On 2010-08-16, at 10:22 PM, Doug Henwood wrote:
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> On Aug 16, 2010, at 10:15 PM, Marv Gandall wrote:
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>> My understanding is profits have been soaring on both the manufacturing and service side
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> Yup. Doesn't Adam Smith have a line about how profits are highest in countries speeding most rapidly towards ruin?
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This also squares with David Harvey's and perhaps your own view that cheaper inputs and expanding markets can sustain high rates of profit, but only temporarily. But temporary can also be a very long time, as we've learned. Class consciousness and collective organization and action declined apace with the unionized manufacturing sector, so there's no reason to suppose, assuming capitalism survives its current dangerous crisis, that the accelerated exploitation of the workforce can't continue, or that US - European - and Japanese-based corporations won't be able to shift the bulk of their production and sales to the vast new labour and consumer markets opening up overseas. But for wage earners in the more developed capitalist economies, it certainly does look like we are speeding most rapidly towards ruin one way or the other.