'Talk about centralization! The credit system, which has its focal point in the allegedly national banks and the big money-lenders and usurers that surround them, is one enormous centralization and gives this class of parasites a fabulous power not only to decimate the industrial capitalists periodically but also to interfere in actual production in the most dangerous manner — and this crew know nothing of production and have nothing at all to do with it.'"
But this is true! I think a key word here is "periodically." The well-adapted parasite doesn't completely kill off its hosts, after all, but has organically adapted to the host's life cycle. (Hey, it's Marx's metaphor, not mine.) Or maybe the better analogy would have been symbiosis:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbiosis
Or maybe this fun rant would have been red-penciled as too distracting if Marx himself had gotten around to putting his drafts into publication form, which is what I always have in the back of my mind when reading anything in v. 2 and 3. I don't think "pin the tail on the biggest capitalist bastard" was really what Marx was about. Does anyone here really disagree with that?
And still, Marx is here writing about the role of finance capital under capitalism, not in its pre-capitalist ("usury") forms, which Hudson so outrageously mixes up, leading to all the trouble. My main point.
On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 8:45 AM, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> On Aug 2, 2010, at 2:28 PM, socialismorbarbarism wrote:
>
>> Please, spare Marx from such “friends.”
>>
>> Production capital good! Finance capital bad! Ugga ugga ugga [scratch
>> armpits]. Decadent, pervert financial capitalists forcing their sick
....