Rethinking Marxism: Radhika Desai 1 of 3 "The Demand Problem in the Current Crisis"

Rethinking Marxism Conference 2009
"Temporal Value Theory in a Moment of Crisis:
A Roundtable on the Economic Crisis"
with:
Andrew Kliman
Alan Freeman
Radhika Desai
David Calnitsky
Brendan Cooney


This was a great panel which might help viewers understand some of the debates among the left on how to properly understand the crisis. There was a good deal of agreement among the panelists on some issues like the idea that the crisis is more than a financial crisis, and that the theory of the falling rate of profit has validity in the current situation. On the other hand panelists differed starkly on the degree to which problems of demand were important in analyzing the crisis, and on what role states and other exogenous forces play in resolving crisis.

I have posted the panelists in the playlist in a different order than they spoke at the conference.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• monopoly
• capital
• crisis
• TSSI
• marx
• equilibrium
• falling rate of profit
• labor
• value
• underconsumption
• 1929
• depression
• use-value
• exchange-value

[kolomgorov]

Is Marx's theory of accumulation crisis that profits have a tendency to fall (because increasingly capital intensive production decreases surplus value) or underconsumption because supply will exceed demand (because workers aren't being paid their full product). I thought it was the first? Or does one imply the other?

[brendanmcooney]

@kolomgorov. There is a debate amongst marxists over whether or not underconsumptionism can be considered a Marxist theory of crisis. I tend to take the more orthodox position that it can't- that Marx was a theorist of the falling rate of profit.