[lbo-talk] Jayati Ghosh on the contradictory effects of tech change

Shane Mage shmage at pipeline.com
Tue Feb 16 09:58:29 PST 2016


On Feb 16, 2016, at 12:23 PM, Marv Gandall wrote:
>>
>
> They may be investing in paper assets rather than investing in production...
Not "invest"--speculate on odds-on bets thanks to their control over the monetary authorities. Speculation is not, not ever, investment
> but they’ll typically go where they can get the higher returns.
and "returns" are not profits--except that when they come from looting they amount to negative profits.
> This may be a conjunctural or a structural problem
It is no longer ever conjunctural once imperialism has been structured as state-monopoly-capitalist and monopoly-state-capitalist systems
> , but it is not a subjective one, ie. a sign that the corporate sector “hates profit.”...
profits are supposed to go to the nominal owners--largely workers through institutions like pension funds. What's for the "corporate sector" not to hate about that?
> If all capitalists looted their companies with such abandon and unsustainable debt, in line with your caricature above, the system would have collapsed long ago without it needing to be toppled from below.
The biggest capitalists operate by looting and destroying the smaller capitalists. Always have. Ever heard of John D. Rockefeller?

And you really ought somehow to have noticed that "the system" is right now collapsing before your very eyes. The problem is not to topple it from below (that meme is indeed so 19th century) but to get out from under the wreckage and start rebuilding.

Shane Mage

"Thunderbolt steers all things." Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list