: : [F]or the most part US workers, though paid more, are more exploited than Chinese workers, who produce less surplus value.: This is nonsense.
Why, exploitation is measured as a ratio of wages to surplus produced, it is not some subjective or raw estimate based on working conditions and living standards. Yes chinese workers have appalling conditions, but I doubt they create as much value as the productive capacity of teh US, if US workers, regardless of living standard, are paid less as a ratio of surplus, they are more exploited. this is irrelelevent because all workers are exploited, it just means that there is no interets for the Chinese worker in fighting with a different bunch of masters against the US masters...
: Because constant (and fixed) capital tends to increase in cost (thus reducing profits), according to Marx's theory, (surplus) labor must be continually 'squeezed' to offset the 'tendential fall in the rate of profit'...
Or exports increase, thus gaining extra value, and thus brining in cheap imports, which can lower teh costs of a capitalists variable capital (through cheap hammers and the like- Marx Capital Three Chapter 14(?) Section Five on exports and teh rate of profit).
: No, that's not it at all. I am speaking of differences between the production sphere and the circulation sphere (which are becoming increasingly widened geographically). Your example above compares two 'productive' workers. The circulation capital ('non-productive' workers as well as increased fixed and constant capital) must be 'discounted' from the production capital (recall Marx's refutation of Say's Law). Marx is clear on this point:
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: The general law is that all costs of circulation which arise only from changes in the forms of commodities do not add to their value. They are merely expenses incurred in the realization of the value or in its conversion from one form into another. The capital spent to meet those costs (including the labor done under its control) belongs among the faux frais of capitalist production. They must be replaced from the surplus-product and constitute, as far as the entire capitalist class is concerned, a deduction from the surplus value or surplus-product, just as the time a laborer needs for the purchase of his means of subsistence is lost time.(1)
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: The circulation sphere's exponential growth (represented aptly by the 'computer revolution' as far as book-keeping is concerned) therefore must contribute to and accelerate the 'tendential fall of profit.' To wit, Marx:
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: Division of labor and assumption of independence do not make a function one that creates products and value if it was not so intrinsically, hence before it became independent. If a capitalist invests his capital anew, he must invest a part of it in hiring a book-keeper, etc., and in the wherewithal of book-keeping. If his capital is already functioning, is engaged in the process of its own constant reproduction, he must continually reconvert a part of his product into a book-keeper, clerks, and the like, by transforming that part into money [variable capital]. That part of his capital is withdrawn from the process of production and belongs in the costs of circulation, deductions from the total yield (including the labor-power itself that is expended exclusively for this function).(2)
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: As constant and fixed cost goes up (and, interestingly, Marx here sees the increasing social division of labor as contributing to the 'tendential' fall in average profit), the variable capital must be reduced either by increased productivity in the form of intensified labor---i.e. quicker turnover (better technology)---or by lowered wages (unless the capitalist is willing to accept lowered profits). I assert that either and both result in 'exploitation' (because the capitalist does not accept lowered profits). Thus, the increase in circulation (including all circulation workers) pressures profits which---as Marx so often states---can only be wrung from the variable investment (production workers).
Just out of interest, I don't recall bus drivers being part of the valorization process, would you say, on teh basis of the above, that they are not working class?
Circulation sphere also includes till staff anbd sainsburies, and shelf stackers- are they not working class now. Further, although circulation staff are a burden on teh capitalist, taht is unproductive, they can also try and drive their wgaes down, in teh same way as tehy look for cheaper machinery.
