On Sat, 5 Mar 1994 23:25:14 -0500 (EST) Doug Henwood said:
>
>On Fri, 4 Mar 1994, Jim Devine wrote:
>
>> (1) does money-lending lead to the creation of surplus-value or is that
>> simply an illusion arising from the fetishism of commodities?
>> Here, I believe, Steve Keen and I agree: it is the latter. Gil Skillman
>> disagrees with us.
>
>Depends on what's done with the borrowed money, doesn't it? If it is
>invested productively & profitably, yes; if it goes to buy groceries or
>rubies, no. An awful lot of borrowing these days goes to the latter sort
>of spending - not to mention government spending.
>
Steve Keen and I were discussing the sources of surplus-value
rather than its uses. But you're right: how surplus-value is used
is an important issue: this is where Marx writes about productive
vs. unproductive consumption of the surplus-value, accumulation vs.
capitalist consumption (or other types of non-accumulative spending).
It's possible to do productive consumption based on borrowed money,
but usually the creditors insist that borrowers involve their own
capital in the deal.
The "origin of surplus-value" question
in Marx, where he uses the so-called "labor theory of value," and
talks about the exploitation of labor despite the assumption that
exchanges are fair and equal (i.e., price = value), is
primarily a synchronic question. Sorry about the structuralist
jargon: it means "cross-sectional." But the diachronic, dynamic,
historical, time-series dimension is also important: in the end,
literally at the end of volume I of CAPITAL, it turns out that
surplus-value arises due to the historical divorce of the free
proletarians from their control of the means of production and
subsistence. It is this divorce that means that productive
consumption of surplus-value (i.e., accumulation) can be
profitable. (I think that some state spending can also be
productive in this way, but mostly capitalist politics leans
away from the state actually garnering a profit.)
in pen-l solidarity,
Jim Devine BITNET: jndf@lmuacad INTERNET: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Econ. Dept., Loyola Marymount Univ., Los Angeles, CA 90045-2699 USA
310/338-2948 (off); 310/202-6546 (hm); FAX: 310/338-1950
