[lbo-talk] Re: Ok, I Need Some Education

[Michael Dawson -PSU]

You have it figured out.  If you look back to when the big corporation was
legalized in the U.S. (late 1800s), you find all the aspiring big
capitalists (e.g., Thomas Alva Edison) bitching about competition and free
markets, and clamoring for a bigness antidote.  They got it, and ever since
then, their firms have often been able to raise the rate of exploitation as
fast or faster than the rate of growth of their labor, machinery, raw
materials, and overhead costs.

Nobody but orthodox (in the bad sense) Marxist economists give a fat rat's
ass about Marx's theory of rates of profit, which, as Baran and Sweezy
argued, is outdated and analytically unhelpful.  Investors and corporate
managers care about productivity, cost control, marketing, and, ultimately,
ROI.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "BklynMagus" <magcomm at ix.netcom.com>
To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org>
Sent: Tuesday, March 02, 2004 9:34 AM
Subject: [lbo-talk] Re: Ok, I Need Some Education


> Dear List:
>
> I need some help with this concept.  If you want to post to me offlist
instead of using up quota that is cool.
>
> > This perspective, outlined in Baran and Sweezy's Monopoly Capital,
argued that Marx's "law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall" was
no longer directly applicable to the monopoly capitalist economy that
emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century, and had to be replaced by
a "law of the tendency of surplus to rise"-where surplus was defined as the
difference between the wages of production workers and total value added.
>
> Ok, my understanding (don't laugh if I make too many mistakes or at my
econ 101 approach) -- that the more value I add as a worker to a product,
the better for the owner.  So he is constantly trying to figure out how to
get more value out of me without increasing my wages/benefits.  Like the new
hires at the supermarkets who will get lower starting salaries.
>
> Now, in monopolistic capitalist systems, the tendency is for the owners to
keep having more and more value added to a product without facing an
equivalent rise in wage/benefits for the workers who are making that value
in the first place.  Monopolies help in that workers have fewer options of
where to work and there will not be wage/benefit competition for workers.
>
> Unrestricted free markets hurt since producers will keep trying to
undercut each other and will, therefore, offer lower wages/benefits to keep
costs down.  Eventually the free market will have losers and the winners who
are left will tend to monopoly.
>
> Brian Dauth
> Queer Buddhist Resister
>
>
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