I too would like to get away from the distractions about the "greed" of some
capitalists, as if the servants of capital could do anything else than
accumulate. The flamboyant shows of nose-holding while
Congress passes the bale out are  deliberately designed to
disguise what really has happened.



Very helpful that Jim Devine has cited the reference to chapter 3 of Capital
Volume 1
http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch03.htm

The concluding paragraphs of section 2 give the context.

I am not sure however I read the passage cited in quite the same way as
others.
To check, from the final paragraph of this section -


|  One thing is,
| however, requisite; this token must have an objective social validity
| of its own, and this the paper symbol acquires by its forced currency.
| This compulsory action of the State can take effect only within that
| inner sphere of circulation which is coterminous with the territories
| of the community ...

For me the real thing to hang onto here is the "objective social validity"
behind the circulation, (or non-circulation) of tokens.

That is an emerging (and constantly re-emerging) property of a complex
system.
And it is real.

Chris Burford



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Patrick Bond" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Progressive Economics" <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, September 29, 2008 5:01 AM
Subject: Re: [Pen-l] Re: What’s the total amount of money in the whole world
?


| Jim Devine wrote:
| ... The
| general stagnation -- especially after the tech bubble pop and
| recession of 2000-01 -- meant that without a housing bubble, Bush and
| many other policy-makers would have a hard time pointing to prosperity
| in order to justify their misrule.
| Jim, as a guru of finance/real economic processes dating to the 1930s, why
don't you extend this sentence from eight years back to the early 1970s
global-scale beginnings of systematic stagnation and declining GDP growth
(not to mention the non-GDP factors like pollution and nonrenewable resource
depletion)? Why not establish the roots of the current crisis in
overaccumulation and work outwards from there?
|
| I'm getting so bored with greed, corruption, ignorance, deregulation, etc.
explanations for what should be called a capitalist crisis.
|


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