Ricardo, not Marx, reasoned that a machine, to be introduced, must cost less than the workers it is designed to replace. But Marx had different system of calculation: A machine replaces labor power power but labor power is than than value it creates. The machine's money value represents all the labor in its production, in no matter what proportion it represented wages and surplus value. Hence the real economy of a machine is the difference between its value and only the labor-power it replaces, not the total value added by labor. Dead labor is less, then, than the living labor it replaces. Since the difference is computed as between the cost of the machinery and merely of the labor power it replaces, it follows that where labor power costs little it may not pay to buy any machinery. And there is surely no shortage of little cost labor today.
On Marx's own premises as spelled out in Kapital I, capitalist production will fetter great advances in mechanization and the utilization of the full technical knowledge of mankind.
Capital will endlessly revisit and magnify the horrors of nineteenth century Manchester.
The Krisis group seems to have made an elementary accounting error. There would have to be a different theoretical basis for a collapse theory.
Yours, Abu Hartal
_________________________________________________________________ Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today it's FREE! http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/