From: Gerald_A_Levy@MSN.COM
Date: Mon Nov 01 2004 - 08:57:19 EST
Presumably the message from Kaleckian theory to the working class is simply this: "help the ruling class overcome any 'Protestant' inhibitions against luxury, consumption and decadence, for the stability of your employment depends on their use of credit lines to finance their overconsumption." We can safely assume that capitalists will consume enough to realize all of surplus value. To be sure, this puts a burden on them. Imelda Marcos had to shop a lot and find room in her closet for new pairs of shoes. Who cares? ============================================ Rakesh, Paul C has answered your post suggesting some historical reasons why the rate of unproductive consumption of surplus value hasn't been higher. I'll try a different tack focusing on basic theory. To think that the capitalist class can get together and decide to increase unproductive consumption, in the form of increasing expenditures on luxury goods, for their mutual benefit presumes that capitalists by an *act of will* can put aside capitalist competition. While the "law of Moses and the Prophets" suggested by Marx in Volume I simply asserts that it is in the nature of capitalists to accumulate and not to waste surplus value by diverting it from conversion into capital (i.e. it is a consequence of the assumption that they are wearing "character masks" and are "capital personified"), it is -- at a greater level of concretion -- the *force of competition* that *compels* individual capitalists to reinvest s at the highest possible rate. Indeed, one could argue that a dynamic theory of capitalism in which technological change takes places requires that s be reinvested at an expanded rate. While capitalists haven't by an act of will put aside competition and decided to increase unproductive consumption of s in the form of increasing expenditures on luxury goods, it _is_ the case that individual capitalists _acting individually_ to increase their _individual_ profit margins have increased unproductive expenditures in many areas, e.g. in increased funding for advertising, so that they can capture a greater percentage of the aggregate s. And it is the case that the state has taken from capitalists a greater percentage of the total s to use in its budget, e.g. on arms expenditures so that the benefits of imperialism can be maintained and extended and thereby a greater percentage of value, s, and wealth can flow back to capital from an individual capitalist social formation. In solidarity, Jerry
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