[10. Crisis, Which Was a Contingency, Becomes a Certainty. The Crisis as the Manifestation of All the Contradictions of Bourgeois Economy]
“The possibility of crisis, which became apparent in the simple metamorphosis of the commodity, is once more demonstrated, and further developed, by the disjunction between the (direct) process of production and the process of circulation. As soon as these processes do not merge smoothly into one another but become independent of one another, the crisis is there.” (p 507)
The description of all of these possibilities of crisis, described by Marx, which arise within commodity production and exchange, again demonstrate the fallacy of the claim that Marx argued that the cause of crises of overproduction is the law of the tendency for the rate of profit to fall, because these possibility of crisis exist without the existence of capitalism, and consequently without its law of falling profits.
The possibility of crisis is inherent within the commodity itself. That possibility arises because of the contradictory nature of the commodity as being both use value and exchange value. If we take a product, that is a use value produced by labour, for direct consumption, this contradiction does not exist. The product is produced, in this case, not for its exchange-value, but purely for its use value. Indeed, although this product has an individual value, because it is a product of labour, it does not have exchange-value, because it is not produced with the intention of throwing it into the market to be compared with other commodities.
The producer of such a product, is only concerned with the value of the product in so far as this value represents a proportion of their available labour-time, and thereby represents the amount of other products of their labour they have to then forego, in accordance with The Law of Value. As Marx declares, in Capital I, the experience of Robinson Crusoe tells us all we need to know, in this respect, as far as value and the law of value is concerned. Crusoe uses his watch to make calculations of how much time is required to produce the various elements that comprise his needs (their value), and he is then able to rank all of his various needs (use value), and compare it with the time required for the production of each, so as to use his time most effectively, to maximise the satisfaction of those needs.
Engels, in Anti-Duhring, says that this is essentially what a communist society would do to meet its social needs.
“The useful effects of the various articles of consumption, compared with one another and with the quantities of labour required for their production, will in the end determine the plan.”
“As long ago as 1844 I stated that the above-mentioned balancing of useful effects and expenditure of labour on making decisions concerning production was all that would be left, in a communist society, of the politico-economic concept of value. (Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, p. 95) The scientific justification for this statement, however, as can be seen, was made possible only by Marx's Capital.”
(Anti-Duhring, Chapter 26)
But, because an individual or a society deliberately produces use values for direct consumption, rather than exchange, they only produce those use values they intend to consume. That does not mean that such societies are not governed by the law of value. It is simply, as Marx sets out in his letter to Kugelmann, that the Law of Value, in such societies, manifests itself in a different way to that under commodity production and exchange. Indeed, as Marx says in The Critique of the Gotha Programme,
“Here, obviously, the same principle prevails as that which regulates the exchange of commodities, as far as this is exchange of equal values. Content and form are changed, because under the altered circumstances no one can give anything except his labour, and because, on the other hand, nothing can pass to the ownership of individuals, except individual means of consumption. But as far as the distribution of the latter among the individual producers is concerned, the same principle prevails as in the exchange of commodity equivalents: a given amount of labour in one form is exchanged for an equal amount of labour in another form.”
And he makes the same point in Capital III, Chapter 49.
“...after the abolition of the capitalist mode of production, but still retaining social production, the determination of value continues to prevail in the sense that the regulation of labour-time and the distribution of social labour among the various production groups, ultimately the book-keeping encompassing all this, become more essential than ever.”
Only if such individuals or societies miscalculate, for some reason, does a potential for some kind of crisis arise. Sometimes, such societies might experience a bumper harvest, for example, so that, with hindsight, they could have devoted less time to agriculture, and more time to other activity, but such overproduction never leads to a crisis. Either what is produced in excess is stored, or, where that is not possible, it was common to celebrate their good fortune by a communal feast. The real cause of crisis, in such a society arose not from overproduction but underproduction, for example, where a crop failure meant that not enough was produced so as to be able to adequately feed everyone, or to be able to replace seed etc.
But, commodity production – not only capitalist production, but all commodity production – implies production based not on the production of use values, but exchange-value. In order to have exchange-value, the commodity must be a use value, and so that aspect of it can be assumed. But, as soon as such a use value is produced for someone else, i.e. as soon as it becomes alienated, the other assumptions that follow naturally, as far as direct production and consumption of products, fall away. The commodity is produced for its exchange-value, even under a system of barter. But, in order to realise this exchange value, the producer relies on the fact that not only is their commodity a use value for potential buyers, but that the total quantity of what they have produced are use values for potential buyers. But, this can no longer be assumed to be the case, and the more capitalist production increases the volume of output, the less this assumption that what has been produced, in total, represents use value, for potential buyers, can hold, which is what turns the possibility of crisis under all commodity production, into the certainty of crisis under large-scale, capitalist machine production.
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