| This question <52|52> overall <101|103> Hans: <99|103>. |
| Question 75: Discuss the implications of the fact that an increase in material wealth in the form of commodities may be accompanied by a decrease in the total amount of their value. How does this contradiction manifest itself in developed capitalism? |
| [102] Hans: Non-congruence of wealth and value Your answer [52] is terrific, KALISPEL. To be honest with you, I hadn't thought about it this way, but now that you explain it, I am thinking: how could I have missed this aspect of it? The answer I had in mind when posing Question 75 went along the following lines: |
| (1) if wealth and value move in opposite directions, then a market economy, which focuses on value, is like a ship whose compass went awry. This is why you have economic phenomena like: when crops are good (which means more wealth), then the farmers suffer (because farm prices plunge). Or the recent developments in which incredible increases in productivity (the computer, the technology which allows us to have this class in this way), do not lead to the enrichment of all but to unemployment and misery. |
| (2) But the fact that capitalism, through the market system, focuses on the wrong measure of wealth, also comes to haunt the capitalists: despite all technological innovations, it becomes harder and harder for the capitalists to make money, because machines do not create value, only workers do, and workers are being more and more eliminated out of the production process. This is the law of the “falling rate of profit”, which Marx considered to be the most important law of capitalism. |
| Therefore I saw how the non-congruence of wealth and value hurts the capitalists, but I did not see the much more obvious fact, pointed out in your answer, how it hurts the workers. I guess this bias on my part is due to my middle-class upbringing and the privileged job I have as a university professor. Recently, the capitalist system has become so desperate for profits that it is getting ready to seriously squeeze the university professors. In my view, this is stupid of them, because they risk losing their best apologists. |
| Allow me just one minor quibble with the wording of one sentence in your answer. You write: |
| They would not let the unproductive stand on the street corner with a sign will work for food. |
| Don't call the unemployed “unproductive”. These are workers willing to work whom capitalism does not need, because, as you said, the capitalists do not have the general welfare in mind, but only their narrow class interests. The state of being unproductive is forced on these workers, they are not intrinsically unproductive. |
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