Jim Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said:
> > I don't try to be controversial as much as make clear the laws of motion of > the system. Jim, the point is that if a crisis results from underconsumption as a result of disproportionality, it can be overcome in a different way than an underconsumption crisis which is the phenemonal form of FROP crisis. Not interested in being controversial either but in understanding that there are different kinds of obstacles in the course of accumulation. as for your crisis scenario of rising rents to owners of raw materials, this would be resort to ricardian organic chemistry, no? > > Marx's explanation doesn't work, since investment in fixed capital > automatically leads to a "counteracting tendency," specifically, increases > in labor productivity (which cheapens labor-power and the means of > production). One doesn't need to accept the Okishio theorem to see them. well we all know that for Marx upward pressure on the OCC was the most important tendency of all, so your revision of Marx deals a fatal blow to his theory. at any rate you don't explain here why the cheapening of constant capital, as well as the rise in the rate of surplus value, would only result in the OCC rising more slowly than TCC, as Marx believed. > Smart people like Sweezy saw the limits of Marx's argument a long time ago. yes smart people do tend to find limits to Marx's argument. i tend to attribute my having been convinced by Marx (and Grossmann and Mattick) to my lack of smarts. > I take these kinds of critiques seriously, so I see the "rising organic > composition of capital" as mostly a cyclical phenomenon. so do I. the crisis by forcing the devaluation of constant capital relieves the upward pressure on the OCC. > > >but i don't understand your exact specification of this instability if the > >economy can indeed get on Tugan's happy merry-go-around. > > It's not "happy," since business fixed investment (unlike workers' > consumption spending) is subject to all sorts of fluctuations due to > changes in expected profit rates and the like. ah so you have a subjective theory of crisis. animal spirits and the other kinds of variables invoked by very smart people. In simple terms, workers > _need_ to spend on consumer goods, while capitalists only _want_ to do > fixed investment. (The role of credit makes matters more complicated, but > let's leave that aside here.) > > It's true that there's an objective pressure for capitalists to do fixed > investment (as I've emphasized, referring to structural tensions causing > capitalists to face a cost for not investing), but a recession or > depression undermines the investment by _all_ or most capitalists, thus > undermining the competitive pressure to invest. but aren't we trying to explain the onset of a crisis which by enforcing the devaluation of constant capital revives investment? Similarly, rising > unemployment causes fear among the workers, so the pressure to invest that > arises from class antagonisms on the job is attenuated. ah but a rising rate of exploitation also points the way out of crisis. > > I can't assume that such upward pressure always and everywhere exists. > Also, Sweezy & Bauer don't make that assumption. bauer does indeed make the assumption of a rising OCC. grossmann did not make the assumption that occ always and everywhere rose. for example, the introduction of labor intensive branches could relieve upward pressure. > I wasn't talking about Grossman, but about Sweezy & Bauer. If Grossman's > story is dependent on the assumption that the OCC rises steadily over time, > it's got serious problems. i can't believe you haven't read grossmann and mattick yourself. so you know this isn't true.
