for property rights just emphasize that there indeed is a shortage of zones in which capital feels free to locate to exploit labor?
Yours, Rakesh