[lbo-talk] interest rate policy

[Carrol Cox]

nathan tankus: It occurs to me that I've never actually read any "marxist"
interest
rate rule. This makes sense when the ultimate "policy option"
supported is "socialist revolution" (or heretically, evolution).

Consider a _Capital Centered Marxism_, which would carry no "policy option,"
but build its own "policy" GIVEN Marx's Critique of Political Economy, which
as Postone points out is not the same as a "Critical Political Economy." It
offers us an account of an "ideal average" of all possible specific
capitalist systems -- seen as history, not subjected to any "moral"
judgment. (See Gáspár Miklós Tamás: Telling the truth about class
http://www.grundrisse.net/grundrisse22/tellingTheTruthAboutClass.htm )

" Marx does not 'oppose' capitalism ideologically; but Rousseau does. For
Marx, it is history; for Rous­seau, it is evil."

Marxists then do  not inherit any particular policy. For myself, I derive my
"policy" primarily from Rosa Luxemburg, whose "socialism or barbarism" is
not a slogan demanding socialism; it is an historical analysis indicating
that the future is invisible, that barbarism is as likely as democracy. (And
of course that is all we have had since 1914: Barbarism.)

And incidentally, it is not necessary to be a Marxist to recognize
Luxemburg's alternatives.

St. Thomas would have had some answer to your questionas to an optimal
interest rate. I doubt that Marx can help you.

Carrol