> Increasing work intensity can increase productivity and reduce ULC. That is >>why corps.spend so much time trying to intensify the work process. If a >worker >tends two machines instead of just one, productivity increases and ULC >fall. As a non-economist, this seems wrong to me. Intensification means that the worker is being forced to do more work, not that she is more productive. It is as if hours had been added to the working day. Economists don't call increased output purchased through a prolongation of the working day to be a productivity gain, right? There is a deceivingly difficult attempt to differentiate intensification from productivity increases, their differing impacts on total value produced and the movement of unit values, and the rate of exploitation in Geoffrey Kay, 1979. The Economic Theory of The Working Class. London: Macmillan: 72ff. Rakesh Bhandari Ph.D. Candidate Ethnic Studies
