o-ghost booted.

apparently for this:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=7004834&mesg_id=7004834

I see Hamden had a hand in this

no surprise.

Well how was O_G allowed to stay for so long?

Let's see among the myriad of accusations:

Antisemitic- False

Slavery wasn't so bad- False

Compared Obama to Hitler- False

Equated J. Wright to MLK- False

Wasn't a liberal- True

Ain't no Democrat- True

Anti-Obama- True

Anti-Imperialist- True

Predicted accurately what would occur under an Obama administration- True

There is a sickness which is spreading at DU. As the situation becomes more obvious DU shall constrict further.

Hannah is next...

"We can see by her avatar that she is a Marxist."

Really? By that standard, Hamden is a dog....

... a foul dog at that.

any clue what his story is?

he was in south africa during the rev, as he's always telling anyone who'll listen.

i think he's a spook.

i spend too much time at du anyway. it was interesting when i first started there, but i've gotten more cynical since then.

to the point where i don't believe there's much to do but sit back & watch, unfortunately.

at least in my time, where someone who voted for clinton = "radical".

speaking of which, why doesn't someone take the sections on economic crisis you're going through at pi & write a "for dummies" condensation using selected quotes?

Don't know his story.... He knows some things about Africa but under pressure he is single dimensional. If I was to guess, he works/worked for an NGO. He also belongs to the DSA and believes in some kinda sappy-socialism, which he finds reinforcement for in Africa (not surprising because even "conservatives" are some kinda "socialists" in much of Africa). Maybe...

The problem is that personally he acts like a thirteen year old... so, maybe it is all made up. I doubt he is any kind of spook.

As far as doing a "Marx on Crisis for Dummies", it is pretty hard. People have been trying to do that for a century, with mixed success. But, its a good idea. Give it a shot if you feel like it. I'd be happy to help.

"Compared Obama to Hitler." That is what I was accused of.

Well absent OG there's not much to read there. Bookmark deleted.

Well absent OG there's not much to read there. Bookmark deleted.


He was called Ghost for a reason..hes not that easy to get rid of and he tends to come back with a vengeance

http://www.mentalfloss.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/ghostbusters.jpg

any clue what his story is?


i think he's a spook.




I think he might be too, or a wannabe, and think he reads this site, how else would he know who I was, and others too, except by reading here carefully, fuck him.

(yeah, you, fuck you for ghost).

As for ghost, damn shame, ...hmmm, whose posts can I search for when on the fly, except for folks here...??...not much else, new computer (used), no bookmarks, might keep it that way...

any clue what his story is?


i think he's a spook.




I think he might be too, or a wannabe, and think he reads this site, how else would he know who I was, and others too, except by reading here carefully, fuck him.

(yeah, you, fuck you for ghost).

As for ghost, damn shame, ...hmmm, whose posts can I search for when on the fly, except for folks here...??...not much else, new computer (used), no bookmarks, might keep it that way...


Two can play that game. He gets out of line a good bit, his transgressions are deleted rather quickly, a friendly mod, I suspect, alert on that asshole every time.
Fucker thinks he's bulletproof, we'll see, the politics of running that place might be a bit more complicated than he thinks.

any clue what his story is?

he was in south africa during the rev, as he's always telling anyone who'll listen.

i think he's a spook.

i spend too much time at du anyway. it was interesting when i first started there, but i've gotten more cynical since then.

to the point where i don't believe there's much to do but sit back & watch, unfortunately.

at least in my time, where someone who voted for clinton = "radical".

speaking of which, why doesn't someone take the sections on economic crisis you're going through at pi & write a "for dummies" condensation using selected quotes?


On "Crisis For Dummies" I think you have to at least introduce things like Says Law. Which requires setting some backdrop. Its a project worth thinking about at the very least

says law is easier to simplify than marx.

i'm game to try if others are.

i'm thinking simple enough for high schoolers to get the broad strokes without much sweat. divide the text, paraphase, put together, edit for style, consistency, clarity.

hyperlink the details, just get the basics into the main text, so anyone can get it & the more interested types can go to the hyperlinks.

charts & diagrams are good too.

I wouldn't touch Say's Law; nor would I go into the detailed criticism of Ricardo, etal in ToSV.

The highest level of abstraction is that paragraph in the Manifesto which everyone immediately understands. The most detailed level is that contained in Capital, which even "Marxist Scholars" seem to have trouble with. Any popularization must be much closer to the former, must be stated positively (as opposed to Historo-critically), and must stay away from the airdropping of everything from "changing organic composition" to "the tendency of the rate of profit to fall". Failure to do the last either risks writing something which furthers confusion, or writing a cruder and less complete but equally difficult version of the original.

To do this right requires a straight shot from "the twofold nature of commodities" to the inevitability of the crisis of overproduction, with all the rest considered (or not considered) as a simple variation on a theme.

He was called Ghost for a reason..hes not that easy to get rid of and he tends to come back with a vengeance


He may well have some company soon.

"a straight shot from "the twofold nature of commodities" to the inevitability of the crisis of overproduction, with all the rest considered (or not considered) as a simple variation on a theme."

sounds pretty straightforward.

i'm thinking something to seed around the net, like "why you're hurting now, what's happening with the economy now, why jobs are disappearing," etc.

something to respond to people's basic questions.

when do we start?

How about now?

Will you try a pass at "twofold nature"? If we get that right, the rest will come.

Suggestion:

Use value/value.
Capital, surplus value, wages.
The Circuit: Capital is recovered and surplus value is realized when commodities are sold
Capital accumulates (grows in magnitude) while markets do not (at least at the same rate)
Crisis is inevitable

Crisis is political as well as economic.

link me to the original & i'll give it a shot.

The Economic Crisis thread is here:

http://www.progressiveindependent.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=103035



The three "Reading Capital" threads (through exchange) which preceded "Crisis" are here:

http://www.progressiveindependent.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=100854
http://www.progressiveindependent.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=101186
http://www.progressiveindependent.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=102658

The references to Marx are in-line, within the threads.


There is a bunch of stuff that I wrote on the subject along these lines:

http://socialistindependent.org/board/index.php?topic=324.0

I'm not sure if any of it is useful or if I could find much of it if it was...

now that i look at the brass tacks, i'm thinking it's more logical, considering the intended audience, to work backwards from crisis to value:

What's happening? What's gumming the economic works?

What's the cause? Greedy bankers?

No, imminent in the process...

Circulation

Value

But i'll see what develops.

Just started reading the ABC's of the Economic crisis, pretty easy read, except that I truly am economically challenged mentally...quote at the top of the second chapter is: "Accumulate, accumulate! That is Moses and the prophets!" Marx, 1867

Mature capitalism seems to be a main topic.

now that i look at the brass tacks, i'm thinking it's more logical, considering the intended audience, to work backwards from crisis to value:

What's happening? What's gumming the economic works?

What's the cause? Greedy bankers?

No, imminent in the process...

Circulation

Value

But i'll see what develops.


Hey HB

I don't always check DU, so let me know if you work on this and also let me know if I can help somehow

ok, i've gone through most of the links & i'm sort of at a loss as to how to proceed. the "twofold nature" of commodities (& labor) doesn't seem like a good starting point to me. anax, did you have something in mind when you suggested it for a starting point? maybe i'm not getting it.

I was responding to you, hb:

"speaking of which, why doesn't someone take the sections on economic crisis you're going through at pi & write a "for dummies" condensation using selected quotes?"

The sections (from ToSV) depend on "two-fold". Wanna do a different cut? Works for me.

The stuff in ToSV is a direct derivation, though... (skipping 400 or so pages in between). Without it, it's confusion city: "overproduction is just fine cause they produce too many Hummers and hot dogs anyway and who says its overproduction 'cause lots of people have decided not to buy that shit and it was all about sub-prime mortgages and stealing anyway.... and..."


Man, just the thought of it makes my head hurt.

no, i get it's pivotal, i just thought you had a special reason to want to start there.

no, i get it's pivotal, i just thought you had a special reason to want to start there.


I think its because that is the core reason for crisis. That production and exchange become exceedingly detached from use while at the same time resting entirely on use for its reason to even exist. So the idea is to establish this most fundamental fact, and then yadda yadda from there by contending that the rest is details. Which it is, if you take a broad enough view of things.

This particularly lets you get to the larger point, that crisis never ends. Either you're in one or you're about to be in or at the very least there is one on the horizon (due to tunnel vision "on the horizon" doesn't always mean "on the radar unfortunately). Been meaning to ask Anax how the "anarchy of production" factors into the inexorability of crisis cycles. But I've beent taking a more contemplative approach on these questions recently, so I'll chew on it for a while.

Now that I understand what you're envisioning, I agree with anax that touching any of the technical stuff is poison. I had thought initially you basically wanted to reproduce the PI discussion on DU, but somewhat filtered down for easier reading.

How is "anarchy of production" distinguishable from what we are discussing right here? The individual capitalist is:

A) Private... his concern as a capitalist is purely private. Whether he acts to increase his production in blissful ignorance or whether he is fully conscious of his surroundings and merely hopes that his production will win the battle of competition and be converted back to money, there is no impetus whatever for him to withdraw capital. With the advent of the joint-stock company, it may even be illegal. Not even "enlightenment" helps the modern Capitalist, who, unlike his historical predecessor, doesn't own "his" Capital and thus cannot even withdraw into "eccentricity". This goes double when we consider finance capital. In this most liquid of forms, it is a change of venue for investment which is called for. There is no provision whatever for "slowing down".

B) Concerned exclusively with Value. Use-values are mere precondition which ceases to have meaning once the circuit has begun. As values in exchange, the "market" defines itself. That overproduction or market saturation may be the result is only clear retrospectively. The market collapses or it does not. There is no such thing as "it could have collapsed". Even when surrounded by destruction, the imperative is unaltered. A general pull-back only occurs and can only occur after the fact (the onset of crisis).

How is "anarchy of production" distinguishable from what we are discussing right here? The individual capitalist is:

A) Private... his concern as a capitalist is purely private. Whether he acts to increase his production in blissful ignorance or whether he is fully conscious of his surroundings and merely hopes that his production will win the battle of competition and be converted back to money, there is no impetus whatever for him to withdraw capital. With the advent of the joint-stock company, it may even be illegal. Not even "enlightenment" helps the modern Capitalist, who, unlike his historical predecessor, doesn't own "his" Capital and thus cannot even withdraw into "eccentricity". This goes double when we consider finance capital. In this most liquid of forms, it is a change of venue for investment which is called for. There is no provision whatever for "slowing down".

B) Concerned exclusively with Value. Use-values are mere precondition which ceases to have meaning once the circuit has begun. As values in exchange, the "market" defines itself. That overproduction or market saturation may be the result is only clear retrospectively. The market collapses or it does not. There is no such thing as "it could have collapsed". Even when surrounded by destruction, the imperative is unaltered. A general pull-back only occurs and can only occur after the fact (the onset of crisis).





Yeah, that makes sense. I think I actually posed my question in reverse. In Engel's Socialism:Scientific and Utopian it seems to me like he is saying that the "anarchy of production" is a fundamental source of capitalist crisis (an "antagonism" -- which also ties in with what I was asking you about Marx breaking with Hegel in Philosophy of Right..ie essential contradictions vs Hegel's "interpenetration" and so on)

I will quote some of Chapter 3 of Engels Socialism: Scientific or Utopian. The whole chapter is germane but I think this is the most relevant part. I guess what I am really wrestling with is how class conflict and crisis are bound together.


Now, in what does this conflict consist?

Before capitalist production — i.e., in the Middle Ages — the system of petty industry obtained generally, based upon the private property of the laborers in their means of production; in the country, the agriculture of the small peasant, freeman, or serf; in the towns, the handicrafts organized in guilds. The instruments of labor — land, agricultural implements, the workshop, the tool — were the instruments of labor of single individuals, adapted for the use of one worker, and, therefore, of necessity, small, dwarfish, circumscribed. But, for this very reason, they belonged as a rule to the producer himself. To concentrate these scattered, limited means of production, to enlarge them, to turn them into the powerful levers of production of the present day — this was precisely the historic role of capitalist production and of its upholder, the bourgeoisie. In the fourth section of Capital, Marx has explained in detail how since the 15th century this has been historically worked out through the three phases of simple co-operation, manufacture, and modern industry. But the bourgeoisie, as is shown there, could not transform these puny means of production into mighty productive forces without transforming them, at the same time, from means of production of the individual into social means of production only workable by a collectivity of men. The spinning wheel, the handloom, the blacksmith's hammer, were replaced by the spinning-machine, the power-loom, the steam-hammer; the individual workshop, by the factory implying the co-operation of hundreds and thousands of workmen. In like manner, production itself changed from a series of individual into a series of social acts, and the production from individual to social products. The yarn, the cloth, the metal articles that now come out of the factory were the joint product of many workers, through whose hands they had successively to pass before they were ready. No one person could say of them: "I made that; this is my product."

But where, in a given society, the fundamental form of production is that spontaneous division of labor which creeps in gradually and not upon any preconceived plan, there the products take on the form of commodities, whose mutual exchange, buying and selling, enable the individual producers to satisfy their manifold wants. And this was the case in the Middle Ages. The peasant, e.g., sold to the artisan agricultural products and bought from him the products of handicraft. Into this society of individual producers, of commodity producers, the new mode of production thrust itself. In the midst of the old division of labor, grown up spontaneously and upon no definite plan, which had governed the whole of society, now arose division of labor upon a definite plan, as organized in the factory; side by side with individual production appeared social production. The products of both were sold in the same market, and, therefore, at prices at least approximately equal. But organization upon a definite plan was stronger than spontaneous division of labor. The factories working with the combined social forces of a collectivity of individuals produced their commodities far more cheaply than the individual small producers. Individual producers succumbed in one department after another. Socialized production revolutionized all the old methods of production. But its revolutionary character was, at the same time, so little recognized that it was, on the contrary, introduced as a means of increasing and developing the production of commodities. When it arose, it found ready-made, and made liberal use of, certain machinery for the production and exchange of commodities: merchants' capital, handicraft, wage-labor. Socialized production thus introducing itself as a new form of the production of commodities, it was a matter of course that under it the old forms of appropriation remained in full swing, and were applied to its products as well.

In the medieval stage of evolution of the production of commodities, the question as to the owner of the product of labor could not arise. The individual producer, as a rule, had, from raw material belonging to himself, and generally his own handiwork, produced it with his own tools, by the labor of his own hands or of his family. There was no need for him to appropriate the new product. It belonged wholly to him, as a matter of course. His property in the product was, therefore, based upon his own labor. Even where external help was used, this was, as a rule, of little importance, and very generally was compensated by something other than wages. The apprentices and journeymen of the guilds worked less for board and wages than for education, in order that they might become master craftsmen themselves.

Then came the concentration of the means of production and of the producers in large workshops and manufactories, their transformation into actual socialized means of production and socialized producers. But the socialized producers and means of production and their products were still treated, after this change, just as they had been before — i.e., as the means of production and the products of individuals. Hitherto, the owner of the instruments of labor had himself appropriated the product, because, as a rule, it was his own product and the assistance of others was the exception. Now, the owner of the instruments of labor always appropriated to himself the product, although it was no longer his product but exclusively the product of the labor of others. Thus, the pr

oducts now produced socially were not appropriated by those who had actually set in motion the means of production and actually produced the commodities, but by the capitalists. The means of production, and production itself, had become in essence socialized. But they were subjected to a form of appropriation which presupposes the private production of individuals, under which, therefore, every one owns his own product and brings it to market. The mode of production is subjected to this form of appropriation, although it abolishes the conditions upon which the latter rests. [2]

This contradiction, which gives to the new mode of production its capitalistic character, contains the germ of the whole of the social antagonisms of today. The greater the mastery obtained by the new mode of production over all important fields of production and in all manufacturing countries, the more it reduced individual production to an insignificant residuum, the more clearly was brought out the incompatibility of socialized production with capitalistic appropriation.

The first capitalists found, as we have said, alongside of other forms of labor, wage-labor ready-made for them on the market. But it was exceptional, complementary, accessory, transitory wage-labor. The agricultural laborer, though, upon occasion, he hired himself out by the day, had a few acres of his own land on which he could at all events live at a pinch. The guilds were so organized that the journeyman to today became the master of tomorrow. But all this changed, as soon as the means of production became socialized and concentrated in the hands of capitalists. The means of production, as well as the product, of the individual producer became more and more worthless; there was nothing left for him but to turn wage-worker under the capitalist. Wage-labor, aforetime the exception and accessory, now became the rule and basis of all production; aforetime complementary, it now became the sole remaining function of the worker. The wage-worker for a time became a wage-worker for life. The number of these permanent was further enormously increased by the breaking-up of the feudal system that occurred at the same time, by the disbanding of the retainers of the feudal lords, the eviction of the peasants from their homesteads, etc. The separation was made complete between the means of production concentrated in the hands of the capitalists, on the one side, and the producers, possessing nothing but their labor-power, on the other. The contradiction between socialized production and capitalistic appropriation manifested itself as the antagonism of proletariat and bourgeoisie.

We have seen that the capitalistic mode of production thrust its way into a society of commodity-producers, of individual producers, whose social bond was the exchange of their products. But every society based upon the production of commodities has this peculiarity: that the producers have lost control over their own social inter-relations. Each man produces for himself with such means of production as he may happen to have, and for such exchange as he may require to satisfy his remaining wants. No one knows how much of his particular article is coming on the market, nor how much of it will be wanted. No one knows whether his individual product will meet an actual demand, whether he will be able to make good his costs of production or even to sell his commodity at all. Anarchy reigns in socialized production.

But the production of commodities, like every other form of production, has it peculiar, inherent laws inseparable from it; and these laws work, despite anarchy, in and through anarchy. They reveal themselves in the only persistent form of social inter-relations — i.e., in exchange — and here they affect the individual producers as compulsory laws of competition. They are, at first, unknown to these producers themselves, and have to be discovered by them gradually and as the result of experience. They work themselves out, therefore, independently of the producers, and in antagonism to them, as inexorable natural laws of their particular form of production. The product governs the producers.

In mediaeval society, especially in the earlier centuries, production was essentially directed toward satisfying the wants of the individual. It satisfied, in the main, only the wants of the producer and his family. Where relations of personal dependence existed, as in the country, it also helped to satisfy the wants of the feudal lord. In all this there was, therefore, no exchange; the products, consequently, did not assume the character of commodities. The family of the peasant produced almost everything they wanted: clothes and furniture, as well as the means of subsistence. Only when it began to produce more than was sufficient to supply its own wants and the payments in kind to the feudal lords, only then did it also produce commodities. This surplus, thrown into socialized exchange and offered for sale, became commodities.

The artisan in the towns, it is true, had from the first to produce for exchange. But they, also, themselves supplied the greatest part of their individual wants. They had gardens and plots of land. They turned their cattle out into the communal forest, which, also, yielded them timber and firing. The women spun flax, wool, and so forth. Production for the purpose of exchange, production of commodities, was only in its infancy. Hence, exchange was restricted, the market narrow, the methods of production stable; there was local exclusiveness without, local unity within; the mark in the country; in the town, the guild.

But with the extension of the production of commodities, and especially with the introduction of the capitalist mode of production, the laws of commodity-production, hitherto latent, came into action more openly and with greater force. The old bonds were loosened, the old exclusive limits broken through, the producers were more and more turned into independent, isolated producers of commodities. It became apparent that the production of society at large was ruled by absence of plan, by accident, by anarchy; and this anarchy grew to greater and greater height. But the chief means by aid of which the capitalist mode of production intensified this anarchy of socialized production was the exact opposite of anarchy. It was the increasing organization of production, upon a social basis, in every individual productive establishment. By this, the old, peaceful, stable condition of things was ended. Wherever this organization of production was introduced into a branch of industry, it brooked no other method of production by its side. The field of labor became a battle-ground. The great geographical discoveries, and the colonization following them, multiplied markets and quickened the transformation of handicraft into manufacture. The war did not simply break out between the individual producers of particular localities. The local struggles begat, in their turn, national conflicts, the commercial wars of the 17th and 18th centuries.

Finally, modern industry and the opening of the world-market made the struggle universal, and at the same time gave it an unheard-of virulence. Advantages in natural or artificial conditions of production now decide the existence or non-existence of individual capitalists, as well as of whole industries and countries. He that falls is remorselessly cast aside. It is the Darwinian struggle of the individual for existence transferred from Nature to society with intensified violence. The conditions of existence natural to the animal appear as the final term of human development. The contradiction between socialized production and capitalistic appropriation now presents itself as an antagonism between the organization of production in the individual workshop and the anarchy of production in society generally.

The capitalistic mode of production moves in these two forms of the antagonism immanent to it from its very origin. It is never able to get out of that "vicious circle

" which Fourier had already discovered. What Fourier could not, indeed, see in his time is that this circle is gradually narrowing; that the movement becomes more and more a spiral, and must come to an end, like the movement of planets, by collision with the centre. It is the compelling force of anarchy in the production of society at large that more and more completely turns the great majority of men into proletarians; and it is the masses of the proletariat again who will finally put an end to anarchy in production. It is the compelling force of anarchy in social production that turns the limitless perfectibility of machinery under modern industry into a compulsory law by which every individual industrial capitalist must perfect his machinery more and more, under penalty of ruin.

But the perfecting of machinery is making human labor superfluous. If the introduction and increase of machinery means the displacement of millions of manual by a few machine-workers, improvement in machinery means the displacement of more and more of the machine-workers themselves. It means, in the last instance, the production of a number of available wage workers in excess of the average needs of capital, the formation of a complete industrial reserve army, as I called it in 1845 [3], available at the times when industry is working at high pressure, to be cast out upon the street when the inevitable crash comes, a constant dead weight upon the limbs of the working-class in its struggle for existence with capital, a regulator for keeping of wages down to the low level that suits the interests of capital.

Thus it comes about, to quote Marx, that machinery becomes the most powerful weapon in the war of capital against the working-class; that the instruments of labor constantly tear the means of subsistence out of the hands of the laborer; that they very product of the worker is turned into an instrument for his subjugation.

Thus it comes about that the economizing of the instruments of labor becomes at the same time, from the outset, the most reckless waste of labor-power, and robbery based upon the normal conditions under which labor functions; that machinery,

"the most powerful instrument for shortening labor time, becomes the most unfailing means for placing every moment of the laborer's time and that of his family at the disposal of the capitalist for the purpose of expanding the value of his capital." (Capital, English edition, p. 406)

Thus it comes about that the overwork of some becomes the preliminary condition for the idleness of others, and that modern industry, which hunts after new consumers over the whole world, forces the consumption of the masses at home down to a starvation minimum, and in doing thus destroys its own home market.

"The law that always equilibrates the relative surplus- population, or industrial reserve army, to the extent and energy of accumulation, this law rivets the laborer to capital more firmly than the wedges of Vulcan did Prometheus to the rock. It establishes an accumulation of misery, corresponding with the accumulation of capital. Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole, i.e., on the side of the class that produces its own product in the form of capital (Marx's Capital, p. 661)

And to expect any other division of the products from the capitalist mode of production is the same as expecting the electrodes of a battery not to decompose acidulated water, not to liberate oxygen at the positive, hydrogen at the negative pole, so long as they are connected with the battery.

We have seen that the ever-increasing perfectibility of modern machinery is, by the anarchy of social production, turned into a compulsory law that forces the individual industrial capitalist always to improve his machinery, always to increase its productive force. The bare possibility of extending the field of production is transformed for him into a similarly compulsory law. The enormous expansive force of modern industry, compared with which that of gases is mere child's play, appears to us now as a necessity for expansion, both qualitative and quantative, that laughs at all resistance. Such resistance is offered by consumption, by sales, by the markets for the products of modern industry. But the capacity for extension, extensive and intensive, of the markets is primarily governed by quite different laws that work much less energetically. The extension of the markets cannot keep pace with the extension of production. The collision becomes inevitable, and as this cannot produce any real solution so long as it does not break in pieces the capitalist mode of production, the collisions become periodic. Capitalist production has begotten another "vicious circle".

As a matter of fact, since 1825, when the first general crisis broke out, the whole industrial and commercial world, production and exchange among all civilized peoples and their more or less barbaric hangers-on, are thrown out of joint about once every 10 years. Commerce is at a stand-still, the markets are glutted, products accumulate, as multitudinous as they are unsaleable, hard cash disappears, credit vanishes, factories are closed, the mass of the workers are in want of the means of subsistence, because they have produced too much of the means of subsistence; bankruptcy follows upon bankruptcy, execution upon execution. The stagnation lasts for years; productive forces and products are wasted and destroyed wholesale, until the accumulated mass of commodities finally filter off, more or less depreciated in value, until production and exchange gradually begin to move again. Little by little, the pace quickens. It becomes a trot. The industrial trot breaks into a canter, the canter in turn grows into the headlong gallop of a perfect steeplechase of industry, commercial credit, and speculation, which finally, after breakneck leaps, ends where it began — in the ditch of a crisis. And so over and over again. We have now, since the year 1825, gone through this five times, and at the present moment (1877), we are going through it for the sixth time. And the character of these crises is so clearly defined that Fourier hit all of them off when he described the first "crise plethorique", a crisis from plethora.

[b]In these crises, the contradiction between socialized production and capitalist appropriation ends in a violent explosion. The circulation of commodities is, for the time being, stopped. Money, the means of circulation, becomes a hindrance to circulation. All the laws of production and circulation of commodities are turned upside down. The economic collision has reached its apogee. The mode of production is in rebellion against the mode of exchange.

The fact that the socialized organization of production within the factory has developed so far that it has become incompatible with the anarchy of production in society, which exists side by side with and dominates it, is brought home to the capitalist themselves by the violent concentration of capital that occurs during crises, through the ruin of many large, and a still greater number of small, capitalists. The whole mechanism of the capitalist mode of production breaks down under the pressure of the productive forces, its own creations. It is no longer able to turn all this mass of means of production into capital. They lie fallow, and for that very reason the industrial reserve army must also lie fallow. Means of production, means of subsistence, available laborers, all the elements of production and of general wealth, are present in abundance. But "abundance becomes the source of distress and want" (Fourier), because it is the very thing that prevents the transformation of the means of production and subsistence into capital. For in capitalistic society, the means of production can only function when they have und

ergone a preliminary transformation into capital, into the means of exploiting human labor-power. The necessity of this transformation into capital of the means of production and subsistence stands like a ghost between these and the workers. It alone prevents the coming together of the material and personal levers of production; it alone forbids the means of production to function, the workers to work and live. On the one hand, therefore, the capitalistic mode of production stands convicted of its own incapacity to further direct these productive forces. On the other, these productive forces themselves, with increasing energy, press forward to the removal of the existing contradiction, to the abolition of their quality as capital, to the practical recognition of their character as social production forces.[b]

There are a number of good starting points for Hannah to use in the excerpt from Engels, kid.


Hitherto, the owner of the instruments of labor had himself appropriated the product, because, as a rule, it was his own product and the assistance of others was the exception. Now, the owner of the instruments of labor always appropriated to himself the product, although it was no longer his product but exclusively the product of the labor of others.

The problem that many people have is that they cannot "see" Capitalism as something distinct and new. The shift that Capitalism is, and the impact of that shift on all social arrangements needs to be seen before it can be discussed at all.

"It was once this way, and then became that way" is a good starting point I think.

It was like this:


In the medieval stage of evolution of the production of commodities, the question as to the owner of the product of labor could not arise. The individual producer, as a rule, had, from raw material belonging to himself, and generally his own handiwork, produced it with his own tools, by the labor of his own hands or of his family. There was no need for him to appropriate the new product. It belonged wholly to him, as a matter of course. His property in the product was, therefore, based upon his own labor. Even where external help was used, this was, as a rule, of little importance, and very generally was compensated by something other than wages. The apprentices and journeymen of the guilds worked less for board and wages than for education, in order that they might become master craftsmen themselves.

Then it became like this:


Then came the concentration of the means of production and of the producers in large workshops and manufactories, their transformation into actual socialized means of production and socialized producers. But the socialized producers and means of production and their products were still treated, after this change, just as they had been before — i.e., as the means of production and the products of individuals. Hitherto, the owner of the instruments of labor had himself appropriated the product, because, as a rule, it was his own product and the assistance of others was the exception. Now, the owner of the instruments of labor always appropriated to himself the product, although it was no longer his product but exclusively the product of the labor of others. Thus, the products now produced socially were not appropriated by those who had actually set in motion the means of production and actually produced the commodities, but by the capitalists. The means of production, and production itself, had become in essence socialized. But they were subjected to a form of appropriation which presupposes the private production of individuals, under which, therefore, every one owns his own product and brings it to market. The mode of production is subjected to this form of appropriation, although it abolishes the conditions upon which the latter rests.

You have to establish an anchor point in the discussion with people, based on objective material reality and historical fact, get them to think and start asking questions.

Many who arguing against overthrowing Capitalism are at the same time denying its existence as a distinct, discrete, and new thing.


This contradiction, which gives to the new mode of production its capitalistic character, contains the germ of the whole of the social antagonisms of today. The greater the mastery obtained by the new mode of production over all important fields of production and in all manufacturing countries, the more it reduced individual production to an insignificant residuum, the more clearly was brought out the incompatibility of socialized production with capitalistic appropriation.

The inherent contradiction in Capitalism is another good starting point. Evidence of this contradiction is everywhere.

From Marx, on the impact of the drive for higher productivity on all of us:


...the most powerful instrument for shortening labor time, becomes the most unfailing means for placing every moment of the laborer's time and that of his family at the disposal of the capitalist for the purpose of expanding the value of his capital

Another good starting place:


The extension of the markets cannot keep pace with the extension of production. The collision becomes inevitable, and as this cannot produce any real solution so long as it does not break in pieces the capitalist mode of production, the collisions become periodic. Capitalist production has begotten another "vicious circle".

In general, I would say that the task here is to get people to see, think about, and talk about what is, as a necessary prerequisite to going into the whys and the bigger picture. That does not require talking about Marx, let alone Marxism, but rather about objective material reality and historical fact.

Approaching the subject from almost any direction will inevitably lead to it being approached from all directions. Better to get people to look at reality and to start asking questions, then to try to hand them answers.

We aren't shooting for getting academic degrees in Marxist theory here. The airplane designer needs to understand physics, but the goal is to get an airplane into the air, not to understand physics.

This is clear as a bell, Mike! very good place to start; as the resident "ignorant mass" here, I hope that means something in regards to how to reach the audience you are appealing. If I can understand it, I think the majority PU'ers would...hope this is helpful...

Mike that's good stuff & i'm procrastinating due to having some stomach crud the last few days which leaves me unable to concentrate to do sustained work, & in a bitchy mood. hope to have something after t-day.

& happy t-day to all of you.

Mike that's good stuff & i'm procrastinating due to having some stomach crud the last few days which leaves me unable to concentrate to do sustained work, & in a bitchy mood. hope to have something after t-day.

& happy t-day to all of you.


Same to you and I hope you feel better soon.

Mike that's good stuff & i'm procrastinating due to having some stomach crud the last few days which leaves me unable to concentrate to do sustained work, & in a bitchy mood. hope to have something after t-day.

& happy t-day to all of you.



Same to you and I hope you feel better soon.


Same from me to everyone, hope you all have a great holiday!

Gobble, gobble...thanks to all here...

Mike that's good stuff & i'm procrastinating due to having some stomach crud the last few days which leaves me unable to concentrate to do sustained work, & in a bitchy mood. hope to have something after t-day.

& happy t-day to all of you.


hb, hope you feel better today and can enjoy some good eating.

i'm better today but t-day was a pain since i couldn't eat more than one little thing without pain. i'd have a serving of potatoes, wait an hour, have something else.

working on this thing--it's a pain too. :>)

****

The Bush recession officially began in December of 2007, and many explanations have been advanced to explain its causes; greedy bankers, mortgage fraud (something else)--

But none of these explanations wash. In the end, they all go back to some failure of individuals; today's bankers are *particularly* rapacious, today's homebuyers *particularly* deceitful. Our economic system would work splendidly, if not for the *bad* people. But then, so would any system.

There's an alternate explanation, though. It's that crisis is inherent, inevitable, due to the normal workings of our *particular* form of economy--the way we produce & distribute goods to meet our needs.

To see why, let's go back in time a bit to determine how our system -- capitalism -- differs from other forms of economic organization.

The most basic form of economic organization is one in which individuals, family groups & the community as a whole use freely available resources to produce goods intended mainly for their own needs. Goods are distributed within the community on that basis. If I cut some wood, it's my wood. If I use it to make a bow, it's my bow. If I use it to build a house, & my neighbors pitch in, it's my house--but I'm obliged to help them build theirs.

Even as late as the end of the 19th Century, this kind of production for use was still the norm for a large fraction of the US population. Only a portion of of most people's needs were met from production inside the capitalist money economy.

Let's compare this older kind of economy with our present-day one.

On the face of it, it doesn't seem so different. I work X hours, I meet my needs. But there are several differences in practical outcomes, & they regularly produce economic crisis.


****

i'm now trying to translate marx on how capitalism interrupts the linkage between production & use.

if this isn't the kind of thing you had in mind, speak up. i'm not wedded to it, just trying to find a structure non-nerds could relate to.

Glad you're feeling better, hb (wow that was a long bout!), this nerd likes your beginning...

Here's the next section, feel free to take part! My plan was to translate the potential crisis points & add some examples from the present recession.

****

First, the people making production decisions are no longer people who produce goods to meet their direct needs, they're "capitalists" producing goods to make a profit. This introduces the potential for complications.

In the first scenario, I & my community "own" resources & labor power, & with them, produce things we want to use. We may trade with others, but "what is exchanged is surplus. and it's unimportant whether this surplus is exchanged or not." There's no potential gap between production & consumption.

In capitalist production there is. As capitalist, I own money & productive assets (land, machinery); I want more. So I buy materials & labor & produce goods.

I then own these goods---but as goods, they're useless to me. I have to sell them to reproduce & increase the money I've invested.

*****

Therefore:

1. The general possibility of crisis is given in the process of metamorphosis of capital itself, and in two ways:

in so far as money functions as means of circulation, [the possibility of crisis lies in] the separation of purchase and sale;

and in so far as money functions as means of payment, it has two different aspects, it acts as measure of value and as realisation of value.

These two aspects [may] become separated. If in the interval between them the value has changed, if the commodity at the moment of its sale is not worth what it was worth at the moment when money was acting as a measure of value and therefore as a measure of the reciprocal obligations, then the obligation cannot be met from the proceeds of the sale of the commodity, and therefore the whole series of transactions which retrogressively depend on this one transaction, cannot be settled.

If even for only a limited period of time the commodity cannot be sold then, although its value has not altered, money cannot function as means of payment, since it must function as such in a definite given period of time. But as the same sum of money acts for a whole series of reciprocal transactions and obligations here, inability to pay occurs not only at one, but at many points, hence a crisis arises.

These are the formal possibilities of crisis. The form mentioned first is possible without the latter—that is to say, crises are possible without credit, without money functioning as a means of payment. But the second form is not possible without the first— that is to say, without the separation between purchase and sale. But in the latter case, the crisis occurs not only because the commodity is unsaleable, but because it is not saleable within a particular period of time, and the crisis arises and derives its character not only from the unsaleability of the commodity, but from the non-fulfilment of a whole series of payments which depend on the sale of this particular commodity within this particular period of time. This is the characteristic form of money crises.

If the crisis appears, therefore, because purchase and sale become separated, it becomes a money crisis, as ‘soon as money has developed as means of payment, and this second form of crisis follows as a matter of course, when the first occurs. In investigating why the general possibility of crisis turns into a real crisis, in investigating the conditions of crisis, it is therefore quite superfluous to concern oneself with the forms of crisis which arise out of the development of money as means of payment. This is precisely why economists like to suggest that this obvious form is the cause of crises. (In so far as the development of money as means of payment is linked with the development of credit and of excess credit the causes of the latter have to be examined, but this is not yet the place to do it.)

2. In so far as crises arise from changes in prices and revolutions in prices, which do not coincide with changes in the values of commodities, they naturally cannot be investigated during the examination of capital in general, in which the prices of commodities are assumed to be identical with the values of commodities.

3. The general possibility of crisis is the formal metamorphosis of capital itself, the separation, in time and space, of purchase and sale. But this is never the cause of the crisis. For it is nothing but the most general form of crisis, i.e., the crisis itself in its most generalised expression. But it cannot be said that the abstract form of crisis is the cause of crisis. If one asks what its cause is, one wants to know why its abstract form, the form of its possibility, turns from possibility into actuality.

4. The general conditions of crises, in so far as they are independent of price fluctuations (whether these are linked with the credit system or not) as distinct from fluctuations in value, must be explicable from the general conditions of capitalist production. |770a||
||716| (A crisis can arise: 1, in the course of the reconversion [of money] into productive capital; 2. through changes in the value of the elements of productive capital, particularly of raw material, for example when there is a decrease in the quantity of cotton harvested. Its value will thus rise. We are not as yet concerned with prices here but with values.) |716||

||770a| First Phase. The reconversion of money into capital. A definite level of production or reproduction is assumed. Fixed capital can be regarded here as given, as remaining unchanged and not entering into the process of the creation of value. Since the reproduction of raw material is not dependent solely on the labour employed on it, but on the productivity of this labour which is bound up with natural conditions, it is possible for the volume, ||XIV-771a| the amount of the product of the same quantity of labour, to fall (as a result of bad harvests).

The value of the raw material therefore rises; its volume decreases, in other words the proportions in which the money has to be reconverted into the various component parts of capital in order to continue production on the former scale, are upset. More must be expended on raw material, less remains for labour, and it is not possible to absorb the same quantity of labour as before.

Firstly this is physically impossible, because of the deficiency in raw material.

Secondly, it is impossible because a greater portion of the value of the product has to be converted into raw material, thus leaving less for conversion into variable capital. Reproduction cannot be repeated on the same scale. A part of fixed capital stands idle and a part of the workers is thrown out on the streets.

The rate of profit falls because the value of constant capital has risen as against that of variable capital and less variable capital is employed.

The fixed charges—interest, rent—which were based on the anticipation of a constant rate of profit and exploitation of labour, remain the same and in part cannot be paid. Hence crisis. Crisis of labour and crisis of capital. This is therefore a disturbance in the reproduction process due to the increase in the value of that part of constant capital which has to be replaced out of the value of the product.

Moreover, although the rate of profit is decreasing, there is a rise in the price of the product. If this product enters into other spheres of production as a means of production, the rise in its price will result in the same disturbance in reproduction in these spheres. If it enters into general consumption as a means of subsistence, it either enters also into the consumpt

ion of the workers or not. If it does so, then its effects will be the same as those of a disturbance in variable capital, of which we shall speak later.

But in so far as it enters into general consumption it may result (if its consumption is not reduced) in a diminished demand for other products and consequently prevent their reconversion into money at their value, thus disturbing the other aspect of their reproduction— not the reconversion of money into productive capital but the reconversion of commodities into money. In any case, the volume of profits and the volume of wages is reduced in this branch of production thereby reducing a part of the necessary returns from the sale of commodities from other branches of production.

Such a shortage of raw material may, however, occur not only because of the influence of harvests or of the natural productivity of the labour which supplies the raw material. For if an excessive portion of the surplus-value, of the additional capital, is laid out in machinery etc, in a particular branch of production, then, although the raw material would have been sufficient for the old level of production, it will be insufficient for the new. This therefore arises from the disproportionate conversion of additional capital into its various elements. It is a case of over-production of fixed capital and gives rise to exactly the same phenomena as occur in the first case. (See the previous page.) |XIV-771a||
||XIV-861a| […][a]

Or they [the crises] are due to an over-production of fixed capital and therefore a relative
under-production of circulating capital.

Since fixed capital, like circulating, consists of commodities, it is quite ridiculous that the same economists who admit the over-production of fixed capital, deny the over-production of commodities.

5. Crises arising from disturbances in the first phase of reproduction: that is to say, interrupted conversion of commodities into money or interruption of sale. In the case of crises of the first sort [which result from the rise in the price of raw materials] the crisis arises from interruptions in the flowing back of the elements of productive capital. |XIV-861a||

So, my method when translating something thick is to remove excess verbiage & then paraphrase, but I'm not able to penetrate some of this.

Here's the problem: Marx appears (after earlier discussion of possibilities of crisis) to be saying, OK, bottom line summary, here are the possibilities of crisis:

******

The possibility of crisis is given in the metamorphosis of capital itself, and in two ways:

1. Where money is means of circulation, the possibility lies in the separation of purchase and sale;

2. Where money = means of payment, it acts as measure of value and as realisation of value; the two aspects may become separated.
a. If the commodity at the moment of sale isn't worth what it was at the moment when money was acting as a measure of value and therefore as a measure of the reciprocal obligations, then the obligation cannot be met from the proceeds of the sale, and therefore the whole series of transactions which retrogressively depend on this one transaction, cannot be settled. (credit chain)

b. If the commodity cannot be sold, even for a time, then although its value hasn't altered, money can't function as means of payment; inability to pay occurs not only at one, but at many points, hence a crisis arises. (credit chain)

These are the formal possibilities of crisis.

******

Then he seems to be elaboratinging on these two possibilities:

*********

The form mentioned first is possible without the latter—that is to say, crises are possible without credit, without money functioning as a means of payment.
But the second form is not possible without the first— that is to say, without the separation between purchase and sale.

But in the latter case, the crisis occurs not only because the commodity is unsaleable, but because it is not saleable within a particular period of time, and the crisis arises and derives its character not only from the unsaleability of the commodity, but from the non-fulfilment of a whole series of payments which depend on the sale of this particular commodity within this particular period of time. This is the characteristic form of money crises.

If the crisis appears, therefore, because purchase and sale become separated, it becomes a money crisis as soon as money has developed as means of payment, and this second form of crisis follows as a matter of course, when the first occurs.
In investigating why the general possibility of crisis turns into a real crisis, in investigating the conditions of crisis, it is therefore quite superfluous to concern oneself with the forms of crisis which arise out of the development of money as means of payment.

This is precisely why economists like to suggest that this obvious form is the cause of crises.

If crises arise from changes in prices which do not coincide with changes in the values of commodities, they naturally cannot be investigated during the examination of capital in general, in which the prices of commodities are assumed to be identical with the values of commodities.

The general possibility of crisis is the formal metamorphosis of capital itself, the separation, in time and space, of purchase and sale.

But this is never the cause of the crisis. For it is nothing but the most general form of crisis, i.e., the crisis itself in its most generalised expression.

But it cannot be said that the abstract form of crisis is the cause of crisis. If one asks what its cause is, one wants to know why its abstract form, the form of its possibility, turns from possibility into actuality.

******
So now he's going to explain how what's always inherent possibility/abstract form becomes actualized as crisis. Going to a different level, I'd think, except:

I'm not following the structure of the argument. The pieces I get, but not what they are supposed to add up to.

****

The general conditions of crises, in so far as they are independent of price fluctuations (whether these are linked with the credit system or not) as distinct from fluctuations in value, must be explicable from the general conditions of capitalist production. |

A crisis can arise:

1, in the course of the reconversion of money into productive capital;

2. through changes in the value of the elements of productive capital, particularly of raw material, for example when there is a decrease in the quantity of cotton harvested. Its value will thus rise. We are not as yet concerned with prices here but with values.)

First Phase. The reconversion of money into capital.

A definite level of production or reproduction is assumed. Fixed capital can be regarded here as given, as remaining unchanged and not entering into the process of the creation of value. Since the reproduction of raw material is not dependent solely on the labour employed on it, but on the productivity of this labour which is bound up with natural conditions, it is possible for the volume, the amount of the product of the same quantity of labour, to fall (as a result of bad harvests).

The value of the raw material therefore rises; its volume decreases, in other words the proportions in which the money has to be reconverted into the various component parts of capital in order to continue production on the former scale, are upset. More must be expended on raw material, less remains for labour, and it is not possible to absorb the same quantity of labour as before.

Firstly this is physically impossible, because of the deficiency in raw material.

Secondly, it is impossible because a greater portion of the value of the product has to be converted into raw material, thus leaving less for conversion into variable capital. Reproduction cannot be repeated on the same scale. A part of fixed capital stands idle and a part of the workers is thrown out on the streets.

The rate of profit falls because the value of constant capital has risen as against that of variable capital and less variable capital is employed.

The fixed charges—interest, rent—which were based on the anticipation of a constant rate of profit and exploitation of labour, remain the same and in part cannot be paid. Hence crisis. Crisis of labour and crisis of capital. This is therefore a disturbance in the reproduction process due to the increase in the value of that part of constant capital which has to be replaced out of the value of the product.

Moreover, although the rate of profit is decreasing, there is a rise in the price of the product. If this product enters into other spheres of production as a means of production, the rise in its price will result in the same disturbance in reproduction in these spheres. If it enters into general consumption as a means of subsistence, it either enters also into the consumption of the workers or not. If it does so, then its effects will be the same as those of a disturbance in variable capital, of which we shall speak later.

But in so far as it enters into general consumption it may result (if its consumption is not reduced) in a diminished demand for other products and consequently prevent their reconversion into money at their value, thus disturbing the other aspect of their reproduction— not the reconversion of money into productive capital but the reconversion of commodities into money.

In any case, the volume of profits and the volume of wages is reduced in this branch of production thereby reducing a part of the necessary returns from the sale of commodities from other branches of production.

Such a shortage of raw material may, however, occur not only because of the influence of harvests or of the natural productivity of the labour

which supplies the raw material.

For if an excessive portion of the surplus-value, of the additional capital, is laid out in machinery etc, in a particular branch of production, then, although the raw material would have been sufficient for the old level of production, it will be insufficient for the new.

This therefore arises from the disproportionate conversion of additional capital into its various elements. It is a case of over-production of fixed capital and gives rise to exactly the same phenomena as occur in the first case.

Or the crises are due to an over-production of fixed capital and therefore a relative
under-production of circulating capital.

Since fixed capital, like circulating, consists of commodities, it is quite ridiculous that the same economists who admit the over-production of fixed capital, deny the over-production of commodities.

Crises arising from disturbances in the first phase of reproduction: that is to say, interrupted conversion of commodities into money or interruption of sale. In the case of crises of the first sort [which result from the rise in the price of raw materials] the crisis arises from interruptions in the flowing back of the elements of productive capital.

******

help?

Yeah, I remember going over this very carefully. I am pretty sure what threw me was that I thought Marx was listing two distinct possibilities


A crisis can arise:

1, in the course of the reconversion of money into productive capital;

2. through changes in the value of the elements of productive capital, particularly of raw material, for example when there is a decrease in the quantity of cotton harvested. Its value will thus rise. We are not as yet concerned with prices here but with values.)

But hes not I don't think, it is actually a succession whereby 1 basically begets 2.

Not sure if thats whats tripping you up, but it was a hardwon insight for me at least

hmm. that does change the reading, thanks. i'll go over it again.

Hb, take a step back. We are quoting ToSV; not Capital. Marx is writing a (cursory) critique of (then) existing Political Economy; not presenting a positive analysis of crisis.

The key phrasing is here:

"The general possibility of crisis is the formal metamorphosis of capital itself, the separation, in time and space, of purchase and sale. But this is never the cause of the crisis. For it is nothing but the most general form of crisis, i.e., the crisis itself in its most generalised expression. But it cannot be said that the abstract form of crisis is the cause of crisis. If one asks what its cause is, one wants to know why its abstract form, the form of its possibility, turns from possibility into actuality."

To say this another way, in the Capitalist mode of production, surplus-value is created in production but realized in circulation. The commodities must be sold for Capital to be augmented. This is why the two-fold nature of commodities is central - it forces the "separation" which Marx talks about. The two poles of this proceed separately (the general possibility), but also independently (Capital must be invested, without limit, to remain Capital but its realization is in a market which is necessarily bounded (the actual onset of crisis coming from the unstoppable engine running out of road - "overproduction").

Of the two "causes", they can be subsequent to each other as KOBH wrote, or historically, the first can appear before the generalized conditions of the second really exist. The former is really all that was known in the time of Smith.


(I should have added that the second can also exist, but it is a different kind of "crisis". Anything can interrupt the chain of credit and co-dependence if it is serious enough. Whether it leads to recession is dependent on the surrounding conditions.)

Hey Anax,

Cursory though it may be, this is also where we see a little of the rigor courtesy of Hegel you were telling me about.

Here Marx is insisting that one cannot answer "What is crisis?" with "crisis" a la What is a plant?/A plant

That is why it is important and Marx is at pains to point out that a cause is never simply a restatement of a latent possibility. Lest we conclude that the acorn causes the tree, without accounting for the chemical and biological processes and the myriad ecological/environmental factors and so (Now THAT is cursory).

This matters here because establishing the possibility of crisis, even the immanent possibility, both does and doesn't speak to our concern with cause

Watching Marx in action is rare treat and a real kick in the ass at the same time

ok, i see what my problem is. first he lays out the general forms where crisis is inherent, then he gets more specific about the mechanisms through which crisis can materialize.

but here:

"Incidentally, those economists are no better, who (like John Stuart Mill) want to explain the crises by these simple possibilities of crisis contained in the metamorphosis of commodities—such as the separation between purchase and sale. These factors which explain the possibility of crises, by no means explain their actual occurrence. They do not explain why the phases of the process come into such conflict that their inner unity can only assert itself through a crisis, through a violent process. This separation appears in the crisis; it is the elementary form of the crisis. To explain the crisis on the basis of this, its elementary form, is to explain the existence of the crisis by describing its most abstract form, that is to say, to explain the crisis by the crisis."

m. had heaped scorn on economists who agreed with him that crisis is inherent in the forms (contra ricardo), & said this contradiction = the *cause* of crisis.

& here:

"The general possibility of crisis is the formal metamorphosis of capital itself, the separation, in time and space, of purchase and sale. But this is never the cause of the crisis. For it is nothing but the most general form of crisis, i.e., the crisis itself in its most generalised expression. But it cannot be said that the abstract form of crisis is the cause of crisis. If one asks what its cause is, one wants to know why its abstract form, the form of its possibility, turns from possibility into actuality."

I was looking for the resolution of this point, & trying to organize the pp around that theme -- which i'm not finding.


***


OK, so...paraphrase of the section quoted earlier:

Crisis can arise when money must be reconverted into productive capital.

For example, if the value of a constituitive element of productive capital changes, e.g. the quantity of a cotton harvest decreases, its value will rise. (value, not price)

If cotton volume declines, proportionally more $ (price) from earlier production has to be spent on cotton to realize the earlier level of production, and it's not possible to absorb the same quantity of labour as before.

First, there's less raw material. Second, there's less money available to buy variable capital (labor). Part of fixed capital stands idle and a part of the workers is thrown out on the streets.

The rate of profit falls: the value of constant capital has risen against that of variable capital and less variable capital is employed.

Fixed charges—interest, rent—based on earlier expectations can't be paid. Hence crisis.

Moreover, although the rate of profit is decreasing, the price of the product rises, which affects prices in other spheres. If the product is used in other production, it affects pricing of those goods. If the product is a consumption good, there are several possibilities; workers won't buy it, they'll buy less of it, or buy the same amount but stint other purchases to pay the increased cost.

If there's diminished demand for other products, it prevents their reconversion into money at their value, thus disturbing the other aspect of their reproduction, reducing a part of the necessary returns from the sale of commodities from other branches of production.

Shortage of raw material may have other causes too.

If too much surplus-value is laid out in machinery (fixed capital) in one branch of production, the raw material sufficient for the old level of production will be insufficient for the new.

There's an over-production of fixed capital and it has the same effect as in the first case.

Or the over-production of fixed capital = a relative under-production of circulating capital = crisis.

Since fixed capital, like circulating, consists of commodities, it is quite ridiculous that the same economists who admit the over-production of fixed capital, deny the over-production of commodities.

***


Next section:

So long as the owner of the weaving-mill ireproduces and accumulates, his workers, too, purchase a part of his product. Because he produces, they have the means to purchase a part of his product and thus to some extent give him the means to sell it.

The worker can only buy commodities which enter into individual consumption. This already excludes the majority of producers, the workers themselves, as consumers of many commodities where capitalist production prevails. They buy only means of subsistence, commodities which enter directly into individual consumption.

Hence nothing is more ridiculous than to speak of the identity of producers and consumers, since for an extraordinarily large number of branches of production—all those that do not supply articles for direct consumption—the mass of those who participate in production are entirely excluded from the purchase of their own products.

They are never direct consumers of this large part of their own products, although they pay a portion of the value of these products in the articles of consumption that they buy.

This also shows the ambiguity of the word consumer and how wrong it is to identify it with the word buyer. As regards industrial consumption, it is precisely the workers who consume machinery and raw material, using them up in the labour-process. But they do not use them up for themselves and they are therefore not buyers of them.

On the other hand, it is equally wrong to say that the consumers are producers. The landlord does not produce rent, and yet he consumes. The same applies to all monied interests.

The apologetic phrases used to deny crises are important in so far as they always prove the opposite of what they are meant to prove. In order to deny crises, they assert unity where there is conflict and contradiction.

Every reason which they put forward against crisis is an exorcised contradiction, and, therefore, a real contradiction, which can cause crises.

What the workers in fact produce, is surplus-value. So long as they produce it, they are able to consume. As soon as they cease to produce it, their consumption ceases, because their production ceases.

But that they are able to consume is by no means due to their having produced an equivalent for their consumption. On the contrary, as soon as they produce *merely* an equivalent, their consumption ceases, & they have no equivalent to consume.

Their work is either stopped or curtailed, or at all events their wages are reduced. In the latter case—if the level of production remains the same—they do not consume an equivalent of what they produce. But they lack these means not because they do not produce enough, but because they receive too little of their product for themselves.

By reducing these relations simply to those of consumer and producer, one leaves out of account that the wage-labourer who produces and the capitalist who produces are two producers of a completely different kind, quite apart from the fact that some consumers do not produce at all. Once again, a contradiction is denied, by abstracting from a contradiction which really exists in production. The mere relationship of wage-labourer and capitalist implies:

1. that the majority of the producers (the workers) are nonconsumers (non-buyers) of a very large part of their product, namely, of the means of production and the raw material;

2. that the majority of the producers, the workers, can consume an equivalent for their product only so lo

ng as they produce more than this equivalent, that is, so long as they produce surplus-value or surplus-product. They must always be over-producers, produce over and above their needs, in order to be able to be consumers or buyers within the limits of their needs.

When Ricardo says that the only limit to demand is production itself, and that this is limited by capital, then this means, in fact, nothing more than that capitalist production finds its measure only in capital;

in this context, however, the term capital also includes the labour-power which is incorporated in (bought by) capital as one of its conditions of production.

The question is whether capital as such is also the limit for consumption. It is so in a negative sense: more cannot be consumed than is produced.

But the question is, whether this applies in a positive sense too, whether—on the basis of capitalist production—as much can and must be consumed as is produced.

Ricardo’s proposition, when correctly analysed, says the very opposite of what it is meant to say.

Thus according to the assumption, the market is glutted, for instance with cotton cloth, so that part of it remains unsold or all of it, or it can only be sold well below its price. (For the time being, we shall call it value, because while we are considering circulation or the reproduction process, we are still concerned with value and not yet with cost-price, even less with market-price.)

It is not denied that too much may be produced in individual spheres and therefore too little in others; partial crises can thus arise from disproportionate production (proportionate production is, however, always only the result of disproportionate production on the basis of competition) and a general form of this disproportionate production may be over-production of fixed capital, or on the other hand, over-production of circulating capital.*

Just as it is a condition for the sale of commodities at their value, that they contain only the socially necessary labour-time, so it is for an entire sphere of production of capital, that only the necessary part of the total labour-time of society is used in the particular sphere, only the labour-time which is required for the satisfaction of social need (demand).

If more is used, then, even if each individual commodity only contains the necessary labour-time, the total contains more than the socially necessary labour-time; in the same way, although the individual commodity has use-value, the total sum of commodities loses some of its use-value under the conditions assumed.

However, we are not speaking of crisis as it arises from the disproportion in the distribution of social labour between the individual spheres of production. This can only be dealt with in connection with the competition of capitals. In that context it has already been stated that the rise or fall of market-value which is caused by this disproportion, results in the migration of capital from one branch of production to another.

This equalisation itself however already implies as a precondition the opposite of equalisation and may therefore comprise crisis; the crisis itself may be a form of equalisation. Ricardo etc. admit this form of crisis.

When considering production we saw that the aim of capitalist production is appropriation of the greatest possible amount of surplus-labour, etc., in short, large-scale production, i.e., mass production.

It is thus in the nature of capitalist production, to produce without regard to the limits of the market.

During the examination of reproduction, it is assumed that the method of production remains the same and it remains the same, moreover, for a period while production expands. The volume of commodities produced is increased because more capital is employed and not because capital is employed more productively.

But the mere quantitative increase in capital at the same time implies that its productive power grows.

Reproduction on an extended basis, even if originally it appears only as a quantitative expansion of production—the use of more capital under the same conditions of production—at a certain point, therefore, always represents also a qualitative expansion in the form of greater productivity of the conditions under which reproduction is carried out. Consequently the volume of products increases not only in simple proportion to the growth of capital in expanded reproduction—accumulation.

Now let us return to our example of calico.

The stagnation in the market which is glutted with cotton cloth, hampers the reproduction process of the weaver. This disturbance first affects his workers. Thus they are now to a smaller extent, or not at all, consumers of his commodity—cotton cloth—and of other commodities which entered into their consumption.

It is true, that they need cotton cloth, but they can't buy it because they have not the means, because they cannot continue to produce because too much has been produced, too much cotton cloth is already on the market.

Neither Ricardo’s advice “to increase their production”, nor his alternative “to produce something else” can help them. They now form a part of the surplus production of workers, in this case of cotton producers, because there is a surplus production of cotton fabrics on the market.

But a large number of other producers are hit by this interruption in the reproduction process of cotton: spinners, cotton-growers, engineers (producers of spindles, looms etc.), iron and coal producers and so on.

Reproduction in all these spheres would also be impeded because the reproduction of cotton cloth is a condition for their own reproduction--even if they had not over-produced in their own spheres. Thus the consumption of and the demand for calico fall just because there is too much of it on the market. But this also applies to all other commodities on which, as articles of consumption, the revenue of these indirect producers of cotton is spent.

Even if there has been no over-production in these spheres, now they are over-producing.

If over-production has taken place not only in cotton, but also in linen, silk and woollen fabrics, then it can be understood how over-production in these few, but leading articles, calls forth a more or less general (relative) over-production on the whole market.

On the one hand there is a superabundance of all the means of reproduction and a superabundance of all kinds of unsold commodities on the market. On the other hand bankrupt capitalists and destitute, starving workers.

This however is a two-edged argument. If it is easily understood how over-production of some leading articles of consumption must bring in its wake the phenomenon of a more or less general over-production, it is by no means clear how over-production of these articles can arise.

The phenomenon of general over-production is derived from the interdependence not only of the workers directly employed in these industries, but of all branches of industries which produce the elements of their products, the various stages of their constant capital.

In the latter branches of industry, over-production is an effect.

But whence does it come in the former?

For the latter branches of industry continue to produce so long as the former go on producing, and along with this continued production, a general growth in revenue, and therefore in their own consumption, seems assured.

***

OK, I went through the sections on overproduction & translated them to modern language more or less, but this needs to be reworked to be useful. "Twofold" not explicit & some background missing. & the ordering not logical to popular audience as it stands.


Just putting it up for now...if you see problems in interpretation...I added a bit that wasn't in the original in one place...

***

The Bush recession officially began in December of 2007. Lots of people have tried to explain its causes; greedy bankers, mortgage fraud--

But none of the explanations wash. In the end, they all point to some failure of individuals: today's bankers are *particularly* rapacious, today's homebuyers *particularly* deceitful. Our economic system would work splendidly, if not for the *bad* people. But then, so would any system.

There's another explanation, though you don't hear it often. It's that crisis is inherent and inevitable in our economy, not because of greedy bankers, but because of the normal workings of our *particular* kind of economy--the way we produce & distribute goods to meet our needs.

To see why, let's go back in time a bit to determine how our system -- capitalism -- differs from other forms of economic organization.

The most basic form of economic organization is one in which individuals, family groups & the community as a whole use freely available resources to produce goods intended mainly for their own needs.

Goods are distributed within the community on that basis. If I cut some wood, it's my wood. If I use it to make a bow, it's my bow. If I use it to build a house, & my neighbors pitch in, it's my house--but I'm obliged to help them build theirs.

Even as late as the end of the 19th Century, this kind of production for use was still the norm for a large fraction of the US population. Only a portion of of most people's needs were met from production inside the capitalist money economy.

Let's compare this kind of economy with our present-day one.

On the face of it, it doesn't seem so different. I work X hours, I meet my needs. But there are several differences in practical outcomes, & they regularly produce economic crisis.

First, the people making production decisions are no longer people who produce goods to meet their direct needs, they're "capitalists" producing goods to make a profit. This introduces the potential for complications.

In the first scenario, I & my community "own" our resources & labor power, & with them, produce things we want to use. There's no gap between production & consumption.

But in capitalist production, there is.

As capitalist, I own money & productive assets (land, machinery); I want more. So I buy materials & labor & produce goods.

I then own these goods---but as goods, they're useless to me. I have to sell them to get back the money I've invested. But I don't just want to get my money back--I want to make a profit. I want to get *more* back than I invested.

So this is the first place where economic crisis may begin. I have to be able to sell my goods to recoup my investment, finance future production, & make a profit.

If I can't, I'll decrease production, or even go out of business. My workers lose their jobs, my suppliers lose my business--my failure has a ripple effect in the economy as a whole.

My immediate creditors & suppliers are suddenly in the same boat I'm in--which means *their* creditors & suppliers are in the same boat--and so on, all along the supply or credit chain.

But assume I manage to sell my goods at the price I want, which returns my investment plus (I think) a profit. I'm ready to reinvest in another round of production.

Here's another point where crisis can begin. Say I'm producing cotton cloth & there's a cotton blight. Cotton is now in short supply, & unexpectedly expensive; I'm obliged to reinvest more money than before to produce the same volume of cloth.

Or maybe, since I'm competing with other producers for a smaller amount of cotton, I won't be able to buy the same volume I did before.

Either way, there's a ripple effect. I have to pay more for cotton, so I have less money to pay my workers. Or I can't get as much cotton, so I don't need as many workers.

There's also less money -- or less need -- for thread, or dye, or paper, or salesclerks, or advertising, or anything else involved in the production & sale of my product. The ripple effect again.

There's another angle, too. Say I have a textile factory, & I've put a lot of money into the machinery in the expectation that it will produce X amount of goods yearly, generating X percent of profit, & over X years, I'll recoup the cost of the machines, plus profit.

But now some of the machines are idle. I have a lot of expensive machinery producing nothing, & fewer workers operating the machines.

My profit rate goes down. I still have to make the same payment on my machinery, whether it's producing cloth or not. But if it's not producing cloth, I have less product to sell to get the cash for the payments.

I can try to reduce costs elsewhere. I can, for example, cut my remaining employees' health benefits, or reduce their wages, or reduce their lunch breaks. But since I now have fewer workers, but still the same amount of machinery, sweating my workers has less effect on costs than it did before. The ratio of machines (which don't produce profit directly) to workers (who produce profit) has increased.

Again, there's a ripple effect. Fixed charges—interest on the loans for the machines, rent, etc.—based on earlier expectations can't be paid so easily. My operating cushion is smaller or non-existent. I could sell the machines I'm not currently using--but possibly at a loss, & the sale would leave me unable to produce at my earlier volume when business picked up.

There's another ripple effect as well. Since cotton is in short supply & more costly & the cost of fixed capital proportionally more expensive, I (& other producers) will try to raise prices to maintain the same income stream (not sure I'm understanding this section: "Moreover, although the rate of profit is decreasing, there is a rise in the price of the product.")

This affects other prices. If my cloth is used by other producers, they'll try to raise prices to cover my price hike. Consumers will buy less of my product, or less of someone else's product.

When fewer products are purchased, some producers will be back to the first crisis situation: inability to sell their product, cover their costs, make a profit, or realize enough money to restart another round of production.

But it's not just a bad cotton harvest that can have this effect. Imagine I had a good year & decide to invest in a lot of high-speed machinery that allows me to double my production. Now I need double the cotton I did last year.

Imagine some of my competitors had the same idea. In effect, cotton will be in shorter supply than it was previous year, because the better technology = increased demand by producers.

There's a lot of money tied up in productive machinery & a relative shortage of (now) higher-priced cotton -- but we've tied up lots of money in machinery, leaving less to buy cotton.

***

So long as my factory is going along year to year producing & making me enough money to go on the next year, my workers have the money to buy my product or the products of other manufacturers.

But worker-consumers only buy *some* of the products sold in the market. There are lots of products that are produced only for sale to other producers--though worker-consumers pay for part of the value of these products in the consumer products they buy.

This shows the very language--producer, consumer--we use to describe our economy is misleading.

So long as workers produce extra value (for the owner), they can consume.
But their ability/right to consume isn't due to their having produced the equivalent to what they'll consume.

In fact, if they produce *only* the equivalent of what they consume, their consumption will end--because they won't be producing surplus for the owner. They'll be laid off, their hours will be cut, their wages reduced.

The relationship of worker and capitalist implies:

1. Most producers (workers) are nonconsumers (non-buyers) of a large part of their product (e.g. production equipment & raw materials)

2. Most producers (workers) can consume an equivalent for their product only if they produce *more* than this equivalent--so long as they produce surplus.

They must *always* be over-producers--produce *more than* their needs to be able to be consumers to meet their needs.


****untrnlted portion



Now let us return to our example of calico.

The stagnation in the market which is glutted with cotton cloth, hampers the reproduction process of the weaver. This disturbance first affects his workers. Thus they are now to a smaller extent, or not at all, consumers of his commodity—cotton cloth—and of other commodities which entered into their consumption.

It is true, that they need cotton cloth, but they can't buy it because they have not the means, because they cannot continue to produce because too much has been produced, too much cotton cloth is already on the market.

Neither Ricardo’s advice “to increase their production”, nor his alternative “to produce something else” can help them. They now form a part of the surplus production of workers, in this case of cotton producers, because there is a surplus production of cotton fabrics on the market.

But a large number of other producers are hit by this interruption in the reproduction process of cotton: spinners, cotton-growers, engineers (producers of spindles, looms etc.), iron and coal producers and so on.

Reproduction in all these spheres would also be impeded because the reproduction of cotton cloth is a condition for their own reproduction--even if they had not over-produced in their own spheres. Thus the consumption of and the demand for calico fall just because there is too much of it on the market. But this also applies to all other commodities on which, as articles of consumption, the revenue of these indirect producers of cotton is spent.

Even if there has been no over-production in these spheres, now they are over-producing.

If over-production has taken place not only in cotton, but also in linen, silk and woollen fabrics, then it can be understood how over-production in these few, but leading articles, calls forth a more or less general (relative) over-production on the whole market.

On the one hand there is a superabundance of all the means of reproduction and a superabundance of all kinds of unsold commodities on the market. On the other hand bankrupt capitalists and destitute, starving workers.

This however is a two-edged argument. If it is easily understood how over-production of some leading articles of consumption must bring in its wake the phenomenon of a more or less general over-production, it is by no means clear how over-production of these articles can arise.

The phenomenon of general over-production is derived from the interdependence not only of the workers directly employed in these industries, but of all branches of industries which produce the elements of their products, the various stages of their constant capital.

In the latter branches of industry, over-production is an effect.

But whence does it come in the former?

For the latter branches of industry continue to produce so long as the former go on producing, and along with this continued production, a general growth in revenue, and therefore in their own consumption, seems assured.

There is one point that there is broad agreement about - that endless growth of the economy is a problem, that resources run out, that the world is being trashed. This is an Achilles heel in the arguments of the apologists for Capitalism. The thing to do is demonstrate to people that growth is an inevitable and inherent feature of Capitalism - you can't have one without the other.

I don't know HB, I've been mulling your idea of presenting Crisis For Dummies, and all I am seeing are the perils and pitfalls. For one thing, I think it is going to be way too long for an introductory presentation. Secondly, I think it forcs you to vulgarize too many things that only lend themselves to confusion upon further elaboration.

Combine those two problems and you get the third and overriding problem which is that the point we want to make gets lost in verbiage and minutae.

EDIT: but the first part about how the conventional explanations don't fly is exceptional. That part I think is a keeper.

@Mike: The thing is, we are kind of trying to impress the opposite point on people -- that "resources" is an economic and not geological concept, as is scarcity, as is "endless growth". I don't think it behooves us to try and conflate those into a correspondence relationship by saying sthat "Sure, Capitalism is economic but it also has geological and ecological limits". No it doesn't. Its only limit is social.

i agree what i've got here is useless, & with your misgivings kid. just putting it into colloquial language was a chore--marx writes in spirals--e.g. i'd not get why he was distingishing price v. value in an example--then 1000 words later, he'd connect the dot.

otoh, one of the things that's bugged me for some time is the way mainstream discussion of "capitalism" conflates it with other economic forms in the fashion of "I have some pears, you have some apples, I trade my pears for some of your apples, now we're both better off--that's capitalism!!"

when people are raised to think like that, they're being trained not to be able to even conceptualize economic relations or understand why things happen the way they do--thus the resort to putting crisis down only to crooks.

so my feeling is that "crisis for dummies" is a useful thing to do. a difficulty *i* have in condensing it is my own reading is auto-didactic/scattered, i don't have the breadth to fill in the blanks. also conscious of "vulgarizing" or substituting my own interpretation--

but i think i'm going to just go ahead & vulgarize, because my original plan of translation isn't going to work due to m's thick spiraling style -- then you guys can fill in the weak spots if you think it's worth the trouble.

back later with vulgar marxism--

i agree what i've got here is useless, & with your misgivings kid. just putting it into colloquial language was a chore--marx writes in spirals--e.g. i'd not get why he was distingishing price v. value in an example--then 1000 words later, he'd connect the dot.

otoh, one of the things that's bugged me for some time is the way mainstream discussion of "capitalism" conflates it with other economic forms in the fashion of "I have some pears, you have some apples, I trade my pears for some of your apples, now we're both better off--that's capitalism!!"

when people are raised to think like that, they're being trained not to be able to even conceptualize economic relations or understand why things happen the way they do--thus the resort to putting crisis down only to crooks.

so my feeling is that "crisis for dummies" is a useful thing to do. a difficulty *i* have in condensing it is my own reading is auto-didactic/scattered, i don't have the breadth to fill in the blanks. also conscious of "vulgarizing" or substituting my own interpretation--

but i think i'm going to just go ahead & vulgarize, because my original plan of translation isn't going to work due to m's thick spiraling style -- then you guys can fill in the weak spots if you think it's worth the trouble.

back later with vulgar marxism--


Hey HB, if you were dropping a hint with all the "vulgarities' that wasn't a dig at what you're doing so much as a shortcoming I've done myself many times and can't figure out how to get around ;) Its definitely worth doing because it makes us think things out and solidify our own ideas and understanding.

At first I agreed with you that part of the problem was stylisitic, but the more I read Chapter 1 of Capital the more I see the genius in it -- and come to question whether it could be presented in any other way without losing something. Thats when I turn in for the night and quit lol

no,not at all. i just don't see any way around vulgarization. my goal isn't to instill deep knowledge of marx (which i don't have myself), it's to get an "aha" moment - "hey, capitalism is *different* from trading apples & pears!"

in my own experience, when the lightbulb comes on, people get motivated to do their own research.

no,not at all. i just don't see any way around vulgarization. my goal isn't to instill deep knowledge of marx (which i don't have myself), it's to get an "aha" moment - "hey, capitalism is *different* from trading apples & pears!"

in my own experience, when the lightbulb comes on, people get motivated to do their own research.


One comment that Anax made that really hit home is that all buying and selling is ultimately the buying and selling of human lives. The market trades exclusively trades in human beings.

Been thinking about this in relation to "Their Morals And Ours". Anax brought that up yesterday and its always been something that stuck in the back of my mind to. Not only do we stand for something, we're on the right side of history and morality.

According to some polls, up to 90% of people want social spending and bill the rich while ending both unpopular wars, the unpopular Stimulus and the enormously unpopular Bailout. I mentioned this to someone and he replied "Well they could be wrong". But my response is "No, 90% of people can NOT be wrong when it comes to social policy"

Think about it..

"the buying and selling of human lives"

indeed.

one of those "the horror!" insights.

"the buying and selling of human lives"

indeed.

one of those "the horror!" insights.


Our lives. My life. When that sinks in, when the teeth are set on edge and words won't do.....

It's taken me a long time to get there, expedite that process and we might see the beginning before we're worm food.

Hey HB, I am working on a piece about the Twisted Knot. I don't know exactly what to call it, but it seems like showing how "use" and "exchange" get wrapped up into a pretzel and leave things all tied up is a required prelude to explaining crisis.

I don't know, I'm spinning on my wheels on this but the very first thing you addressed (and I think rightly) is "Why is Capitalism different from what came before?".

@Mike: The thing is, we are kind of trying to impress the opposite point on people -- that "resources" is an economic and not geological concept, as is scarcity, as is "endless growth". I don't think it behooves us to try and conflate those into a correspondence relationship by saying that "Sure, Capitalism is economic but it also has geological and ecological limits". No it doesn't. Its only limit is social.

Point taken.

@Mike: The thing is, we are kind of trying to impress the opposite point on people -- that "resources" is an economic and not geological concept, as is scarcity, as is "endless growth". I don't think it behooves us to try and conflate those into a correspondence relationship by saying that "Sure, Capitalism is economic but it also has geological and ecological limits". No it doesn't. Its only limit is social.

Point taken.


I was actually going to come back and mention that I see the other side of this as well -- people see the enormous and unremitting ecological degradation and destruction and want to know Why? Why is it happening and whats more why can't we stop it? Its not even a question of how, I think its pretty clear that the how is only a matter of collectively setting ourselves to the task.

I just don't know where the line should be drawn. I still think it is true that banking on capitalism to exhaust its natural resources is the REALLY long bet which just seems like a complete loser.

Sure, the capitalist only bets short and therefore lacks any ability (let alone initiative) to do do anything about the long term, but its not clear how that plays out and it definitely IS clear that it doesn't supercede the class struggle.

I was actually going to come back and mention that I see the other side of this as well -- people see the enormous and unremitting ecological degradation and destruction and want to know Why? Why is it happening and whats more why can't we stop it? Its not even a question of how, I think its pretty clear that the how is only a matter of collectively setting ourselves to the task.

I just don't know where the line should be drawn. I still think it is true that banking on capitalism to exhaust its natural resources is the REALLY long bet which just seems like a complete loser.

Sure, the capitalist only bets short and therefore lacks any ability (let alone initiative) to do do anything about the long term, but its not clear how that plays out and it definitely IS clear that it doesn't supercede the class struggle.


BP is doing some great work on this, and some good things are starting to come together.

"Why can't we stop it" is the point where we can get some leverage. I think that on environmentalism and agriculture we have a good opportunity to talk about Capitalism and people are listening.

There is a lot happening, a lot of work to do. Keep your feet moving, cycle down low, dig in the corners and win those battles, and crash the net whenever you can. Which reminds me, I wanted to post about the Wings.