Re: [Marxism] Not 'RoP' but '% of total profits' - duh. Re: USprofits collapse in 4th qtr

["S. Artesian" <sartesian@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Greg,


What you said was;

"As a side note, shouldn't we reconsider the stageist and developmentalist 
framework presupposed above? Isn't it high time to reconceptualize what it 
means to be an advanced society?
Given the ecological crisis, having two-thirds of the population of China 
engaged in sustainable agriculture is not necessarily a bad thing, while we 
here in the USA could use many more organic farms than exist currently. 
Having so much of the population alienated from the land puts us at a 
distinct disadvantage"
_______________

You don't get 2/3 of the population engaged in agriculture especially where 
total land under cultivation is actually less than that area in the US 
without avg plot size being extremenly small, and with agricultural labor 
being extremely unproductive.  We are after all and first and foremost 
defining productivity on the basis of output per unit of labor input.

Where exactly are yields falling per labor unit input in the "modern" system 
of agriculture?  Certainly the process is wasteful, destructive, produces 
all sorts of damage, but where are outputs per unit labor input falling?

The history of  smaller parcels of worked land in China having nothing to do 
with neglect,  very little to do with rich vs. poor landholding patterns, 
and almost nothing to do with imperialist penetration or "inhibition" of 
China and China's development.

I strongly recommend the works of Philip C.C. Huang -- The Peasant Family 
and Rural Devellopment in the Yangzi Delta 1350-1988, and The Peasant 
Economy and Social Change in North China, to get a grasp of the origins and 
repercussions of what he calls  agricultural involution.

I am not arguing against utilizing organic methods in cultivation.  I am 
absolutely arguing against  this notion that having more and more people 
tethered to subsistence, or "subsistence +" production is or ever can be a 
basis for communism, or that "much of the population alienated from the land 
puts us at a distinct disadvantage."

And who ever advocated Cuba returning to the agricultural practices and 
policies of the failed fSU?  The policies and practices didn't work in the 
fSU- and the major reason was because of the poor agricultural productivity 
inherent in its organization. Like I said, throughout the 1980s, 33% [I 
think} of the population was tethered to agriculture.   But you know what 
else we should never want to go back to?  The romantic notions about 
subsistence farming and the efficacy of its agriculture and the romantic 
notions where rural life is Edenesque.



----- Original Message ----- 
From: <sabocat59@xxxxxxx>
To: <sartesian@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, March 29, 2009 11:03 AM
Subject: Re: [Marxism] Not 'RoP' but '% of total profits' - duh. Re: 
USprofits collapse in 4th qtr


> 


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