{"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":59,"pdf_page":59,"physical_index":59,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"3806fbef88172be2d87b8e2f5354049fe9a384333a0ef2cb85c400d53b23a5dc"},"chapter":"Zombie Capitalism Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx","content":"But Marx's own argument does not stop with pointing to the possibility of consumption falling below production. He goes on to insist that the double nature of one set of commodities, those that make up the means of production, as both values and use values, makes that inevitable. A Russian Marxist economist of the late 1920s, Pavel V Maksakovsky, spelt out how this double nature works itself out. 10 As we have seen, the exchange value of goods is determined by the amount of labour required to produce them using the average level of techniques and skill operating in the system as a whole (what Marx refers to as \"abstract labour\"). But their production involves concrete human labour bringing objects (\"use values\" ) into physical interaction with each other. The correct relations between different exchange values and different use values must exist for production to take place.\n\nThe more industry develops, the more complicated these relations become. Textile machines cannot be produced without steel; steel without iron ore and coal; coal without cutting machinery, winding gear and so on. But the chains of physical interaction depend on chains of buying and selling, in which coal firms sell to steel firms, steel firms to textile firms and textile firms to consumers-that is, to people who get wages or profits to spend from other firms so long as these can sell their goods.\n\nSuch long, intertwined chains linking production to final consumption only function if two completely different conditions are fulfilled. The correct physical relations between things that go to produce other things has to exist determined by the law of physics, chemistry and biology. But, at the same time, each act of production has to expand the amount of value (ie the amount of average abstract labour) in the hands of the owners of each particular firm. The physical organisation of the production of use values has somehow to correspond with the capitalist determination of prices by values.\n\nDiscrepancies between the two requirements mean that the expansion of production inevitably leads to bottlenecks in the supply of raw materials, causing their prices to rise, cutting into the profits of those capitalists who buy them, and so redistributing surplus value from the capitalists producing finished goods and components to those producing raw materials. It also means that the demand for one vital commodity, labour power, can begin to exceed the supply, leading to upward pressure on wages (at least in money terms, although workers may not see it like this if rising raw material prices cut into the buying power of the expanded wage).\n\nThe Dynamics of the System\n\n59","previous_page":58,"next_page":60}