At 10:47 21/10/99 +0100, Lew wrote:
>My understanding of this situation is that many foreign creditors would
>only accept gold as payment, which was different to the British
>government funding of the Whites through gold. In any case, I know of no
>evidence that Lenin borrowed ideas on gold and currency from Keynes.
It may be that there was a close correspondence between the practice of
Keynes and of Lenin in white and red Russia, and neither was regarded as
especially controversial at the time.
>On Marx:
>>Of course. But his models of capitalism are hypothesised as existing in one
>>state. I am not aware that he centrally discussed the problem of the uneven
>>exchange of value from the trade between countries with different levels of
>>the means of production and different values of labour power. If he did,
>>can someone please supply the reference?
>
>See _Capital_, Volume 1, the section on "The Primitive Accumulation of
>Capital". Preobrazhensky applied this analysis to the Soviet economy
>under the title "Primitive Socialist Accumulation."
Sounds an interesting lead. Can you be more specific? There are 8 chapters
in this section.
Meanwhile I have found an argument in Capital Volume 2 chapter 14, The Time
of Circulation.
This may help to explain the uneven accumulation of capital on a world
scale and the growing disparity of wealth between developed and less
developed countries:
"All branches of production which by the nature of their product are
dependent mainly on local consumption, such as breweries, are therefore
developed the the greatest extent in the principal centres of population.
The more rapid turnover of capital here compensates in part for the
circumstances that a number of conditions of production, building lots,
etc, are more expensive.
... The mere relative length of the transit of the commodities from their
place of production to their market produces a difference in the first part
of the circulation time, the selling time, but also in its second part, the
reconversion of the money into the elements of the productive capital, the
buying time."
>>When a capitalist economy is not working at full capacity, which is most of
>>the time, I would have thought that marxists could agree with Keynesians
>>that an increase in economic activity to bring more labour power into the
>>productive forces would temporarily increase the amount of exchange value
>>in the country.
>
>By "an increase in economic activity" I assume you mean through an
>increase in government spending. This may or may not lead to a temporary
>increase in economic activity, depending on the stage of the trade cycle
>and the general level of profitability. One consequence of this policy
>(which Keynes acknowledged) would be a reduction of workers real wages
>as prices rise. Most emphatically: Marxists do not agree with Keynesians
>on *anything*.
That is surprising. Do they both not purport to be addressing material
reality? If so it would be surprising if there is not some degree of
overlap in their analyses. Besides I thought you said
>>Lenin, like most leftists, was a Keynesian in his economics, even if he
>>predates him slightly.
>>The trouble always comes that capital cannot go on
>>accumulating on this basis because of a crisis of overproduction when it
>>comes up against the limited purchasing power of the masses. This can only
>>be eased by the destruction of a portion of capital. The very best outcome
>>is this happens gradually and in step with the accumulation of newer
>>sectors of the economy, perhaps aided by an influx of value from poorer
>>countries, perhaps in the form of cheaper immigrant labour power, or
>>cheaper imported raw materials.
>
>An underconsumptionist view of capitalism, and one which Marx at times
>had some sympathy with.
I do not accept your characterisation of my paragraph as
underconsumptionist. I argued that a socialist state would have to ensure
the regular devaluation of capital relative to the total productive social
labour of the society, otherwise there would be crises. That is why
control of finance capital is crucial now for the project of world wide
socialism, even if we can and must compromise about industrial capital.
Chris Burford
London
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