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Artesian, I read your piece on the current economic "downturn" in insurgent notes (http://insurgentnotes.com/2010/06/paper-torches/ ) a few weeks ago. An extremely good analysis, IMHO. In the first part of your article, you show how gross corporate investment has been increasing because of increased capital consumption, while net investment has been decreasing. You thus show a very real difference between the 1993-2000 recovery and the 2003-2007 "recovery". I didn't bother to take a look at the figures from the BEA, but could you just reference the most important tables (non-residential real investment and return on investment/corporate profit), if you don't mind that is. In your article, you use the declining ratio of "added value" (surplus value) to total value of production. That is s/c + v + s, which is not the same as the usual s/c + v ratio ("profits before taxes"). Anyway, your year by year (starting in 1995) exploration of the contradictions in US manufacturing production is really interesting, better actually than the "Monthly Review"'s insistence on diminishing real purchasing power compared to productivity. Of course, you both agree on the fact that "financialization" is a natural outcome of the drying up of manufacturing profits. And you remind us that any decrease in the rate of growth, is in fact a delay in the realization of capital, and thus sharpens the contradictions inherent in the commodity/money mode of production. Your last part is also very interesting : you show that the commodity fetishism of capitalist production inevitably ends up creating pretend/"as if" financial commodities that no longer bear any link to the real world (investment vehicles). This "character mask" grip of the commodity form on less and less tangible value (as the speed of capital circulation increases) is a reminder of the direction in which the advanced commodity mode of production is taking us. Again, better than what the "Monthly Review" has produced. ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
