[Marxism] Marx was a "restricted consumptionist"

["Charles Brown" <charlesb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Steve Palmer 
Mon Jan 19 19:30:01 MST 2009 



That is true but only half the story.

^^^
CB: Sure the story is more complex than
its ultimate cause. But the ultimate 
cause has an explanatory status that
the rest of the story does not have,
 especially
in the debates over whether the
Law of the Tendency of the Rate of
Profit to Fall is "the" key cause.
 It is true , too, that the FROP is
part of the complex causal chain of
crises,  but the FROP is "one-third" 
of the story, 
ACCORDING TO
MARX WHOSE THEORY EVERBODY
IS EXPOUNDING in this debate on
overproduction vs underconsumption
; and the
FROP is not the ultimate story 
either, as arguers for the FROP
always imply. The _ultimate_ story
 or cause is "restricted consumption 
and poverty'
 of the masses' as Marx says in the quote.
 Marx doesn't mean
 to discard his own analysis and "Law" 
that he has just articulated, when he makes 
this statement about the "ultimate 
cause". 

^^^

The capitalists get the rest of the value and use it to buy means of
production and luxuries.

In the last section of Book 2, Marx reviews the reproduction schema to
demonstrate that there is no intrinsic reason why the circulation of
capital should not continue uninterruptedly. A crisis results in an
interruption of circulation. Obviously there can be screwups in the
proportions, but there is no necessary reason why this should occur.
There are numerous points in Capital and elsewhere where Marx clearly
repudiates underconsumption as an explanation of crisis.
^^^
CB: Quote them. I just gave you a
quote from Marx that contradicts
 your claim here.

^^^


 In addition the discussion of Malthus, an early underconsumptionist,
in Theories of Surplus-Value shows the faulty reasoning behind this
interpretation.

It is only in Book 3, where he investigates the process of competition
that Marx can examine the effect of production on circulation and that
he can demonstrate that capitalist production necessarily and inevitably
creates a crisis which appears (and can only appear) as a disturbance of
circulation. The tendency for the rate of profit to fall results in a
suspension of accumulation, which can only appear in the sphere of
circulation.

^^^
CB: In that same book three, 
after explaining'
 the FROP , Marx says, contra 
your claim 
here:

"The ultimate reason for all
real crises always remains the
poverty and restricted consumption
of the masses"...

^^

The famous (infamous?) quote

^^^
CB: Only infamous because it directly
contradicts your claim as to what
 Marx thinks.

^^^
 "The last cause of all crises remains the poverty and restricted
consumption of the masses as opposed to  the drive of capitalist
production to develop the productive forces as though only the absolute
consuming power of society constituted their limit." has to be read in
context. Out of that context it is extremely misleading. If interpreted
in the underconsumptionist way, then it bears no relation to the
surrounding paragraph.

^^^
CB: In context, it is explaining
that what you say above is not
 Marx's thinking.

^^^^

In the immediate context of the entire paragraph, Marx is saying, look,

^^^
CB: No , _you_, not Marx, are 
saying that. The context doesn't
change the meaning into the opposite
of what Marx said, and into what 
you want him to have said.
^^^^^

if you ignore all superficial phenomena, assume that everything sells
at its values and that there are only capitalists and workers, then a
crisis of disproportion could only be explained by a disproportion
between capitalists' consumption and their accumulation. But, because
the workers do not consume means of production, then the proportions in
which the latter exchange are going to be controlled, not by the needs
of workers, but by much narrower criteria: whether or not they can be
'profitably employed by the capitalist class'.

^^^
CB: Of course the _needs_ of the
workers not being met doesn't
trigger the capitalists cutting
production.  It is, ironically,
the mass of workers not having 
enough money to _buy_, pay money 
for to the capitalists,  all the means of
personal consumption that causes the
crisis , ultimately. It is not that 
workers needs aren't being met, but
that they can't give the capitalists
money to realize their surplus value,
profit, that makes the capitalists
 cut production, and destroy capital
variable and constant.

^^^^

^^^
CB: The costs of the means of production
get included and passed on
 in the costs of the means
of personal consumption, which
 the wage-laborers do buy the
 vast majority of .

^^^^

A critical part of the surplus product, means of production, is
exchanged based exclusively on the criterion of profitability - that is,
whether the use-values not consumed by the working class can be used by
the buyer (ie a capitalist) to produce at a profit. This is necessarily
the case as long as capitalists continue to appropriate surplus
product.

So we are returned to the question of profitability to explain why
crises necessarily occur. The entire paragraph falls in the middle of a
discussion of the relationship between credit and the reproduction
process, which doesn't make its interpretation any easier. I think this
is one of those places where Marx strayed away from the main trail of
his thought without concluding it neatly.

"The last cause of all real crises always remains the fact that
capitalists appropriate a substantial part of production, which means
that whether it is purchased or not, depends on whether it can be used
by another capitalist to produce at a profit."

Steve

--- On Sun, 1/18/09, David PicÃn Ãlvarez <david at miradoiro.com>
wrote:

> Sure, but in this case doesn't it come to the same? The 
> fact that labour is 
> the source of value, and that labour power sells roughly at
> its reproduction 
> cost, would seem to me to entail that, barring a different
> mechanic for 
> exchange, workers cannot acquire goods and services
> equivalent in value to 
> those goods and services that they produce.
> 
> --David.




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