According to this World Bank Report, using data from the McKinsey Report, the productivity in 1965 of dock labour (prior to containerisation) was 1.7 tons per hour. Post containerisation, in 1970, that had risen to 30 tons per hour. The average ship size went from 8.4 GRT to 19.4 GRT, insurance costs fell from £0.24 to £0.04, and capital tied up in transit halved from £2 per ton to £1 per ton. Today, 90% of goods are transported by container, in an integrated road, rail and sea system. As the report suggests, the reduction in cost, and increase in speed, has also had a significant effect in stimulating the circulation of commodity-capital in the process.
This is perhaps one of the most notable increases in transport productivity, but it should not be missed that, alongside it, many more such improvements continually occur, for example, in increasing the size of carriers, improvements in speeds of carriers, development of additional road and other transport networks and so on. Moreover, alongside these physical improvements in transport speed, through technological development come others. For example, the development of common markets, like the EU, across the globe, has speeded up the movement of goods and services by the removal of various legal barriers - an advantage which Britain will lose as a result of Brexit. The introduction of the Schengen Agreement in Europe, means that time spent at border crossings has been slashed. Even, things such as the introduction of satellite navigation systems, has acted to speed up deliveries.
But, changes in production have also acted to speed up circulation. The introduction of flexible specialisation systems, alongside the introduction of Just In Time, means that the suppliers of the large companies operating such systems, have themselves to introduce similar systems, in order to be able to provide the guarantees to customers that they will be able to provide the inputs of the right type, quality, and in the necessary quantity, at short notice, to be delivered precisely when required. This means that the quantity of commodity-capital at any one time lying fallow is reduced.
The development of the Internet, and of electronic payments systems, has further revolutionised the rate of turnover of capital, with a consequent effect on the average annual rate of profit. But, let us ignore all of these factors set out by Marx and Engels, and clearly visible, today, that not only counter any long-run tendency for the rate of profit to fall, but to actually produce the opposite result. Let us assume that, from the point that capitalist production starts to become dominant, as the Industrial Revolution takes off, from around 1760, that this steady grind downwards of the average annual rate of profit was actually taking place, as Roberts claims. Its, then, still not clear why this continual and gradual decline leads to any crisis of overproduction at all, certainly not one of an overproduction of commodities, which Marx and Engels ascribe to quite different factors, as production outstrips the growth of the market, but, also, not of an overproduction of capital either. Certainly, there is no reason apparent as to why this slow gradual, and continuous decline, would, then, lead to crises being periodic, rather than being a permanent state of affairs.
If we take the overproduction of commodities, there is, in fact, no such generalised crisis until 1825, as Marx and Engels describe. It is, then, that the massive rise in production, resulting from the introduction of steam engines, on a large scale, is unable to find sufficient demand, as the market failed to grow in proportion. So, although, by 1825, we would have had more than 60 years, at the very least, considering that capitalist production itself began 400 years earlier, in which the tendential law should have been operating, and leading to the crisis Roberts attributes to it, but no such previous crisis occurred. It was that which led Mill, Say, and Ricardo to deny the possibility of such a generalised crisis of overproduction of commodities. Earlier crises did occur, but as Marx notes, these earlier crises were not crises of overproduction, but financial crises resulting from banks issuing excess bank notes and so on, or as with the South Sea Bubble.
But, given the claims for the operation of the tendential law, and its significance in relation to crises of overproduction of capital, why, then, after 1825, did we not see a continual period of crisis, rather than periodic crises? Marx certainly rejected the catastrophist notions about it reflecting some “historic decline of capitalism” claimed for it by Roberts. If that were the case, then, the decline should have started from the moment that capitalism came into existence, and with it the “tendency”. We would then have a problem certainly explaining the repeated periods of rapid capitalist expansion and accumulation, in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, not to mention the huge technological advances that capitalism has continued to bring with it, up to today.
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