[Marxism] A second quote from Marx and Engels on crises
Charles Brown
cdb1003 at prodigy.net
Sun Feb 22 08:04:15 MST 2009
"It is enough to mention the commercial crises that,
by their periodical return, put the existence of the entire bourgeois society on its trial, each time more threateningly.
In these crises, a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises, there breaks out an epidemic that,
in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity -- the epidemic of over-production. Society suddenly finds itself put
back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation, had cut off the
supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed. And why? Because there is too much
civilization, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal
of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have
become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they
bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois
society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the
one hand, by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the
more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises,
and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented."
^^^^^
CB: How can production be "over"
without it being "under" bought ?
Hmmm "by diminishing the means
whereby crises are prevented"
So, "more thorough exploitation
of the old markets" "diminishes
the means whereby crises are
prevented". So more exploitation
diminshes the means whereby
crises might be prevented.
Ergo, less exploitation is
the means whereby crises might
be prevented.
The working class says
"Give us some more money
and we will buy what's over
in production.
Sartesian says:
Oh,no,no,no you
see the problem
is the falling
rate of profit.
We've got to
raise the rate of
profit back up.
^^^
Workers: Well, we do our
part in making the bosses
profit. We work half a day
for free already. Shall
we work 2/3 the day for free ,
to raise the rate of profit
back up ?
What .oh knowledgeable Marxist,
can _we_ do to prevent the
rate of profit from falling ?
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