brother cakes
11-05-2009, 11:57 AM
is it possible to look at quantitative and qualitative increases in productivity as the other side of the medal of absolute and relative surplus value?
I don't know, lately I've been getting tired and distracted easily because of my allergy medication.
On Economic Crisis
Re: On Economic Crisis
anaxarchos
11-05-2009, 12:34 PM
What the worker gets paid is the price of his labor power ("wages") which, though it is the simple cost of the reproduction of the worker (conditioned by "social norms" and national peculiarities), still goes up very slowly, if at all. The value of what is produced in the time frame that the worker sells in return for wages is completely independent of that calculation (though the difference is, in fact, surplus-value). By virtue of accumulating surplus value, the magnitude of capital grows... and by virtue of competition and the desire for profit, the productiveness of capital also grows. The market is bounded by the social conditions and grows naturally only to the extent that the population under capitalist relations itself grows.
All is fine whilst capital is a small leaf in a large sea of non-capitalist relations. All is still fine as capital begins to strip the countryside of population and convert them into urban workers - the "clearing of the estates". After this proceeds for a while, the limits of national markets are approached and recurring economic crises of increasing intensity are the result. Now capital export and foreign markets become the only outlet that is possible. This is the history of the century which begins in the middle of the 1800s. Competition between individual capitalists is transformed into competition between capitalist nation states.
It is inevitable that it all ends with one country which is dominant... and then, saturation is reached again, but this time without any possible outlet. The second half of your post is now dead on:
"There is not actually over-production - as measured against demand or need - but rather it is relative. The transfer of wealth, expropriated from the worker into the hands of the capitalist, means that inevitably sooner or later people will not be able to buy what the capitalist is selling - regardless of their needs or of demand. It is demand at a certain price that drops off and the supply at a certain price that looks like a glut. The glut, the inevitability of a glut, is certain given the very nature of Capitalism."
It is what entered the literature in the 1930s - The Grapes of Wrath.
Food is burned while people starve.
11-05-2009, 12:34 PM
What the worker gets paid is the price of his labor power ("wages") which, though it is the simple cost of the reproduction of the worker (conditioned by "social norms" and national peculiarities), still goes up very slowly, if at all. The value of what is produced in the time frame that the worker sells in return for wages is completely independent of that calculation (though the difference is, in fact, surplus-value). By virtue of accumulating surplus value, the magnitude of capital grows... and by virtue of competition and the desire for profit, the productiveness of capital also grows. The market is bounded by the social conditions and grows naturally only to the extent that the population under capitalist relations itself grows.
All is fine whilst capital is a small leaf in a large sea of non-capitalist relations. All is still fine as capital begins to strip the countryside of population and convert them into urban workers - the "clearing of the estates". After this proceeds for a while, the limits of national markets are approached and recurring economic crises of increasing intensity are the result. Now capital export and foreign markets become the only outlet that is possible. This is the history of the century which begins in the middle of the 1800s. Competition between individual capitalists is transformed into competition between capitalist nation states.
It is inevitable that it all ends with one country which is dominant... and then, saturation is reached again, but this time without any possible outlet. The second half of your post is now dead on:
"There is not actually over-production - as measured against demand or need - but rather it is relative. The transfer of wealth, expropriated from the worker into the hands of the capitalist, means that inevitably sooner or later people will not be able to buy what the capitalist is selling - regardless of their needs or of demand. It is demand at a certain price that drops off and the supply at a certain price that looks like a glut. The glut, the inevitability of a glut, is certain given the very nature of Capitalism."
It is what entered the literature in the 1930s - The Grapes of Wrath.
Food is burned while people starve.
Re: On Economic Crisis
Kid of the Black Hole
11-06-2009, 01:56 PM
this material is just as important in its way as the opening of Capital. I'm sure you guys don't, but it would be a mistake to think this material doesn't carry the same urgency and trenchant scrutinizing power
And not only in the context of arcane debates between detached academics either
11-06-2009, 01:56 PM
this material is just as important in its way as the opening of Capital. I'm sure you guys don't, but it would be a mistake to think this material doesn't carry the same urgency and trenchant scrutinizing power
And not only in the context of arcane debates between detached academics either
Re: On Economic Crisis
Two Americas
11-06-2009, 02:25 PM
You say that this is important "not only in the context of arcane debates between detached academics either." I would say it is important least of all in the context of arcane debates between detached academics.
I am amazed at how many things (seemingly unrelated) are becoming more clear, and how many real world applications there are. I am not even aware of intentionally applying anything fo the most part, I am just looking at everything differently now. How did I miss so much (all of it, really) in previous readings? I think that I had unconsciously assumed that Marx was about something called "Marxism" - a sales pitch for a doctrine - and that Marxism was a "belief system" about the "installation of an alternative system." That then made it impossible for me to understand the material (not that it is all that difficult to understand.)
The people defending Capitalism are flat-earthers. Their views may be more popular, so that therefore we are "losers" in a "circle jerk," but I bet we get to the "new world" before they do. They are crippled by their fear of sailing off the edge of the earth.
11-06-2009, 02:25 PM
You say that this is important "not only in the context of arcane debates between detached academics either." I would say it is important least of all in the context of arcane debates between detached academics.
I am amazed at how many things (seemingly unrelated) are becoming more clear, and how many real world applications there are. I am not even aware of intentionally applying anything fo the most part, I am just looking at everything differently now. How did I miss so much (all of it, really) in previous readings? I think that I had unconsciously assumed that Marx was about something called "Marxism" - a sales pitch for a doctrine - and that Marxism was a "belief system" about the "installation of an alternative system." That then made it impossible for me to understand the material (not that it is all that difficult to understand.)
The people defending Capitalism are flat-earthers. Their views may be more popular, so that therefore we are "losers" in a "circle jerk," but I bet we get to the "new world" before they do. They are crippled by their fear of sailing off the edge of the earth.
Re: On Economic Crisis
Kid of the Black Hole
11-06-2009, 02:42 PM
So many questions that are supposed to plague and bedevil us..and the answers are right there for all to find/see
Through the looking glass in reverse in sight
11-06-2009, 02:42 PM
So many questions that are supposed to plague and bedevil us..and the answers are right there for all to find/see
Through the looking glass in reverse in sight
Re: On Economic Crisis
PinkoCommie
11-06-2009, 02:50 PM
Now, well, YIKES!
I suppose it wasn't until -very- recently that I thought about what it could mean, the combination of your already formidable way of thinking/writing and the newly acquired critical abilities that come from seeing the "round earth"..
I'll reiterate that I never would have had my pump primed to dive into all of this sort of information had it not been for you.
Go get 'em!
11-06-2009, 02:50 PM
Now, well, YIKES!
I suppose it wasn't until -very- recently that I thought about what it could mean, the combination of your already formidable way of thinking/writing and the newly acquired critical abilities that come from seeing the "round earth"..
I'll reiterate that I never would have had my pump primed to dive into all of this sort of information had it not been for you.
Go get 'em!
Re: On Economic Crisis
brother cakes
11-06-2009, 04:22 PM
The general law is that all costs of circulation, which arise only from changes in the forms of commodities do not add to their value. They are merely expenses incurred in the realisation of the value or in its conversion from one form into another. The capital spent to meet those costs (including the labour done under its control) belongs among the faux frais of capitalist production. They must be replaced from the surplus-product and constitute, as far as the entire capitalist class is concerned, a deduction from the surplus-value or surplus-product, just as the time a labourer needs for the purchase of his means of subsistence is lost time.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/wo ... ch06.htm#3
11-06-2009, 04:22 PM
The general law is that all costs of circulation, which arise only from changes in the forms of commodities do not add to their value. They are merely expenses incurred in the realisation of the value or in its conversion from one form into another. The capital spent to meet those costs (including the labour done under its control) belongs among the faux frais of capitalist production. They must be replaced from the surplus-product and constitute, as far as the entire capitalist class is concerned, a deduction from the surplus-value or surplus-product, just as the time a labourer needs for the purchase of his means of subsistence is lost time.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/wo ... ch06.htm#3
Re: On Economic Crisis
curt_b
11-06-2009, 08:00 PM
I think this comment is worthwhile, people's lives are so amazingly fucked up and busy, that spending time on political theory just can't happen. Somebody (I can't remember who) argued that after working themselves to the bone, it only makes sense to grab a six pack and watch football on a day off. That's sane, expecting such working people to spend their off time reading Chomsky, Marx or Engels is nuts.
This week somebody I was close to died and my GF's mother is close to dying. Two organizers in a janitors campaign I'm working on got fired for trying to organize. I'm also working on three other events this month, the first one was a UFCW campaign that the company is so disgustingly anti-union that you can barely believe (even in these times) they have a 140 million defense department contract, and just recently obtained a 6 million state economic development grant.
We have some pretty good stuff coming up in the next few weeks, and this site is probably the thing I let go for a while.
11-06-2009, 08:00 PM
I think this comment is worthwhile, people's lives are so amazingly fucked up and busy, that spending time on political theory just can't happen. Somebody (I can't remember who) argued that after working themselves to the bone, it only makes sense to grab a six pack and watch football on a day off. That's sane, expecting such working people to spend their off time reading Chomsky, Marx or Engels is nuts.
This week somebody I was close to died and my GF's mother is close to dying. Two organizers in a janitors campaign I'm working on got fired for trying to organize. I'm also working on three other events this month, the first one was a UFCW campaign that the company is so disgustingly anti-union that you can barely believe (even in these times) they have a 140 million defense department contract, and just recently obtained a 6 million state economic development grant.
We have some pretty good stuff coming up in the next few weeks, and this site is probably the thing I let go for a while.
Re: On Economic Crisis
Dhalgren
11-06-2009, 08:44 PM
Curt is fucking working and all he has to do is say what and I will do. The rest is a fucking bright light on the world as it is. Kid, we are are there...
11-06-2009, 08:44 PM
Curt is fucking working and all he has to do is say what and I will do. The rest is a fucking bright light on the world as it is. Kid, we are are there...
Re: On Economic Crisis
Two Americas
11-06-2009, 09:41 PM
It is not as though we all need to become economic scholars. But if a few of us get this down, that strengthens all of us. I think that a small handful have a big effect. Supposedly they are all ignoring us, but just watch now how the ideas we are talking about here start to change what people elsewhere are saying and how they are looking at things.
I have had limited contact, for example, with Bageant and Moore. Yet I see a shift in the way they are talking about things now. (Not that I get any credit. The power is in the ideas, and those are not mine.) Those guys are blue collar, not gentrified liberals or academics, so they can put things in words that really resonate with people (and really piss the liberals off.) We are digging up the answers to the questions that are burning in the minds of many people.
"Pssst! The earth is round. Pass it on." If a few are saying that with the conviction that comes from just having sailed around the damned thing, it is absolutely impossible to keep the idea from spreading. It is not required that the entire population get in a boat and sail around the world. From the moment a handful of people start saying it, the flat earthers' days are numbered.
Why do you think people went so bananas when we merely started saying that "the earth might be round. Let's check it out." They desperately need to keep a lid on any speculation about the earth not being flat.
We are building a conceptual framework that can be used by thousands, as opposed to "believed." Were it a belief system, then millions would need to be here studying with us and be converted, and we would be failing. But these are tools, not beliefs, and people will use them without needing to "believe" in anything, because they work, just as people can sail around the world without having to qualify for that in some way.
"Pssst! The earth is round. Pass it on."
11-06-2009, 09:41 PM
It is not as though we all need to become economic scholars. But if a few of us get this down, that strengthens all of us. I think that a small handful have a big effect. Supposedly they are all ignoring us, but just watch now how the ideas we are talking about here start to change what people elsewhere are saying and how they are looking at things.
I have had limited contact, for example, with Bageant and Moore. Yet I see a shift in the way they are talking about things now. (Not that I get any credit. The power is in the ideas, and those are not mine.) Those guys are blue collar, not gentrified liberals or academics, so they can put things in words that really resonate with people (and really piss the liberals off.) We are digging up the answers to the questions that are burning in the minds of many people.
"Pssst! The earth is round. Pass it on." If a few are saying that with the conviction that comes from just having sailed around the damned thing, it is absolutely impossible to keep the idea from spreading. It is not required that the entire population get in a boat and sail around the world. From the moment a handful of people start saying it, the flat earthers' days are numbered.
Why do you think people went so bananas when we merely started saying that "the earth might be round. Let's check it out." They desperately need to keep a lid on any speculation about the earth not being flat.
We are building a conceptual framework that can be used by thousands, as opposed to "believed." Were it a belief system, then millions would need to be here studying with us and be converted, and we would be failing. But these are tools, not beliefs, and people will use them without needing to "believe" in anything, because they work, just as people can sail around the world without having to qualify for that in some way.
"Pssst! The earth is round. Pass it on."