Re: Listening to an interesting exchange on overproduction, greenandred

["David Schanoes" <Schanoes@xxxxxxx>]

I get so confused in my old age, but it has its advantages, not the
least of which is (self) entertainment,....

To Lou Paulsen:  Marx wrestles throughout all his work with the facets
of overproduction and overproduction's relationship to crisis, and
ultimately the role of crisis in the reproduction, more than the
overthrow ,of capital.

Simon Clarke has written an excellent book introducing and analyzing
these problems, and the book is on the web for free.

At various times and places Marx seems to endorse underconsumption,
only to attack it vigorously (and correctly I think) as ignoring the
origins and essence of capitalist production itself-- that is production
for exchange not consumption, production based on the inability of the
producers to consume the product.  Marx also seems to endorse
disproportionality between the spheres of production only to draw back
and find that analysis incomplete, and not critical enough.

Marx also hints at the relationship of overproduction and the falling
rate of profit but never fully explores that relationship.

And finally Marx's work is not about, and should not be viewed, as a
formula,  a "catalogue" of leading indicators of capitalist crises.
Rather the crisis itself is the reproduction of capital in all its glory
and misery.

Now overproduction can be cyclical, structural, secular and it can
involve disproportion, temporary gluts of commodities  BUT the
overproduction that defines capital is in fact the exchange between
capital and wage-labor where labor must be continually aggrandized and
expelled from the production process, thus altering the relations
between the components of that production, and the profit realized when
massive amount of capital are mobilized, transformed into commodities,
by minimal amounts of labor power.  The overproduction of capital (which
is the same as the overproduction of commodities) so reduces the
relation of profit to the system that production itself becomes an
obstacle, a burden.  The markets, the arena for the realization and
apportionment of this total surplus value forced into them, mimic this
change in proportion and relationships and speed up only to seize up as
the rate of transformation becomes inadequate for continued circulation.


Manipulations of price (i.e. oil) serve to transfer profit to the more
technically advanced sectors (productivity in oil extraction and
refining exceeds every other sector save semi-conductors and computer
production, but that's another story), but sooner or later, sooner
rather than later, capital must confront its components of production to
rearrange the ratios-- and, at a critical point, reducing wages only
exacerbates the process.  This is currently happening worldwide.

So what's the capitalist to do?  Well, in the 1980s we had leverage
buyouts and asset stripping-- flameless arson-- in the US, and a lost
decade for Latin America.

Now? Now we have the fire this time-- as destruction of the means of
production, Russia 1991-1999 (to be continued) , Kosovo 1999, Argentina
2000--, Iraq
etc.
_________

Now about that plane where I live, Fred,  trains, Fred,  that's where I
am, not planes but trains--

Besides always preferred the Montagnards to the Girondists.

As for the rest, yes I'm aware of the uproar in liberal circles about
those remarks.  Big deal.

dms


~~~~~~~
PLEASE clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.