On 8/13/06, Ted Winslow wrote:
Renaissance commentators traced the conception of usury as money unnaturally reproducing itself to Aristotle, who argued that usury is "the birth of money from money" and then explains that "of all modes of making money this is the most unnatural."
this isn't that far from Marx's view (and Marx quoted Ari approvingly at times). To Marx, usury was M -- M' where M' > M. This produces profit for the individual usurer, but couldn't exist without an exploitative relationship in production in the same social formation (since money alone does not produce a surplus), the production of a surplus either in industrial capital (i.e., M -- C ... P ... C' -- M') or in some non-capitalist mode of exploitation. The pure usurer was a parasite on society. However, the usurer might be an industrial capitalist or a non-capitalist exploiter at the same time as being a money-lender. I dunno about the bit about usury being akin to sodomy. Should those favoring GLBT rights also be defending usurers? -- Jim Devine / "It is however always important to remember that the ability to see things in their correct perspective may be, and often is, divorced from the ability to reason correctly and vice versa. That is why an economist may be a very good theorist and yet talk absolute nonsense...." -- Joseph Schumpeter [edited]
