[PEN-L:29562] Re: RE: Re: production & realization

["Ulhas Joglekar" <joglekarulhas@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Jim wrote:

>In fact, under the right conditions, such as those of the 1950s and 1960s
>in the U.S., >it can pull up wages (relative to labor productivity) and
thus
>consumer demand, >preventing underconsumption problems (without it being
>necessary for consumers >to get into severe debt).

Would this correspond to capital accumulation largely founded on the
relative surplus value?

>But under historically-specific conditions such as those of the 1920s or
>the 1990s, >where accumulation doesn't pull wages up much relative to labor
>productivity and >there's a world-wide "race" (or creep) to the bottom,
>there's an underconsumption >undertow. The one-sided class struggle against
>labor -- combined with competitive >austerity and export-promotion -- keeps
>consumer demand growing very slowly.

Is this the strategy of accumulation grounded in the absolute surplus value?

>But that doesn't mean we can't have economic booms like that of the late
>1990s >(again in the U.S.) Accumulation can speed ahead. In fact, it did
so,
>but it had to speed >up more than in the 1950s or 1960s, to make up for the
>baleful pull of the >undertow. And consumption boomed, but almost
completely
>based on a truly >dramatic increase in indebtedness. Both of these booms
>corresponded to a rapid >increase in U.S. external indebtedness. So the
>"solution" to the undertow created >new problems, new imbalances, with
which
>we are still living.

I don't know much about the US economy, but the popular perception about the
US economy is the US lives beyond its means. US savings rate is low. US
economy has a massive balance of payments deficit combined with a huge
fiscal deficit (except perhaps for Clinton years) Thus, the US would seem to
be characterised by overconsumption, rather than an underconsumption
undertow. How do we reconcile the hypothesis of undertow with the appearance
of profligacy?

Ulhas