"I think it's more right to say that currency is the result of people's coping with surplus. Surplus is not the same as inequity, right? Any interdependent economic system creates local surplus and shortage which exchange then evens out and this is a positive process. People can't be personally autarchic and thus their best bet is to learn to provide for and depend on others.
But I think money actually does cause inequity in and of itself. In that money represents power in the marketplace it is a super-good for which people will trade things of value at unprofitable terms (for the most part). After all, people at the gambling tables and in line for the Lotto will willingly trade real money for the illusory promise of more money even when that promise is offered with the mathematical certainty of a per-dollar loss."
adx:
The bourgeoisie maintained the currency system as a way to cope with continuing inequities that did not end up in the dustbin of history with the abolishment of feudalism. Slavery was just exchanged for wage slavery, and wage labor-- in hock for a little bit of currency-- became the preferred system. In capitalism it is impossible to detach currency from wage labor itself, and thus, exploitation and accumulation of surplus value.
Boddi:
"To me it seems that Marxists have followed a model of sort of Economic Bonapartism - mainly in that it was started by, well, Bonaparte - where rather than revolutionizing the financial apparatuses of republican and liberal-democratic capitalism, they simply took possession of them and tried to bend them to political-military aims by slapping crippling and artificial controls on them. While creating a huge, unitary creditor that was only answerable politically freed a lot of capital initially, the combination of cutting off the flow of market information and the pressure to continue expansive monetary policy inevitably led to terrible distortions.
Worse than that in a way, Marxist systems lost the virtuous cycle of trust-building that capital markets represent. The Marxist financial systems simply insisted on obedience and trust naturally eroded."
adx:
The assumption seems to be that these systems were in fact Marxist, or socialist or communist, when in fact they were not. The "Marxist" states that emerged in the 20th century were state-monopoly capitalist, incapable of carrying through their political revolutions due to the global social realities of capitalism which became more entrenched. At any rate, even if the term "Marxist" above is being used as a shorthand for the "actually-existing" societies which emerged under this guise, the economic models used by Russia, China, etc. cannot be used to discredit Marxism, since in fact workers had no more control over the means of production than they have in advanced capitalist societies.
And as it turns out, centrally-planned economies were crucial to the development of these states, which otherwise would have been crushed by post-colonial hegemony the way so many "third-" and "second-world" countries have been. As Roosevelt, Hitler, and Stalin proved in varying means and degrees, central planning simply works in times of global military escalation and crisis.
The "distortions" which existed in China and Russia were of the same nature, but simply of a different character, than those that occurred and continue to occur in the United States and Western Europe.
What is your evidence that "trust" exists in the "virtuous cycle" of capital of markets? What is your evidence that "trust naturally eroded" in "Marxist" systems?
--adx boddi satva <lbo.boddi at gmail.com> wrote:
I think it's more right to say that currency is the result of people's coping with surplus. Surplus is not the same as inequity, right? Any interdependent economic system creates local surplus and shortage which exchange then evens out and this is a positive process. People can't be personally autarchic and thus their best bet is to learn to provide for and depend on others.
But I think money actually does cause inequity in and of itself. In that money represents power in the marketplace it is a super-good for which people will trade things of value at unprofitable terms (for the most part). After all, people at the gambling tables and in line for the Lotto will willingly trade real money for the illusory promise of more money even when that promise is offered with the mathematical certainty of a per-dollar loss.
You write:
> Actually if you read them most of the Marxists had fairly clear ideas about
> possibilities for economic organization and "finance," so to speak. They
> would have been mistaken, though, to plan for a revolution that was due to
> break out in several different places and times. The bourgeoisie did not
> plan a financial structure to their society per se; it emerged dialectically
> out of fluctuating social realities. You can't just play god and make up an
> economic system and then switch it into 'on' mode by breathing in your nose.
> Sure, you can theorize as the Marxists did based on socio-historical
> realities, but it has to emerge out of cr! itical practice.
I would love for you to refer me to these clear ideas because I admit I don't know them. I also admit that my Marxist reading has not been what it should.
To me it seems that Marxists have followed a model of sort of Economic Bonapartism - mainly in that it was started by, well, Bonaparte - where rather than revolutionizing the financial apparatuses of republican and liberal-democratic capitalism, they simply took possession of them and tried to bend them to political-military aims by slapping crippling and artificial controls on them. While creating a huge, unitary creditor that was only answerable politically freed a lot of capital initially, the combination of cutting off the flow of market information and the pressure to continue expansive monetary policy inevitably led to terrible distortions.
Worse than that in a way, Marxist systems lost the virtuous cycle of trust-building that capital markets represent. The Marxist financial systems simply insisted on obedience and trust naturally eroded.
boddi
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