Public investment in clean energy: Is it social gain or capital diversion?

“ Expenditures with respect to research facilities, and research grants, to support research in— `` (i) development of cellulosic ethanol or other nonfossil fuels, `` (ii) technologies for the capture and sequestration of carbon dioxide produced through the use of fossil fuels, `` (iii) increasing the efficiency of existing technologies for producing nonfossil fuels, `` (iv) automobile battery technologies and other technologies to reduce fossil fuel consumption in transportation, or `` (v) technologies to reduce energy use in buildings. ”

“ The windfall profits tax on crude oil has been enacted providing $227 billion over ten years for assistance to low-income households, increased mass transit funding, and a massive investment in the production and development of alternative energy sources; The Synthetic Fuels Corporation has been established to help private companies build the facilities to produce energy from synthetic fuels; Solar energy funding has been quadrupled, solar energy tax credits enacted, and a Solar Energy and Energy Conservation Bank has been established ”

“ Binding is a work of repair, not one of expansion, and consequently the amount spent for this purpose adds little to the resources of the library. The modern librarian does not begrudge money for salaries; heat, light and the general up-keep are items that cannot be reduced materially in most libraries. But money spent on binding reduces the funds available for new books. Therefore, a study of the many ways in which binding bills can be made smaller is well worth while.
Two elements, material and labor, enter into the cost of binding, labor of course forming the larger part. ”

“ Every destruction of durable commodities which lessens the power to gratify wants is a loss to a community and no juggling with words can make it anything else. If it gives employment to labor, that means that the labor has been diverted from the production of other things to which it would have been devoted. Edward Atkinson several years ago calculated that every year fires destroyed property in the United States to the amount $150,000,000. [45] That workmen are employed to reproduce the buildings, etc., can surely not be reckoned as a social gain. ”

“ If the binder understands that he may have the work only so long as he follows the specifications faithfully, one may safely leave the details to him.
It should further be borne in mind that good binding is seldom obtained at low prices. A library book well bound requires good material, good workmanship and special reinforcements which take time. Since the largest part of the cost of a book is due to the labor spent on it, it follows that low prices can prevail only in those localities where the cost of labor is below the standard. ”

“ The gilding of a library book is a simple matter compared with that of books bound for individuals. Such books are usually meant to be artistic and their covers bear elaborate designs in gold, generally limited only by the size of the owner's pocketbook or by his taste. [1] In library binding gilding is confined to the furnishing of necessary information. Tooling of all kinds, with the possible exception of that which divides the back into panels, is unnecessary. A description of finishing processes is unnecessary here since they add nothing to the strength of a book. ”

“ A decision about new books which are popular is harder to make because it is fair to ask:
(c) Is the demand falling off? It is here that the assistant must show good judgment. It may be [Pg 127] that the book can be rebound easily with profit, if there is a sufficient demand to keep all the copies in circulation. It may be that the book is waning in popularity and that other copies in the library are ample to supply present demands. If they are, the copy in hand should be canceled, since the cost of binding will then be saved. ”

“ The General Demand for Labor not Lessened.—It is a matter of common experience that new machines are labor displacers. At its introduction an economical device often forces some men to seek new occupations, but it never reduces the general demand for labor. As progress closes one field of employment it opens others, and it has come about that after a century and a quarter of brilliant invention and of rapid and general substitution of machine work for hand work, there is no larger proportion of the laboring population in idleness now than there was at the beginning of the period. ”

“ Individual acquisition may be contrasted with social production in cases where the individual increases his wealth at the expense of others, without adding to value. Most economic efforts increase the income of the individual and the income of society at the same time. The fruits of the field and the uses of machines are net additions to current income; they are not merely subtracted from the income of one and added to that of another. The increase of products by labor may depress somewhat the exchange value of competing labor, but the general welfare is furthered by the greater abundance. ”

“ Immediate Effects of Labor Saving.—Inventing a [Pg 255] machine that can do the work of twenty men will cause some of the twenty to be discharged. They feel the burden of finding new places, and if they are skilled workmen and their trade is no longer worth practicing, they lose all the advantage they have enjoyed from special skill in their occupations. Do they themselves get any adequate offset for this, or does society as a whole divide the benefit in such a way that those who pay nearly the whole cost get only their minute part of the gain? ”

“ While most inventions at first draw capital from the social fund to the point where they are applied, many of them soon liberate capital by cheapening particular appliances of production, and nearly all of them, by means of the profits they insure, ultimately add to the social capital.
The Vital Importance of Continued Improvement.—Intelligent study will make it clear to every one that any assertion that machinery is the enemy of labor is not merely erroneous, it is a contradiction of the most striking and important fact connected with general progress. ”

“ The gradual introduction of an improvement is important, since it affords time for an increase in the social demand for the product which is thus cheapened and for introducing at many other points improvements which neutralize, in a large degree, the labor-expelling effect of the first improvement.
(4) Technical gains are the largest source of additions to the total amount of the social capital. The constant influx of new capital facilitates the placing of laborers at the points where they are needed. ”

“ Beyond the relief that comes when undue speeding of machinery and driving of workers is repressed, it will be impossible to prove that in the long run there is any good whatsoever in it, and the evil in it is obvious and deplorable.
"Making Work" as related to Technical Progress.—The policy reverses the effects of progress. That which has caused the return to labor to grow steadily larger is labor saving or product multiplying, and labor making and product reducing are the antithesis of this. ”

“ Carbon dioxide and other ordinary pollutants often come from the same sources, mainly from the burning and utilization of fossil fuels. Controlling the use of fossil fuels and consequently reducing carbon emissions have a lasting impact on the economic structure, energy mix, forms of transport, modes of production, and ways of life. ”

“ The collective body gets a greater income than before, and the workers share in the gain.
Importance of the New Forms which the Social Income Takes.—This increasing income takes the form in which society now requires it, and it is this which brings about the readjustment of labor—or the changes in the amounts of labor used in particular subgroups—which have caused hardship in the past. ”

“ There is, as we shall see, an external characteristic which shows clearly this specific historical peculiarity of the capitalist process of reproduction. Comprising not only production but also circulation (the process of exchange) , it unites these two elements. Capitalist production is primarily production by innumerable private producers without any planned regulation. The only social link between these producers is the act of exchange. In taking account of social requirements reproduction has no clue to go on other than the experiences of the preceding labour period. ”

“ The circulation of money succeeds the circulation of commodities, completing the cycle of social capital. But what is the position in real life? The relations outlined in the diagram lay down a precise first principle for the division of social labour in a planned production—always providing a system of simple reproduction, i.e. no changes in the volume of production. But no such planned organisation of the total process exists in a capitalist economy, and things do not run smoothly, along a mathematical formula, as suggested by the diagram. ”

“ It is the production of surplus value which turns reproduction of social necessities into a perpetuum mobile. Reproduction, for its part, can obviously be only resumed when the products of the previous period, the commodities, have been realised; that is, converted into money; for capital in the form of money, in the form of pure value, must always be the starting point of reproduction in a capitalist [Pg 40] system. The first condition of reproduction for the capitalist producer is thus seen to be a successful realisation of the commodities produced during the preceding period of production. ”

“ In real life the actual conditions for the accumulation of the aggregate capital are quite different from those prevailing for individual capitals and for simple reproduction. The problem amounts to this: If an increasing part of the surplus value is not consumed by the capitalists but employed in the expansion of production, what, then, are the forms of social reproduction? ”

“ Thus quite a new incentive is given to constantly renewed production, to the process of reproduction as a regular phenomenon in capitalist society, an incentive unknown to any other system of production. In every other economic system known to history, reproduction is determined by the unceasing need of society for consumer goods, whether they are the needs of all the workers determined in a democratic manner as in an agrarian and communist market community, or the despotically determined needs of an antagonistic class society, as in an economy of slave labour or corvée and the like. ”

“ A case in point is the analysis of simple reproduction of the aggregate social capital, where the problem itself rests upon a fiction: in a society producing by capitalist methods, i.e. a society which creates surplus value, the whole of the latter is taken to be consumed by the capitalists who appropriate it. The object is to present the forms of social production and reproduction under these given conditions. ”

“ Expanding reproduction is not a new discovery of capital. On the contrary, it had been the rule since time immemorial in every form of society that displayed economic and cultural progress. It is true, of course, that simple reproduction as a mere continuous repetition of the process of production on the same scale as before can be observed over long periods of social history. ”

“ Every business, home, and industry must do its share. So what can be done?
Let me begin with electricity generation. This is the single largest piece of the global warming puzzle —responsible for 33 percent of global warming gases in the United States . And the biggest culprit here is pulverized coal, which is the major source of energy in 40 of the 50 states.
Coal, alone, produces 27 percent of annual carbon dioxide emissions, or 2.1 billion tons every year.
Globally, coal produces 9.3 billion tons of carbon dioxide every year – or one-third of all global greenhouse gas emissions. ”

“ It would be in a position to make every development from competition to monopoly the occasion for further socialization. Thus there would be no danger to the state in permitting, or even fostering, private industry within the limits described. As the organizer of the vast body of labor essential to the operation of the main productive and distributive functions of society, and to the other public services, the state would automatically, so to speak, set the standards of income and leisure which private industry would be compelled, by competitive force, to observe. ”