Hi Charles, I have just spent a few days relocating, so sorry for the delayed reaction. Yes, the whole point of the dispute is that there's a periodic tendency for capital to overaccumulate, and by my defnition of crisis (following from Robert Cox), that means capitalism has to do something external to its 'laws of motion': devalorize. That's what at stake in this debate: whether capitalism has these terrible spells of diseqilibrium, or whether business-as-usual continues in an uninterrupted way.
And yes, there's also a tendency to uneven and combined development, of which one feature is immiseration, and yes, that's a secular trend. But at stake here is how to think about episodic crises, which the other comrades are wont to deny.
^^^^^ CB: Ok but do you explicitly refer to Marx's Absolute General Law of Capitalist Accumulation , by name. Afterall, by the name he seemed to think it is pretty important.
"The greater the social wealth, the functioning capital, the extent and energy of its growth, and, therefore, also the absolute mass of the proletariat and the productiveness of its labour, the greater is the industrial reserve army. The same causes which develop the expansive power of capital, develop also the labour power at its disposal. The relative mass of the industrial reserve army increases therefore with the potential energy of wealth. But the greater this reserve army in proportion to the active labour army, the greater is the mass of a consolidated surplus population, whose misery is in inverse ratio to its torment of labour. The more extensive, finally, the lazarus layers of the working class, and the industrial reserve army, the greater is official pauperism. This is the _absolute general law of capitalist accumulation_ ( emphasis added -CB). Like all other laws it is modified in its working by many circumstances, the analysis of which does not concern us here. "
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch25.htm#S4
I don't see Doug , et al, denying that capitalism has terrible episodic spells of disequilibrium. It is that they say the spells are _episodic_ , not continuous. There are busts and _booms_. The booms are not "disequilibriums" for the capitalists. There is immiseration of masses during even the booms. That's the absolute general law of capitalist accumulation.
^^^^^
And yes, hope to see you in Detroit, we have more to learn from crisis and failed displacement, e.g. in the built environment, than most anywhere in the US.
^^^^^^^^ CB: Look forward to seeing you !