Steve Keen:
>> understanding this crisis involves an
>>appreciation of the role of credit money and debt, and this requires a
>>non-commodity theory of money which is antithetic to the commodity approach
>>to money derived from a labour theory of value.
Chris Buford:
>What on earth is the problem about understanding the role of "credit money
>and debt" in the present crisis from the point of view of the labour
>theory of value (to be more correct the Marxist law of value)?
right you are! Marx talks a lot about the role of "credit money and debt"
in volume III of CAPITAL, among other places. It's part of his
non-monetarist business cycle theory (or part-theory, since he didn't
finish it). He wasn't held back by his law of value at all.
I'd say the only problem with Marx's vision on credit money and debt is
that it's limited by his assumption that gold is the only form of
international money (where the value of gold is determined by how much
labor is needed to produce it). During the last 30 years, we've made a
tradition to a dollar standard. That, in turn, is based on the power of the
United States. If the US hegemony collapses and nothing replaces it, then
we'll revert to the gold standard. But in the meantime, we have a
power-based system of money, where the hegemon can claim the privileges of
seigneurage.
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
