[lbo-talk] Marx on the credit crunch?

[Eubulides]

On Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 1:58 PM, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
>
>
>  Doug Henwood wrote:
>  >
>  >[ clip]
>
> > > -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." [clip]
>
>  Here we have, a think, one of those points at which Marx the scientist
>  (critique of political economy) and Marx the philosopher of history
>  touch. There is _nothing_ in his core analysis of capitalism which
>  _necessitates_ the claim that capitalism has an "historical task." I
>  tend to agree with Marx's historical or philosophical claim here, but
>  that is all it is, a historical claim, not anything which flows
>  _necessarily_ from the nature of capitalism (as, for example, the
>  necessity of endless growth within capitalism does, but that of course
>  can lead to unviersal destruction as well as to a new form of
>  production).
>
>  Carrol

=============

Nor is "new form of production" equivalent to new forms of property
and contract that would, presumably, be partly constitutive of
socialism-communism; KM could simply be talking about new ways of
making new types of commodities.............technological change and
the like.

Ian