Hello,
I found this list via Jim Farmelant's post on Marxmail. After reading
Waistline's arguments about the macro economic composition of capital and his
brave challenge that provokes us to provide evidence to the existence of the
"SECTOR" called "industrial capital", eventually I decided to subscribe to the
list and post a small contribution to the debate.
I think the fundamental error of Waistline's claim resides in confusion of
dialectical method with the descriptive dimension of dialectical analysis.
Therefore, he takes the concepts literally whereas their purpose is to reflect
diverse forms of the object in its dialectical movement.
When Marx accuses the political economy for throwing commercial capital and
industrial capital together and overlooking the characteristics of former, he
does not, in any sense, blame them for neglecting the categorical division of
capital but draws attention to the diverse forms of capital in the operation of
capitalist accumulation.
For instance, in the vol. 3 of Capital, Marx says, "...our purpose, which is to
define the specific difference of this special form of capital":
"We have explained (Book II, Chapter VI, "The Costs of Circulation,") to what
extent the transport industry, storage and distribution of commodities in a
distributable form, may be regarded as production processes continuing within
the process of circulation. These episodes incidental to the circulation of
commodity-capital are sometimes confused with the distinct functions of
merchant's or commercial capital. Sometimes they are, indeed, practically bound
up with these distinct, specific functions, although with the development of
the social division of labour the function of merchant's capital evolves in a
pure form, i.e., divorced from those real functions, and independent of them.
Those functions are therefore irrelevant to our purpose, which is to define the
specific difference of this special form of capital. In so far as capital
solely employed in the circulation process, special commercial capital, partly
combines those functions with its specific
ones, it does not appear in its pure form. We obtain its pure form after
stripping it of all these incidental functions."
So when Marx applies the concepts such as, "industrial capital", "industrial
capitalists", "fictitious capital", "commercial capitalists" and so on, he
designates singular forms of capital in the movement of its being but not the
specific categorical divisions of capital.
With this in mind, also when Lenin invoked the "financial capital" or when
Sweezy, talked about "the triumph of financial capital" they were merely
describing the distinctive characteristics of a specific form which is the core
of imperialist exploitation.
I think the answer of Waistline's question is quite easy: There is no such a
thing as "industrial capital sector" or industrial capital as a subdivision in
the totality of capital. And in this sense, there is no financial capital too.
The supposed difficulty of this question rises on the bizarre confusion about
categories and forms.
Mehmet Çagatay
http://weblogmca.blogspot.com/
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