CB: In Vol. I of _Capital_, Marx seems to find the origin of finance capital in the establishment of the national debt: He coins the term "bankocracy" and refers to financiers:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch31.htm The public debt becomes one of the most powerful levers of primitive accumulation. As with the stroke of an enchanter’s wand, it endows barren money with the power of breeding and thus turns it into capital, without the necessity of its exposing itself to the troubles and risks inseparable from its employment in industry or even in usury. The state creditors actually give nothing away, for the sum lent is transformed into public bonds, easily negotiable, which go on functioning in their hands just as so much hard cash would. But further, apart from the class of lazy annuitants thus created, and from the improvised wealth of the financiers, middlemen between the government and the nation – as also apart from the tax-farmers, merchants, private manufacturers, to whom a good part of every national loan renders the service of a capital fallen from heaven – the national debt has given rise to joint-stock companies, to dealings in negotiable effects of all kinds, and to agiotage, in a word to stock-exchange gambling and the modern bankocracy. From: Carrol Cox <[email protected]> On 7/22/2011 1:34 PM, Doug Henwood wrote: On Jul 22, 2011, at 2:24 PM, Sabri Oncu wrote: Good points. About the second, I blame Marx a bit: He is very difficult to read and writes too long, at least, to my taste. Maybe some Marxists also feel that way so that they get stuck in the first volume of capital. If they keep reading the remaining volumes they may see that Marx did not view finance secondary. That's for sure. There's some great stuff on finance in Capital vol. 3. TSV and the Grundrisse too. Doug I think it is in a review of the new German edition of Vol 3, in HM several years ago before my eyesight collapsed: the reviewer suggested that it wasn't just ill health that prevented Marx from completing Capital. He had decided he needed to know more about finance, and was beginning a study of the American Stock Exchange. I never read it carefully and by the time I got back to it my eyes were gone. It looked interesting, however. Carrol _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
