“Consumption produces production in two ways.” (p 196)
The first is that already mentioned that products only become real as a result of being consumed. The second is that,
“Consumption furnishes the impulse to produce, and also provides the object which acts as the determining purpose of production. If it is evident that externally production supplies the object of consumption, it is equally evident that consumption posits the object of production as a concept, an internal image, a need, a motive, a purpose. Consumption furnishes the object of production in a form that is still subjective. There is no production without a need, but consumption re-creates the need.” (p 196)
This is also why, where demand/consumption is rising, production rises to satisfy it, and this is true under capitalism, even where this increased production results in a lower rate of profit. Indeed, its what drives on that production, and capital accumulation beyond its limits, resulting in a crisis of overproduction.
“The demand increases constantly, and, in anticipation of this new capital is continually invested in new land, although this varies with the circumstances for different agricultural products. It is the formation of new capitals which in itself brings this about. But so far as the individual capitalist is concerned, he measures the volume of his production by that of his available capital, to the extent that he can still control it himself. His aim is to capture as big a portion as possible of the market. Should there be any over-production, he will not take the blame upon himself, but places it upon his competitors. The individual capitalist may expand his production by appropriating a larger aliquot share of the existing market or by expanding the market itself.”
(Capital III, Chapter 39)
This is mirrored in production. It is production that creates what is consumed.
“Consumption without an object is no consumption, in this respect, therefore, production creates, produces consumption.” (p 197)
But, this is true at a deeper level, as Marx describes, in The Grundrisse, in relation to The Civilising Mission of Capital. Production does not just limit itself to satisfying existing need. Trade itself arose because different communities produced different use values, and this stimulated an expansion of consumption, as new tastes developed. Merchants have an incentive to seek out new types of use value, so as to create new markets, which, in the process, develops an ever widening horizon of tastes and preferences. Producers, also, thereby, as producers of commodities, seek to develop new use values, and new markets, particularly as the prices they can obtain for these new products tend to be higher.
“Production not only provides the material to satisfy a need, but it also provides the need for the material. When consumption emerges from its original primitive crudeness and immediacy – and its remaining in that state would be due to the fact that production was still primitively crude – then it is itself as a desire brought about by the object. The need felt for the object is induced by the perception of the object. An objet d'art creates a public that has artistic taste and is able to enjoy beauty – and the same can be said of any other product. Production accordingly produces not only an object for the subject, but also a subject for the object.” (p 197)
And, in age of mass advertising and marketing, this becomes all the more true. Moreover, under capitalism, as it revolutionises production, so that the existing use values becomes produced in every larger quantities, at ever lower values, and requiring ever smaller amounts of labour for their production, so capital must, in any case, continually develop new products, so as to create new markets, and new spheres in which it can employ labour, so as to produce profit.
“On the other side, the production of relative surplus value, i.e. production of surplus value based on the increase and development of the productive forces, requires the production of new consumption; requires that the consuming circle within circulation expands as did the productive circle previously. Firstly quantitative expansion of existing consumption; secondly: creation of new needs by propagating existing ones in a wide circle; thirdly: production of new needs and discovery and creation of new use values. In other words, so that the surplus labour gained does not remain a merely quantitative surplus, but rather constantly increases the circle of qualitative differences within labour (hence of surplus labour), makes it more diverse, more internally differentiated. For example, if, through a doubling of productive force, a capital of 50 can now do what a capital of 100 did before, so that a capital of 50 and the necessary labour corresponding to it become free, then, for the capital and labour which have been set free, a new, qualitatively different branch of production must be created, which satisfies and brings forth a new need.”
(Grundrisse, Chapter 8)
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