I'm probably past three posts to day (no rollover from prior months lurking Doug?), but anyhow.
Yes that is a problem you can't shy away from. But just as important, the 1994-2007 period makes no conceptual sense so shame on you for defending it as a logical period for analysing trends and cycles. (Doug, same for you using that WB table.)
> I don't often agree with Marvin, but I think he called rightly you out on
> this. Marx's chapter on countervailing tendencies is trying to explain why
> capitalism is not in a state of perennial crisis (as was implied by
> Sisimondi's theory). Harvey's revision of Marx's theory is pretty much a
> dismantling of it.
>
No, Harvey's book Limits to Capital *extends* Marx's countervailing tendencies argument (sorry about 'the whole point' as that was a bad phrase to use). He extends it spatially (especially invoking real estate and globalisation), temporally (especially invoking finance) and more recently into capitalist-noncapitalist spheres. How could you have missed that, lads?
> When Marx talked about crises, he had in mind real world events, that were
> evident to all, not hidden laws at work under the surface of society.
Huh?! Das Kapital repeatedly shows how dialectic analysis derives the laws of motion - including crisis formation - that exist independ of contingent events.
> Crisis
> for him was that point when the law of accumulation's fundamental
> contradictions erupted. If crisis becomes something that's existence needs
> to be demonstrated by analysis then it isn't crisis.
James, that's quite original.
> Patrick argues with the fact that the capitalist system has vastly expanded
> its workforce world wide, but other than saying that these jobs are not well
> paid (which is true) and that there has been a decline in Chinese
> manufacturing workforce (which is just daft)
I think, actually, it's true. Where's Marty H-L when I need him. Marty?
> When you say that there has not been a
> new round of accumulation you mean what, exactly? That factories are empty,
> lying idle, that output has ground to a halt?
Yes, in uneven ways, lots of idle capacity exists out there, sector by
sector.
> This is not the world the rest
> of us are living in. If by 'devalorisation' you mean that some capital
> investments went bust - that is true, but the way that the capitalists
> resolved the crisis was by defeating the working class (and nationalist and
> Stalinist movements).
>
True to some degree; but they also needed consumer credit ...
> Patrick:
>
> "I'd still look at 1990s-2000s growth as anaemic."
>
> And I would agree with you, especially in the West, but anemic growth is
> most definitely not 'crisis'.
>
It is if you live in most of Africa, comrade...
> Patrick, objecting to my point that the British economy did not show signs
> of a rising organic composition of capital, but a falling one, as living
> labour displaced machinery in the shift to service sector employment.
>
> "You're looking at stats that include labour productivity that is
> technically not associated with surplus value production, so it's not so
> relevant to what Marx understood as the laws of motion, right? "
>
> It is a misreading of Marx (and Grossmann) and the economy for that matter
> to assume that 'service sector' is coeval with 'unproductive'.
>
>
Some parts are producive, if the creation of commodities is involved; other parts of the service sector are devoted to the circulation process, which makes it technically 'unproductive'.
Good to chat, James.
Cheers, Patrick