The contradiction at the heart of the commodity is manifest in the fact that, as productivity rises, real social wealth increases, as more use values are produced, but the exchange value of each commodity simultaneously falls. The bourgeois economists, like Ricardo, could not comprehend the potential for crisis, of an overproduction of commodities, which this contradiction represents, because they did not comprehend the true nature of the commodity as a unity of these two contradictory factors.
“Here, therefore, firstly commodity, in which the contradiction between exchange-value and use-value exists, becomes mere product (use-value) and therefore the exchange of commodities is transformed into mere barter of products, of simple use-values. This is a return not only to the time before capitalist production, but even to the time before there was simple commodity production; and the most complicated phenomenon of capitalist production—the world market crisis—is flatly denied, by denying the first condition of capitalist production, namely, that the product must be a commodity and therefore express itself as money and undergo the process of metamorphosis.”
(Theories of Surplus Value 2, p 501)
In order to maximise their profit, in order to maximise their accumulation, each producer is led to minimise the individual value of their commodity, to reduce it below its social value, as much as possible. But, as each producer does this, so its social value falls too. The main basis of reducing its individual value is to expand production. But, then production expands faster than the ability of the market to absorb it.
“But the whole process of accumulation in the first place resolves itself into production on an expanding scale, which on the one hand corresponds to the natural growth of the population, and on the other hand, forms an inherent basis for the phenomena which appear during crises. The criterion of this expansion of production is capital itself, the existing level of the conditions of production and the unlimited desire of the capitalists to enrich themselves and to enlarge their capital, but by no means consumption, which from the outset is inhibited, since the majority of the population, the working people, can only expand their consumption within very narrow limits, whereas the demand for labour, although it grows absolutely, decreases relatively, to the same extent as capitalism develops. Moreover, all equalisations are accidental and although the proportion of capital employed in individual spheres is equalised by a continuous process, the continuity of this process itself equally presupposes the constant disproportion which it has continuously, often violently, to even out.”
(Theories of Surplus Value 2, p 492)
The whole point is that contrary to Say's Law, the capitalist does not sell in order to buy, to consume, C – M – C. At any point, the money flowing back from the sale of commodities may not be thrown back immediately into the market, which means other commodities thrown into the market find no buyer. In fact, that may be the case with the petty commodity producer too in a money economy as opposed to a barter economy. As soon as commodities appear in the market, that find no buyer, market prices fall, possibly even below cost prices. The potential for crisis is revealed.
No comments:
Post a Comment