Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Evidence please. Productive . Industrial capital U have the
WLSeems to me you do in fact get the distinction between productive capital and speculative capital. A good Ponzi scheme is not back until it collapses. Profits to be made from that side of the business constituting productive capital has never been bad business. I never said I didn't get such a distinction (although why do I not like that term 'productive' capital? Will get back to you about that.) For the purposes of analysis Marx, Lenin, Veblen and Keynes all make such a distinction. I don't think any would deny how they overlap in the 'magic of profit-taking' of capitalism. Industrial capitalists like what the UK, US had in the 19th century might not exist today (afterall, they were people in the 19th century), but we can still use the term 'industrial capital'. I just refuse to go over the ontological or exegetical deepends (as so many Marxists are wont to do). But I do detect a thesis in your posts WL. I just don't know that it means anyone else is wrong about the current crisis of capital. CJ ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Evidence please. Productive . Industrial capital U have...
In a message dated 1/7/2009 12:28:16 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, jann...@gmail.com writes: I'm not sure I'm following your arguments. One, who here has said that nothing has changed since Lenin? WL: CB . . . repeatedly and directly . . . in his line of arguing the existence of industrial capital and Lenin's Imperialism. And in statement that American society is not qualitatively different from feudal Russia. Russia was after all basically feudal in its economic and social structures when Lenin died. America was qualitatively different from Russia when Lenin was alive. Some of the discussion is sectarian on both sides but not the majority of it. I think. The matter of who rules today is going to be important with Obama coming into office. One cannot push him to the left. He is finance capital representative left to tap dance between the whims of productive and non-productive capital. Get ready for advocacy of the anti-monopoly coalition. It is the Democratic party that has to be isolated and their grip over the workers broken. Obama has already had his day in the sun by being elected. Give it six months. WL **New year...new news. Be the first to know what is making headlines. (http://www.aol.com/?ncid=emlcntaolcom0026) ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Evidence please. Productive . Industrial capital U have the
I guess one question here is why Ford, Chrysler and GM didn't re-invest profits into accumulating their industrial capital. One, if the goal was to reach a certain level of production to stay competitive in the world (what is the benchmark now, 2 million vehicles per year?), the most obvious solution was to acquire stakes in and control of other car companies and attempt integration of production. Two, this very easily moves over to finance and speculative finance because of the way such deals were run by investment banks able to put together the 'leverage' to finance the deals (while taking a huge cut for themselves). Three, what is most surprising though is how these companies all say at the same time that they are in effect 'bankrupt' and need federal loans to stay solvent. So did management as ownership strip out so much money from these companies to enrich themselves (so they could, for example, speculate on other things)? So much for the idea that management even tries to act in the best interest of the company. A different area of inquiry and analysis is how so much of the political economies we produce in have become owned by 'holding companies', which ultimately are owned by private equity groups and things like hedge funds (who invest for 'institutional investors'), while these private equity groups and hedge funds are dominated by US and UK 'interests'. CJ ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Evidence please. Productive . Industrial capital U have the
If only this guy would read Marx. No wait, that would just make him another HCKL or something similar to that. BTW, I noticed one of the more famous private equity groups, Carlyle Group, is trying to put together big deals in overseas universities. I guess they think 'American-quality' higher education is the next big wave. And Laureate is the model. http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/09282007/watch.html BILL MOYERS: This story in THE NEW YORK TIMES this week. What do you think when you read a story like that? JOHN BOGLE: Well, first, it's a national disgrace. Simply put. And there are some things that must be entrusted to government and some things that must be entrusted to private enterprise. And what we see there, at least in my judgment, is that we've taken medical care, healthcare and going from making it a profession in which the patient is the object of the game — preserving the patient first do no harm as Hippocrates would say or would have said and turn that into a business. And so, it's a bottom line. I've often said we're in a bottom line society. We're measuring the wrong bottom line. BILL MOYERS:What does it say to you that the real owners of the nursing home, the private investors have created this maze of smoke and mirrors that make it virtually impossible to find out who the owners really are? JOHN BOGLE:Well, that's so typical of much that's going on in American finance, the way we structure these financial instruments, which are stock certificates or debt instruments. But it's the same thing of the removal of your friendly, local neighborhood bank holding the mortgage and being able to work with you when you fall on hard times to some unnamed, often unknown, financial institution who couldn't care less. BILL MOYERS:These private equity firms that own these nursing homes wouldn't even talk to THE NEW YORK TIMES. They won't talk to reporters. I mean, there's no accountability to the public. JOHN BOGLE: There's no accountability. And it's wrong. It's fundamentally a blight on our society. BILL MOYERS:What does it say that big private money can operate so secretly, with so little accountability, that the people who are hurt by it, the residents in the nursing home have no recourse? JOHN BOGLE:It says something very bad about American society. And you wonder — the first question anybody would have after reading the article — how in God's name do they get away with that? Well, we have all these attorneys that are capable of devising complex instruments, and money managers who are capable of devising highly complex financial schemes. And there's kind of no one to answer to the call of duty at the end of it. BILL MOYERS: And we're talking about some of the most powerful names in the business. I mean, these are formidable forces, right? JOHN BOGLE: They're formidable forces. But, I'm afraid-- BILL MOYERS: Respectable citizens, right? JOHN BOGLE: Well, I mean, I don't know about that. But, it's certainly -- it's easy to say that greed is taking — playing a part — greed has a role in a capitalistic society. But, not the dominant role and-- BILL MOYERS: What should be the dominant? What is the job of capitalism? JOHN BOGLE:Well, ultimately, the job of capitalism is to serve the consumer. Serve the citizenry. You're allowed to make a profit for that. But, you've got to provide good products and services at fair prices. And that's the long term, that's what businesses do in the long term. The businesses that have endured in America have done that and done that successfully. But, in the short term, there's all these financial machinations in which people can get very rich in a very short period of time by creating highly complex financial instruments, providing services that can be cut back easily as in the hospital article, not measuring up to basically their duty. We all know that in professions, the idea has been service to the client before service to self. That's what a profession is. That's what medicine was. That's what accountancy was. That's what attorneys used to be. That's what trusteeship used to be inside the mutual fund industry. But, we've moved from that to a big capital accumulation — self interest — creating wealth for the providers of these services when the providers of these services are in fact subtracting value from society. So, it doesn't work. BILL MOYERS:So, the private equity nursing homes have added to their wealth. But, they've subtracted from society the care for people who need it. JOHN BOGLE: That is exactly correct. Not good. BILL MOYERS:THE WALL STREET JOURNAL editorial page celebrates what it called the animal spirits of business. And as if that's the heart of capitalism. What do you think about that? JOHN BOGLE:Well, I like the animal spirits of business. I mean Lord Keynes told us about animal spirits. And it comes out of a part of his work that says, You know, all the precise numbers and the perspectives mean nothing. What determines the
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Evidence please. Productive . Industrial capital U have...
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/ ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Evidence please. Productive . Industrial capital U have the
And as the past 8 years (and before as well) have shown, MILITARISM really hasn't left the 'equation' and in fact has grown even more immense in its hold on the US. Of course we Marxists already knew this, but here is the analysis showing up in American academia (albeit from someone who is not Marxist but Marxist ideas permeate non-Marxist discourse). Much better than the Chalmers Johnson books from what I can tell looking at copies online (read-only, so I can't quote). It's in my Amazon shopping cart now. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0230602282/ref=ord_cart_shr?_encoding=UTF8m=ATVPDKIKX0DERv=glance Review Ismael Hossein-zadeh's penetrating analysis of the role of the military-industrial complex in driving U.S. foreign policy and rearranging domestic priorities could not be more timely. With U.S. military spending at levels higher than the peak years of the Vietnam War, Hossein-zadeh provides the most cogent explanation yet of how we got to this point.--William D. Hartung, Senior Research Fellow, World Policy Institute at the New School America has been overrun not by military force, but by the force of militarism. Using statistics, analysis and historical references, Hossein-zadeh reveals the troubling picture that America may have succumbed to militarism despite the warnings of Washington, Eisenhower and Butler. Hossein-zadeh reveals the true cost of Pentagon programs by adjusting the federal budget for Social Security and unmasking the insatiable, consuming maw of spending run amok. He reveals how budgetary militarism is defeating the New Deal, even as it musters a long term assault on the Bill of Rights and other foundations of American democracy. The Political Economy of U.S. Militarism is a must-read for patriots concerned about the future of the United States. --Grant F. Smith, Director of Research, Institute for Research, Middle Eastern Policy Writing in a scholarly but accessible manner, Ismael Hossein-zadeh provides an impressive overview of policy trends, their historical background and their political and economic influences. In examining the recent tendencies towards war and militaristic responses to foreign policy issues, the author looks past the now dominant neo-conservative justifications, focusing on the powerful interests that lie beneath.--David Gold, Associate Professor, International Affairs Program, The New School Ismael Hossein-zadeh has produced an original and powerful synthesis of previous explanations of contemporary U.S. militarism. He locates the relevant economic, political, and ideological forces within a power-elite military-industrial complex framework firmly grounded in a structural analysis of capital accumulation. By steering past the twin dangers of conspiracy theory and economic reductionism, this framework clearly reveals the parasitic, class-biased, and systemic character of the Bush administration's unilateralism. Along the way, Hossein-zadeh provides a challenging analysis of the cyclical fluctuations of U.S. military spending since World War II.--Paul Burkett, Professor of Economics, Indiana State University Product Description This wide-ranging, interdisciplinary analysis blends history, economics, and politics to challenge most of the prevailing accounts of the rise of U.S. militarism. While acknowledging the contributory role of some of the most widely-cited culprits (big oil, neoconservative ideology, the Zionist lobby, and President Bush's world outlook), this study explores the bigger, but largely submerged, picture: the political economy of war and militarism. The study is unique not only for its thorough examination of the economics of military spending, but also for its careful analysis of a series of closely related topics (petroleum, geopolitics, imperialism, terrorism, religious fundamentalism, the war in Iraq, and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict) that may appear as digressions but, in fact, help shed more light on the main investigation. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Evidence please. Productive . Industrial capital U have the
The ideas that nothing has changed since Lenin is just intellectual laziness and a refusal to admit that things change at best and dogmatism at worse. GMAC not GM is the master of GM. GMAC is GM. . Dude, its all finance capital. I'm not sure I'm following your arguments. One, who here has said that nothing has changed since Lenin? Two, who here has said we should ignore 'finance capitalism' and speculation? Three, the categories you are talking about are analytic ones, not ontological ones. I'm not even sure they get to the psychological motive of most capitalists. They simply describe the way capital functions in the transformative social process. Often investors have only one motive (they have been all but guaranteed a 12-20% annual return on their investment, even more if the window given is 3-5 years). Their money goes towards industrial and financial ends. In times of a bubble, since everyone wants that 12-20% return they put their money into whatever they think will get them that higher return. If manufacturing cars in Detroit would get that--or at least convince them it could get that--they would put their money there. Consider the Madoff scandal. Two years ago he was one of the go-to guys who could get investors that high rate of return. Now he is an alleged Ponzi scheme broker. What is the difference between now and two years ago? No one believes in his scheme anymore. I'm not sure if such speculative craziness goes all the way back to the Tulip Bubble, but it has been in world capitalism for quite some time. It's main attraction? The higher rate of return promised. Why do people become convinced? Because they saw so-and-so and so-and-so-and-so get 20% last year. Whether it is individual investors or CALPERS or Harvard, the thinking is the same and is exploited the same. So could you re-state what you are trying to argue here? I just don't get it. CJ ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Evidence please. Productive . Industrial capital U have...
Seems to me you do in fact get the distinction between productive capital and speculative capital. A good Ponzi scheme is not back until it collapses. Profits to be made from that side of the business constituting productive capital has never been bad business. On the other hand this category called industrial capital sector or a crack between industrial capital and finance (finance!!) is well . . . Industry = industrial capital. How amusing. The industrial capitalists can be found in your local museum, standing to the left of the merchant capitalist. Wait a minute. Because GE also sells commodities and some one must sell these commodities to the consumer, its capital is really a form of merchant capital because someone brought the product from GE, and sold it to someone else. Buy such a thinking man a beer. I did follow some of the links CB provided and it seem to me he had not read them. Waistline In a message dated 1/7/2009 1:12:16 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, jann...@gmail.com writes: Speculation as speculative capital, denotes something different than speculation - risk taking, on the part of finance capital during the era of Lenin. Speculative capital as a concept means investment and risk taking on the basis of financial institutions more than less detached from production of commodities. Speculative capital as a form and sector of capital rises to domination on the basis of revolution in the productive forces. The irony is--I would bet my money!--that so much money pours into speculative finance because the motive behind moving the money is thinking like this: this is a surer and higher return on my money than anything else, including direct investment into something producing a good or service. Take GE, it makes most of its money (or at least up until recently) as a straightforward finance capital firm through its financial arms. It also makes money manufacturing for military, governments or for markets where it almost enjoys a monopoly. And one of the best ways to make money manufacturing for the US military is simply to win the big contract and then squeeze profits out of all the sub-contractors who actually do all the work. CJ **New year...new news. Be the first to know what is making headlines. (http://www.aol.com/?ncid=emlcntaolcom0026) ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
