Re: Re: Value talk/Engels Marx

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Note: The human eye cannot see emergence, or rather the outbreak of crisis is
witnessed at its second phase. Hence, prediction based on the law system
discovered by Karl Marx 150 years ago.




"The capitalistic mode of production moves in these two forms of the
antagonism immanent to it from its very origin. It is never able to get out
of that "vicious circle" which Fourier had already discovered. What Fourier
could not, indeed, see in his time is that this circle is gradually
narrowing; that the movement becomes more and more a spiral, and must come to
an end, like the movement of planets, by collision with the center. It is the
compelling force of anarchy in the production of society at large that more
and more completely turns the great majority of men into proletarians; and it
is the masses of the proletariat again who will finally put an end to anarchy
in production. It is the compelling force of anarchy in social production
that turns the limitless perfectibility of machinery under modern industry
into a compulsory law by which every individual industrial capitalist must
perfect his machinery more and more, under penalty of ruin.

But the perfecting of machinery is making human labor superfluous. If the
introduction and increase of machinery means the displacement of millions of
manual by a few machine-workers, improvement in machinery means the
displacement of more and more of the machine-workers themselves. It means, in
the last instance, the production of a number of available wage workers in
excess of the average needs of capital, the formation of a complete
industrial reserve army, as I called it in 1845, available at the times when
industry is working at high pressure, to be cast out upon the street when the
inevitable crash comes, a constant dead weight upon the limbs of the
working-class in its struggle for existence with capital, a regulator for
keeping of wages down to the low level that suits the interests of capital.

Thus it comes about, to quote Marx, that machinery becomes the most powerful
weapon in the war of capital against the working-class; that the instruments
of labor constantly tear the means of subsistence out of the hands of the
laborer; that they very product of the worker is turned into an instrument
for his subjugation.

Thus it comes about that the economizing of the instruments of labor becomes
at the same time, from the outset, the most reckless waste of labor-power,
and robbery based upon the normal conditions under which labor functions;
that machinery,
"the most powerful instrument for shortening labor time, becomes the most
unfailing means for placing every moment of the laborer's time and that of
his family at the disposal of the capitalist for the purpose of expanding the
value of his capital." (Capital, English edition, p. 406)

Thus it comes about that the overwork of some becomes the preliminary
condition for the idleness of others, and that modern industry, which hunts
after new consumers over the whole world, forces the consumption of the
masses at home down to a starvation minimum, and in doing thus destroys its
own home market.

"The law that always equilibrates the relative surplus- population, or
industrial reserve army, to the extent and energy of accumulation, this law
rivets the laborer to capital more firmly than the wedges of Vulcan did
Prometheus to the rock. It establishes an accumulation of misery,
corresponding with the accumulation of capital. Accumulation of wealth at one
pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil,
slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole,
i.e., on the side of the class that produces its own product in the form of
capital (Marx's Capital, p. 661)"

"We have seen that the ever-increasing perfectibility of modern machinery is,
by the anarchy of social production, turned into a compulsory law that forces
the individual industrial capitalist always to improve his machinery, always
to increase its productive force. The bare possibility of extending the field
of production is transformed for him into a similarly compulsory law. The
enormous expansive force of modern industry, compared with which that of
gases is mere child's play, appears to us now as a necessity for expansion,
both qualitative and quantitative, that laughs at all resistance. Such
resistance is offered by consumption, by sales, by the markets for the
products of modern industry. But the capacity for extension, extensive and
intensive, of the markets is primarily governed by quite different laws that
work much less energetically. The extension of the markets cannot keep pace
with the extension of production. The collision becomes inevitable, and as
this cannot produce any real solution so long as it does not break in pieces
the capitalist mode of production, the collisions become periodic. Capitalist
production has begotten another "vicious circle".

As a matter of fact, since 1825, when the first general crisis broke out, the
whole industrial and commercial world, production and exchange among all
civilized peoples and their more or less barbaric hangers-on, are thrown out
of joint about once every 10 years. Commerce is at a stand-still, the markets
are glutted, products accumulate, as multitudinous as they are unsaleable,
hard cash disappears, credit vanishes, factories are closed, the mass of the
workers are in want of the means of subsistence, because they have produced
too much of the means of subsistence; bankruptcy follows upon bankruptcy,
execution upon execution. The stagnation last for years; productive forces
and products are wasted and destroyed wholesale, until the accumulated mass
of commodities finally filter off, more or less depreciated in value, until
production and exchange gradually begin to move again. Little by little, the
pace quickens. It becomes a trot. The industrial trot breaks into a canter,
the canter in turn grows into the headlong gallop of a perfect steeplechase
of industry, commercial credit, and speculation, which finally, after
breakneck leaps, ends where it began - in the ditch of a crisis. And so over
and over again. We have now, since the year 1825, gone through this five
times, and at the present moment (1877), we are going through it for the
sixth time. And the character of these crises is so clearly defined that
Fourier hit all of them off when he described the first "crise plethorique",
a crisis from plethora.

In these crises, the contradiction between socialized production and
capitalist appropriation ends in a violent explosion. The circulation of
commodities is, for the time being, stopped. Money, the means of circulation,
becomes a hindrance to circulation. All the laws of production and
circulation of commodities are turned upside down. The economic collision has
reached its apogee. The mode of production is in rebellion against the mode
of exchange.

The fact that the socialized organization of production within the factory
has developed so far that it has become incompatible with the anarchy of
production in society, which exists side by side with and dominates it, is
brought home to the capitalist themselves by the violent concentration of
capital that occurs during crises, through the ruin of many large, and a
still greater number of small, capitalists. The whole mechanism of the
capitalist mode of production breaks down under the pressure of the
productive forces, its own creations. It is no longer able to turn all this
mass of means of production into capital. They lie fallow, and for that very
reason the industrial reserve army must also lie fallow. Means of production,
means of subsistence, available laborers, all the elements of production and
of general wealth, are present in abundance. But "abundance becomes the
source of distress and want" (Fourier), because it is the very thing that
prevents the transformation of the means of production and subsistence into
capital.

For in capitalistic society, the means of production can only function when
they have undergone a preliminary transformation into capital, into the means
of exploiting human labor-power. The necessity of this transformation into ca
pital of the means of production and subsistence stands like a ghost between
these and the workers. It alone prevents the coming together of the material
and personal levers of production; it alone forbids the means of production
to function, the workers to work and live. On the one hand, therefore, the
capitalistic mode of production stands convicted of its own incapacity to
further direct these productive forces. On the other, these productive forces
themselves, with increasing energy, press forward to the removal of the
existing contradiction, to the abolition of their quality as capital, to the
practical recognition of their character as social production forces.

This rebellion of the productive forces, as they grow more and more powerful,
against their quality as capital, this stronger and stronger command that
their social character shall be recognized, forces the capital class itself
to treat them more and more as social productive forces, so far as this is
possible under capitalist conditions. The period of industrial high pressure,
with its unbounded inflation of credit, not less than the crash itself, by
the collapse of great capitalist establishments, tends to bring about that
form of the socialization of great masses of the means of production, which
we meet with in the different kinds of joint-stock companies."

"For in capitalistic society, the means of production can only function when
they have undergone a preliminary transformation into capital, into the means
of exploiting human labor-power."

Engels "Anti-Duhring"



 "The word overproduction in itself leads to error. So long as the most
urgent needs of a large part of society are not satisfied, there can of
course be absolutely no talk of an over-production of products - in the sense
that the amount of products is excessive in relation to the need for them.

On the contrary, it must be said that on the basis of capitalist production,
there is a constant under-production in this sense. The limits to production
are set by the profit of the capitalist and in no way by the needs of the
producers. But overproduction of products and over production of commodities
are two entirely different things.

If Ricardo thinks that the commodity form makes no difference to the product,
and furthermore, that commodity circulation differs only formally from
barter, that in this context the exchange-value is only a fleeting form of
the exchange of things, and that money of therefore merely a formal means of
circulation - then this is in fact in line with the presupposition that the
bourgeois mode of production is the absolute mode of production, hence it is
a mode of production without an definite specific characteristic, its
distinctive traits are merely formal.

He cannot therefore admit that the bourgeois mode of production contains
within itself a barrier to the free development of the productive forces, a
barrier which comes to the surface in crises and, in particular in
over-production - the basic phenomenon in crises. (End of paragraph)

Theory of Surplus Value. Volume 2 of Theories of Surplus Value, Progress
Publishers, Moscow first edition 1968.

Karl Marx



"But the perfecting of machinery is making human labor superfluous."

"the bourgeois mode of production contains within itself . . . a barrier
which comes to the surface in crises and, in particular in over-production -
the basic phenomenon in crises."