Ecological Headstand: The Luddite Question: Rhythm, Rebounds and Elastic...

Ecological Headstand: The Luddite Question: Rhythm, Rebounds and Elastic...: "Paul Krugman, Brad DeLong, Chris Bertram at Crooked Timber and Frances Woolley at Worthwhile Canadian Initiative have all chimed in recently..."

Marx is quoted from Capital, and the conclusion is:

In this account of business cycles, the alternating expansion and contraction has become endogenous, regardless of whatever "accidents" may have engendered them. Moreover, given such periodicity, unemployment -- the production of a relative surplus population, the industrial reserve army -- is not some regrettable side-effect but becomes a necessary condition of modern industry and of the continuing accumulation of capital. Thus the long-run rebound of employment, far from curing unemployment, simply establishes the condition for yet another round of displacement.

The continual submersion of skilled workers into the unskilled is neccessary for Capitalist development.

What is not mentioned in the article is the role of the industrial reserve army in keeping wages down. This alone ensures that there will never be full employment in a Capitalist economy. All benefits of productivity increases have to accrue to the Capitalist.