[Marxism] Why analyze the economic crisis

[Greg McDonald <sabocat59@xxxxxxx>]

S. Artesian wrote:

<When we point to stagnating or declining real wages we need to link  
that not
with underconsumption but with the organization of the means of  
production
as capital, with capital's need for profit-- that the attack on workers
wages, living standards is not because underconsumption somehow has led
capitalism to an abyss, so that now it must attack even less  
consumption in
order to... in order to what?  We need to link it to the entire  
notion of
profit-- to capitalism's need for profit... because if the problem is
underconsumption then the nearest social democrat will absolutely  
agree and
say what we need is to "tame" capital, not replace it, to augment
consumption, to give capital a social, human, face and dimension.

And how does that get done?  By feeding capital what it must consume in
order to reconstitute its mechanism of accumulation-- feeding bodies  
into
that great furnace of consumption called war.

Bet on it.  That's where this capitalism is going, and in a hurry.   
And to a
big one.>

Ok,  so far I agree, having had the opportunity during these past few  
months to do some actual reading on Marx and economic crisis. Always,  
the driving force behind change under capitalism, is capitalism's  
need for profit. But could not underconsumption, or restricted  
consumption, as CB puts it, be a "second cut" contradiction? In other  
words, if the restricted consumption of the masses is caused by the  
exploitive extraction of surplus value during the production process,  
could not then this effect further exacerbate the original cause,  
becoming in and of itself a second order causal factor? Capitalism  
needs to make a profit to survive, and it can only realize a profit  
in the process of exchange. It has to sell its commodities on the  
market. If it cannot sell, (due mainly to overproduction but also to  
the lack of purchasing power by the workers) there is no profit to be  
made, regardless of the surplus value embedded in the commodity  
itself.  This exacerbates the original causal factor of  
overproduction, making the crisis worse.  Or am I just trying to have  
my cake and eat it too?

Greg McDonald


________________________________________________
YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
Send list submissions to: Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Set your options at: 
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40archives.econ.utah.edu