Charles, The problem with the analysis you offer is that there is no historical specificity, no distinction between "good" times and "bad" times; no reason for expansion, and no reason for the expansion to flip into contraction.
^^^^ (I'm not sure of your actual name) CB; No matter. Even with your theory , you can't predict when there will be a boom and when there will be a bust. You explain why there are cycles, but not when they will be. Anybody here want to predict the time of the next recession ? Don't worry , Doug won't bite you. And it is Marx, lui-meme, who says, to paraphrase, the "ultimate" cause of all crises is that society produces as if it pays in wages enough to buy all the wage laborers produce. By definition, wage laborers are paid less than the value of the total of commodities they produce. Crisis is inherent in the cell of exploitation itself. Anyway, nowadays seems the business cycle is significantly blunted in the US economy, no ? The crises don't occur generally, but some may be geographically or industrially localized. "My" theory addresses the issue of a secular trend, as the economists call it, not a cyclical one. So, I'm thinking "my" , I mean Marx's, thinking here helps explain the mechanisms of the Absolute General Law of Capitalist Accumulation, which is a secular , not cyclical phenomenon of capitalism ( pour Marx). ^^^^ If the problem is, ultimately, and originally, that the workers can't buy all the product, then capitalism should never expand; ^^^^ CB: Some of the capitalists "expand", the ones who do sell all their commodities. Some of the capitalists "contract", the ones who do not sell of of their commodities. This is creative destruction, competition. We refer to the ones who don't go bankrupt as "capitalism", but actually "capitalism" has left the bodies of a lot of companies by the side of the rode. ^^^^^ then reducing wages and increasing the rate of expropriation should not provide capital with a, however temporary, boost, then changes in technology that lead to greater rates of relative surplus value should have no impact on the rates of reproduction. ^^^^^^ CB; Capital is not monolithic as an economic class; it is intra-class competitive (though we think of it as somewhat monolithic as a political ruling class vis-a-vis the working class), so your use of "capital" here is misleading. There are winners and losers in "capital". During contractions, don't companies go bankrupt ? The companies that don't are the winners, and were and are able to use the methods you mention above, _and_ realize their theoretical surplus value, to boot. These are the booty getting capitalists (smile). ^^^^^ The rate of return on investment certainly does not decline because workers can't buy all the product, nor does the rate of return increase when workers can buy more of the product. ^^^^^ CB; Yes, indeed. I'm really thinking ficticious capital uses lying , cheating and stealing, counterfeiting, printing its own money , arbitrary fees, "penalties", looting, general and abstract enronizing to "make" its money. Is interest really logically and economically justified ? I'm not convinced of that given the recent thread here in which it was rationalized not too successfully. The rate of return on investment _should_ decline because workers can't buy all the product, but the investment bankers have the system jimmy-rigged, especially under finance capitalism, state-monopoly capitalism, imperialism. The interest rate is conceived of in part as some species of insurance policy for the moneylenders. They are getting paid for taking "risks". Perhaps this is a factor in preventing the rate of return on investment from having anything to do with the real economy, i.e. fictionalizing the rate of return on investment.
