[quoting Hudson's paper] “Instead of promoting capital investment in an alliance with industry and government, financial planners have sponsored a travesty of free markets. Realizing that income not taxed is free to be capitalized, bought and sold on credit, and paid out as interest, bankers have formed an alliance between finance, insurance and real estate (FIRE) to free land rent and monopoly rent (as well as debt-leveraged ‘capital’ gains) from taxation.
The result is that today’s economy is burdened with property and financial claims that Marx and other critics deemed ‘fictitious’…”
Please, spare Marx from such “friends.”
Production capital good! Finance capital bad! Ugga ugga ugga [scratch armpits]. Decadent, pervert financial capitalists forcing their sick fantasies down the throats of straight, decent production capitalists who make real things for the real world in the real non-travesty free market of the Golden Age of sometime-or-other! Ooo yucko!
Contra this author, the key result is that today’s capitalist economy, like yesterday’s capitalist economy and the capitalist economy of 100 years ago, is burdened with what Marx and even some other critics have called “capitalists.” Sorry if that sounds tautological, but anyone who misses that point isn’t going to be able to make coherent analyses of, say, the role of finance vs. production capital during certain historical periods in the development of capitalism.
We (and by “we” I mean the working class majority of the human race) are going through a period of normal capitalism. Which is quite bad enough, thank you. There *are* some striking new developments in contemporary capitalism that are worth examining, and that I hope might provide us a rational understanding of capitalism that can aid us in the struggle, but positing a supposed “new” phenomenon of out-of-control financial capitalists is not one of them.
Here is Hudson: "In keeping with his materialist view of history, Marx expected banking to be subordinated to the needs of industrial capitalism.... But as matters have turned out, the rentier interests mounted a Counter-Enlightenment to undermine the reforms that promised to liberate society from special privilege."
And here is Marx, quoted by Hudson: "Where capitalist production has developed all its manifold forms and has become the dominant mode of production, interest-bearing capital is dominated by industrial capital, ** and commercial capital becomes merely a form of industrial capital, derived from the circulation process.** " [emphasis added]
Marx is clearly referring to the historical process whereby *pre-capitalist* forms of financial capital become integrated into the capitalist economy, and cannot function as something outside the overall system. Does anyone still seriously argue otherwise? Finance capital is to be *completely integrated* by the capitalist mode of production. Which, if one hasn't noticed, it has been. It doesn't mean financial capital must become some sort of trivial vestigial appendage.
FWIW, I don’t think Marx’s formulation of the category of “fictitious” capital has proven very helpful, but that’s a whole other argument.
On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 1:40 AM, Alan Rudy <alan.rudy at gmail.com> wrote:
> Never heard it told this way... surprised there have been no comments as a
> result.
> Is this a widely held perspective that the international conspiracy against
> me has withheld from my awareness?
> It flips a lot of things around - though I'm not sure on their head.
> Anyone?
...