>for other wise how does one know that the catastrophe will not generate
>its own "different" ways for the capitalist class to respond?
Carrol, this is non -responsive to my argument that the simple and easy expedient of an expansion of capitalistically unproductive production will not be available. The capitalist state will thus have to respond more in accordance with its nature as a class state--improving profitability and repression of emergent social forces. There is great variation possible within these confines.
Let me add that I have not been advocating a terminal theory of crisis. It's clear from Grossmann and Mattick's writings that they did not think capitalism would ever fall like a house of cards.
What I have been arguing on the basis of value theory and FROP is the limits of the mixed economy. This does not make me an advocate of terminal crisis or automatic breakdown theory nor (I should clarify again) a Friedmanite or Hayekian who thinks economies are more cyclically stable than Keynes had supposed; or that there are no multiplier effects; or that govt manipulation of prices can have no effects; that the only disequilibriating force in capitalist economies is inflationary credit creation. I am not trying to be a bourgeois economist.
Oh, and I should add here, that the rate of exploitation has not always been high enough: That's why we have had cycles and even depressions. And this speaks to how Marxism is different than bourgeois business cycle research which can find effective causes everywhere but (of course) in the capital relation itself.
>Of course. But how does this give us any particular political guidance?
There are clear political implications to my argument which I am not going to spell out now. Yet aren't you one of the Monthly Review followers here? Have you read Ellen Wood's argument to move the left beyond left Keynesianism? She could of course have strengthened her argument about the limits of such a study by drawing from Mattick, Yaffe or Cogoy.
I think our
>best chance for a revolutonary left is that the present boom
>continue until it again creates an acute crisis of rising aspirations.
Could be a good context for trade unionism.
Yours, Rakesh