Article discreditng the thesis that Mao "killed millions of people" in The Great Leap

[Jester]

Just realized, I actually worded that incorrectly and thus made the error of conflating socially necessary labor time and 'productivity', my bad. Innovation does indeed increase productivity, but the same value is being created; just that it is done so across a broader span of productivity. This was essential in explaining about how 'dead labor' (capital) increasingly sucked the life of living labor and lead to an ever-increasing rate of exploitation of the worker.

So, if I am interpreting this correctly, if a new kind of technology allows a worker (with the same labour power inputs) to produce 10 widgets in the time it used to take to produce 5, then the value of each widget has been cut in half? The same value is now divided over twice as many widgets?

I may be misreading you, as I don't quite understand what a "broader span of productivity" is. I have interpreted it here as an increase in productivity - goods produced per input.

-Jester