Looking through the contribution by Sally it struck me that there was
a danger of attributing to technical change a growth in unemployment
that is more likely to be due to quite other causes.
The developement of new technology has been an unvarying feature of
capitalism for a least two centuries. This has taken hold successively
of new branches of production, revolutionised them and greatly increased
the productivity of labour. In the process some branches of production
have declined but others have expanded. Whilst there has always been
a reserve army of labour the size of this has ebbed and flowed with
the tides of capital accumulation. Were technical change a significant
cause of unemployment we would expect to see lonng term secular declines
in employment on the scale of centuries, which clearly has not been the
case.
Instead with each cycle of capital accumulation the employed proletarian
population is higher than the last. This is just as true now as it
ever was. What has changed is the global distribution of the proletariat,
away from Europe and North America towards Asia and Latin America.
This is becausem capital has moved towards the areas with the largest reserve
armies of labour - newly proletarianised rural populations. In such
countries the historical element of the value of labour power is conditioned
by the low standards of living available in peasant agriculture.
If this is the primary cause of the growing reserve armies in the former
metropolitan areas, then the only way in which a long term tendancy to
cause local unemployment can be halted is by these economies being
withdrawn from the circuit of international capital. This is possible
in two broad configurations:
1) The establishment of socialist economies in these areas.
2) As a reformist alternative, the introduction of strict controls on the
movement of capital probably combined with restrictions on international
trade. These are the sort of measures undertaken by British Labour
governments after the last world war.
In both cases there would also be some greater of lesser leveling of incomes.
I would suggest that were either of these courses followed, it would soon
become apparent that shortages of labour rather than superfluity of it
were the principle obstacle to economic development.
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Paul Cockshott , WPS, PO Box 1125, Glasgow, G44 5UF
Phone: 041 637 2927 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
