{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","title":"Zombie Capitalism Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781608461042","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","id":"4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","uuid":"4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","title":"Zombie Capitalism Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx","normalized_title":"zombiecapitalismglobalcrisisandtherelevanceofmarx","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781608461042","isbns":["9781608461042"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":426,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Zombie%20Capitalism%20Global%20Crisis%20and%20the%20Relevance%20of%20Marx","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/4a3d22bd-c5b9-47a4-a022-bd35d44d9bfe/search"},"page":{"printed_page":131,"pdf_page":131,"physical_index":131,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"b187fc03bb3417ea17ef7c599c663c2c60eb815d1035a329473f192d3b18ced4"},"chapter":"Zombie Capitalism Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx","content":"Capitalism has never formed a closed system in practice. Wars and slumps have destroyed immense quantities of output, incorporating huge accumulations of value, and prevented the production of more. Capital exports have diverted and frozen other accumulations for long stretches of time.24\n\nAs we saw in Chapter Four, Henryk Grossman had recognised that imperialism in diverting surplus value overseas had temporarily reduced the upward pressures on the organic composition of capital in the domestic economy and the therefore tendency to crisis. He also at least partially anticipated Kidron's point about the effect of military expenditure. He noted that, while wars were enormously destructive of use values, they had the effect of easing the purely economic contradictions of capitalism since they \"pulverise values\" and \"slow down accumulation\". By reducing the tendency for accumulation to rise faster than the employed labour force they countered the fall in the rate of profit:\n\nThe destructions and devaluations of war are a means of warding off the immanent collapse [of capitalism], of creating a breathing space for the accumulation of capital. . . War and the destruction of capital values bound up with it weaken the breakdown [of capitalism] and necessarily provide a new impetus to the accumulation of capital. . . Militarism is a sphere of unproductive consumption. Instead of being saved, values are pulverised. 25\n\nMilitary expenditure is a particular form of waste that can appeal to capitalists connected to a particular state. For it enhances their capacity to struggle for control of worldwide surplus value with rival capitalists. It is functional for nationally based complexes of capital in the same way that advertising is for individual firms, even while wasting resources for the system as a whole. It was therefore a characteristic phenomenon of the classical form of imperialism that led to the First World War-and it survives today in the massive arms spending of the United States in particular.\n\nThe logic of arms-based economic expansion has escaped many Marxist economists. It is absurd, they argue, to see a deduction by the state from the total surplus value as somehow countering the tendency for surplus value to grow more slowly than total investment costs, and so overcoming the fall in the rate of profit. What they have failed to understand is that this \"absurdity\" is just part of the greater absurdity of the capitalist system as a whole, of its contradictory nature. They have not seen that engaging in military competition can be just as much a \"legitimate\" capitalist goal as engaging in economic competition for markets.\n\nState Spending and the System\n\n131","previous_page":130,"next_page":132}