Re: (OPE-L) Re: Rising organic composition

[Paul Cockshott <wpc@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

gerald_a_levy wrote:

Paul C wrote on  Friday, May 30:

> I dont claim any expertise on demographics, but it is fairly evident
> that once a country becomes fully industrialised the birth rate falls
> dramatically.
> Reasons for this will be many, the dissolution of patriarchal economic
> relations and the participation of women in the labour market, the
> availability of contraception on a general basis, the replacement
> of filial piety by state pensions and mutual funds. Whatever the
> detailed causes, the fact remains that a couple of generations after
> industrialisation capitalist countries seem dependent on immigration
> to ensure population growth.

With the possible exception of increasing participation of women in
the labour market, there is no reason to think that any of the above
developments are *necessary* consequences of the development of
capitalism.  So, if your explanation for population change ultimately
rests on accidental or historically contingent reasons, then your
explanation for why the OCC rises and the rate of profit will fall
also becomes subject to historical accident and contingency.  Since
you also, on May 20, refer to how this contradiction will "seal its fate",
your explanation implies that whether the fate of capitalism will be
"sealed" depends on whether the contingencies that you have suggested
re population change actually develop as you anticipate.

1. Demographic transition or conversion is a well attested empirical
     phenomenon.  What contrary instances
can you come up with.

2. My explanation of it is certainly not complete, but all of the features
    that I mention are common place attributes of capitalist development.
    What does it mean to say that they are not *necessary* consequences,
    other than that we have not yet come up with an understanding of
    the causal process generating them. This reflects our ignorance
    more than anything else.
 

 

In solidarity, Jerry

-- 
Paul Cockshott
Dept Computing Science
University of Glasgow



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