Cú Chulainn

Further contradiction: the periods in which capitalist production exerts all its forces regularly show themselves to be periods of over-production; because the limit to the application of the productive powers is not simply the production of value, but also its realization.

However the sale of commodities, the realization of commodity capital, and thus of surplus-value as well, is restricted not by the consumer needs of society in general but by the consumer needs of a society in which the great majority are always poor and must always remain poor.“

The effective demand of the working classes is here implicated in keeping the market in balance and that effective demand is perpetually under threat given the analysis of Volume 1.

It is difficult to introduce this question into Marxist theorising because this was one of Keynes’s concerns also and in talking about it one immediately risks the accusation of importing Keynesianism into Marxism when, of course, the influence is the other way round.

But here we have an explanation of why the fate of the working classes is to get lost in compensatory consumerism because that is how capital keeps its market intact.

But as in the case of Volume 1, this tentative conclusion is contingent on the assumptions. But however one parses it, the findings in Volume 2 on this matter contradict those of Volume 1.

The pressure to reduce wages that animates Volume 1 undercuts the capacity of the workers’ effective demand to stabilise the economy in Volume 2.