The author, David Harvey, seems to know a lot about old Karl.
From the introduction to "LEFT OUT: David Harvey on Marx, Capital, and the Madness of Economic Reason" at http://davidharvey.org/
...Harvey currently works as distinguished professor of anthropology and geography at CUNY, where he has been teaching Marx’s “Capital: Critique of Political Economy” for more than four decades. His course on Marx’s Capital has been downloaded by over two million people internationally since appearing online in 2008.
Harvey is also a famous author of several bestselling books, including The Enigma of Capital, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, 17 Contradictions and the End of Capitalism, and many more.
As Harvey argues in our interview, most people who read Capital often stop after the 1,152 pages of Volume I, which is very problematic if you want to understand the workings of capital as a totality.
His latest book, Marx, Capital and the Madness of Economic Reason (out today), makes the core of Karl Marx’s thinking in the three volumes of Capital clear and accessible for the lay reader, without compromising their depth and complexity.
Marx’s trilogy concerns the circulation of capital: volume I, how labour increases the value of capital, which he called valorisation; volume II, on the realisation of this value, by selling it and turning it into money or credit; and volume III, on what happens to the value next in processes of distribution...
Capitalism and the value of technology [excerpt]
Technology has undoubtedly changed how the economy operates, from the steam engine to the smartphone. But are machines a legitimate source of value in a capitalist society? In the following excerpt from Marx, Capital, and the Madness of Economic Reason, David Harvey delves into Marx’s Capital to better understand the value of man and machinery in a technology-dependent world.
The question of technology is foundational for understanding the dynamics of capital in motion. Marx is one of the most incisive and prescient commentators on this topic. This is not to say his analyses are complete or can pass unchallenged. Technology in combination with science is a major focus throughout Volume 1 of Capital but is held constant in Volume 2. In Volume 3 he deals with some of the consequences of technological change for profits and rents along with occasional comments on certain technological and organizational features of financial intermediation and monetary circulation. Marx’s main focus in Capital is on the role of technology and science in relation to the valorisation of capital and the production of commodities. In the Grundrisse he adopts a more expansive stance and provides intense, sometimes speculative and prescient commentaries on technological issues. But there is nothing substantial in his works about the technologies of realisation and circulation (apart from transport) or of social reproduction (including the reproduction of labour power) and the technologies of distribution are not systematically scrutinised either. The upshot is a rather one-sided view of technological and organisational change.
But Marx had good reason to take this position. Technical and organisational changes occur in the history of human societies all over the place and for all sorts of reasons affecting all sorts of activities. It sometimes seems that the technical and organisational ingenuity of human beings knows no bounds. Some of the new techniques and organisational forms last and some of them do not. Ancient China had a long history of remarkable technical and organisational innovations none of which were widely adopted or lasted. Only under capitalism do we find a systematic and powerful force for technological and organisational dynamism that is sustained and cumulative in its effects. This force, Marx believes, is concentrated at the moment of valorisation for very particular reasons. It is shaped by the perpetual search under capitalism for relative surplus value.
Capitalists in competition with each other sell their commodities at a social average price. Those that have a superior technology or organisational form in production gain excess profits (relative surplus values) because they produce at a lower individual cost of production and sell at the social average. Conversely, those with inferior technology or organisational form attain lower profits or losses and are either driven out of business or are forced to adopt the new methods. The advantaged producers have an incentive to adopt even better methods to preserve their market share and their excess profits. The fiercer the competition the more leapfrogging innovations are likely to occur as one firm jumps ahead and others catch up or go even beyond the technological mix and the organisational form that reflect the social average. The forces shaping the labour process at the point of valorisation push incessantly towards raising the productivity of labour power. As the productivity of labour rises so the value of individual commodities falls. If wage goods become cheaper then the value of labour power (assuming a fixed physical standard of living) declines, leaving more surplus value for capital. All capitalists stand to gain higher profits (more relative surplus value) from rising labour productivity in the production of wage goods. Increasing relative surplus value sometimes goes hand in hand with a rising physical standard of living of labour. It all depends on the strength of productivity gains and how the benefits from increasing productivity are distributed between capital and labour. A small part of the relative surplus value is turned back to labour so they can acquire more use values, while most of it goes to capital. This depends on the state of class struggle (unions often negotiate productivity sharing clauses in contracts). The drive to produce relative surplus value underpins the incessant pressure towards technological and organizational changes in production....MORE
