[Marxism] Why analyze the economic crisis

[S. Artesian]

Well, I'm kind of flattered, and very gratified, by your agreement-- 

Nothing wrong with having your cake and eating it too-- all that means is 
that you've gotten beyond the value form and need the cake for its 
usefulness and not for its encapsulation of expropriated wage-labor.  So go 
ahead and eat.  And always remember to share your food.  The usefulness of 
the cake is not just in its personal consumption but also in its social 
consumption.

Anyway, regarding your question-- I think there are obvious instances-- with 
the emphasis on instances-- where underconsumption is a factor for a 
specific enterprise or a specific industry. But again, even in those 
specific instances, if we look more closely,  we can see the 
"underconsumption" is not due to the restrictions of wage-labor upon the 
laborer, but due rather to the "overconsumption" of socially unnecessary 
labor in the production and reproduction of those specific commodities, 
which must go unpurchased and unconsumed as capitalism apportions the 
socially produced profit along the lines of the most effective producers, 
and through that establishes the general rate of profit.

The commodity has to prove its social value, has to realize its appropriated 
surplus value, in the markets.   It, the commodity, can only do that at one 
and the same time in concert with all other commodities and in competition 
with all other commodities.  So a particular industry, or sector even, may 
push its commodities into the markets where the surplus value is unrealized 
due to the inefficiency, the expense of production, and even the lack of 
usefulness of product.  In these cases we see that it is the genetic 
composition of the commodity, of its contradiction between exchange and use 
values, that drives the process of (un)realization, not the ability of the 
workers to consume the products.

When we come to capitalist reproduction as a whole, and with the breakdown 
of that reproduction, then we have moved from socially necessary labor of a 
commodity or type of commodity, and from the social usefulness of a 
commodity,  and TO the social necessity of the commodity producing system 
itself.  So we must look to its core contradiction, its conflict between 
means and relations of production, between the accumulation of the means of 
production as capital and the ability to maintain the ratio of profit 
required to sustain more accumulation.

Historical aside: Several months ago, when the US Congress and the UK 
parliament were debating bailing out the banks, the Financial Times, moaning 
about the resistance to the bailouts asked-- if rescuing the banks is not a 
socially worthwhile endeavor, then what is?  Can you believe it, it's like 
they almost understood the dual nature of the commodity?   Part of the 
answer that should have been given right back to the FT was that the markets 
were telling everybody that far too much socially unnecessary labor time had 
been expended in this sector and that subsidizing the banks, expending more 
socially unnecessary living labor on this socially unnecessary dead labor 
was akin to, no... was identical to throwing bad money after worse money.

Anyway, Let me give an example, one Charles Brown brought up on Julio 
Huato's Marxist-Debate list.  The old story goes that Henry Ford was talking 
to Walter Reuther about his plans and dreams for automation of the 
production process and replacing the workers with machines:

Said Henry to Walter:  "Who will you organize then, Walter, the machines?"

Replied Walter to Henry:  "Who will you sell your cars to then, Henry, the 
machines?"

And this by the way is the problem with underconsumptionism-- it leaves 
unchallenged the ownership, the property of production, the relations of 
capital, requiring the continued existence of capital in the mistaken belief 
that capital requires consumption.

Anyway, the answer to Walter is that Henry could have continued to sell his 
machine produced machines, garnering profit from the other manufacturers 
whose appropriated surplus value would flow to the Ford capital given the 
apportioning of profits through price mechanisms in the market.  The reduced 
socially necessary labor time involved in the Ford product as compared to 
all others, would guarantee its claim on the total appropriated surplus 
value.  So the maximally restricted consumption of the Ford no-workers would 
be offset. .

If we take this further-- to the point where all of capitalism produces all 
its commodities with no workers,  would the problem then be one of 
"underconsumption"?  Not at all.  The problem would be one of no capitalism 
at all, because there is no surplus value with no wage labor; there is no 
profit with no surplus value; there is no accumulation with no profit; there 
is no commodity without labor-power existing in its wage form.  There 
wouldn't be capitalism period.

Hope I haven't just cured you of ever agreeing with me again.


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Greg McDonald" <sabocat59 at mac.com>
To: <sartesian at earthlink.net>
Sent: Thursday, February 05, 2009 2:38 PM
Subject: [Marxism] Why analyze the economic crisis


>  This exacerbates the original causal factor of
> overproduction, making the crisis worse.  Or am I just trying to have
> my cake and eat it too?
>
> Greg McDonald