definitions of capital, centre, periphery

[Henry C.K. Liu]

Not being an expert on Marxism, but I always felt that marxist posture toward
capital should not be inherently antagonistic. The question is one of
ownership.  Capital is merely a mechanical concept of eoconomic accounting.  The
ownership of it is however a soicio-poltical issue, becasue not only does
ownership determine the flow of return on capital, it also carries the right to
deploy capital as the owners see fit.  And the deployment of capital over time
determines the socio-economic structure of society and civilization.
Even in the final stages of socialism, the role of capital in economic
organization will still be indispensable.  In a fundamental way, capital is the
liberator of labor, because it is thriouigh the wise deployment of capital that
labor can escape the drugery of production.
In the past 70 years, the historical data of socialist revolutions and
construction have provided ample evidence that the erroneous destruction of
capital and the anihliation of capitalists merely left the liberated nations is
economic shamble.
The correct attitude may be to regard capital as a social resource and capital
managers as workers also.

Henry C.K. Liu

Chris Burford wrote:


> I'll try to answer the question. The concept of the centralisation and
> concentration of capital can be extended from capitalist companies to whole
> capitalist economies if you take the wider definition of capital, variable
> as well as constant capital, into account.
>
> It is clear that the balance of flows favours the accumulation of this
> wider definition including an educated workforce with suggicient purchasing
> power for a mass sophisticated market, in the metropolitan imperialist
> countries.
>
> Does that do violence to either marxism or the empirical data?
>
> Chris Burford
>
> London
>
> At 07:29 19/02/99 +0000, you wrote:
> >At 16:28 18/02/99 -0800, you wrote:
> >>Then Japan is the mother of centers and NY is the mother of the periphery.
> >>A better defintion would that centers are places that benefit more from
> >>capital that passes through it.
> >>
> >>Henry
> >>
> >>Doug Henwood wrote:
> >>
> >>> "By definition, the center is the provider of capital, the periphery the
> >>> recipient." - George Soros, The Crisis of Global Capitalism, p. 120
> >
> >My understanding is that from a marxist point of view, the tendency for the
> >concentration and  centralisation of capital is a long term tendency. I
> >have assumed that applies to societies and not just companies.
> >
> >How could the definitions above be made more compatible with that
> perspective?
> >
> >Chris Burford
> >
> >London
> >
> >