Council of Canadians

Max Sawicky sawicky at epinet.org
Mon Apr 10 10:39:39 PDT 2000


Quoth DH: . . . Money is valuable only because it represents claims on real resources, i.e. products of human labor. Taxation and borrowing from rich people may look like movements of money, but they represent real resource transfers. . . .

If the Gov prints some money and buys your stock or, if you like, your electric generator plant, isn't that a "real resource transfer"? Looks real to me.


>>>>>>>>> . . .
Borrowing from a central bank doesn't - it's just funny money. People who believe in these schemes tend to believe "finance" is a kind of malignant growth on the productive sector, and not something intimately tied to capitalist production. . . .
>>>>>>

Reformist/populist monetary proposals do not dispute the intimacy of ties between finance and capitalist social relations -- only their susceptibility to modification by the State.

Funny that those enthralled by state power (i.e., C. Cox) deny the existence of fiat money -- the reality of money backed up by special bodies of armed men. This denial seems to reflect mechanistic materialism run amuck.

Of course, underlying this denial is really a refusal to engage politics on the level of reforms, even radical ones.

mbs



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