Re: Underconsumption/ "poverty and restrictedconsumption of the masses"

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>>> jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 03/22/01 02:18PM >>>
I wrote:
>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).

Charles writes:
>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.

you forget spending on accumulation,

(((((((((

CB: Spending on accumulation is not for means of consumption commodities, no ?

((((((

plus the seeming insatiability of the
capitalist lust for luxury. They rush in to buy High-Definition TVs, for
example, even though they haven't been established as the standard yet.
They think they can afford it when it turns out that the current HDTVs turn
out to be obsolete. If all else fails, there's always cocaine.

((((((((

CB: I am not denying this, but what about all that toilet paper and just all the numerous non-luxury individual consumption commodities ? The capitalists don't buy those up.

Pay out in wages "v" amount of capital, but the value of the commodities that are produced is v plus the surplus value.  In the department of production of means of individual consumption, more is produced than the even the capitalists can buy up as "luxuries" ( and the wage laborers buy as means of consumption).


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