Capital accumulation, job creation in the S&T age

Trevor A. Campbell, Contributor

ON NOVEMBER 24, the Los Angeles Times carried a report with the following headline: 'Gloomy Fed employment forecast overshadows upbeat GDP data: the Fed predicts unemployment will remain high for years'.

In an unusually candid admission, "some Fed policymakers on Tuesday raised the spectre of a permanently higher jobless rate for the United States (US) economy, suggesting that many more workers will struggle to get back on its feet even as the economy continues to grow."

On the same day, The Gleaner carried an announcement from the Planning Institute of Jamaica (PIOJ) that they had hired the economist, Professor Donald Harris, to be their economic growth expert (Planning Institute of Jamaica hires growth expert, The Gleaner, Wednesday, November 24, 2010).

According to the director general of the PIOJ, Dr Gladstone Hutchinson:

"Harris will work with the PIOJ team to develop growth-inducement strategies for the economy, based on the removal of these binding constraints and the creation of an enabling environment, and on the support of emerging business clusters that can produce globally competitive outputs."

While it is coincidental that these two announcements took place on the same day, the importance of their connection, however, should not be missed if we are serious about developing a deeper understanding of the contemporary capitalist economy, its level of integration and, for better or worse, the options that are available to Professor Harris and his colleagues.

Better strategy?

With the above in mind, it might be useful to ask Professor Harris (who authored a book in 1979 titled Capital Accumulation and Income Distribution) to elaborate for the benefit of the general public (in language that is accessible to the lay person) on why he thinks his strategy for economic growth (or more precisely, capital accumulation) will differ from the process that is unfolding on the North American mainland. In other words, will his strategy for economic growth/capital accumulation lead to significantly higher levels of employment for workers based in Jamaica? It might have been an oversight, but it is interesting to note that nowhere in The Gleaner report was there any specific mention of how the "growth-inducement strategies" would be directly linked to a comprehensive job-creation strategy.

Why is this discussion important?

The apparent paradox of accelerated capital accumulation (most academic economists call this process economic growth), without the attendant increase in employment has become a vexing issue for many of the governments throughout the world. In an era when governments are being forced to decrease the number of workers on it's payroll, politicians are now dependent, more than ever, on the increase of employment of the working class by capital, in order to retain their legitimacy in a capitalist democracy. Capitalist entrepreneurs, operating in the context of intensifying global competition - in the age of the scientific and technological revolution - are being compelled to use less and less labour to produce the commodities they sell, as one of the primary means of reducing their cost of production. For an illustration of this point see, for instance, the videos that can be accessed at the following link:

http://singularityhub.com/2010/02/11/no-humans-just-robots-amazing-video...

Google also the following article, 'Boutique Owner Extends Shelf Life: Lisa Kline stays open by cutting back on stores and staff' (Los Angeles Business Journal December 6-12, 2010), which discusses, in detail, how a small Southern California-based retailer is reorganising to do more with less workers.

Businesses operating in Jamaica cannot isolate themselves from this process if they intend to be integrated into the global supply chains of modern capitalist production and distribution. In other words, what we might have here are conflicting agendas. The challenges facing Dr Hutchinson and his team at the PIOJ are, indeed, quite daunting. Let the nationwide seminar on 'Capital accumulation and job creation, in the age of the scientific and technological revolution' begin.

Trevor A Campbell is a political economist and the moderator of the online forum -'Caribbean Dialogues'. He may be contacted at tcampbell@eee.org.