[Pen-l] Query on Henryk Grossman

[Louis Proyect]

I am nearly finished reading Rick Kuhn's biography of the Polish 
economist and have found the chapter on his crisis theory quite 
interesting in terms of its explanation of over-accumulation, the 
organic composition of capital, falling rate of profit, etc. However, 
while reading it, I wondered how relevant Grossman (or other Marxists 
focused on the organic composition of capital) is to the current crisis, 
which does not involve an increasing organic composition of capital. It, 
like most crises since the 1950s, involve "fictitious capital" to one 
extent or another, from the savings and loan crisis to LTCM--and now the 
credit crisis on Wall Street. Speculative bubbles such as these hardly 
relate to increased automation of auto, etc., or any other typical 
manifestation of the organic composition of capital. In fact, heavy 
industry--the sector addressed by classical Marxism such as Daniel 
Guerin's "Fascism and Big  Business"--seems to play a minor role in 
economic upheavals in the advanced capitalist countries. The dot-com 
crisis was ostensibly non-financial, but the fact that it arose out of a 
disconnect with "bricks and mortars" makes it seem another exception to 
Grossman (and Mattick's) formulas.

Any thoughts?
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