On Aug 3, 2010, at 11:06 AM, Shane Mage wrote:
> This is a crying fallacy (of composition). The individual capitalists comprised in the system may well all be trying to maximize M' (their cash surplus over a period of time). But that is totally false for the system as a whole, even on the crudest level, as is seen from the fact that the higher the rate of inflation the higher the M' for every capitalist and for all of them added together, yet the higher the rate of inflation the more disastrous for the system.
No kidding. Do I have to spell everything out? Real M'.
> The point of the capitalist system is not the "accumulation of money"--it is the accumulation of *Capital*. And specifically of *productive* capital. The entire financial structure (beyond what is needed to supply the productive capitalists' transactional demand for money) is entirely parasitic.
Well, no. I don't want to quote Marx as scripture, but no one has written better than he did on this topic. The point of the financial system is to transform specific embodiments of capital into capital-in-general, which is in money form. Here's a bit from the Grundrisse:
> Money is therefore not only an object, but is the object of greed. It is essentially auri sacra fames. Greed as such, as a particular form of the drive, i.e. as distinct from the craving for a particular kind of wealth, e.g. for clothes, weapons, jewels, women, wine etc., is possible only when general wealth, wealth as such, has become individualized in a particular thing, i.e. as soon as money is posited in its third quality. Money is therefore not ony the object but also the fountainhead of greed…. Hedonism in the abstract presupposes an object which possesses all pleasures in potentiality.
Doug