While it is not possible to determine in advance the forms of organisation that will emerge in the course of a series of economic and political struggles, there is no question that, given the vast changes in the economy over the past decades, they will involve the broad mass of the population.
In this exchange, Beams replies to a reader who asks: “ What is the mechanism by which capitalism takes the surplus value extracted in one department of production (more labour intensive) and transports it to the profit and loss statement of another department of production (more capital intensive)?”
The increasing social productivity of labour is expressed in the tendency of the rate of profit to fall because in any given quantum of capital, there will tend to be smaller proportion of living labour (the sole source of surplus value).
Keynes opposed the fundamental Marxist conception that the economic crises which wracked the capitalist system were the outcome of structural contradictions arising from private ownership and production for profit.
Dear Mr Beams,
