O'Connor on crisis theory, etc.

[Jim heartfield]

In message <l03020900b27f76c27622@[128.114.140.14]>, Barbara Laurence
<cns at cats.ucsc.edu> writes
> This is why S/V is the
>central category in Marxist thought. It is a quantitative measure of the
>potential (or not) of the system to suffer a realization crisis; it's also
>a qualitative measure of capital's power over labor. The greater the latter
>(e.g., since late 1970s in the US), the higher will be S/V hence the
>greater the problem of realizing value (solved in the 1980s by military
>spending and hyper-consumerism and in the 1990s by hyper-consumerism (even
>more than the 1980s) and exports (mainly).

This misses out the extensive argument in Marx's second volume of
capital, that reproduction on an increasing scale is possible because
the capital goods sector also contributes to demand. It is just wrong to
say that only v = demand. S, too equals demand.

It seems a rather narrow interpretation of sociology to me to think that
all change is located at the level of market exchange. Does society stop
at the factory gates?

-- 
Jim heartfield