Political Econ of Growth. Paul A. Baran

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СКАЧАТЬ distinction between productive and unproductive labor has seriously contributed to the self-emasculation of modern economics. Committing its protagonists to treat as productive all activities in capitalist society that earn a monetary reward, the criterion of market approval and market valuation that might have at least a claim to consistency under conditions of pure capitalism becomes a source of serious troubles when what has to be dealt with is a society permeated with feudal remnants. Adherence to the market valuation principle under such circumstances forces economists either into the somewhat ludicrous position of having to criticize the existing state of affairs from the unhistorical and unrealistic standpoint of Mises, Hayek, Knight, and others of that school, or into the uncomfortable necessity to twist and bend the “principle” by claiming usefulness and essentiality for various non marketed activities in view of their “indirect” contribution to marketable output or in view of their essentiality for the preservation and functioning of the capitalist system as a whole.

      ¹² J. A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (New York, 1950), p. 198.

      ¹³ Marx, Grundrisse der Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie (Rohentwurf) (Berlin, 1953), p. 432.

      ¹⁴ Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program, in Marx and Engels, Selected Works (Moscow, 1949–1950), Vol. II. pp. 20 ff.

      ¹⁵ Incidentally, in a rationally planned economy there is no need for excess capacity to exist for any length of time even in declining industries, that is, in industries facing a shrinkage of demand for their products. Timely conversions of such capacities to the production of other outputs could reduce such excess capacity to a minimum.

      ¹⁶ America’s Capacity to Produce and America’s Capacity to Consume (Washington, 1934). For an excellent summary of this study, cf. J. Steindl, Maturity and Stagnation in American Capitalism (Oxford, 1952), pp. 4 ff., from which some sentences in the text above have been borrowed.

      ¹⁷ America’s Capacity to Produce and America’s Capacity to Consume (Washington, 1934), p. 31.

      ¹⁸ Ibid.

      ¹⁹ Lewis H. Robb, “Industrial Capacity and Its Utilization,” Science & Society (Fall 1953), pp. 318–325.

      ²⁰ “While even under emergency conditions only a relatively small part of this type of potential economic surplus is actually tapped, what has been accomplished on occasions suffices to indicate at least the dimensions of the problem involved. The wartime increase in output that resulted merely from concentration of production in large-scale plants, from the elimination of the most flagrant cases of duplication, cross-hauling, and inefficiency, was most impressive in the United States as well as in Great Britain and Germany.

      ²¹ Not that Babbitt—the fittest participant in the “rugged” competitive struggle for survival—who is idolized by some liberal economists and some old-fashioned Chambers of Commerce is a more attractive human specimen than the “modern” man described in David Riesman’s The Lonely Crowd, in C. Wright Mills’ White Collar: The American Middle Classes, in T. K. Quinn’s Giant Business. There indeed would be little room for confidence in the future of the human race if these two types were the only ones to choose from.

      ²² “We know that under international cartel agreements, patents frequently served not as an incentive to investment but rather as a device for limiting production, establishing restricted market areas, limiting the rate of technical advancement, fixing prices, etc. We know that the prewar Standard Oil-I.G. Farben marriage seriously retarded the development of a synthetic rubber industry in the United States. We know that Standard’s concessions to Farben were, in large part, motivated by a desire to suppress the synthetic gasoline patents outside of Germany. We know that Du Pont’s arrangements with I.C.I. resulted in a division of world markets rather than a dynamic, competitive development of these markets.… Investigations revealed … that when Du Pont developed a pigment which could be utilized either in paints or as a textile dye, the director of one of its research laboratories wrote: ‘Further work may be necessary on adding contaminants to “Monastral” colors to make them unsatisfactory on textiles but satisfactory for paints.’ The investigations described the Rohm & Haas research effort to discover a contaminant which would make methyl methacrylate suitable for use as a commercial molding powder but unfit as an ingredient for dentures. The investigations told of the heroic effort by the General Electric research organization to shorten the life of flashlight batteries, etc.” Walter Adams, American Economic Review (May 1954), p. 191.

      ²³ This approach, suggested originally by Schumpeter, has been given wide currency by J. K. Galbraith’s American Capitalism (Boston, 1952), where we read: “… the social inefficiency of a wealthy community grows with the growth of wealth that goes far to make this inefficiency inconsequential.” (P. 103.)

      ²⁴ TNEC Investigation of Concentration of Economic Power, Hearings, Part 1 (Washington 1939), p. 12.

      ²⁵ Ibid., p. 16.

      ²⁶ Ibid., p. 77.

      ²⁷ Ibid., testimony of Leon Henderson, p. 159.

      ²⁸ That a planned economy could easily dispose of the most striking irrationality of the capitalist system—unemployment caused by insufficient demand—is most succinctly shown by M. Kalecki: “It is useful to consider what the effect of a reduction in investment in a socialist system would be. The workers released from the production of investment goods would be employed in consumption goods industries. The increased supply of these goods would be absorbed by means of a reduction in their prices. Since profits of the socialist industries would be equal to investment, prices would have to be reduced to the point where the decline in profits would be equal to the fall in the value of investment. In other words, full employment would be maintained through the reduction of prices in relation to costs. In the capitalist system, however, the price-cost relationship … is maintained and profits fall by the same amount as investment plus capitalists’ consumption through the reduction in output and employment. It is indeed paradoxical that, while the apologists of capitalism usually consider the ‘price mechanism’ to be the great advantage of the capitalist system, price flexibility proves to be a characteristic feature of the socialist economy.” Theory of Economic Dynamics (London, 1954), pp. 62 ff.

       THREE

       Standstill and Movement Under Monopoly Capitalism, I

      THE rate and direction of economic development in a country at a given time, as suggested earlier, depend on both the size and the mode of utilization of the economic surplus. These in turn are determined by (and themselves determine) the degree of development of productive forces, the corresponding structure of socioeconomic relations, and the system of appropriation of the economic surplus that those relations entail. Indeed, as Marx has pointed out:

      … the specific economic form, in which unpaid surplus labor is pumped out of the direct producers, determines the relation of rulers and ruled, as it grows immediately out of production itself and in turn reacts upon it as a determining element.… It is always the direct relation of the owners of the means of production to the direct producers which reveals the innermost secret, the hidden foundation of the entire social structure.… The form of this relation between rulers and ruled naturally corresponds always to a definite stage in the development of labor and of its social productivity. This does not prevent the same economic basis from showing infinite variations and gradations in its appearance even though its principal conditions are everywhere the same.¹

      It СКАЧАТЬ