Doug Henwood wrote: > But, I gotta say, I'm not sure what you mean by "overaccumulation" > here. Is it just another way of saying that capitalism periodically > overinvests, and has to work that off over time? If so, then that's > little more than a theory of the business cycle. Are you making a > grander claim than that, of the Luxemburg-ish sort?
My vision of over-accumulation -- which I also call "over-investment" because it involves fixed capital, which takes time to be purged from the system -- could be pigeon-holed in this way. As I've argued before on pen-l, it typically involves cycles of over-accumulation and "working it off over time." That is, it sounds a lot like the "Austrian" theory of cycles. The main formal difference is that unlike in the Austrian theory, the economy can spin off the normal cyclical path, to get stuck in an underconsumption trap (as in the early 1930s). This means that Keynesian-style fiscal stimulus (and to a lesser extent, monetary stimulus) can play a role beyond changing the timing and intensity of the swings of the cycle. Note that I reject what Jacoby describes as "the crisis tradition in Marxism." That is, to me the idea that economic crises will be the downfall of capitalism seems ridiculous. (It's only the movement of the working classes and other oppressed groups that will end capitalism.) A serious depression could easily mobilize the Benito Mussolinis and David Horowitzes of the world instead of spurring the growth of a socialist movement. The 1930s was not a happy period. In the US, it encouraged mass struggles which set the basis for the New Deal, but it could have produced much better. I don't know Luxemburg's work very well either. But it seems like she (or at least some of her followers) believed that economic crisis would cause an economic collapse, which would (spontaneously?) cause an upsurge of working-class resistance, which would bloom into a socialist revolution. There's nothing at all that's automatic about that process. Instead of ending capitalism, crises seem to one of the many costs of living under capitalism that are ignored by the mainstream media, etc. Their occurrence may raise consciousness, but that's hardly automatic without socialist activists. -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante.
