Lenin is correct in criticising Sismondi's catastrophist view that capitalist production leads to under-consumption, and an inability to realise surplus value, but he is wrong in accepting Ricardo's view, and acceptance of Say's Law, that supply creates its own demand, or production creates its own market. Lenin is right, therefore, in criticising Sismondi's catastrophism, and disbelief in the development of capitalism, his, “failure to understand that it causes an ever-increasing growth of the productive forces and denial that such growth is possible—in exactly the same way as the Russian romanticists “teach” that capitalism leads to a waste of labour, and so forth.” (p 146)
But, in doing so, he seems to have overlooked the fact that Marx points out that what is correct in Sismondi as against Ricardo is precisely the contradictory and crisis ridden nature of that development.
“To oppose the welfare of the individual to this end, as Sismondi does, is to assert that the development of the species must be arrested in order to safeguard the welfare of the individual, so that, for instance, no war may be waged in which at all events some individuals perish. Sismondi is only right as against the economists who conceal or deny this contradiction.)”
(Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 9)
So, Lenin criticises Sismondi's statement that,
““Those who urge unlimited production are mistaken,” says Sismondi (I, 121). Excess of production over revenue causes over-production (I, 106). An increase in wealth is beneficial only “when it is gradual, when it is proportionate to itself, when none of its parts develops with excessive rapidity” (I, 409). The good Sismondi thinks that “disproportionate” development is not development (as our Narodniks also do); that this disproportion is not a law of the present system of social economy, and of its development, but a “mistake” of the legislator, etc.; (p 146)
But, Marx, also, in Capital I, points out that, whilst the potential for overproduction of commodities exists with all commodity production and exchange, whilst this production is small-scale, and productivity changes only slowly, output expands proportionate to population and the market, so that overproduction crises do not occur. What turns the potential for overproduction into an inevitability is precisely the development of large-scale machine industry, and continual rapid development of technology and productivity.
Lenin is right to point out that this disproportion in the development of the means of production, relative to consumption, is a law of the capitalist system, but he is wrong in not accepting, as Sismondi does, that it is precisely this which turns the potential for crises of overproduction of commodities, into an inevitability, because contrary to Say's Law, supply does not create its own demand. A disproportion in which production grows faster than consumption is absolutely a law of capitalist production, and the basis of accumulation, but Marx points out that such disproportionality is needed not just by capitalism, but every mode of production. Without it, there is no possibility of creating the production required for an expanding population, for example. No society could have accumulated means of production, and raised social productivity, so that no evolution of social forms would have been possible.
No comments:
Post a Comment