Apologies for the length of this, but I was challenged to produce some quotes ... --- On Tue, 1/20/09, Charles Brown <_charl...@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us_ (mailto:charl...@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us) > wrote: You quoted the quote from Lenin. If you'd turned the page and read on, you would have found the following: 'These propositions all speak of the contradiction we have mentioned, namely, the contradiction between the unrestricted drive to expand production and limited consumption—and of nothing else. Nothing could be more senseless than to conclude from these passages in Capital that Marx did not admit the possibility of surplus-value being realised in capitalist society, that he attributed crises to under-consumption, and so forth.' This should serve as an alert on this issue. Here is Marx in Book 2, Chapter 20: 'It is sheer tautology to say that crises are caused by the scarcity of effective consumption, or of effective consumers. The capitalist system does not know any other modes of consumption than effective ones, except that of sub forma pauperis or of the swindler. That commodities are unsaleable means only that no effective purchasers have been found for them, i.e., consumers (since commodities are bought in the final analysis for productive or individual consumption). But if one were to attempt to give this tautology the semblance of a profounder justification by saying that the working-class receives too small a portion of its own product and the evil would be remedied as soon as it receives a larger share of it and its wages increase in consequence, one could only remark that crises are always prepared by precisely a period in which wages rise generally and the working-class actually gets a larger share of that part of the annual product which is intended for consumption. From the point of view of these advocates of sound and “simple” (!) common sense, such a period should rather remove the crisis. It appears, then, that capitalist production comprises conditions independent of good or bad will, conditions which permit the working-class to enjoy that relative prosperity only momentarily, and at that always only as the harbinger of a coming crisis.' In a footnote to this passage, Engels remarked: 'Ad notam for possible followers of the Rodbertian theory of crises'. Rodbertus had argued that: 'capital accumulates and production increases without there being a sufficient number of purchasers for the products, for the capitalists do not wish to consume more and the workmen are not able to do so.' In Anti-Duhring: 'unfortunately the under-consumption of the masses, the restriction of the consumption of the masses to what is necessary for their maintenance and reproduction, is not a new phenomenon. It has existed as long as there have been exploiting and exploited classes. Even in those periods of history when the situation of the masses was particularly favourable, as for example in England in the fifteenth century, they under-consumed. They were very far from having their own annual total product at their disposal to be consumed by them. Therefore, while under-consumption has been a constant feature in history for thousands of years, the general shrinkage of the market which breaks out in crises as the result of a surplus of production is a phenomenon only of the last fifty years; and so Herr Dühring's whole superficial vulgar economics is necessary in order to explain the new collision not by the new phenomenon of over-production but by the thousand-year-old phenomenon of under-consumption. ... The under-consumption of the masses is a necessary condition of all forms of society based on exploitation, consequently also of the capitalist form; but it is the capitalist form of production which first gives rise to crises. The under-consumption of the masses is therefore also a prerequisite condition of crises, and plays in them a role which has long been recognised. But it tells us just as little why crises exist today as why they did not exist before.' The problem which devotees of underconsumptionism have is explaining how capitalism works at all, since the workers can NEVER buy back the full value of what they produce. The entire system should die at birth because the workers won't be able to buy everything. The trick for getting out of this problem is to postulate 'third parties' who manage to buy the unsold goods. Luxemburg, Baran and Sweezy etc take this route. Malthus gives this kind of explanation, which Marx discusses in Theories of Surplus Value Let's look at the quote in context. Here is the whole paragraph: 'Let us suppose that the whole of society is composed only of industrial capitalists and wage-workers. Let us furthermore disregard price fluctuations, which prevent large portions of the total capital from replacing themselves in their average proportions and which, owing to the general interrelations of the entire reproduction process as developed in particular by credit, must always call forth general stoppages of a transient nature. Let us also disregard the sham transactions and speculations, which the credit system favours. Then, a crisis could only be explained as the result of a disproportion of production in various branches of the economy, and as a result of a disproportion between the consumption of the capitalists and their accumulation. But as matters stand, the replacement of the capital invested in production depends largely upon the consuming power of the non-producing classes; while the consuming power of the workers is limited partly by the laws of wages, partly by the fact that they are used only as long as they can be profitably employed by the capitalist class. The ultimate reason for all real crises always remains the poverty and restricted consumption of the masses as opposed to the drive of capitalist production to develop the productive forces as though only the absolute consuming power of society constituted their limit.' It seems there's something for everyone here: a 'crisis could only [ONLY!] be explained as the result of a disproportion of production in various branches of the economy, and as a result of a disproportion between the consumption of the capitalists and their accumulation.' In this sentence it's disproportion that is the ONLY explanation; in the next it's underconsumption which is the ULTIMATE cause. We have to make sense of these two adjacent sentences and the entire paragraph - we can't just pluck out the piece that supports an argument and ignore the rest that doesn't. The point Marx is making is that workers consumption CANNOT provide a solution to these disproportions and never can because, by definition, they don't buy means of production or luxuries (capitalists' consumption). That's all. As for the falling rate of profit (FROP), Marx described it: 'This is in every respect the most important law of modern political economy, and the most essential for understanding the most difficult relations. It is the most important law from the historical standpoint. It is a law which, despite its simplicity, has never before been grasped and, even less, consciously articulated.' Grundrisse. Ten years later, in a letter to Engels describing the contents of Book 3, he writes: 'This is one of the greatest triumphs over the pons asini of all previous political economy.' He devoted the whole of Part III of Book 3 to the law, 150 pages. If he thought underconsumptionism was the way to go, why didn't he write a chapter or two saying so? Why would he criticise Malthus for his underconsumptionism yet accept the same theory himself? When Marx praises Rodbertus it is for his writing on rent, not on underconsumption. It seems very clear that Marx did not entertain underconsumptionism Steve This email was cleaned by emailStripper, available for free from _http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm_ (http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm) **************Inauguration '09: Get complete coverage from the nation's capital.(http://www.aol.com?ncid=emlcntaolcom00000027)
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