> On Fri, Apr 10, 2009 at 11:05 AM, Philip Pilkington
> <pilkingtonphil at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >
> > I'd love to read the article, please send it to me. But I still remain a
> > little sceptical that the steel industry stayed perfectly profitable
> while
> > subjecting themselves to the forces of global competition. I mean I call
> to
> > mind here the farming industry. An industry which produces "raw goods"
> > perfectly well but needs government subsidies to remain profitable within
> > the West. Competition in the raw goods section should, by all accounts,
> > erode profitability... if, that is, competition is allowed free reign and
> if
> > competition actually functions properly...
>
> Sure, sending offlist. I can send it to anyone else who's interested
> too; email me. An extract from the introduction below.
>
> One more thing: A point Dumenil and Levy are always making against
> Brenner is that there's a big problem involved in arguing that a
> _sectoral_ decline in the profit rate, e.g., in the manufacturing
> sector, or part thereof, arising from conditions specific to that
> sector, can cause a general decline. The problem is that the sector's
> outputs are always someone else's inputs, so what's bad news for
> manufacturing producers is good news for those industries that use
> manufactures as inputs, and/or for real wages.
No offence, but you're considering this from the point of view of an actual, tangible "value" rate. If value is completely relative (i.e. determined contingently) then this argument doesn't work. Output and input merge into each other... etc...
But, okay, let's give those that produce "inputs" a lead (nonsense, because they're tied into the economy...)... anyway. They're producing inputs... let's say "copper"... where is it going? Its going into a mass production process which is worldwide. People don't give a rat's ass where they're buying their raw material from... this is secondary. Competition kicks in when this "copper" is used along with workers. What happens? Well, anyone can buy copper and workers, so... competition... presumably...
> Since Brenner rejects
> both a wage-squeeze and declining _technical_ capital productivity,
> the investment overhang, or zombie inefficient capital stock hanging
> in there and still being counted in the profit rate's denominator, is
> the only out he has left, so it's left to carry a huge explanatory
> burden. The point of the Fine et al article is to demonstrate that
> zombie inefficient capital stock doesn't, in reality, hang in there
> that long.
Well, I haven't read it... and I will... but Brenner seems convincing. He puts forward something I see every day... which is scary, I'll grant... but its not so abstract!