Re: Historical Materialism

[Rakesh Bhandari <rakeshb@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>  Historical Materialism
> by Justin Schwartz
> 07 February 2002 05:59 UTC
>
>
>
>
> > As we've all been remiss in pointing out until now, the most
> > powerful critique of Capital -- in the last decade at the very
> > least -- makes no use whatsoever of value theory. What is missing
> > from that book............."Wall Street", that value theory would
> > make substantive improvements on?
>
> well, we have it from very wise people that you can't begin to understand or
> explain capitalism without value theory, we're stucvk at the level of mere
> ecletic phenomenal static description. Sorry, Doug.
>
> jks
>
> ^^^^^^^
>
> CB: Actually, you can begin to explain capitalism without value
> theory, you just can't get anywhere near finishing explaining it
> without value theory.
>
> Isn't value theory a premise of Doug's book ?


Doug thinks Marx was an underconsumptionist; at the same Doug
subscribes to the wage led profit squeeze thesis. Doug's an eclectic.
Doug's hostility to value theory derives in part from his rejection
of the significance of the Yaffe, Shaikh, Perlo, and Moseley finding
that despite the so called wage led squeeze on profits,  s/v has had
a tendency to rise throughout.

Doug thinks his theory is radical because it imlies that since the
working class had the ability to choke the profitability of the
working class it may have the power to overthrow the capitalist class.

But there are empirical problems with the wage squeeze theory raised
by Fred and others, and I don't think Doug has even recognized them.
And I won't here get into why the implications are not as politically
radical as Doug thinks.

Moreover, that capital accumulation depends on a rising s/v does in
fact disclose the limits of this mode of production since as greater
difficulties are faced in raising the rate of exploitation, the
system comes to itself depend on convulsive crises by which as a
result of the destruction and devaluation of capital the value
composition of capital can be readjusted to the rate of exploitation
such that accumulation can resumed and the realization of surplus
value thereby ensured. On the basis of value theory, it is clarified
that the capitalist way out of crises is not putting more purchasing
power in the hands of workers or simply increasing the rate of
exploitation. If the system as a whole cannot be put right even
through a protracted crisis, then one capital survives ever more only
at the expense of another, yielding slaughterous destruction in the
world market and the political tensions to what gives rise. Barbarism
or socialism.

RB