On 6/15/08, Ted Winslow <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > How can "financialisation" take over as a source of profits when the only > source of profits is surplus value extraction? >
I agree that the "take over" part is misleading. Which came first: the commodity of labor power or social domination? In a literal reading of financial instruments, each dollar of value represents part of some "real" asset. Two problems arise. One is that the image of the asset can, in theory at least, be infinitely reproduced through options of some kind. The other is that the value of the real asset is reciprocally determined by the fluctuating value of the representative financial instrument. In the case of "surplus value", we're talking about the unique features of the "commodity" of labor power. Surplus value extraction is only ever the source of profits within a definitive system in which the private ownership of financial assets legitimizes the buying and selling of labor power as a commodity. So financialization has to be there from the get go. Surplus value is first "realized" as profit in exchange and then retrofitted onto the labor process from whence the commodity came. In that world, time's arrow not only stands still, but flies backward! I think what is needed is some kind of articulation of "finance" that distinguishes between the formal, real and universal subsumption of "property" to the accumulation process (just as Marx distinguished between the formal and real subsumption of labor to capital in the process of production). -- Sandwichman _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list pen-l@lists.csuchico.edu https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
