Michael Perelman wrote:
>I don't know what the biggest risk is for capitalism: Third World upheavals,
>financial implosion, global warming, overcapacity, or resource constraints. I
>think it would be very useful to think about how these various
>forces relate to
>each other. For example, could resource constraints and
>overcapacity cancel one
>another out?
In my role as PEN-L's Dr Pangloss, may I point out one thing you
didn't include - human ingenuity, and its specifically capitalist
form of innovation in pursuit of profit. You list every problem and
treat each as a potentially fatal constraint. As the Old Man put it
in the Grundrisse:
"Those economists who, like Ricardo, conceived production as directly
identical with the self-realization of capital -- and hence were
heedless of the barriers to consumption or of the existing barriers
of circulation itself, to the extent that it must represent
counter-values at all points, having in view only the development of
the forces of production and the, growth of the industrial population
-- supply without regard to demand -- have therefore grasped the
positive essence of capital more correctly and deeply than those who,
like Sismondi, emphasized the barriers of consumption and of the
available circle of counter-values, although the latter has better
grasped the limited nature of production based on capital, its
negative one-sidedness. The former more its universal tendency, the
latter its particular restrictedness."
