>>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 03/22/01 04:12PM >>> > >I wrote: > >In "normal" times, the capitalists purchase the surplus commodities as > >luxury consumption goods or investment goods or wasteful goods, so this > >basic realization problem isn't realized (as it were). > >Charles writes: > >How many cars can a capitalist drive and buy ? How much toilet paper, > >televisions ? Even in "normal" times, I don't see how the capitalists can > >buy up all the goods and services corresponding to the surplus value. > >you forget spending on accumulation, >CB: Spending on accumulation is not for means of consumption commodities, no ? I follow Marx, seeing accumulation as in effect happening for accumulation's sake, driven by the battle of competition and other structural tensions. ((((((( CB; I agree with "accumulation as the law and the prophets", but I am saying that the capitalists do not accumulate by buying masses of individual consumption commodities, the leftovers unsold because the masses of workers don't have enough to buy them all. ((((((( I wrote: >plus the seeming insatiability of the >capitalist lust for luxury. They rush in to buy High-Definition TVs, for >example, even though they haven't been established as the standard yet. >They think they can afford it when it turns out that the current HDTVs turn >out to be obsolete. If all else fails, there's always cocaine. > >CB: I am not denying this, but what about all that toilet paper and just >all the numerous non-luxury individual consumption commodities ? The >capitalists don't buy those up. >Pay out in wages "v" amount of capital, but the value of the commodities >that are produced is v plus the surplus value. In the department of >production of means of individual consumption, more is produced than the >even the capitalists can buy up as "luxuries" ( and the wage laborers buy >as means of consumption). at the end of volume II of CAPITAL, Marx showed that both simple and extended reproduction can continue over time without realization crises of the sort you're pointing to. He just didn't think the system would allow this process to continue without crisis forever. (((((((( CB: I recall you mentioning that a number of weeks ago. I will study it. What about the following quote from Vol. III: "_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 _ " The ultimate reason for all real crises seems to be poverty and underconsumption of the masses in this statement by Marx, which is to say realization.
