[lbo-talk] Fwd: the Grundrisse and credit.

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Sun Jan 15 22:02:23 PST 2012


There may an empirical problem here unrelated to the topics discussed.

David asked a question he hoped "marxists" could answer. But "Marxist" names way to man. But "Marxist" names way too many perspecives. He might find rather different answers from different individual Marxists. Two Marxists will even disagree on whether any of Marx's theories are true.

In an HM review I read in part just before I went blind, I remember 1 point: Marx recognize that the mass of mss from which Engels got Vol. 3 was wrong and/or radically incomplete on finace & was beginning to study the American stock market.

Before going on, I will state that even when I use them epthets scuh as ritualistic only muddle the waters of discourse.

Have you read the posts from Angelus Novus. They don't answer your question but they point towards the context(s) in which the question you ask would become subject to a number of different perspectives.

But it seems far more important to work for a general unity among those (whatever their label) who belong together in an antiii-capialist movement. These debates may be a useful 'streama of events' within such a movement, but are not core. I'm out of the hospital and too weak as well as too blind to get agrip on what the debate is, but I would like to see it continue without labels and with a background aweness that capitalism has become a looming threat to the very existence of ordered societh. That won't make thedebatr less sharp; it should make it less rude.

Carrol

-----Original Message----- From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org] On Behalf Of Doug Henwood Sent: Sunday, January 15, 2012 11:00 PM To: lbo-talk Subject: [lbo-talk] Fwd: the Grundrisse and credit.

[This probably bounced because David isn't subscribed.]

From: David Graeber <david.graeber at me.com> Date: January 15, 2012 3:37:25 PM EST To: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> Cc: "lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org" <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] the Grundrisse and credit.

Sent from my Magic Brain

On Jan 15, 2012, at 2:39 PM, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:

On Jan 15, 2012, at 1:40 AM, nathan tankus wrote:

it strikes me that this is what one would say from a static structural reading of Marx - that is, assume a total system modeled on industrial capitalism as it existed in Marx's Europe in the mid-19th century, contrast it with "past ages" each taken as a whole... But what I was trying to do in my book was take a more historical account, and from that perspective, there's a real problem. As I put it in the book:

I don't see that at all. Marx's comments on credit, as in Vol. 3 of Capital, are sketchy, suggestive, and mostly ahead of their time. The joint-stock company was a pretty small player in his day. Consumer credit didn't exist. But his main point, that credit is embedded in the system of production (and, I might add given my own obsession, the system of ownership and class formation) in ways different in capitalist societies from others is pretty important. In fact, that seems more "historical" than finding some kind of transhistoric, ritualistic aspect to credit.

Yes but that's a straw man isn't it Doug? What I actually argued was nothing of the kind - in fact I don't even understand what "ritualistic" is supposed to mean here. Joint stock corporations as I'm sure you know _had_ been important in capitalism - or whatever you want to call it - before the industrial revolution, when the British economy especially shifted to small family firms. My own argument focuses not on "ritual, transhistoric" factors but the changing relation between credit, money, and military structures - a factor that Marx didn't really address. I hardly claimed to have a comprehensive analysis or to have resolved precisely how this related to forms of priduction at the time - but I was rather hoping Marxists would be inspired to help here.

Maybe "static strucuralist" seemed like fighting words and that's why the answer took the form not of an answer to the question but basically name-calling. I'm sorry if I seem to have started it. It wasn't my intention. I was asking a question and actually hoping to get an answer.

"Here we comer face to face with a peculiar paradox. It would seem that almost all elements of financial apparatus that we've come to associate with capitalism-central banks, bond markets, short selling, brokerage houses, speculative bubbles, securization, annuities came into being not only before the science of economics (which is per haps not too surprising), but also before the rise of factories, and wage labor itself."

It struck me that this was the challenge I was throwing out to Marxist theorists. I don't think Marxist theorists are beyond answering it, not by any means, but it's an interesting question and deserves addressing. A mere restatement of orthodoxy such as below doesn't seem to be much help

Actually, a lot of orthodox Marxists think that credit - or, more broadly, finance - is irrelevant, epiphenomenal to the real productive action.

Though there are plenty of similarities in the mob psychology, speculation in tulips is different from speculation in houses, fiber optic cables, Pets.com, etc. Tulips are curiosities - the others are deeply involved in the "real" economy.

So that's your answer??? Speculation in tulips is another straw man. The financial forms I'm speaking of like the earliest corporate ones largely developed around overseas military and colonial ventures, they were all about the "real" economy. Just they had little role yet for free wage labor, and a lot more for various forms of slavery and debt peonage. It strikes me that the realization that what we think of as capitalist forms of finance, speculation, investment, etc are not necessarily tied to wage-based industrial production is highly relevant to our times. I honestly don't know what the full implications are. But shouldn't we be thinking about them? David

Doug



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