[Marxism] Marx was a "restricted consumptionist"

[S. Artesian]

Charles,

I never said poverty had nothing to do with the crisis, or ultimate crisis 
of capitalism.  I stated that the inability of the workers to expand their 
consumption; the restricted consumption of workers was not the source of the 
problems, predicaments, crises of capitalist accumulation.  I stated that 
Marx clearly locates the historical limits of capital in the falling rate of 
profit; that he finds the source of capitalist crisis in overproduction--  
which is nothing other than the overproduction of the means of production 
unable to exploit wage-labor at a sufficient intensity.

I stated that Marx was not a restricted consumptionist in his analysis of 
those historical limits of capital, its structural and secular tendencies 
towards declining profits, insufficient rates of exploitation.

You can play as many word games as you like-- "When did you stop beating 
your wife"  or like David Stockman, classify ketchup as a vegetable, but 
that doesn't make the lunch any more nourishing.

But if restricted consumption is the ultimate cause of every capitalist 
crisis, then you should  be able to explain capital's cycles, its 
oscillations based on that consumption.  You refuse to do so, which says a 
lot about how much confidence you have in your own belief.  And no, simply 
showing that the value of the production of goods exceeds personal income 
does not establish that restricted consumption is the cause of a crisis--  
you would have to show the differentials, the variations, and why such 
variations at times accompany expansions, and why the same variations at 
other times accompany contractions. You would have to explain why at times 
there is a crisis, and at times there is no crisis.

I'm not confusing political crisis with economic crisis.  It was Marx who 
clearly stated that at that moment when the means of  production come into 
conflict with the relations of production an era of revolution is 
inaugurated.  So if the conflict finds its ultimate source in restricted 
consumption, you need to show how the revolt against the relations of 
production is in fact based on restricted consumption.

I am absolutely saying that the events I listed can be explained through 
analysis of profit, profitability, the exchange of capital and wage-labor, 
the growth of the means of production and the conflict between means and 
relations of production.   That's what Marxist historical analysis is.  Try 
reading Trotsky's Results and Prospects, History of the Russian Revolution; 
or Marx's 18th Brumaire and Class Struggles in France.

The origin and the driver of the Russian Revoluton was not a slogan for 
bread, it was the growth of the means of production, on an international 
scale and national scale, with Russian agricultural, the relations of land 
and labor, so archaic as to circumscribe the means of production, limit the 
domestic market, and exacerbate the overproduction of capital.   WW 1 was 
the trigger for that revolution.  Do you think underconsumption produced 
WW1?

But all in all, it's probably not worth discussing this with you as you 
would much rather spin words, avoid answers, and pretend you're in a 
courtroom trying to build a case for appeal on technical grounds.



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Charles Brown" <charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us>
To: <sartesian at earthlink.net>
Sent: Thursday, January 22, 2009 12:04 AM
Subject: [Marxism] Marx was a "restricted consumptionist"