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On Feb 6, 2013, at 2:34 PM, Ralph Johansen wrote:
Shane Mage wrote
On Feb 6, 2013, at 6:47 AM, Ed George wrote:
"Me: Capitalists introduce technical change because it allows them
(the innovators) to realise an above average rate of profit (at
least for a period of time). Other capitalists are forced to adopt
new techniques (through competition) to avoid being priced out of
the market. My question is: why are capitalists *necessarily* driven
to pursue surplus-profits? That they are is an observable fact; but
why are they?"
The answer is insecurity. In the competitive-capitalism model used
by Marx (well reflecting the institutional framework of that epoch's
capitalism) productivity-raising technological change allows its
adopter to undersell the others and drive the weaker ones out of the
market.
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I looked quickly at this exchange. I sense that the point ignored
which causes this circular discussion may be that the origins, as v
the operative functions and mechanisms, of the system called
capitalism are not front and center.
It is a profound methodological mistake to believe that the
historical origins of a system automatically help to explain current
behavior within the system. The origins are (in the case of
capitalism) thousands of years old and--more important--totally
outside the consciousness of the actors whose behavior is to be
explained (an originating event can remain within the active
collective unconscious of a people for a long time--as in the
historical cosmic catastrophes whose cultural echoes among the meso-
American peoples survived for millennia in the religious practice of
mass human sacrifice--but explanation of current religious practices
among the descendants of the Olmec, Maya, Toltec and Aztec peoples can
scarcely be helped by invocation of those catastrophes). There must
be some clear way in which the origins of a practice survive in the
collective unconscious of a people (as in the ritualistic words with
which Jews unconsciously reinforce the memory of such a catastrophe as
experienced in the time of Moses) before they can explain anything at
all about people's current behavior.
Shane Mage
"Thunderbolt steers all things." Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64
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