abu hartal quoted Marx:
> 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.
Public debt in the historical context of "primitive accumulation" is associated with the "barbaric" form of the capitalist "passions" Marx identifies that context and elaborates as the basis of "hoarding." In that form, they place obstacles in the way of accumulation through the employment of capital "in industry or even in usury." Public debt helps to overcome these obstacles by "endowing barren money with the power of breeding."
"Money is not just an object of the passion for enrichment, it is the object of it. This urge is essentially auri sacra fames. [The accursed greed for gold. -- Ed.] The passion for enrichment by contrast with the urge to acquire particular material wealth, i.e., use-values, such as clothes, jewellery, herds of cattle, etc., becomes possible only when general wealth as such is represented by a specific thing and can thus be retained as a particular commodity. Money therefore appears both as the object and the source of the desire for riches. [11] The underlying reason is in fact that exchange-value as such becomes the goal, and consequently also an expansion of exchange-value. Avarice clings to the hoard and does not allow money to become a medium of circulation, but greed for gold preserves the monetary soul of the hoard and maintains it in constant tension with circulation.
"The activity which amasses hoards is, on the one hand, the withdrawal of money from circulation by constantly repeated sales, and on the other, simple piling up, accumulation. It is indeed only in the sphere of simple circulation, and specifically in the form of hoards, that accumulation of wealth as such takes place, whereas the other so-called forms of accumulation, as we shall see later, are quite improperly, and only by analogy with simple accumulation of money, regarded as accumulation. All other commodities are accumulated either as use-values, and in this case the manner of their accumulation is determined by the specific features of their use-value. Storing of corn, for example, requires special equipment; collecting sheep makes a person a shepherd; accumulation of slaves and land necessitates relations of domination and servitude, and so on. Unlike the simple act of piling things up, the formation of stocks of particular types of wealth requires special methods and develops special traits in the individual. Or wealth in the shape of commodities may be accumulated as exchange- value, and in this case accumulation becomes a commercial or specifically economic operation. The one concerned in it becomes a corn merchant, a cattle-dealer, and so forth. Gold and silver constitute money not as the result of any activity of the person who accumulates them, but as crystals of the process of circulation which takes place without his assistance. He need do nothing but put them aside, piling one lot upon another, a completely senseless activity, which if applied to any other commodity would result in its devaluation.[12]
“Our hoarder is a martyr to exchange-value, a holy ascetic seated at the top of a metal column. He cares for wealth only in its social form, and accordingly he hides it away from society. He wants commodities in a form in which they can always circulate and he therefore withdraws them from circulation. He adores exchange-value and he consequently refrains from exchange. The liquid form of wealth and its petrification, the elixir of life and the philosophers' stone are wildly mixed together like an alchemist's apparitions. His imaginary boundless thirst for enjoyment causes him to renounce all enjoyment. Because he desires to satisfy all social requirements, he scarcely satisfies the most urgent physical wants. While clinging to wealth in its metallic corporeality the hoarder reduces it to a mere chimaera. But the accumulation of money for the sake of money is in fact the barbaric form of production for the sake of production, i.e., the development of the productive powers of social labour beyond the limits of customary requirements. The less advanced is the production of commodities, the more important is hoarding -- the first form in which exchange-value assumes an independent existence as money -- and it therefore plays an important role among ancient nations, in Asia up to now, and among contemporary agrarian nations, where exchange-value has not yet penetrated all relations of production." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/ ch02_3.htm#hoard
Ted