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But it is not made to lie idle as a bargaining tactic from "the capitalist class" ... it lies idle because of lack of demand for its products.

Corporations are sociopaths, and that includes sacrificing strong immediate interests of the corporation itself for the greater good of "corporations as a whole". To get corporations on board, they have to be persuaded that it is in their interest. Now, this can and normally does include a substantial amount of self-deception, where the immediate interest of the corporation in the conventional wisdom of corporate managers and board members is not, in reality, the actual immediate interest of the corporation.

That is why one of the main tools for making real equipment lie idle is an aggressively anti-full-employment monetary policy ... in the specific US case, the FOMC is made up of government appointees and Presidents of not for profit corporations (Federal Reserve Banks) where the effect on the corporate bottom line nets out, as any surplus revenue over operating costs and a fixed nominal dividend is handed over to the Treasury, and where the short term interests of the commercial banks is often served by shying away from full employment conditions.

Creating the macroeconomic conditions in which it is in the perceived self-interest of corporations to idle equipment is far easier than convincing corporations with clear profit opportunities from the use of equipment to let that equipment lie idle. Without an immediate countervailing interest, such as the interest to gain the best bargain possible in negotiations with its own workers, its very hard to get a corporation to refrain from producing to meet a demand.

I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Wed Apr 1st, 2009 at 09:52:31 AM EST
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