Below we publish Geoff Jones’ comments on our initial document “What is the cause of the current capitalist crisis“. We will publish our reply to Comrade Jones in a follow-up post.
Comments on ‘Causes of Capitalist Crisis’ (11 comrades’ document)
1. I should like to make some brief comments on this document. I comment on seven points in appropriate paragraphs, but my major problem is with its extraordinary abstract and rambling presentation, particularly in regard to the work of Andrew Glyn. Only when it comes down to practicalities do the most important questions arise. A general point: although Marx’ analysis is couched in terms of values, all figures quoted are in terms of prices.This problem of the transformation of values into prices (see for example Morishima & Cataphores (1)) may well have to be considered in any detailed discussion. I shall not deal with it here, but add a historical note at the end.
2. Paras11-16 The comrades are oversimplifying Marx’ discussion on crisis which was not necessarily completely consistent. Itoh(2) makes this point more clearly than I can. And it is no use complaining about a ‘battle of quotations(para119)’ when this seems to be the method employed in the document itself.
3. Para 28: Comrades appear to take exception to the statement that “..it is completely false to blame the crisis on the fall in the rate of profit alone”. I assume that the comrades are quoting accurately, but cannot see their problem, even in their own terms. If someone is thrown off a cliff, it is certainly true that their death is due to the law of gravity, but not due to that law alone. Who did the throwing and for what reason is also relevant.
4. Para 43. Can we have some factual evidence? Also the difference between a ‘law of a tendency’ and a ‘tendency’ as apparently voiced by unnamed comrades in debate, seems mere quibbling.
5. Para 81. Comrades appear to counterpose to our picture of capitalist stagnation over a number of years, a picture of growth followed by apocalyptic collapse in the short term. If they believe their perspective is correct, they should be concretising this, both in terms of practical evidence and in terms of our programme. Should we be preparing for mass food riots, armed insurrection…?
6. Para 92. This is an extraordinary schematic depiction of ‘counter-tendencies’. Counter-tendencies are concrete processes rooted in the world economic and political structure. I assume that the comrades would accept that this has developed since Marx’ and Engles’ time. Two major changes that immediately spring to mind are the collapse of the Stalinist states and their immediate opening up as a source of cheap labour, and the capitalisation of the Chinese economy to produce cheap consumer goods. It is obvious that both will have a massive effect on capitalists’ rate of profit. As Trotsky(3) pointed out:
“As regards the large segments of the capitalist curve of development …., their character and duration are determined not by the internal interplay of capitalist forces but by those external conditions through whose channel capitalist development flows. The acquisition by capitalism of new countries and continents, the discovery of new natural resources, and, in the wake of these, such major facts of “superstructural” order as wars and revolutions, determine the character and the replacement of ascending, stagnating or declining epochs of capitalist development.”
7. Para 171. The comrades seem to have no concept of what is meant by ‘transitional demands’. On the slogan of ‘Nationalise the Banks’, workers’ reaction has moved in a relatively short time from ‘You must be mad.’ To ‘Dead right, mate.’ and in debate we must build from there. Nobody (I assume) believes that this could take place via ‘Act of Parliament’ without a huge groundswell of a workers’ movement, which would inevitably and in no time at all involve the takeover of large parts of the remaining capitalist economy. (It wouldn’t be as simple as Portugal in 1974 where the bank workers took over their bank and found themselves almost by accident in charge of most of the rest of the economy!).
8. The comments of paras 162-172 seem to me to be wilfully perverse. I fully concur with paras 15-31 of the ‘Defence of the Transitional Programme’ document,
9. One final point. I have never read work by Kliman, but it seems ironic that he allies himself to an organisation whose basic founding principle was a denial of the LTRPF!
10. A historical note. Tony Cliff, Chris Harman and others set up the IS (later SWP) on the theoretical basis of the ‘permanent arms economy’ which meant an end to the capitalist boom-slump cycle. They got their ideas from work by a Prussian statistician Ladislaus von Bortkiewicz, who married Marx’ transformation of value into 4 prices(C III Part 1) to the two sector model of the capitalist economy (C II chXX). Von B added a third sector (Luxury goods) and showed that it was possible for the rate of profit in money terms to continue to expand, or at least not to decrease (see Sweezy(4)). Cliff and co. identified the luxury goods sector with the billions spent on armaments hence ‘permanent arms economy’. I’m not sure when they quietly ditched this position.( By the way, Von B’s analysis is fallacious because he only considered simple reproduction not expanded reproduction).
Geoff Jones (Socialist Party Wales)
References:
• 1)Michio Morishima & George Catephores: Value, Exploitation and Growth (McGraw Hill 1987)
• 2)Makoto Itoh: Value and Crisis, (Pluto, 1980)
• 3)Leon Trotsky : The Curve of Capitalist Deverlopment www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1923/04/capdevel.htm
• 4)Paul Sweezy: Theory of Capitalist Development, (Dobson 1946)
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