It is not the problem around the transfer of value or the reproduction of the value portion of fixed capital that Marazzi deals with in his essay The Amortization of the Body-Machine (Marazzi 2012: 35ff. ) (according to which constant capital is produced twice through the operation of transfer), is in the foreground here, but rather, from a different point of view, once again the phenomenon of the compression of functional and labor times in capitalist production and thus the potentiation of value production through the use of new technologies and machines, with which the productivity and profitability of an industrial enterprise can be increased relative to other enterprises as well as other forms of capital (commercial and financial capital). From the point of view of value, a company achieves a temporary competitive advantage/extra profit over competing companies precisely when it succeeds in selling its goods, which have fallen in value per unit due to the application of new technologies, above their individual value, but also, if possible, below the standard value in force at a given time in the respective industry or cheaper than those of other companies. Insofar as with the increase of productivity both the working time and the function time (of the machines) per product unit decreases and/or the output per respective time unit increases, the enterprise increases its portion of the total value mass at the markets, i.e., it gets back possibly more working time and/or function time than it used itself. Accordingly, more labor time/functional time is actualized by this enterprise in circulation at time t1 than it has actually operationalized and objectified in its own production processes at time t0, because the valid standard of total commodity values – the specific temporal norm in an economy – is, after all, not determined by the labor and functional time applied in a particular enterprise, but by the “socially” valid labor and functional time at the level of total capital. The successful application of innovations allows the dominant enterprise to produce its products in shorter time (shorter labor and functional time), i.e., with fewer or more effective inputs than the enterprises producing with average productivity, so that its unit costs decrease with possibly higher outputs per unit of time, whereby not only its rate of profit and its absolute mass of profit will increase overdimensionally, but the enterprise will at the same time absorb or collect higher shares of a social time and money package via the processes of averaging (average rate of profit). Increasing productivity in the context of a single capital then means that investments are spread over a relatively larger number of products, whose value per unit decreases, so that the price per unit should actually also decrease. However, it remains questionable whether the company passes on this reduction in cost per unit, which corresponds to an acceleration and effectivization of the production processes, to the customers to a certain extent, or whether it sells at the old price (average) and thus realizes very high extra profits, or whether it lowers prices primarily in order to beat competitors out of the field. Of course, the company has to realize a market price at all. Initially, it is only indicated here that the dominant individual capital realizes an extra profit at least temporarily via productivity increases. (MEW 25: 209) And this addresses the necessity of giving priority to relative or relational measures over absolute ones, without disregarding the latter. We will come back to the problem of the relation between profit rate and profit mass. At the same time, it seems imperative to focus not only on the profit maximization of individual capital, but in particular on the explanation of the universal drive/movement of capital in the context of the differential accumulation of plural capitals, which, as already seen, fight for their value shares in the total value mass in the form of realized prices. may be able to use the competitive mechanisms in the markets to absorb higher value shares in total production beyond their individual labor and production inputs. Not in profit maximization per se, but in the structural, the structuring and structured motivation to “beat the average” and thus to outperform the average rate of return (as also emphasized by Bichler/Nitzan; see Bichler/Nitzan 2009: 19), lies one of the important “motivations” of capitalist (dominant) enterprises, which in turn have the necessity to outperform imposed upon them through the corrective mechanisms of competition. Behind this lies the imperative to include in one’s symbolic calculations and bookings not only the increase of absolute quantities, but above all of relative quantities within the framework of differential accumulation. On the other hand, it must always be taken into account that it is precisely the recognition of the “law” of averaging rates of profit that paradoxically only allows the vision of beating the average to come into view, insofar as products are realized as commodities at least ideally at average prices. In this sense, even the groups of the most powerful oligopolistic coalitions of capital are subject to competitive constraints (according to Bichler/Nitzan, this refers not only to so-called market power, but above all to the broad strategic capacity of the dominant firms to combine so-called sabotage in business with the methods of capitalization; cf. Bichler/Nitzan 2009: 231f.).
Finally, the advantage of extra profit/extra surplus value in the processes of differential accumulation lasts for a firm only until the majority of its fellow competitors in an industry catch up with their own productivity standards, at which point the productivity level of the leading firm has become quasi generalized and thus a new base level of production time has been established, at least within an industry, which in purely material terms is represented by a larger total quantity of products produced per unit time. And there is normally a general increase in the rate of surplus value, with the increase in the relative surplus value of the subdominant firms leading to the liquidation of the extra surplus value of the dominant firm. Thus, it is necessary to take into account that the respective proportions of the individual commodity shares flow into the always fluctuating “total fund of total capital,” whereby, according to Marx, the prices of the individual capitals realized at a given time should correspond to a certain quantum of the “absolute” mass of value. (Cf. Kurz 2012: 204) To assume this would correspond to a conceptual representation that always has to keep in mind that the (impossible) quantitative determination of a total volume of value is a simulation ex post that assumes that exactly this quantum of value preceded its actualization. (Strauß 2013: 296) We will see that on this conceptual level not only the redistribution of so-called value quanta in the context of averaging has to be taken into account, but simply the fact that value is set in circulation, although value creation does not take place in it. Moreover, it has to be explained why these processes always have to take place via the formation of average profit rates as a tendency.
With the increase of productivity within an enterprise, should it actually prove to be market dominant in real history, a specific temporal norm is redefined in a time interval: For example, 2 million candies are produced in one labor hour instead of 1 million, i.e. the price of a candy could now fall by half, however, the total production value per hour measured in monetary units initially remains the same, but it now represents itself in 2 million candies instead of 1 million, whereby here the halving refers only to the new value added in production. Other components of value that are transferred to the product (raw materials, intermediate products and operational consumption of means of production) are most likely also reduced with the increase in productivity, but just not in the same dimension. The individual product, whose “individual value” has decreased due to the increase of productivity in a certain enterprise of industry X, absorbs, if it can be sold on markets at the average price, which is always related to the currently valid capital standard of productivity, a higher share of socially valid, abstract labor and functional time. In circulation, the realization of these commodities in relation to the capital-necessary abstract labor and function time on the level of total capital means an actualization in favor of the more productive capital. With their realization, these products actually attract a higher share of socially necessary labor in comparison to products produced with lower productivity standards. The growth rates (quantity growth per unit of time) often exceed the temporal acceleration rates in production, with the result that (social) time resources tend to become increasingly scarce despite technical progress, so that time itself congeals into an extremely important parameter of capitalization from the point of view of efficiency, and these processes take place not only in production, but, as was also the case historically, in circulation, the transportation and communication industries, with whose acceleration the turnover of goods and capital, and generally the transaction speeds of capital, could be considerably increased. Above all, it should now be asked why dominant capitals, in the course of the ubiquitous acceleration mechanisms, do not incessantly pull away from the competition – if their accumulation, which is still bound to (clock)time, does not come up against various speed limits – and are still subject to processes of averaging of profit rates, which are permanently regulated by the correction mechanisms of the competition, as these themselves are oriented to the averaging.
With the general implementation of new technologies, and in this context one must always understand innovation as an internal economic factor, which initiates and forces the acceleration and growth of an individual capital, the socially necessary and valid working and functional times condense; according to Marx, a sectoral average profit rate settles at a new level, at least in the short term, whereby the respective levels are subject to a constant shift through new wave movements, which are caused by further technological innovations and the speed effects accompanying them. (MEW 25: 164ff.) Unequal dynamics thus determine the motivation necessary for individual enterprises to employ further productivity-enhancing innovations, whereby Marx assumes that competition between individual capitals always leads to a tendential equalization of diverging intersectoral profit rates. With Marx, one would then eventually have to speak of a tendential equalization of the general rate of profit, which is one with the various undulations of differential accumulation. Virtualization would have to be understood at this point as strategies or as interventions of single capitals on the basis of the quasi-transcendentality of capital in order to actualize always new quantitative dimensionings, and this indicates itself as ever already delayed fixation of past accumulation and at the same time as adaptation, control and projection of ongoing production processes. Harald Strauß formulates this as follows: “Past production as a quantum of value, i.e. as capital, is realized only as a reflection; at the same time, this measure subjects current production to a flexion by adapting the conditions of production according to the updated averages. It is a double movement of actualization, that of average formations and the orientation of current production.” (Strauss 2013: 193) And there is no measure of any kind that could accurately reflect these processes. In the concept of capital as a total complexion, the concept of accumulation is integrated, namely as the bridge between virtually circulating capital structure and virtually fixable capital circulation (cf. Schwengel 1977: 305), and as the link between past and future, as the bridge between capital stock (averaging) and investment (orientation of current production as profit expectation).
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Foto: Bernhard Weber