On Jul 20, 2013, at 2:54 PM, Julio Huato wrote:
> This centralization accomplished by modern centralized finance --
> Marx noted -- tends to
> reduce the faux frais (the waste of surplus labor time) of
> capitalist reproduction regarded as a totality.
Whatever Marx noted (a citation would have been helpful), it certainly had nothing to do with *modern* centralized finance, whose very inception dates to a century or more after the writing of Das Kapital. When Marx used the term *faux frais* he specifically was referring to the "necessary but unproductive expenses" (overhead costs) of the circulation process that count as circulating constant capital, not as a "waste" of surplus-labor time. In any event, the hypertrophy of the FIRE and Merchandising sectors makes it quite odd to see such a vast diversion of capital and labor from productive to unproductive employments viewed as a reduction of "waste" rather than as the very exemplar of modern capitalist parasitism and waste.
>
Shane Mage
This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire, kindling in measures and going out in measures.
Herakleitos of Ephesos