[lbo-talk] The German Debate on the Monetary Theory of Value

nathan tankus somekindofheterodox at gmail.com
Wed Dec 28 07:49:56 PST 2011


"The notion of credit stretching the limits to capital is missing, isn't it? "

well i think the difference is Graeber (and i guess i would throw myself in here too) sees how integral credit was from the very beginning. you can only really conceive of "credit stretching the limits to capital" if you conceive of capital as something that exists before and separate from credit and debt. When you instead conceive of them as coterminous and hopelessly intermingled, it is hard to frame things in those terms. if your asking if Graeber sees credit's ability to expand incredibly and thus delay crisis, i think he does.

"Because if there’s no end to it, there’s absolutely no reason not to generate credit— that is, future money—in definitely. Recent events would certainly seem to confirm this. The period leading up to 2009 was one in which many began to believe that capitalism really was going to be around forever; at the very least, no one seemed any longer to be able to imagine an alternative. The immediate effect was a series of increasingly reckless bubbles that brought the whole apparatus crashing down."

-Nathan Tankus ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



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