Exchange with Charles Brown:
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Castoriadis, Marx and Aristotle ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
CB:
... Well then , do tell, what _is_ Castoriadis's critique of Marx ? ...
... the concepts nomos and physis derived exactly from a slaveowning society are not the basis for the wisest and scientific understanding of capitalism, so your use of the concepts here means you are entangled in a way you don't want to be. Marx's treatment of the relationship between culture and nature is more in accord with modern anthropological findings than the old Greek confusion.
.... Talk about out-of-date concepts.:>) You are concerned about use of concepts from the 19th Century, and fail to see that concepts from ancient Greece are out of date ? In this respect, Michael Perelman is not accurate when he says your approach moves beyond the time frame of Marx's analysis when the center of capitalism was industrial. Your analysis moves _backward_ in time from Marx to the extent that you use concepts from ancient Greece when slaveowning was the center of the mode of production.
JN [new]:
1. Marx and Aristotle had different views on “equivalence.” Marx argued, as you claim, that Aristotle’s perception could not be applied to the social reality of capitalism. Castordiadis argues that Marx was wrong. I’m not sure why you want me to summarize Castoriadis for you. I don’t see a point arguing with your interpretation of my own interpretation.
2. You believe that if one uses Greek concepts, one is going backward. I suppose, based on this logic, democracy is indeed “out of date,” along with all the Greek philosophy. We should be careful not to use any of it when studying capitalism.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Finance capitalism and the concept of capital ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
JN [new}
Thank you for filling me in on Hobson, Hilferding and Lenin. I have not read Nikitin’s “The Fundamental of Political Economy”, but I hope you don’t imply that it was he who discovered the large interest groups. I’m sure you know that the topic was studied extensively already at the turn of the 20^th century, if not before.
It seems to me that you are trying to knock down a straw man.
We are not claiming to have discovered the existence of “big business,” “corporate coalitions,” “big government” and the “capitalist state.” And we do not claim to be the first to analyze them, separately or jointly. Our argument is that these new historical developments have led to a major revision in Marxism, but not to a serious re-examination of the CONCEPT OF CAPITAL ITSELF. We state so explicitly in “Dominant Capital and the New Wars” (pp. 268-69; see citation at the end of this posting).
As far as we know, analytically, Marxists still think of the accumulation of “real” capital in terms of abstract labor. Capital is said to be augmented by the addition of fresh surplus value; less material depreciation; and subject to a revaluation due to technological obsolescence. Power processes that do not affect the creation of surplus value, depreciation or obsolescence do not bear on accumulation. Based on this view, taxation, public debt, subsidies, inflation, mergers, propaganda, intellectual property rights, wars, transfer pricing, etc – insofar as they do not bear on surplus value / depreciation / obsolescence – could only redistribute the already accumulated capital. They can create new “real” capital or destroy existing “real” capital.
If you or anyone else on the list know of a NEW Marxist concept of capital accumulation – particularly one that incorporates power into the very definition of capital – we will be thrilled to learn about it (seriously).
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Lenin on imperialism ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
JN [new]:
I suppose Lenin had the final word on imperialism. The United States is now the world’s largest importer of capital. Presently, 20% of its assets are owned by foreigners. How long do you think it will take before the foreign imperialists will own it all?
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Differential accumulation and super-profit ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
CB:
Your idea of "differential accumulation" seems to be somewhat equivalent to the Marxist-Leninist concept of "super-profits".
JN [new]
I don’t see how the two concepts are “somewhat equivalent.” The benchmark for “super profit” is “surplus value,” a concept anchored in production and invisible in practice. The benchmark for “differential accumulation” is the “normal rate of return.” This rate already incorporates power and is visible in practice (in other words, insofar as inflation, taxation, war, merger, IPR etc. bear on the normal rate of return, they are already part of our benchmark; they are not part of the surplus-value benchmark. You may like one concept better than the others, but they are not the same.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Addendum on the Marxist concept of capital ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
JN [new]:
From “Dominant Capital and the New Wars” (pp. 268-69):
http://bnarchives.yorku.ca/archive/00000001/ :
“Of course, Marx was the first to note the growth of big business and the formative role of the state in the genesis of capitalism, themes that were later developed by neo-Marxist state theorists and the analysts of monopoly capitalism. But to emphasize these aspects of power was to undermine the labor theory of value. . . . Monopoly Capital theorists took a step forward, by emphasizing the role of centralized power in mature capitalism and by recognizing that such power made labor values more or less irrelevant for the actual trajectory of PRICES AND PROFITS. But they failed to take the next logical step, namely to rethink the implication of power for the CONCEPT OF CAPITAL ITSELF. This failure was candidly acknowledged by Paul Sweezy in his assessment of “Monopoly Capital,” a book which he wrote together with Paul Baran twenty-five years earlier:
[citation from Sweezy;] “Why did Monopoly Capital fail to anticipate the changes in the structure and functioning of the system that have taken place in the last twenty-five years? Basically, I think the answer is that its conceptualization of the capital accumulation process is one-sided and incomplete. In the established tradition of both mainstream and Marxian economics, we treated capital accumulation as being essentially a matter of adding to the stock of existing capital goods. But in reality this is only one aspect of the process. Accumulation is also a matter of adding to the stock of financial assets. The two aspects are of course interrelated, but the nature of this interrelation is problematic to say the least. The traditional way of handling the problem has been in effect to assume it away: for example, buying stocks and bonds (two of the simpler forms of financial assets) is assumed to be merely an indirect way of buying real capital goods. This is hardly ever true, and it can be totally misleading. This is not the place to try to point the way to a more satisfactory conceptualization of the capital accumulation process. It is at best an extremely complicated and difficult problem, and I am frank to say that I have no clues to its solution. But I can say with some confidence that achieving a better understanding of the monopoly capitalist society of today will be possible only on the basis of a more adequate theory of capital accumulation, with special emphasis on the interaction of its real and financial aspects, than we now possess”. (Sweezy 1991)
Jonathan Nitzan http://www.bnarchives.net
