Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: the profit rate & recession

[Rakesh Bhandari <rakeshb@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

oops meant capital, not labor.

> The trigger may have been a shortage of easily available, easily
> exploitable labor (along with cheap energy perhaps). This of course
> underlines that at its root the profitable expansion of CAPITAL
> depends on the exploitation of living lbor.
>
> Rakesh

Makoto Itoh:

"Following Uno's lead, I maintain that a growing demand for labour
power accompanying capital accumulation with a relatively constant
composition of capital characterizes the phase of prosperity, whereas
the production of the relative surplus population with a composition
of capital appears intensively in the phase of depression in the
process of regular business cycles...

"However, so long as the exiting fixed capitals continue to work, the
competitive introduction of new methods of production has to be
partial and limited, particularly the case where new machines are
added to existing plant. Even teh equipment already fully depreciated
tend to be utilises asa sort of free asset being more profitable than
otherwise. In this respect, as Marx point out, 'machinery is most
valuable for capital when its value=0' In so far as the existing
capitals are thus not easily abandoned in the prosperity phase, the
demand for labor power must increase absolutely, even if not strictly
proportionally to the accumulation of capital. Therefore,
accumulation of capital during prosperity, which goes on with a
relatively constant composition, absorbing progressively larger
number of workers into the produciton process, must sooner or later
cause an overaccumulation in relation to the labouring population."

Basic Theory of Capitalism, p. 300

Does this capture some of the essential features of the US boom
before its end; is this why it ended? Will it be overcome with
capitals on average of higher composition and thus with high
unemployment?

rb