You wrote: As I said, US labor cannot seriously want to block China out for reasons of employment since its best bet to avoid overproduction of capital, i.e. juxtaposition of idle capital and idle workers as Marx puts it, is availability of Chinese labor so as to expand the base of valorization which has become shrunken in relation to the huge mass of capital that is being accumulated.
And earlier you wrote: Yes, Gspan is trying to avoid a coming crisis of underproduction of surplus value, imperfect valorization of that mountain of capital. He is openly concerned whether this rapid rate of accumulation which given some upward pressure on OCC means enormous increase in amount of constant capital needs to be slowed down before that swollen mass of accumulated machinery and productive capacity will be idled due to shortage of workers. Accumulation founders not on lack of markets but underproduction of surplus value whether due to small base of valorization and/or insufficient rate of exploitation. Capital's crises are overcome first and foremost in the realm of production.
=========== 1st, if, globally, there is no shortage of workers even leaving China out of the equation [I'll leave aside for the moment skills levels and the social bootstrapping needed to position them in the various technology circuits/sectors], then isn't the problem of valorization showing up first and foremost in the realm of investment decision making? That is, assuming M - C{(MP, LP)...(P)...C' - M'}= M +*M (where * signifies surplus value), isn't finance capital "constipated" at the move from M to C? And isn't this fact currently independent, in the aggregate, from labor's ability to withhold LP in order to bid wages up? Profit levels don't seem hampered by lack of exploitation [see JBF's latest in MR]. So globally the valorization problem is the health of banks around the globe and an undersupply of new capitalists willing to start up new firms/sectors which would then go on to hire workers. The big established corps. don't need more workers sufficient to drive down the global unemployment rate by any statistically significant amount, so maybe it's a shortage of entrepreneurs thats the problem, no? Perhaps the drive to displace workers with labor saving technology has reached the point of diminishing returns in a lot of sectors; lean and mean has been successful beyond capital's wildest dreams so far in established industries. It seems it's the "new" sectors where valorization problems based on lack of available LP is a problem; yet globally that's not a very big sector of the world market. Microsoft is a mouse compared to GM.
2nd, the China issue really raises the paradox of whether US corps. want to invest in China to facilitate it's internal development or just lease/exploit say, a third of the populace for export platforms so as to keep per unit costs low on intermediate goods and consumer goods headed here. The tariff escalation strategies that the US has used to devastating effect around the world could hamper China's ruling class' ability to modernize China's industrial base, especially if through IPR's the Corps. could control tech. transfer process [which the WTO effectively allows them to do]. Whether the Chinese ruling class cares about their citizenry more than it's own reproduction inclines me towards the export platform model; for US capital it's a no brainer. The question then becomes just how far into the 21st century the rest of the planet' peoples will put up with producing for US consumers while immiseration deepens globally and ecosystems buckle under the strain.
>From my informal survey of union rank and file out here in Seattle, they're
pretty disgusted with the way the AFL-CIA "leadership" is handling the China
issue.
Let China in and the WTO'll 'nix itself via paralysis, labor/green standards or not, is my current guess. PMFN jawboning is empty ritual. Finance capital is shedding the Westphalian model, workers should too...
Ian