<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> <html> <head> <meta content="text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1" http-equiv="Content-Type"> <title></title> </head> <body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000"> James Heartfield wrote: <blockquote cite="mid000b01c71c6f$25dbd520$0201a8c0@D6F2G31J" type="cite">In general, I find, Patrick, that you read more into Grossmann than is there. If I can characterise it this way, you find that Grossmann discusses the more developed forms that capital takes (share capital, fictitious capital and so on), and you think that sets the precedent to re-focus the enquiry from onto these phenomenal forms of capital accumulation. But it seems to me that you misunderstand Grossmann's method. Grossmann, who is meticulous on the methodological point that one ought not to confuse different levels of analysis, discusses fictitious capital under the heading of the 'modifying counter-tendencies' to the law of breakdown. That is, they are derivative, secondary effects, that react back upon the underlying trajectory of capital accumulation, but cannot reverse it. Grossmann saw fictitious capital as unessential, a phenomenal form that capital took. Interesting as a manifestation of the inner contradiction, but not so vital as to bear the weight of an explanans explanandum that you make it. </blockquote> No problem so far, except to insist that Grossmann, who published Breakdown in March 1929, was exceptionally prescient: that the *vulnerabilities* of capital as reflected in speculative bubbling in fictitious capital markets were far more serious than Hilferding understood (his Finanzkapital overestimated the *power* of finance, e.g., that if you take over the six Berlin banks you control all of German industry). That makes Grossmann's reading of financial processes far richer than an epiphenomenom would otherwise warrant. (I wonder if Doug's ever picked up Grossmann; I understand his alliance with Leo Panitch on these matters as akin to the Hillferding position, as against crisis theorists like Harvey, Brenner, Wood, etc.) (And I don't think I misunderstood this when I tried applying Grossmann to Zimbabwe in a 1998 book which I'll email to you - but you can decide.) <blockquote cite="mid000b01c71c6f$25dbd520$0201a8c0@D6F2G31J" type="cite">None of this, by the way, has any bearing on the wholly unrelated category of primitive accumulation. </blockquote> On the contrary, a great deal of primitive accumulation is driven by the search for countervailing profitability once surplus value becomes harder to realise under conditions of overaccumulation. Under such conditions, over the past three decades or so, we have seen a great deal more primitive accumulation of the sort Marx/Harvey listed (in my earlier post), and hence renewed interest in studying it. <blockquote cite="mid000b01c71c6f$25dbd520$0201a8c0@D6F2G31J" type="cite">And of course you are right to say that the real course of events will not be decided by books. But in that we are discussing Marx's concept of primitive accumulation, it seems to the point to say that it is being misapplied, no more meaning 'fictitious capital' </blockquote> But please connect the dots, James. When a great deal more capital takes a fictitious form (translation: paper representations of capital) and gets bid into the stratosphere in terms of paper asset values and expected returns and even the creation of derivatives on returns, then there's that much more pressure coming from the holders of the paper for capital to squeeze harder not only on workers, but also on society and nature, in a primitive kind of way, not so? <blockquote cite="mid000b01c71c6f$25dbd520$0201a8c0@D6F2G31J" type="cite">than it does 'finance' or 'cuckoo clocks' for that matter. And one might indeed say that it does not matter if you use these terms in a different way from Marx's meaning, but then why call it "primitive accumulation", a coinage quite patently meant to explicate the common political economy term "original accumulation"? </blockquote> Because primitive it is, when capitalists have to depart from the surplus value circuitry and steal. Harvey talks about 'accumulation by dispossession' - no problem with that, then? <blockquote cite="mid000b01c71c6f$25dbd520$0201a8c0@D6F2G31J" type="cite">Elsewhere you invoke Rosa Luxemburg's name in support of the theory of primitive accumulation. And that is right, in that she argued that insofar as Capital creates values greater than it consumes then it would need to conquer ever greater markets in which to realise this surplus product. But Luxemburg was wrong, as Grossmann indicates on pp 164-5 of the Law of Accumulation... saying that she imagined that she had found a gap in Marx's system and 'then constructs a theory to fill this so-called gap' a procedure, he says that 'shatter the underlying unity of the [that's Marx's theoretical] system and creates a hundred new problems'. I suspect that Grossmann would have endorsed Paul Mattick's view that Luxemburg's theory of 'noncapitalist markets' 'had nothing to do with Marx's theory of accumulation', and that furthermore 'Imperialism ... can be treated in connection with accumulation, without reference to the need for noncapitalist markets for the realisation of surplus value' (Economic Crisis and Crisis Theory, 1981, p 90) </blockquote> Indeed, she was definitely wrong on the reproduction schema (but then again how much weight does one put on those sketchy scraps which Engels put in Das K out of context). Our new book goes into all the gory details, in a tough critique by Arndt Hopfmann, who is an excellent comrade and now the recently departed head of the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung's Joburg office. She may also have been incorrect here or there on historical detail. Never mind, the thrust of her sensibility about how capital expands under imperialist circumstances stands the test of time better than Lenin's, doesn't it? </body> </html>