Re: Interesting exchange on overproduction (from psn-l)

["David Schanoes" <Schanoes@xxxxxxx>]

Hey Charles, nice to hear from  you:

1. Yes I did read your post, and in an earlier post I discussed how
Marx would assume  "underconsumptiont/overproduction" and then reject it
only to reassume and reject it again-- along with disproportionality
which he supported and then found inadequate and then supported again.


2. Marx quite clearly states that the root cause of overproduction is
in the exploitation of the worker-- but I don't think Marx is implying
or insisting or identifying that exploitation as the restriction on
consumption.  It is in the specific terms of that exploitation of
labor-- the extraction of surplus value, the production for profit that,
I think, is the determining definition of exploitation.

3.  I think yes, the capitalist has to realize the surplus value
extracted in production in the exchange with all other commodities, but
that is not dependent on wage rates, and how much the workers' consume.
Marx goes out of his way to demolish the notion that workers' wage rates
high or low are the causes of overproduction or crises,  and he shows
how overproduction and crises actually afflict capitalism  when wages
and consumption increase, which is not the same thing as wages causing
crises.  The difference, again, is in the rate, the ratio, the relation
of surplus value to capital and the ability of profit to be reproduced
quickly enough in the markets.

4.  Too often, in fact inevitably, the arguments about underconsumption
fade into proposals for stimulating aggregate demand-- when of course
the demand may already exist, may be increasing, but without the means
for profitable exchange-- i.e. overproduction of agricultural products,
etc.

5. Yes, I think when you say the underconsumption is not regarding use
value, but exchange value, you are on the right path-- but then it isn't
underconsumption at all-- it's exchange, profitable exchange, the
ability of capital to support the terms of its self-expansion within the
confines of private property which is itself.  That's the revolutionary
nexus-- the conflict between means and relations of production, the
convergence of the falling rate of profit with overproduction, the "law
of value, the hard way" as Brother Melvin puts it, that makes crisis not
just inevitable but necessary to the system of production.



dms


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