“In 1929 Mellon was undeterred. He advised the then president Hoover to “liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate farmers, liquidate real estate… it will purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up from less competent people.”
This is reminiscent of Henryk Grossman who wrote:
“We know that in Marx’s conception crises are simply a healing process of the system, a form in which equilibrium is again re-established, even if forcibly and with huge losses. From the standpoint of capital every crisis is a ‘crisis of purification’. Soon the accumulation process picks up again, on an expanded basis, and within certain limits…it can proceed without any disruption of equilibrium. But ‘beyond certain limits’…the accumulated capital again grows too large. The mass of surplus value starts to decline, valorisation begins to slacken until finally…it evaporates completely…The breakdown sets in again and is followed devaluation of capital…and so on. Henrk Grossman. “Law of the Accumulation and Breakdown.” https://www.marxists.org/archive/grossman/1929/breakdown/ch02.htm
Michael Roberts wrote:
“In 1929 Mellon was undeterred. He advised the then president Hoover to “liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate farmers, liquidate real estate… it will purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up from less competent people.”
This is reminiscent of Henryk Grossman who wrote:
“We know that in Marx’s conception crises are simply a healing process of the system, a form in which equilibrium is again re-established, even if forcibly and with huge losses. From the standpoint of capital every crisis is a ‘crisis of purification’. Soon the accumulation process picks up again, on an expanded basis, and within certain limits…it can proceed without any disruption of equilibrium. But ‘beyond certain limits’…the accumulated capital again grows too large. The mass of surplus value starts to decline, valorisation begins to slacken until finally…it evaporates completely…The breakdown sets in again and is followed devaluation of capital…and so on. Henrk Grossman. “Law of the Accumulation and Breakdown.” https://www.marxists.org/archive/grossman/1929/breakdown/ch02.htm
Exactly