Australian Left Review
Article Title
The process and means of change
Abstract
The last decade has seen a remarkable advance in marxist analysis in a variety of areas. A very important work is Professor Barry Commoner’s (1) marxist analysis of the “Eco-system — Production system — Economic system” . Commoner traces and demonstrates the close links of the three systems and documents the capital crises in the US. He indicates its dimensions and its implications for living standards and the capitalist system. He reveals the capital crises as a basic reason for reduced resources for health, education, housing and welfare. (My reading of Nixon Apple’s review of Ernest Mandel’s The Second Slump in ALR, June 1979, pp. 4547, indicates that Mandels’ empirical work supports Commoner’s analysis.) Marxist sociologists Francois Lamarche (2), Jean Lojkine (3) and others, have spoken of these as areas of collective consumption: “By collective means of consumption we mean the totality of material supports of the activities devoted to the extended reproduction of social labor power” ((Lojkine, 1972).