Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Richard Wolff and the deepening crisis | Michael Roberts Blog

[Shalva Eliava via Marxism]

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I think the only Marxist worth reading on the topic of capitalist crises is 
Howard Sherman. His research on the concrete, measurable nature of actual 
business cycles is much more illuminating than the unending debate between 
"underconsumptionists", "overaccumulationists", "profit-squeezers", and falling 
profit fundamentalists. 

> On Jun 3, 2016, at 2:16 PM, Ralph Johansen via Marxism 
>  wrote:
> 
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> 
>   Louis Proyect wrote
> 
>   For Wolff, the “classic contradiction” of capitalism is that
>   capitalists “paid insufficient wages to enable workers to purchase
>   growing capitalist output” (p166). But the main contradiction, in my
>   view, lies not in ‘insufficient wages’ but in Marx’s law of the
>   tendency of the rate of profit to fall. This tendency can for
>   periods (sometimes long) be counteracted by more exploitation and
>   new technology, but it eventually operates to drive down
>   profitability and total profits, leading to a collapse in investment
>   and then incomes and employment.
> 
>   This explanation is entirely missing in Wolff’s book. Wolff’s five
>   reasons for the Long Depression are true only because they describe
>   the nature of the current low-growth world, but the explanation lies
>   with continued low profitability (near post-war lows), a failure to
>   reduce debt levels and the failure of business investment to recover
>   as a result. It’s not too much cash and capacity but too little profit.
> 
>   
> full:https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2016/06/02/richard-wolff-and-the-deepening-crisis/
> 
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Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Richard Wolff and the deepening crisis | Michael Roberts Blog

[Ralph Johansen via Marxism]

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   Louis Proyect wrote

   For Wolff, the “classic contradiction” of capitalism is that
   capitalists “paid insufficient wages to enable workers to purchase
   growing capitalist output” (p166). But the main contradiction, in my
   view, lies not in ‘insufficient wages’ but in Marx’s law of the
   tendency of the rate of profit to fall. This tendency can for
   periods (sometimes long) be counteracted by more exploitation and
   new technology, but it eventually operates to drive down
   profitability and total profits, leading to a collapse in investment
   and then incomes and employment.

   This explanation is entirely missing in Wolff’s book. Wolff’s five
   reasons for the Long Depression are true only because they describe
   the nature of the current low-growth world, but the explanation lies
   with continued low profitability (near post-war lows), a failure to
   reduce debt levels and the failure of business investment to recover
   as a result. It’s not too much cash and capacity but too little profit.

   
full:https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2016/06/02/richard-wolff-and-the-deepening-crisis/

This is what Michael Perelman has to say about this [at Left Forum 2016, 
Marxist Laws of Motion & Today s Economic Collapse 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTg7fCh8u1M at 28:22]:


"I think that what he [Marx] wrote is so kaleidoscopic, so deep, so 
intense, that he is very, very difficult to understand. Then we get to 
the idea of the laws of motion. The problem with the laws of motion is 
it was a very good idea, but it creates a temptation where academic 
people want to reduce Marx down to some sort of algebra. How many hours 
have been wasted trying to solve the transformation problem? How many 
people have tried to figure out the mathematical explanation for the law 
of the falling rate of profit? Of course, Marx never had a law of the 
falling rate of profit, but Marxists do. And they waste their time and 
our time on these proofs. He had tendencies, and that's fine. But it 
wasn't a law that would command people to mathematize economics."


Later, Bertell Ollman responds [at 1:21:38]: "I'd like to say a word 
about Marx's laws of motion and tendencies. There are no differences. 
There are no differences. Marx says in a couple of places that by "law" 
he means "tendencies". And you find in Marx that other outcomes can come 
about than what seems to be a "tendency",... where he gives you a whole 
series of what he calls "counter-tendencies", which is a way of showing 
that these tendencies are sometimes stronger than they are at other 
times, and so, when they are, the word "law" is more appropriate, and 
when they're not, the word "tendency" is. And that suggests, of course, 
that other outcomes can come about than what seems to be a tendency, and 
what we've had today


[referring to what Hudson has said, that

   "America has taken off into a higher and higher level of debt in
   relation to government income, of family income and of corporate
   income, and I think we've finally reached the limit. And I think
   we're now in what used to be called "the final crisis. "The final
   crisis" is when the environment can't continue along the laws that
   it's been doing. It can't restore the status quo ante because
   there's only one way to restore equilibrium, and it's not a
   self-stabilizng, an automatic stabilizer. If the problem is the
   credit system taking more and more personal income, for mortgage
   debt, student loans, for bank loans and the credit card debt, the
   only way that you can restore equilibrium is to wipe out the debt to
   the financial class ... the exponential growth of finance overcomes
   the ability of the economy to produce a surplus in order to pay the
   debt ... it's merging with industrial capital, but it's going to be
   subordinate to industrial capital, because that's what capitalism
   does: it subordinates all these preexisting modes of production,
   existing laws of motion. But instead of finance being
   industrialized, industry is being financialized, as Michael just
   said. So, this is something that Marx would not have expected. He
   thought that capitalism was going to move forward towards socialism,
   but it's not moving towards socialism. And if it's not  moving
   towards socialism, where is it moving. You can call it fascism or
   barbarism, but it's certainly not moving towards socialism as part
   of the industrial process, because when finance capital takes over,
   it's downsizing, it's outsourcing, its way of making money is the
   bubble economy, using debt leverage to increase the price of stocks
   and bonds. 

Re: [Marxism] Fwd: Richard Wolff and the deepening crisis | Michael Roberts Blog

[Andrew Pollack via Marxism]

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Thanks, this is so useful. a quick summary of what's wrong with Wolff's
brand of Marxism. By coincidence right after Louis's email was the monthly
notice from Left Forum about Wolff's educational series in NY. (And of
course he was all over Left Forum itself as always.) So this corrective
needs to be widely shared.
p.s.: Michael says at the end that he hopes Wolff's obsession with co-ops
isn't counterposed to socializing and democratically planning the
commanding heights. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, Wolff does
counterpose them.
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