{In response to the quote I myself supplied -
>>Capital Vol 1 Chap 15 Machinery and Modern Industry, Section 3b
>>Prolongation of Working Day.
>
>>Machinery produces relative surplus-value; not only by directly
>>depreciating the value of labour-power, and by indirectly cheapening the
>>same through cheapening the commodities that enter into its reproduction,
>>but also, when it is first introduced sporadically into an industry, by
>>converting the labour employed by the owner of that machinery, into labour
>>of a higher degree and greater efficacy, by raising the social value of the
>>article produced above its individual value, and thus enabling the
>>capitalist to replace the value of a day's labour-power by a smaller
>>portion of the value of a day's product. During this transition period,
>>when the use of machinery is a sort of monopoly, the profits are therefore
>>exceptional, and the capitalist endeavours to exploit thoroughly "the sunny
>>time of this his first love," by prolonging the working-day as much as
>>possible. The magnitude of the profit whets his appetite for more profit.
>><<<
>>
>>Chris Burford
- and continued ....]
>>Useful references to Marx's analysis of free trade.
>
>Chris (B), I agree that this is a useful reference since Marxists seem to
>have forgotten what Marx claims should never be forgotten:
>
>"One other thing must never be forgotten, namely, that, just as everything
>has become a monopoly, there are also nowadays some branches of industry
>which dominate all the others, and secure to the nations which most largely
>cultivate them the command of the world market."
>
>Now this raises the problem of how such industries can be isolated.
Like me, I see Rakesh as a zealot for analysing particular texts and meanings. I agree with the series of questions Rakesh puts illustrating the problem of "isolating" such semi-monopolies or quasi-monopolies.
Certainly "the truth is always concrete", and "the devil lies in the detail".
I think as Rakesh really illustrates the problem arises if we pose the question this way - how to "isolate" such industries. Now everything is connected with everything else, and it is often helpful to remind ourselves how rigorous Marx's method of abstraction is. He abstracts an inherent process in pure culture, as it were, but always conscious of the fact that it can only exist concretely in impure culture.
It is therefore a possibility or a trend. It may still nevertheless be real and true.
Indeed in a probabilistic universe in which random events occur all the time from the quantum level up, laws can only be probabilities and trends.
This issue of semi-monopolies on a world scale as well as within one country or one sector, fits with a model of the law of value operating as a sort of *field* which, like the gravitational field, varies in strength in different circumstances, different locations, and different contexts depending on the presences of other masses in the vicinity.
The field of value that exists around the world is therefore a complex irregular structure of troughs and peaks, valleys, watersheds, rivulets and broad estuaries. As with the matrix of gravitational fields, the presence of a large mass distorts the field around it.
The enormous mass of *relative* semi-monopolistic advantages in the means of production under the capitalist mode of production in the USA, independently of the moral qualities of its citizens, creates a great distortion in the flow of value around the world.
The USA is not yet a black hole from which no value comes out in return, (though some black holes radiate energy around their poles merely from the great heat generated in the vortex of matter falling into it) but the flow of value into the USA and that out, is persistently unequal. This is just another illustration of the uneven accumulation of capital.
All this is "true" even though the relative semi-monopolies are temporary, constantly shifting and impossible to isolate completely as in a pure culture.
This is a matter of process and the USA having the momentum to continue to keep ahead perhaps only five or ten percent of its nearest rivals, in these relative advantages.
So I think as Rakesh implies, a serious examination of whether we can isolate relative monopolies must conclude that we cannot.
Emprical data will therefore have to be gathered in a continuous form which can show irregularities and tendencies to semi-monopoly. Possibly computerised models could be simulated and compared with empirical data.
Rakesh goes on to refer to the passage I quoted from Marx. It is only incidentally in the course of this passage that Marx refers to "a sort of monopoly", which was my purpose for quoting it.
The context of course is in Marx's chapter on the intensification of the working day for the worker, rather than the relative advantage an entrepreneur gets in capturing an unequal portion of the total surplus value of the society - which is another way of looking at it.
Christian indicates the need for a broader context to integrate the two perspectives:
>So do you think "lengthen the working day" means move production to places
>around the globe so that somewhere there is always surplus value being
>generated? Or is this another way of talking about longer single-time-zone
>days?
>
>Christian
Rakesh comments:-
>Marx's point that greater technological advance and productivity will
>actually encourage capital paradoxically to lengthen the working day so as
>to fully enjoy "this sunny day of his first love"...well, it sounds to me
>like my America, both the most advanced technologically and socially
>regressive of the leading capitalist nations.
>
>Yours, Rakesh
Well I agree. It is paradoxical *and* importantly scientific to say that the USA is both the recipient of good fortune through the unequal accumulation of capital on a world scale, and a victim. The intensification of work occurs not only in the work place but after it. Consider only computers. To stay employable workers have to be prepared to use more and more complex computer systems. Even while some programmes are being made safer from human error, still more absorb greater and greater attention from the worker.
And the length of the working day - the citizens of the USA have the fortune and the misfortune to enjoy local free telephone calls, so a majority are now connected to the internet. In Britain only 2/5 are so far, but this is about to change.
The internet can make you ill, destroy your local social networks at the expense of your relationships with people you do not know and do not see. People get irritable and depressed. Relationships and families break up.
But it is not just a moral failing or an act of stupidity. The economic base determines consciousness (tends to). We all feel the pressure to keep up - to learn, as I think I have to this weekend an upgraded version of Bill Gates's word processor software, to keep literate and to interact at work, where, privileged though I am, I need to type draft reports myself.
The intensification of labour and the extension of the working day that Marx describes is of course voluntary in the sense that the worker is free *not* to continue to offer their labour power competitively in the labour market.
But as far as this exchange is concerned I think both Rakesh and I agree that Marx's passing comments about *sorts* of monopolies is congruent with his wider perspectives and the need to retain that in our outlook on the global economy in identifying process of unequal exchange.
Chris Burford
London