Re: Job flight

[Ted Winslow <egwinslow@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Doug Henwood wrote:

> 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.

This isn't so if the degree of rationality characteristic of the
mentality dominant within capitalist relations of production is less
than what would obtain within relations more consistent with the
development of rationality.  In so far as the capitalist corporate form
embodies characteristics which express the psychopathology of those
whose creature it is, it won't be as "efficient" as a form expressive
of less psychopathology.  This effect goes unnoticed where (as with
Doug's recent interviewee Leo Panitch) it's simply assumed that
capitalists are fully instrumentally rational.  Moreover, where
compensation arrangements give the stock market significant influence
over the decision making of corporate executives, the degree of
psychopathology characteristic of these decisions will be increased
because of the greater psychopathology characteristic of the mentality
dominant in financial markets.

The psychopathology can't be competed away if it's an essential feature
of the mentality generated by the internal social relations that define
capitalism.

Ted