capitalism explained

[Chris Burford]

At 00:07 28/02/00 -0500, you wrote:
>Also from the International Political Economy list, another market 
>fundamentalist, Mark Frost, explains the beauties of capitalism:
>
>>Capitalism, is an institutional arrangement wherby winners and losers are
>>placed in juxtaposition, and in the macro sense, provide paraeto "signaling"
>>to individuals regarding risk vs safety optimality decisions.  Those who
>>choose well prosper, those who choose poorly, suffer the indignation of
>>poverty.  Thus it is a "carrot and stick" parable, meaning that the carrot
>>of riches must be balanced by the threat of poverty.  To the extent that the
>>"stick" aspect is softened, then the institutional efficiency of the market
>>process is damaged.
>
>Doug

What a materialist!

Or, as Marx wrote in Volume 1 of Capital, describing the General Law of
Capitalist Accumulation:

"The greater the ... functioning capital....the greater is the industrial
reserve army".

Not always true now within individual states, but true on world scale in
which literally billions of workers are in the industrial reserve army,
either unemployed or partially and tenuously employed on much less than the
value of their labour power judged by global standards.

Now if Mark Frost would just like to explain how those "emerging markets"
are going to be able to absorb all the abundance of commodities that the
clever capitalist entrepreneurs are pumping out, without a periodic
embarrassing crash ....   

After all even winners don't like uncertainty.

And 'winners and losers' does sound like a zero sum game. 

So how stable is that game, viewed overall?

Chris Burford

London