> The production of commodities is not governed by demand; rather demand
> is a function of accumulation undertaken in the pursuit of ever
> greater
> quantities of surplus value.
That's consistent with Keynes's idea of effective demand, no? I.e., capitalists make demand effective through their spending on investment and wages.
Doug
Close enough. The point of course is that capitalist don't make effective demand to realize the commodity value already produced but to make profit yet again. Often the realization problem is more or less solved in this irrational way, but overproduction can indeed and does result once effective demand weakens. For Marx this is most often more than a psychological problem, a loss of animal spirits but having the destroyed the objective basis of the labor theory of value all the economists have to go on is the pscyhology of the actors.
Rakesh