Debt crisis

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>>> Chris Burford <cburford@xxxxxxxxxx> 04/12/00 07:11PM >>>
At 10:13 12/04/00 -0400,

[Chris]
>Quite. A typical capitalist crisis of "overproduction". That is,
>overproduction relative to the limited purchasing power of the market, and
>in particular the impoverished masses of the world.
>
>_________
>
>Charles B: But what of the FROP and inability to valorize capital ?


Isn't this in part looking at the same problem from a different angle.

The rate of profit falls especially fast when the capitalists cannot sell
their goods.
As for your second phrase I have read too little to grasp if this is indeed
a problem or another statement of the same contradiction from a different
perspective.

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Charles: You know there is this big debate about whether Marx's theory of the business cycle featured overproduction ( never say "underconsumption" ! oh my gosh ! please don't say "underconsumption") or the OCC, the FROP and the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall , from Vol. III of Capital.  Valorizing , or lack of, has to do with not enough labor to combine its labor with the capital ( See Rakesh).  I don't know that Marx uses the term "valorize", does he ?

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>This is not true. Debts do not have to be repaid even from the point of
>view of the capitalists. All capitalists know that some have "bad luck".
>
>__________
>
>Charles B: They may know it, but I can't imagine the capitalists letting
>it out in general that they think that debts do not have to be paid.  Lets
>forgive the credit card debt, mortgages and the national debt. I don't
>think the capitalists would go for that.

Yes they will not say it out loud. The euphemism is "restructuring". But
capitalists do take an element of risk in order to participate in the
statistical certainty that they will get a larger slice of surplus value by
owning capital.

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CB: Yes, and some capitalists must fail to. The shakeout, the creative destruction, includes some destruction of capitalists. Those are the capitalists who don't realize their surplus value. There not realizing their surplus value and falling into ruin is the basis for balancing the excess of commodities produced over the wages paid out. The wages those who fail paid , go to the capitalists who survive.  In other words, since exploitation means there are not enough wages paid to the working class as a whole to pay for all the consumption commodities that that are produced on the whole, and some of the surplus value cannot thereby be realized, this is resolved by certain capitalists not realizing even their surplus value, and the surviving capitalists realize all of their surplus value because they get some of the other capitalists' theoretical portion  of the consumer spending.

___________

The petty bourgeoisie have now been induced in large
numbers to try holding shares.
Approached the right way supporters of capitalism will declare bluntly that
indeed there are risks and some capitalists go to the wall. Sections of
capital may lobby hard against bail-outs

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Charles: Agreed. Some capitalists know that there aren't enough wages out there in the working class to be paid for all the commodities and realize all the surplus value the capitalist class is expecting to realize. So, some of the capitalists are going to have to go to the wall. In this sense, the capitalist class is a cannibalistic class. It must eat some of its own.  It is a self- sacrificial cult.





>  Small businesses fail all the time, sacrificed to the bourgeois God.


Absolutely. I have forgotten the proportion of businesses that fail in the
first year. There ought to be a hazard warning printed on the publicity for
all such enterprises. hundreds of thousands of people a year ruin their
lives, and burn up what little capital they have in a business that goes
flat despite them exploiting themselves to the point of exhaustion.

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Charles: Lambs to the slaughter. Christianity is the religion of capitalism. Easter and all that.

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> >Unemployment worldwide nearly doubled between 1989 and 1996, and now
> >criminally afflicts over a billion people.
>
>Nothing inherently criminal about it.
>
>________
>
>Charles B: You must not be unemployed.

I am not, but I don't get your point.

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Charles: Unemployment is a capitalist crime (not just a civil wrong, not just a tort, but a crime).  Why are other crimes that are crimes considered crimes ? Many because they do harm to people.  Murder,  assault, rape, theft, embezzelment are crimes because they harm people. Similarly, firing people, and other acts causing unemployment harm people.  The acts that cause unemployment should be criminalized , formally. This perogative should be removed from the sole province of the employer.
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>Charles B: Capitalism is inherently capital crime.

I am a purist on this. A lot of crime is associated with capitalism but
accumulation occurs through the fair exchange of commodities. I do not
think this is pedantry. I think we sell the pass if we slip into
unscientific rhetoric about this. True that the owners of capital take
their decisions in order to maximise profits and not out of social
foresight, but that is in itself not a crime under capitalist law.

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Charles: I am a purist too. Accumulation occurs through exploitation. Exploitation is theft. The capitalist can be paid a wage too. That would be fair too.  I am talking about socialist law.

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>We must find ways to help people see the world economy in a completely
>different light. To emphasise that it is living labour that is important
>not dead capital. (That is not to say however that investment in the means
>of production is not needed) We have to get the point across that an
>envigoration of the economic life of Africa, Latin America and Asia is to
>the benefit of the people of North America and Europe even if the rate of
>growth there slows temporarily. A rise in the quality of life of third
>world peoples is essential if they are to have better opportunities without
>following in the environmentally destructive path of previous
>industrialisations.
>
>_________
>
>Charles B: True


Charles do you not use software with a reply button which automatically
marks the material to which you reply, as a quote?

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Charles: No , I have a reply button, but it does not automatically mark the material to which I reply as a quote.