On 5/10/2011 7:48 AM, Jim Devine wrote: > John Vertegaal wrote: >> Could it be that you're missing the point? > > it's quite possible. I've never seen an analysis of this passage > before. Note that it's from a manuscript that Marx never finished or > edited or published, so we shouldn't take it too seriously as a > statement of his opinions. > The only statement Marx makes on this page is that he defers the entire subject of government debt back to Sismondi. He doesn't opine anything himself, except apparently agreeing with Sismondi.
>> Could it be that Sismondi isn't criticizing the debt per se, but >> (not so?) simply saying that the funds loaned to the government >> from a "surplus" are imaginary _after_ having been disbursed by >> the government to government income earners? > > in Marx, wouldn't imaginary (which I assume means the same as > "fictitious") capital refer to market price of the bonds that were > sold to finance the government's deficit? The "capital" is truly > fictitious if the money from the bonds does not go to produce > surplus-value (or redistribute it from some other sector) which would > allow payment of interest on it. > Your readings of Marx, no doubt are far more extensive than mine. Where does he lay out the circumstances whereby money "capital" _is_ indeed causal to the production of surplus value, i.e. non-fictitious? And if he ever does so, what are his assumptions? As far as I understand Marx, _work and work only_, produces (surplus) value; which also happens to be Sismondi's position (and mine as well). Just above the Sismondi footnote he writes that "... money wealth in general,.. has resolved itself into an accumulation of claims of ownership upon labour". That may well lead to "allow[ing] payment of interest on it". But for the division of value after it was produced to be a _cause_ (or factor) of production, a set of assumptions is required with which I'm unfamiliar. >> In other words, as soon as the shortfall in direct spending, >> loaned to the government, is directly spent by government income >> earners, _nothing_ is left. From that point onwards, bondholders >> are periodically getting paid from imaginary capital. > > I don't understand. Please explain. > Money is a unit of the accounting process associated with new wealth creation by work, and disbursed as income for the distribution of that wealth. It has no value independent from the created wealth. So if this income is extracted to become "capital" for buying bonds with, it loses its value as soon as its purchasing power is transferred and consummated by government income earners. The purchasing of bonds doesn't turn the inherent circular nature of the economy into a linear one, regardless of "powerful" institutional convention. The conventional right to claim a portion of future wealth creation is based on something that, in the reality of the economy being a circular means to an exogenously located end, no longer exists. If you believe that the money from bonds can produce surplus-value, you believe that money has a value independently. In that case, define (M) please. >> You were right in emphasizing what you did though. It is crucial to >> understand that the income disbursed during the creation of new >> wealth _by work_, always suffices to distribute that wealth. If the >> moneys aren't there, these can be created out of thin air. They >> aren't causal in any way. In other words, accumulated funds are >> always bogus. They were accumulated in the past through >> deprivation of some kind, and should be treated as such by >> government fiscal policy. > > this is unclear to me. > As I see it, the difficulties arise in the main from assumptions you don't want to let go of. The economic process is indivisibly circular. By assuming that (M) is a determinate quantity that causes _certain_ effects, you cut through the circularity and replace it from that point onward with a linearity. If you agree that the economic process is circular, which you did a couple of times in past conversations with me already, you're contradicting yourself; unless you can come up with a definition of (M) that somehow proves otherwise. John V _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
