profit rate falling!

[Rakesh Bhandari]

First to Angela, it has been a while since I thought about Postone's magnum
opus. I can't speak for Andrew Kliman; I hope he is still on the line. Off
the top of my head: I remain skeptical of the "functional" definition of
abstract labor brilliantly developed by Postone, the treadmill effect in
his proufound chapter "Dialectic of Labor and Time", and his embrace of
social movements. Of course his Sohn-Rethel inspired emphasis on the
derivation of 'forms of thought' and apparently a priori notions from the
social relations of production strikes me as a very difficult argument to
sustain, but most expertly done. It's a great, great book.

Now I had sent the following to Charles B privately a few days ago:

first, we need to develop our theoretical understanding of capitalism to
determine the liklihood of the future development of an economic catastrope
of sufficient depth and breadth to make a social crisis possible.

Then we need to begin to develop our theoretical answers to the different
ways out of such a crisis and the class implications of the different
proposals--import duties, creation of money, lower interest rates, tax
reform, liberal fiscal policy, nationalizations,  rationalizations,
revolution. First homework assigment then would be a critique of the
Keynesian Paul Krugman's analysis of "The Way Out" in his "Depression
Economics" article in the penultimate *Foreign Affairs*.

All this work has to be done in anticipation of such a profound economic
crisis in order to prepare ourselves to critique the bourgeois ways out of
the crisis and lay the ground for revolutionary politics.We need to be able
to do this kind of work  quickly and decisively.

It is certain that a profound economic crisis in itself does not ensure a
socialist evolution of the economy. Theoretical clarification is the
central task at this point.

Yours, Rakesh