"Unless we begin to see capitalist consumption as a share of surplus begin to fall again, we will not be seeing ... the development of Capital into a force pushing us beyond the limits of capitalism.
Not Jehu obviously, but I don't think your conclusion is necessarily true. The question of overcoming capitalism lies outside the strictly economic domain- it is a historical question. The TRPF is a manifestation at the economic level of the historical phenomenon of the development of the productive forces.
However, there's a certain level of independence between these two spheres. Even if, at the level of economics, capitalism has found a way to suspend the TRPF, that does not necessarily translate to the development of the productive forces stagnating or degenerating. Natural science, for example, is a central productive force in capitalism, and the development of natural science has in no way receded in the Neoliberal era.
But zooming out a bit further and looking at the geography of production, we see that the degeneration of fixed capital and the decline in productive investment in the West has been accompanied by an expansion in productive investment and the development of fixed capital in the global south, and particularly in China. And furthermore, the cooperative labor process, the productive force that Marx asserts is key for superseding capitalist production, has expanded to encompass the world, which he discusses in Chapter 32 of Capital. Capital is, then, still very much at work pushing us beyond the limits of capitalism, and has perhaps succeeded in doing so already, but this is only visible if one expands the scope of their analysis beyond the strictly economic domain.
I have to challenge this last assertion.
"Unless we begin to see capitalist consumption as a share of surplus begin to fall again, we will not be seeing ... the development of Capital into a force pushing us beyond the limits of capitalism.
What is your disagreement?
Not Jehu obviously, but I don't think your conclusion is necessarily true. The question of overcoming capitalism lies outside the strictly economic domain- it is a historical question. The TRPF is a manifestation at the economic level of the historical phenomenon of the development of the productive forces.
However, there's a certain level of independence between these two spheres. Even if, at the level of economics, capitalism has found a way to suspend the TRPF, that does not necessarily translate to the development of the productive forces stagnating or degenerating. Natural science, for example, is a central productive force in capitalism, and the development of natural science has in no way receded in the Neoliberal era.
But zooming out a bit further and looking at the geography of production, we see that the degeneration of fixed capital and the decline in productive investment in the West has been accompanied by an expansion in productive investment and the development of fixed capital in the global south, and particularly in China. And furthermore, the cooperative labor process, the productive force that Marx asserts is key for superseding capitalist production, has expanded to encompass the world, which he discusses in Chapter 32 of Capital. Capital is, then, still very much at work pushing us beyond the limits of capitalism, and has perhaps succeeded in doing so already, but this is only visible if one expands the scope of their analysis beyond the strictly economic domain.