At 02:44 PM 3/20/98 -0500, Rakesh Bhandari wrote:
>Yes,it is one thing to study motion in a vacuum and then to determine the
>modification of motion by air pressure or viscosity. So Marx may have
>initially assumed a closed capitalist society, without foreign trade or
>vestigal or intermediate classes.
>
>Let us assume a closed national capitalist economy (which may not be Marx's
>assumption). If the current stock of machinery or inventories of such
>machinery has suffered moral depreciation, this may represent a
>destruction of value in an enclosed national capitalism. However if such
>morally depreciated machinery can be sold *above value* either through
>foreign direct investment (with most of the financing being domestic) or
>through licensing agreements (according to Mansfield, et al 1982, the
>average age of technologies transferred to their developing economy
>subsidiaries by US firms during the 1960-1978 period was ten years and 13
>years of technologies transferred through licensing; Mowery estimates
>imports of capital equipment embody technologies that lies somewhere
>between the age of those avaialbe through licensign and those transferred
>to wholly-owned subsidiaries), then falling profitability on past
>investments engendered by moral depreciation no longer obtains in an open
>system. What may rather come to pass is the perenial debt of those who have
>used loans to purchase equipment which is economically obsolescent in world
>market terms.
>
>But such modifications to capital's dynamics may not always be important.
>To the extent that the dynamic of capital itself implies the destruction of
>vestigal or intermediate classes, then capital's own development renders
>less effective such interference to its own laws of motion.
That is an intersting example indeed. It makes me wonder, what does it
take for ther market system to be 'open'. The initial intuition tells
"possibility of geographical or lateral expansion." But then, of course,
we witness the expanasion into different areas of social activity, first by
expanding into new social groups (e.g. the 'marketisation' of the women's
work, like child care, or the newest yuppie trend 'subsitute' mothering),
and second bly planned obsolescence. The compuer industry gives the latter
infinite possibilities, all t\waht it takes a perfectly usable product
'obsolete' is changing a few codes.
But that is not the latest word. The trading in "futures" may be
intepreted as expanding the existing markets diachronically or vertically
in time. How far can that go, Doug Henwood?
But if those speculations are correct, that means that capital will always
find new reserves for expansion, and that is really bad news for the
prediction of capitalism collapsing under the burden of its own
contradictions.
regards,
Wojtek Sokolowski
Institute for Policy Studies
Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, MD 21218
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Opinions expressed above are those of this writer only. They do not
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