Underconsumption/ "poverty and restricted consumption of the masses"

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>>> jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 03/22/01 01:05PM >>>
>... On what you say following isn't it also true that the limited
>consuming power of society as a whole , limited to less than the total
>value of commodities produced, rooted in the fact that the fundamental
>facts of surplus  value, in that the great mass of workers all produce
>more value ( surplus value) than they are paid in wages , of course? The
>capitalists who get the surplus value cannot or do not buy all especially
>the individual consumption commodities, they don't purchase the "surplus"
>commodities corresponding to the surplus value produced, so there is an
>inevitable realization problem lurking by the very operation of extraction
>of surplus value. This is an expression of the contradiction of social
>production and private appropriation. There's a better quote in Vol. III
>saying this , but I have lost track of it.

In "normal" times, the capitalists purchase the surplus commodities as
luxury consumption goods or investment goods or wasteful goods, so this
basic realization problem isn't realized (as it were).

((((((((((

CB: How many cars can a capitalist drive and buy ? How much toilet paper, televisions ?  Even in "normal" times, I don't see how the capitalists can buy up all the goods and services corresponding to the surplus value.

By the way, I found the best example of Marx's statement of his overproduction/ inadequate consuming or purchasing power of the masses aspect of the theory , it is Vol. III , Chapter XXX ( page 484 of International edition):

"Let us suppose that the whole of society is composed only of industrial capitalists and wage-workers. Let us furthermore disregard price fluctuations, which prevent large portions of the total capital from replacing themselves in their average proportions and which, owing to the general interrelations of the entire reproduction process as developed in particular by credit, must always call forth general stoppages of a transient nature. Let us also disregard the sham transactions and speculations, which the credit system favours. Then, a crisis could only be explained as the result of a disproportion of production in various branches of the economy, and as a result of a disproportion between the consumption of the capitalists and their accumulation. But as matters stand, the replacement of the capital invested in production depends largely upon the consuming power of the non-producing classes; while the consuming power of the workers is limited partly by the laws of wages, p!
artly by the fact that they are used only as long as they can be profitably employed by the capitalist class. _The ultimate reason for all real crises always 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 _ (emphasis CB) "

((((((((((

 However, driven in
part by competition, they strive to raise the rate of surplus-value. (The
capitalists will disrupt even their own status quo.)  If labor-market
conditions (including the state of working-class organization) allow this
hike to occur, then the capitalists have a harder and harder time filling
the gap, since increasing luxury and investment spending makes the economy
more unstable. This is overinvestment or overaccumulation relative to
consumption.

Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxx &  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine