Compared to what? It's hard to argue with its capacity to
grow,
innovate, and produce cheaper commodities over the centuries - at a high social and ecological cost, for sure, but I don't think you can win the "efficiency" argument from the left. It has to be on other grounds. ________________
Sympathetic we may be to Joanna's critique, but
Henwood has hit on something important. But I think he's swung a little
late.
It's not so much that capital is efficient, more
efficient, or most efficient, or less efficient-- it is simply that efficiency
and non-efficiency, i.e. waste, are products and by-products, of profit.
So the drive to reduce costs of production drives capital to the
apparent bottom line of efficiency, but the need to realize the
expropriated surplus value drives it to highest levels of waste and
inefficiency.
So the critique isn't contained in some
imagined measure of higher efficiency but in the terms of capitalist production
itself-- in terms of profit and the realization thereof, in terms of the
organization of labor to develop productive forces, and the ability of the
property relations to sustain that development.
Carroll Cox may not agree, but those are
indeed the categories of Marx's critique
dms
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