>>> Jim heartfield <jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk> 11/20 6:06 AM >>>
I read Robert Brenner's original article as essentially one that located
crisis in the realm of exchange, rather then production, so more of a
Sismondian argument than a Marxist one.
I don't think that the view that there are many Marxist theories of crisis stands up. There is one Marxist theory of capital accumulation which argues that Capital, in its tendency to displace living labour relative to dead, undermines the basis of its own reproduction. In the first volume of Capital Marx looks at this process from the standpoint of the social crisis, with the accumulation of wealth and poverty at two opposite poles. In the third volume Marx shows how the same process of the displacement of living labour by dead as a proportion of the capital advanced undermines the ratio of surplus value to capital (rate of profit). In the second volume, Marx shows how the *realisation* of surplus value is possible on the basis of an expanded reproduction. In other words, vulme two argues that the origin of crisis is not to be found in the realm of exchange.
________ Charles: However, in Vol. III of Capital Marx also says:
>"The ultimate reason for all
>real crises always remains the
>poverty and restricted consumption
>of the masses as opposed to the
>drive of captialist production to develop
>the productive forces as though only
>the absolute consuming power of
>society constituted their outer limit "
>(Capital vol. III, Moscow, 1959, pp.
>472-73) ;
I cannot for the life of me figure out why people don't think that Marx's explanation of the business cycle is a complex of the factors of overproduction AND the tendency of the rate of profit to fall due to the long term increase in the organic composition of capital ( dead labor over living labor) , because living labor (variable capital) is the source of surplus value, and dead labor(constant capital) is not.
The logic on overproduction derives from the most fundamental concepts of Marx's critique of capitalist production: value and exploitation. If workers are not paid the full value of what they produce (exploitation) , then the working class does not have enough money to buy all the values that they produce ( and all values are produced by them). The vast majority of commodities that are means of consumption are purchased by the working class. All the value added to means of production must ultimately be added to means of consumption. Thus, a significant proportion of commodities are overproduction, i.e. will not be purchased and the capitalists will not realize their profits on them. This causes real profits to fall and then capitalists cut production, a downturn.
The reason it is a mischaracterization to call this theory one that places the origin of crisis in exchange and not production is that this analysis does not start in exchange but rather in production. The production of value and exploitation are part of PRODUCTION. Thus, this theory places the origin of crisis in production.
However, more importantly, most people agree that Marx's discussion of the cause of the capitalist business cycle is fragmentary and contradictory. That is why there is so much debate on what it is. My interpretation of this is that Marx gave it a low priority in his political economy. This is because Marx and Marxists consider that even in the boom phase of the business cycle capitalism is a bust for the working class as a whole, In boom times there is mass unemployment ( 4% unemployment is mass unemployment), poverty, alienation. workplace hazards, widespread social problems such as crime, racism, male supremacy etc, etc. Marxism is for getting rid of capitalism even in its boom phase. So, the Marxist project places using knowledge of the cause of the business cycle to ameliorate its effects - and I cannot think of any other bottomline reason for so much analysis of what really causes the crisis phase of the cycle - as secondary. Amerliorating the effects of business cycle crisis is reform and Marxism gives priority to revolutionary change, while not rejecting reform struggle altogether. It seems to me that Marx's not focussing on the explanation of the business cycle is a signal to later Marxists that that is not where Marxist economic focus should be. All the effort to discern Marx's true business cycle theory is going against what Marx was trying to tell us by not focussing and refining his business cycle theory in Vol. I., and leaving it in contradictory fragments. This was not an oversight on his part.
Left economists must focus, not on how to ameliorate capitalist crisis ( and thus "why" this or that particular crisis and why crisis in general , falling rate of profit or overproduction ?) ,but proving to masses of people that capitalism causes horrendous problems in booms and busts, showing the enormous ripoff of the capitalist class; and that these problems are solvable by abolishing the private profit system.
Charles Brown
Detroit