>Jim writes:
>> Victor, thanks for the analysis of the context of the sentence quoted
>>by Marx. But there are two debates going on here:
>>
>> (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...
>>
>Re (1), I may disagree with Jim and Steve, but not in terms of the
>way Jim states the issue. Money-lending, or usury as Marx termed it
>for pre-capitalist interest capital, can most certainly be the basis
>for the *realization* of surplus value by interest capitalists. Marx
>affirms this repeatedly in the _Grundrisse_, the _Resultate_, and
>_Capital_ Volume III. The connection works like this: capitalist
>lends money--producer uses resources thereby provided to create more
>value than could otherwise have been produced--transfers some of the
>resulting increase to capitalist in the form of interest payment.
>Note, though, that it's still surplus value to the capitalist,
>whether the surplus value was originally produced with the
>wherewithal provided by the capital loan or not.
This story says nothing at all of how the borrower (producer) is able
to produce more value than the cost of production (the value of inputs).
Marx had a pretty good explanation of how this could work out under
capitalism: in a nutshell, the direct producers (wage-earners) are
dependent for their livelihood on the capitalists who control the
means of production. Under previous modes of production, direct
force was applied to solve the problem (sometimes by a usurer, but
then he or she is ceasing to be *pure* usurer). Marx's
theory is that specific societal conditions are necessary to produce
a surplus. What is your theory, Gil? what are the conditions
necessary for the production of a surplus, as opposed to its
redistribution?
>And if anybody thinks the "fetishism of commodities" has anything to
>do with this, or shows that the above is an illusion, then
>s/he have made a fetish of Marx's theory of the fetishism of
>commodities.
You may remember, Gil, that the quote about money yielding surplus-
value that Steve Keen cited was in the context of more than a page
of Marx using this fetishism language which you seem to abhor.
The statement concerning what Steve and I agree on is *simply
a summary of what Marx was saying there* (or at least what Steve
I thought he was saying there). You may be right that
Marx himself had a fetish of the theory of the fetishism of
commodities. In fact, I *totally* agree. Marx's three
volumes of CAPITAL are structured about the fetishism of commodities
(or what he terms the illusions created by competition toward the
end of volume III). In volume I, he *assumes* that prices are
proportional to values in order to cut through commodity fetishism.
(I think his strategy here was silly, but that's irrelevant here.)
There he deals with only abstract capital and (to a lesser extent)
abstract wage-labor. Then, step by step, he introduces differences
within the capitalist class
(along with the differences among commodities)
and then relationships among these different parts, to approach
describing what Marx considers to be the fetishized appearances
that the ordinary participants in the capitalist system perceive
(in volume III: see the first page). Volume III ends with a
roaring critique of fetishized consciousness. To my mind,
one cannot understand CAPITAL if one doesn't realize how obsessed
Marx was with commodity fetishism. One can't understand the
so-called labor theory of value.
Commodity fetishism, for the uninitiated, can be explained in
very simple terms. One way of looking at it is in terms of
micro vs. macro. On the micro level, the money-lender sees his
or her interest income as a personal achievement, a return for
a service rendered, or what-not. But the lender does not see the
macro-societal preconditions that are necessary for the receipt
of interest: under capitalism, this refers to the societal divorce
of the direct producers from ownership of the means of subsistence
and production and their resultant inability to survive without
working under the capitalists. As Marx said somewhere in CAPITAL
(more eloquently than I), workers pay capitalists surplus-value
so that they (the workers) can survive. In Marx's theory, with
which I agree (at least on this point), the interest received
by the money-lender represents a claim on surplus-value produced
under the aegis of other capitalists. The ignorance of these
societal conditions is a crude way of summarizing what Marx
meant by comm. fet. (NB: this ignorance is not a matter of
simple "false consciousness." Rather, it comes from looking at
a social system from the inside, or by just looking at surface
appearances (the exchange of commodities).)
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
