On Dec 10, 2006, at 11:47 AM, abu hartal wrote:
> Doug,
> Marx describes the whole system of public debt as primitive
> accumulation.
> Abu Hartal
>> From Marx, chap 31 Capital vol I:
>
> 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.
"Given rise to" strikes me as the key phrase here - capitalization of this sort created modern finance several centuries ago. It's now so well-established that the word "primitive" belongs nowhere near it. Is there anything more routine than a Treasury note?
Doug