On Mar 31, 2008, at 11:31 AM, B. quoted :
> "The credit system appears as the main lever of
> overproduction and overspeculation in commerce solely
> because the reproduction process, which is elastic by
> nature, is here forced to its extreme limits, and is
> so forced because a large part of the social capital
> is employed by people who do not own it and who
> consequently tackle things quite differently than the
> owner, who anxiously weighs the limitations of his
> private capital in so far as he handles it himself."
>
> -Karl Marx, Capital Vol. 3
Don't forget what follows that passage:
"This only goes to show how the valorization of capital founded on the antithetical character of capitalist production permits actual free development only up to a certain point, which is constantly broken through by the credit system. The credit system hence accelerates the material development of the productive forces and the creation of the world market, which it is the historical task of the cpitalist mode of production to bring to a certain level of development, as material foundations for new forms of production. At the same time, credit accelerates the violent outbreaks of this contradiction, crises, and with these the elements of dissolution of the old mode of production... The credit system has a dual character immanent in it: on the one hand it develops the motive of capitalist production, enrichment by the exploitation of others’ labour, into the purest and most colossal system of gambling and swindling, and restricts ever more the already small number of the exploiters of social wealth; on the other hand however it constitutes the form of transition towards a new mode of production. It is this dual character that gives the principal spokesmen for credit, from Law through to Isaac Péreire, their nicley mixed character of swindler and prophet."