| This question <426|574> overall <505-1|507> Gottlieb: <505-1|32>. |
| Question 235: Which are the motives why a capitalist might try to introduce new technology? |
| [506] Gottlieb: Technology The capitalist's main motive for anything is profit. Because capitalistic societies are at the cutting edge of technology, technology must equal profits. Why? To a capitalist the value of human labor is the amount that they are paying in wages. If I own a farm I may pay my illegal laborers fifty dollars per day. They can plant one hundred dollars worth of tomatoes per week. I get the surplus $50. If I can somehow create more surplus through technology, then I will incorperate it. Loaning my workers hoes will help them plant $200 worth of tomatoes per week with only $50 of wage labor costs. |
| Personally, a good capitalist would raise the wage to $55 per week and charge $6 per week to rent the hoe. If obtaining a machine to create $1000 worth of tomatoes per week is possible, I will incorporate it only if my surplus increases. This way the work is less strenuous and I can pay my laborers less. |
| Hans: This is a very obvious answer. But this is not the only possible motivation, and it might also have been good to put this in the context of Marx's discussion of relative surplus value. |
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