[lbo-talk] An Orgy of Speculation?

[c b]

"This substantially distinguishes dealing in money from the dealing in
commodities, which promotes the metamorphosis of commodities and their
exchange, or even gives this process of the commodity-capital the
appearance of a process of a capital set apart from industrial
capital. While, therefore, commercial capital has its own form of
circulation, M -- C -- M, in which the commodity changes hands twice and
thus provides a reflux of money, as distinct from C -- M -- C, in which
money changes hands twice and thus promotes commodity exchange, there
is no such special form in the case of money-dealing capital.

In so far as money-capital is advanced by a separate class of
capitalists in this technical promotion of money circulation -- a
capital which on a reduced scale represents the additional capital the
merchants and industrial capitalists would otherwise have to advance
themselves for these purposes -- the general form of capital, M -- M',
occurs here as well. By advancing M, the advancing capitalist secures
M + ΔM. But promotion of M -- M' does not here concern the material,
but only the technical, processes of the metamorphosis."

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch19.htm

^^^^^^

Didn't Doug in one of his posts point out that in actuality there is
no difference between speculative and productive investment. My
grandfather in 1939 took 300 crates of strawberries to market, in
which he had "invested/speculated" quite a bit. Then he brought them
home and fed them to the hogs, because the highest price offered had
been less than the cost of the packaging. Ford invested/speculated
quite a bit on the Edsel; not much return.

As Doug pointed out in one of his earliest posts on this thread, the
whole dispute is generated by those whose moral sensibilities are
roughed up by "speculation" and who think "production" is good. That
is, the distinction is precisely a moral not an economic distinction,
and moral distinctions are grounded in a false epistemology -- that is
they assume that moral statements can be grounded and they can't.

Carroil

^^^^^^
CB: Doesn't Marx make a non-moralistic distinction between M-C-M1 and
M-M1 ?  The latter is fictitious capital accumulation , I believe.  Is
fictitious capital speculative investment ?