[Marxism] More on generation of capitalist crisis

[Charles Brown <cdb1003@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

 Anonymous:  The urbanization rate in the NIEs of Asia accelerates
> remarkably after 1986.  The World Bank did studies on it.


^^^^^^^
CB: However, people moving into the cities and becoming 
wage-laborers/proletarians is not the over-accumulation of capital that leads 
to crisis. Wage-laborers are variable capital. Overaccumulation refers, through 
the OCC, to the accumulation of too much constant capital relative to the 
amount of variable capital or wage-laborers. Wage-laborers/variable capital is 
the source of surplus value. They can't be over-accumulated from the standpoint 
of producing profits ,  profits per total capital or rate of profit ( unless 
their wages are too high ! which was not a problem in East Asia at the time 
referred to) Variable capital increase does not cause the rate of profit to 
fall.  It is overaccumulation of constant capital relative to the amount of 
variable capital ( increased OCC) that leads to a fall in the rate of profit. 
So, this trend of increased urbanization/proletarianization is not the cause of 
the rate of profit falling when it  does. 

Again the rate of profit falls because of a)over-accumulation of _constant_ 
capital relative to variable capital, increase in the OCC, because variable 
capital is the only source of new value , and therefore surplus value (and 
constant capital is not a source of new value or surplus value); and 
b)overproduction of commodities relative to the poverty and restricted 
consumption of the masses of wage-laborers, who are the consumers of the great 
mass of personal consumption commodities, thereby preventing realization of a 
major fraction of the potential surplus value exploited by the capitalists. 

The tendency of the rate of profit to fall is a valid generalization of 
capitalism , because, individual capitalists are constantly revolutionizing the 
instruments of production, in order to produce more unit commodities per labor 
time to get a leg up on the other capitalists. This is relative surplus value 
as opposed to absolute surplus value. Eventually , all such efficiency 
increasing eventually spreads to all capitalists in an industry, and this 
raises the OCC industry wide (see above on how increase in the OCC causes the 
rate of profit to fall.)

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