Greenspan IQ query

Rakesh Bhandari bhandari at Princeton.EDU
Fri Apr 7 16:49:44 PDT 2000



>
>CB: Oh yes, the transnational bourgeoisie is not interested in the Chinese
>"market" as a source of demand for goods. It is only interested in the
>worker half of the worker/consumer. The bourgeoisie constantly in search
>of new markets has nothing to do with the free laborers having wages and
>spending them.

Hi Charles,

You are right. Transnational bourgeoisie wants to access internal Chinese market. Very important to point out since everyone thinks it's only an export platform in which they are interested. This means trans bourg supports rapid privatization to create market room, whatever the unemployment effect; and wants to ensure that they, instead of corrupt party insiders, can benefit from sell off. See today's NYT editorial. But market is not sought to solve a realization problem, to aid in the *realization* of excess surplus value. Rather the problem is the *valorization* of a mountain of capital.

Think of globalization. Because there is a production problem, a production of insufficient surplus value, capital needs to produce at larger scale in order to reduce unit costs and thereby boost profits. The global market is thus needed not to solve a realization problem but to overcome a production problem, a problem of insufficient valorization. Marx was not an underconsumptionist for good reason!

As Greenspan's dread of underpopulation manifests, the immediate problem for the transnational bourgeoisie presently is to expand the valorization base shrunken in relation to the swollen mass of capital. The leading solution is incorporation of Chinese labor via joint ventures controlled by trans bourgeoisie--this means diminishment of state sector or sell offs. The trans bourgeoisie come to exploit first, realize later. The Chinese Communist Party is willing to make this happen for the transnational bourgeoisie--I don't know why you dismiss this as right wing anti communist argument. It is as ironic as it seems. At any rate, access to Chinese market, ability to command internal Chinese market is needed to solve a production problem, a difficulty in the valorization of a swollen mass of capital.

Yours, Rakesh



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