On Apr 22, 2011, at 9:33 AM, Max Sawicky wrote: > As for MMT
More of that wonderful passage from The Grundrisse: <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch02.htm> We have here reached the fundamental question, which is no longer related to the point of departure. The general question would be this: Can the existing relations of production and the relations of distribution which correspond to them be revolutionized by a change in the instrument of circulation, in the organization of circulation? Further question: Can such a transformation of circulation be undertaken without touching the existing relations of production and the social relations which rest on them? If every such transformation of circulation presupposes changes in other conditions of production and social upheavals, there would naturally follow from this the collapse of the doctrine which proposes tricks of circulation as a way of, on the one hand, avoiding the violent character of these social changes, and, on the other, of making these changes appear to be not a presupposition but a gradual result of the transformations in circulation. An error in this fundamental pre! mise would suffice to prove that a similar misunderstanding has occurred in relation to the inner connections between the relations of production, of distribution and of circulation. The above-mentioned historical case cannot of course decide the matter, because modern credit institutions were as much an effect as a cause of the concentration of capital, since they only form a moment of the latter, and since concentration of wealth is accelerated by a scarcity of circulation (as in ancient Rome) as much as by an increase in the facility of circulation. It should further be examined, or rather it would be part of the general question, whether the different civilized forms of money -- metallic, paper, credit money, labour money (the last-named as the socialist form) -- can accomplish what is demanded of them without suspending the very relation of production which is expressed in the category money, and whether it is not a self-contradictory demand to wish to get around essen! tial determinants of a relation by means of formal modifications? Vari ous forms of money may correspond better to social production in various stages; one form may remedy evils against which another is powerless; but none of them, as long as they remain forms of money, and as long as money remains an essential relation of production, is capable of overcoming the contradictions inherent in the money relation, and can instead only hope to reproduce these contradictions in one or another form. One form of wage labour may correct the abuses of another, but no form of wage labour can correct the abuse of wage labour itself. One lever may overcome the inertia of an immobile object better than another. All of them require inertia to act at all as levers. This general question about the relation of circulation to the other relations of production can naturally be raised only at the end. But, from the outset, it is suspect that Proudhon and his associates never even raise the question in its pure form, but merely engage in occasional declamations about! it. Whenever it is touched on, we shall pay close attention. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
