> > Agreed. But its very subordinate. I hate to be so "po-mo" about this, but
> > VERY little of Marx's or Ricardo's arguments are taken up with explaining
> > consumption (demand). They spend all their time on production
> > (accumulation). In fact, so does much economic theory and I wonder how
> > concrete it is due to this. Predicting the actions of producers in a
> society
> > of consumers may be a little off..... maybe...
>
> Um...How can there be a society of consumers without there being
> production? Seems like you've reified the international division of
> labor here. Likewise, the goal of the theory is not, as marginalists
> might have it, to "predict" the actions of producers: it's to explain
> the system which makes producers and consumers--and especially
> producers and owners, as in the producers of the branded mechandise
> you consumer and the owners of the capital and IPR in NYC--appear
> separate and then predict how the contradictions of those
> *relationships* will play out over time.
I agree, but I still think that most Marxists are content with explaining things in terms of the evil capitalist (i.e. producer) and not in terms of the consumer which this capitalist NEEDS.
>
>
> You don't need to explain "consumption:" in threshold cases, if you
> don't consume you'll die. That you satisfy most of this consumption
> with commodities comes back around to that relationship above. The
> "extra" consumption that we now do in Northern cultures is obviously
> interesting, but it is hardly a mode of economic life per se, and is
> obviously based more on the "production" of debt in the current era,
> making consumption itself a form of capital (i.e. interest)
> accumulation--mirrored in the equally debt/finance driven production
> that meets this stimulated demand through contracted, subcontracted
> and endlessly transported widgets and wares.
This is where I almost agree, but I break off. This tends to be able to point to debt as some sort of, on the one hand, problem, and on the other, solution. I think its neither. Its a development, nothing more. Debt is debt... not exactly profound, but the fact is that it is. And if the current global economy is consistently putting its balance sheet into the red, then I'd be worried.
>
>
> In fact, the interesting thing about the current era is how little
> commodity consumption we really need to be doing in order to satisfy
> basic demands--how much of our existence could be simply taken care of
> through social programs of various sorts (instead of commodity health
> care, commodity education, commodity phone service, commodity
> everything) yet the system, at least in the US seems unrelenting in
> its focus on commodification in the interest of accumulation. In many
> ways, the problem isn't that Ricardo and Marx are behind the curve:
> it's that they probably can't imagine how absurd the system has
> become.
>
> The difference now and then is that, then the relentless pursuit of
> profit--i.e. capitalist accumulation--was still connected to a process
> that basically enhanced the potential technical capabilities for
> overcoming conditions of scarcity. The fact that production became
> more efficient and consumption less expensive were two sides of the
> same coin which could theoretically exist under altered property
> relations while retaining the benefits of producing more with less.
> This made the system sensible, even if the property relations were
> arbitrary and capricious. Now it seems to have the opposite effect
> for most of the planet--such as it taking something like 3 times more
> energy to produce a calorie of food than in 1940. The focus on
> production and consumption in the interest of accumulation is actually
> increasing costs in real terms and making it more expensive for people
> to meet their needs. Not to mention the potential annihilation of the
> planet in ways their buddy Malthus could never have dreamed.
>
> If the question is of the theory of value, there is far more to this
> than a change in the consumption patterns would indicate and the fact
> that it still has everything to do with labor is indicated by the
> system that makes inevitable your reluctance to see this society as
> still connected to production, i.e. the fact that goods have to be
> produced thousands of miles away because the labor there is cheaper
> and more disciplined. It hardly makes sense from any other
> perspective, even if the dominant paradigm casts this in marginalist
> terms of production costs, or breathless globo-bozo terms of
> flattening worlds and new opportunities for developing countries to
> sell themselves into exploitation. For these, I think the Marxian
> paradigm has a lot more to offer in terms of actual critical
> faculties--especially on the complex subject of value--rather than the
> pablum that passes for theory in other contexts.
>
> s
>
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