Definition of new phase of imperialism / ( relative surplus value again) by Chris Burford 03 January 2002 21:41 UTC
At 11/12/01 13:28 -0500, you wrote: >CB: Here's my proposal for defining a qualitatively new phase of imperialism: > >1) The scientific and technological revolution especially in >transportation and communication "machinery" has resulted in Marx's >"cooperation" turning into its opposite, being overcome by machinery. The >capitalist do not have to group large numbers of workers in large >factories to maximize the extraction of relative surplus value( See Marx's >discussion of relative surplus value and the factory system in _Capital_ I). I stored this post of Charles as a usefully concise statement, and intended to come back earlier. Regarding the point above, could it be slightly rephrased in terms of the dominant way relative surplus value is extracted? ^^^^^^^^ Charles: It might be rephrased. The point is to look at developments in technology, science and the organization of production within the basic framework that Marx gives in relating these to his whole theory on capital; and to see if the changes can give a Marxist definition to empirical phenomena which bourgeois political economy has dubbed "globalization". It is Marx who gives me the pivot of co-operation/machinery. Here is the table of contents outline of Part IV of Capital: Part IV: Production of Relative Surplus Value Ch. 12: The Concept of Relative Surplus-Value Ch. 13: Co-operation Ch. 14: Division of Labour and Manufacture Ch. 15: Machinery and Modern Industry ^^^^^^^^ I guess a higher and higher proportion of relative surplus value comes from technological innovation while much of the population of the world struggles with comparatively older technology. Their labour power is thereby "morally depreciated" collectively in their states and individually. In the total economic system of the world they are continually transfering relative surplus value to the technologically advanced countries, classes, and strata. Trickle-down second-hand technology will never overcome this global unequal exchange of value, only mitigate it, and intensify the contradictions in other parts of the world. Any takers? ^^^^^^^ CB: I am focussed on the somewhat simple point that for a very long time in history and about which Marx writes, scattered manufacturing workers were brought together in closer cooperation, in larger and larger concentrations, the classic "factories" in order to increase the rate of extraction of relative surplus value. These factories were geographically also close to each other in cities. He calls it modern industry in its combination with machinery. Those are his main two defining relative surplus value extraction elements of that historical trend. ( That's why it is in a part on relative surplus value )"Globalization" seems to be the summation of a kind of long term historical reversal of this geographical concentration of industrial production. The points of production are scattered geographically relative to the previous phase. The development of machinery , one part of the earlier pivot, made possible overcoming the other part, cooperation.
