Hi Ellen Ellen: Money-printing can't be privatized, but it can be quasi-privatized, relegated to semi-autonomous and undemocratic central banks, like the Federal Reserve, the Bundesbank, or the European Central Bank. Removing control over money from normal avenues of democratic accountability has been one of the primary achievements of neo-liberalism.
Ellen Frank, Dollars and Dinars, New Internationalist, January 20 Karl: The point I have been making is that capital cannot exist independently of the state. Some of what you comments support that thesis. Now since capital cannot exist independently of the state this means that the operation of the laws of capital can never operate in free form. Furthermore as capital develops it increasingly requires an increasingly economically active state. This means that under capitalism today the operation of the laws of capital operate in even greater unadulterated form. Consequently in any concrete analysis of the operation of capital the state must be factored into the analysis. Otherwise analysis has an overly abstract character if concrete analysis that is the intention. Marx's Capital (I include here its four volumes) was abstract analysis. It was not intended as an analysis of a particular capitalist society. The problem facing communists is in how. How is capital and the state related and how do the laws of capital operate in the context of a state? There will be always theoretical and analytical difficulties in providing concrete analysis of a particular capitalist economy while this problem has not been successfully resolved. It is in this context that I call for a review of Capital and indeed Marx's thought and politics in general. This is the task that faces communists. It is this problem that explains why there has never been any known concrete analysis of a particular capitalist economy on the basis of Capital. Any attempts claiming to be based on Capital are, loosely speaking, either overly abstract or excessively empirical. The former tends to endeavour, in some way or other, to replicate Capital while the latter tends to abandon Capital. Both are thereby frozen in history. You have witnessed this problem resurfacing again on this list in relation to the Fed's monetarism.On the question of interest rates there was a lack of clarity of the character of the relation of capital to the state: the relationship of the state to interest rates.
