1.
자본주의 위기의 원인에 대한 분석에서 마이클 로버트는 이윤율저하의 경향을 모든 불황의 근본적 원인으로 진단
Michael Roberts’ The Long Depression is an analysis of the three great crises that puts one strand of Marx’s economics at the centre of explanations for the causes of depressions, their severity and the nature of recovery. This aspect of crisis theory is the tendency for the rate of profit to fall. The tendency is rooted in the very nature of capitalist competition, which drives capitalists to seek to make production ever more efficient through the use of machinery and automation.
However, as classical economics knew, although it has been forgotten since Marx, only human labour is capable of producing surplus value that can be appropriated by the capitalist. Surplus value is the difference between the value of the work that a labourer does, and the value the capitalist expends in wages. If all goes well for the capitalist and the product of the work is sold, that surplus value becomes realised as profit.
Put in simplified terms, the long-term problem for capitalism is this. The more capitalists invest in machinery, the higher the value of the means of production becomes compared to the labour involved in the production process. As a result, over time the ‘organic composition of capital’ rises, and if the rate by which the capitalist extracts surplus value remains the same, the rate of profit will decline. That is to say, the more capital that needs to be invested in the means of production (which is called constant capital), the more the ratio of profit compared to investment will decline. The absolute mass of profit can still increase, but it is requiring an ever-higher proportion of capital investment to secure that mass.
This is then the law that as capitalism develops there is a general tendency for it to become less profitable. If this was a simple linear process, then it is clear that capitalism would already have collapsed entirely, but the tendency is offset by many other factors. The counter-tendencies enable capitalists to restore the rate of profit despite the growing organic composition of capital.
2.
로버트 이론의 정치적 함의- 사실상 '전부 아니면 부정'의 접근법이고 결정론의 함정에 빠질 위험이 있다. 케인즈주의를 비롯한 일체의 개량적 치유책의 효과를 부정할 위험성이 있다.
Roberts insistence on the primacy of profitability in the nature of capitalist crisis and recovery contains, however, a political agenda. He sees other explanations as offering the possibility that a way can be found to make the system balance and avoid these catastrophic collapses. Thus, he argues that the ‘Great Recession’ of 2008 was not simply financial in nature but strongly connected to a decline in the rate of profit.
While avoiding the lure of fatalistic prophecy, Roberts’ position that the tendency for the rate of profit to fall is the only real central cause of crisis, does contain political problems. It is, in effect, an all or nothing approach. There is nothing that can be done to alleviate the crises of the capitalist system, which will lurch from crisis to crisis as the cycles of profitability mercilessly wreak havoc with human life. The only thing to be done is to replace the system with something else; ‘underconsumptionist’ theories ‘lend themselves to a “cure” that does not require ending the capitalist mode of production’.
3.
이윤율저하의 경향은 다른 위기의 요인인 저소비와 과잉생산 등과의 연관성이 구체적 역사적 맥락 속에서 규명되고, 이런 제반 요인에 근거해서 자본주의 위기는 더욱 총체적 관점에서 해명되어야 한다.
A full analysis of capitalist crisis cannot either discard the tendency for the rate of profit to fall, or rule out other contradictions and tendencies having a causal impact on the emergence of major crises. The analysis should be properly historical, understanding that the causes and nature of one depression will not be quite the same as another, as capitalist cycles have a directional quality, changing the very nature of the economy and society. This would not be an ‘eclectic approach’ (p.25), but a dialectical one. A complete Marxist analysis of crisis would be able to offer a viable political strategy as well as a historical understanding of the specifics, as well as the generalities, of each major crisis. Roberts’ analysis of the problem of profitability is a valuable contribution to understanding, but does not complete our theory of crisis
원문출처
The Long Depression and the Future of Capitalism
https://www.leftvoice.org/The-Long-Depression-and-the-Future-of-Capitalism
The Long Depression: How It Happened, Why It Happened, and What Happens Next
https://www.counterfire.org/articles/book-reviews/19065-the-long-depression-how-it-happened-why-it-happened-and-what-happens-next
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