THE MATERIAL BASIS FOR UNDER-CONSUMPTIONISM AND HOW TO CRITIQUE IT

This article provides two views of productive and unproductive consumption (investment) as the driver of the economy. The one view is taken from Gross Output and the other from Gross Value Added (GDP). Without spoiling the plot, the contrast in views shows how important adopting the correct method is.

The article is the first download.

NOT SO MUCH OVEN READY AS READY MADE CURTAINS FOR MR JOHNSON.

The ONS released the rate of return for UK industry this week. This together with the ructions around the Prime Minister suggested this article.

Postscript. I should have added in this vein Bolsonaro is being investigated by a parliamentary committee in Brazil which is likely to indict him.

HOW ECONOMIES ARE BENT OUT OF SHAPE.

This article looks at the nature of money especially credit money and how fictitious capital has distorted economic behaviour.

ACADEMIC MARXISM WILL NEVER PROVIDE THE ANSWERS NEEDED TO FREE WORKERS.

This article was inspired by a debate on the Academia website around a conciliatory piece by Fred Mosely. This piece and most of the comments show that Academic Marxism plays the same role as the Young Hegelians did in Marx’s day. They treat Marxism as a theoretical science not a practical science geared towards action. As capitalism lurches from crisis to crisis they are content to debate each other and render Marx more profound, and through so doing, all they reveal is their irrelevance.

(Please note that Graph 3 is not drawn to scale due to its complexity. All three graphs are hand drawn as Excel does not provide a facility to manipulate both height as well as width in their bar graphs. Graph 3 is there for explanatory and discussion purposes to demonstrate alternative ways of reconciling economic and physical hours in the future.)

PAMPHLET, 3rd EDITION with added explanatory graphs.

I have decided to replace the 2017 edition of the pamphlet with a revised edition. It includes graphs to make Marx’s categories easier to grasp where needed. I have tried to leave the 2017 pamphlet as unaltered as I could, confining myself to adding a few comments here and there to bring it up to date. This pamphlet contains the same theoretical breakthroughs found in the original 1999 pamphlet, particularly on the USSR and profit. I continue to believe its explanations hold a high fidelity to that monumental work by Karl Marx, Das Kapital, which I have always viewed as not only a critique of capitalism, but as the indispensable primer for the economic organization of a future communist society. Finally, it is my sincerest hope that this pamphlet makes it easier to grasp the essential categories developed by Marx to describe the structure of capitalist production.

THE STATE STRIKES BACK.

A REPORT WHICH DEFENDS STATUES RATHER THAN BLACK LIVES.

This article is a riposte to the Report brought out last week by the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities. The oddity of this report with its recommendations to bolster the individual, is that it is set against a background of pandemic, which out of necessity, has fostered collective responses and collective recommendations.

THE U.S. RATE OF PROFIT IN 2020 with and without COVID subsidies.

The pandemic has greatly influenced the rate of profit with surprising results once subsidies are accounted for.

The fixed capital data for 2020 is an estimate using capital consumption data which is available.

ONCE AGAIN, WHY THE PROFIT MOTIVE COULD NOT WORK IN THE USSR.

In 1999 when my pamphlet was first published there appeared for the first time an explanation consistent with Marx’s methodology, why the profit motive is tied to market economies. It depends on the presence of “many capitals”. There for the first time appeared an explanation why the profit motive in the USSR had the opposite effect to that intended after it was made prominent in the Kosygin post-1967 reforms. In 2015 I wrote a major article on this question which is referenced in the article. Because much of this analysis has been buried by the large number of articles that appear on this site, I thought it useful to produce a follow up article as part of the series looking back at the USSR from the 1930s onwards.

BREXIT or WREXIT? As the pandemic subsides so the damage caused by Brexit becomes clearer.