>>> cberlet at igc.org 10/04/00 05:33PM >>>
Hi,
Charles Brown wrote:
>
> CB: Yea, I have a bad habit of using the root "bank" in a
> sort of slang way for financialists of all sorts,
Yes, a bad habit that originated historically with the NSDAP and Otto and Gregor Strasser who argued that there was a difference between "productive" industrial capital and "parasitic" finance captial. Congratulations on replicating a core theme of fascist economics. Most socialists only made that mistake once around 1925.
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CB: In general , it is a pretty good slang to use, "bank" or "finance".
Actually, the use of the "bank" root is earlier than what you say. Take Karl Marx's usage of "bankocracy" in the following in 1867:
"The public debt becomes one of the most powerful levers of primitive accumulation. As with the stroke of an enchanter's wand, it endows barren money with the power of breeding and thus turns it into capital, without the necessity of its exposing itself to the troubles and risks inseparable from its employment in industry or even in usury. The state-creditors actually give nothing away, for the sum lent is transformed into public bonds, easily negotiable, which go on functioning in their hands just as so much hard cash would. But further, apart from the class of lazy annuitants thus created, and from the improvised wealth of the financiers, middlemen between the government and the nation-as also apart from the tax-farmers, merchants, private manufacturers, to whom a good part of every national loan renders the service of a capital fallen from heaven-the national debt has given rise to joint-stock companies, to dealings in negotiable effects of all kinds, and to agiotage, in a ! word to stock-exchange gambling and the modern bankocracy. "
But the real validity of my usage of "bankocracy" or the like is as slang for Lenin's "finance capital" and " the financial oligarchy" in _Imperialism_ (1918 ). One of the main ideas there is that "finance capital" is a merger of banking and industrial capital. So, no, I am not using the concept of distinction between productive and parasitic capital. All capital is exploitative, i.e. parasitical. Henry Ford , the great industrialist, was a parasite.
Perhaps you can grasp the idea if you think of its personification in J.P. Morgan and his family uniting railroads and banking, or Rockefellers merging oil and banking, or Carnegie, merging steel manufacture and banking. Get it ?
My bad habit is no more than a foible, in that Doug has pointed out that the German system is based more on central "banks" than the Anglo-American system, with its emphasis on the stock-market ( it is interesting in this regard that Marx mentions the stock-market and bankocracy together). But of course, Wall Street, has a bond market and various "banks" in it. It is clearly a finance capital institution, fitting well within Lenin's more general terminology, which encompasses banks, stock and bond exchanges, insurance companies, hedge funds, trusts.
I just say "banks" because if you go around saying "finance capital:" or the "financial oligarchy" all the time, somebody will jump up and call you a dogmatist or a fancy talker or treating Marxist texts like bibles or the like.
>
> I have been thinking, do any left economists do charts of the
> main owners , with family trees, etc. ? The Morgan Group,
> the Rockefeller Group, etc. I recall you recently remarked
> that a high percentage of wealth source can be attributed to
> inheritance. There should be a basic left economic "who's
> who" of capital book that is updated regularly.
This concept is fifty years out of date. It was true in the late 1800s and early 1900s, but not since WWII. Try reading G. William Domhoff or Holly Sklar. Much wealth is inherited, but elite wealth has been spread around to preclude single families from being significant factors in all but a few cases. Now there is significant intra-elite competition concerning policy.
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CB: I doubt there is just a big mass of individual capitalists constituting the ruling class. I said "group" not "family". So, I'm not saying everybody in the Morgan Group is in the Morgan family, though, it is based historically in that family. I didn't mean to imply all the "groups" are still built around single families. GM is a bit of a shift from the Ford , model, though Ford still exists. However, Doug recently presented data indicating that a high proportion of wealth among the rich is still inherited 50 years after WWII. I think he said the main cause of wealth is inheritance , or something like that.
There has always been intra-elite competition, but to remain in power, they know to unite around their common ,fundamental ,class interests in conflict with those of the working class. This is the sine qua non of ruling class consciousness. This is the necessary limit of intra-class competition.
> But it is not
> predominantly an unconscious process among people who are
> anonymous to each other. The "central committee" and its
> subcommittees do hatch specific plots , as well.
>
Nonsense, the last thirty years of social science points to it being largely consensual and an unconscious process on the part of the 10s of thousands of upper class and upper middle class elites that carry out the policies that are arrived at through struggle among competing elite interests.
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CB: "Consensual process" doesn't contradict what I say. In saying "consensual process" you do contradict yourself by saying it is "unconscious". A "consensual process" is not unconscious. Also, struggling and competing are not unconscious.
Also, it is a bit unclear whether you are saying the "upper class and upper middle class elites" are different than those with the "competing elite in interests "
I could buy that they operate on democratic centralism of some sort ( though I don't think the "upper middles" participate equally with the "uppers"; it's not one person one vote, more one billion dollars, one vote) It sounds like everybody agrees to carry out a policy that it sounds like you say is arrived at in this struggle, even if they disagreed in the struggle. That's democratic centralism, sort of. I don't know if it is majority rule though. I could see a vote among the really, really richest ones or something, but not among the 10's of thousands you mention.
Anyway, the main point is that it is not spontaneous and unconscious, but highly class conscious.
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What "central committee" of capitalism? Do you think the children of the Rockefellers and Morgans and Rothschilds sit in a basement room under Wall Street drinking bourbon and telling the Fed what to do?
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CB: Well , yea, didn't you see that in Doug's book. Actually , bourbon is more a favorite of the Bourbons in the South. But of course, they do it in a bit more posh surroundings than a basement.
What is your theory ? That they coordinate by extra sensory perception ? The Invisible Hand ? Or that everything just happens to fall into place naturally, a sort of natural elite, that naturally wins these titanic economic struggles coming out on top eveytime, while keeping workers divided confused and oppressed at the same time ? Without ever talking to each other about in a basement or a penthouse or a boardroom ? (((((((((((((((
There is almost no difference between your analysis and that of the John Birch Society except you periodically throw in the word "worker." The JBS thinks a secret group of capitalist elites control the banks and the media. The main difference is that they want to protect the middle class and you want to protect the working class, but the basic conspiratorial premise is identical.
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CB: Worse than the John Birch Society, it is the exact same theory that the capitalist ruling class has and practices.
You fail to understand a basic aspect of demogoguery: it depends upon the use of powerful partial truths. Demogogues gain followers because part of what they say is true. For example, the Nazis' demogoguery is demonstrated in the fact that their name is "workers' party". The profound truth they stole and abused was the need for a workers' party and workers revolution at the time. Of course, given this , some one like you could come around and say," you Communists are saying the same thing about a workers' party as the Nazis are. ", and discourage forming a workers's party , or using the name or whatever. Hitler made "anti-capitalist" statements in _Mein Kampf_, so someone like you would think Karl Marx was discredited by Hitler using the same language.
In brief, by your approach , to throw people like you off, all the ruling class has to do is finance a group like the Nazis or John Birch Society with near socialist lingo and terminology , and for you, this would discredit real socialists and communists.
The best example of this today might be the LaRouchites. I said this to you before. Just because the LaRouchites say the CIA was running cocaine in LA doesn't mean it isn't true and the Lefts who say it are discredited.
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AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!
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Good Grief !
Charlie Brown