Re: Re: Re: Re: Gunder Frank
Joanna : It may be intellectually dishonest, but it forwards the Xtian and conservative view that poverty and inequity is not created, it is inherent in human existence and can never be abolished. A comforting view to some. Rep: Not at all, Joanna: empoverishment is inherent to accumulation process. But which is simplism inherent to? RK
Re: Gunder Frank
I noticed that the work of Gunder Frank is featured on the PEN-L archives page, and i read a few samples wherein he counters wallerstein with the idea that the world-system is 5000 years old, not 500 years. I was wondering -- would anyone on the list be willing to give me a short summary on how he defines exploitation through the different periods of imperialism in the past 5000 -- i.e., is the exploitation practiced by the Roman ruling elite the same as the exploitation practiced by our own capitalists? If not, how does it differ? Or, instead of a summary, some direction toward where i can locate such information for myself? thanks so much nancy - Guillermo Algaze traces back the world system to more than 3000 BC, several centuries before Sargon: The Uruk World System, Chicago University Press, 1993, and some papers at http://cas.uchicago.edu/workshops/arch/ There were manufactures in Uruk, devoted to exports against raw materials from the periphery (flint, obsidien, stone, then metals and timber). Uruk World System was expanded up to the sources of Tiger and Euphrate. It shows the historical constant of the expanding trade of all world systems: an asymmetric exchange of goods that are reproducible on the spot, against materials that are not reproducible and must be purchased or conquired farer and farer. Here accumulation, there empoverishment, and always the Luxemburgist relationship accumulation/expansion. RK
Re: Re: Re: Gunder Frank
The historical constant in human history - once we presuppose the existence of human beings, is best understood from the standpoint of the progressive development of the productive forces as distinct from trade. Trade or distribution operates within the boundary of that, which is available to be traded. Rep: So, trade began when there was something available to be traded. Men produced something to be traded, then they invented trade. Pure metaphysics. And it is historically wrong. When human industry knows only flint, obsidian, bones and wood, there are already wide areas of organized trading nets with populations acting as intermediates (Servet: Ordre sauvage et paléomarchand, in Sauvages et ensauvagés, Lyon, Presses Universitaires de Lyon, 1980). Marx-Engels's intuition of trade and productivity dialectic was a conceptual progress in their time, but it is time now to improve it. Two economic features at the begining of civilization: settlement and industry of tools and weapons. Settlement needs conservation and storage of food, that is salt in huge quantities. Industry of tools and weapons needs flint, then obsidian for the step of miniaturization. Salt deposits are not reproducible, nor are flint and obsidian ones. The deposits must be searched ever farer and farer from the settled populations. The invention of trade solves this contradiction. In other words, trade does not result from an increase in productivity, but from a decreasing productivity. Increase in productivity, in industry of tools, in agriculture and in final products comes later, as an answer to the decreasing productivity of mines and extension of transport lines. Did you never ask yourself why the most technical progresses have always been mainly realized in relation to transport and communication? It is true that the name Sargon I is understood in connection with a revolution in the societal infrastructure. As ruler of the Akkadians Sargon is currently understood to have been a talented administrator and military leader who was perhaps the first one to recruit regular troops from among peasants in the village communes. These peasants were later to receive plots of land as payment for their military service. Relying on these troops Sargon carried out a successful series of military campaigns military. His uniting Mesopotamia under his leadership and consequently certain trade routes, should not and cannot be understood properly as modern trade. Rep: Sargon empire is the first empire of the known history. It comes after at least 1 thousand years of trade of Sumer (Uruk World System) and merely reconquires the trading net and area of Sumer after their desintegration. But Sargon invents something new: imperialism. First, there was trade, after what imperialism, then and onward combination of both. But the aim is always the same: continuity in providing raw materials. As for the social structure, it is not very different that the one of Uruk and Ur worlds. What is new is the farmer-soldier. Markets are exceptionally limited and extremely local. It seems to me that the word market in this context means trade routes and there can be no talk of money as capital. Rep: Sorry, it is wrong. There do were money as capital. Not already a legal one, but an account unit: the silver sicle (today the Israelian sheckel reminds the Mesopotamian sicle). Capital was made of clay acknowledgments of debt, and of silver and other metals. I suggest to you to read the book of Garelli on the Assyrian trade in Cappadocce (Istanbul, Institut Français d' Archéologie, 1963). You will discover that they had invented even the remote payments (3000 years before the Lombards) and the compensation. Society leaps forward and we are in the first phase of such an evolutionary leap. Are you sure that leaps always go forward? Why? Because the needles of the watch run always in the same way? Is it one of God's laws? Don't you see the regression of civilization since this last thirty years? seems to me to be intellectually dishonest by confusing radically distinct epochs in human history. All epoch in history are composed of time frames wherein the space in a system is filled as the prelude to the evolutionary leap. This process is the most elementary understanding of the dialectic of the leap and evolutionary leap. Rep: You first invent artificially a division of history, without any historical demonstration (as Marx and Engels did and for that reason failed to explain history), after what you qualify as intellectally dishonest the people who do not accept your dogma as a revealed truth. That is dishonest, and that is the attitude of fanatics. RK
Re: .Re: exogenous/endogenous accumulation
Nancy wrote: Re: the first, i did not understand imperialism the highest stage of capitalism to be saying that at all. instead, i understood it as saying that imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism, begins when monopoly capitalism begins, presumably because the corporations have grown so powerful that they can collaborate with one another instead of fighting amongst themselves, their power allowing them to reach out and find new lands and new people to exploit, i.e., colonialism. - Imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism is Lenin's invention, without any historical basis, for imperialism does exist since Sargon the First (2300 BC), through Egypt, Elam, Babylon, Athens, Rome, 16th-century Europe, 19th-and -20th-centuries England, France, Germany and Russia, the USA in America and Pacific, then the last occidental empire centered on Wall-Street. And the list is not exhaustive. The constant that caracterizes all historical imperialisms is an accumulation, within urban centers, of wealth that is extracted from the conquired countries (raw materials) and labor attracted by the cities or exploited on the spot. In other words, accumulation needs expansion. In that respect, Rosa Luxemburg's theory fits better with history than Lenin's. It establishes a relationship of organic necessity between imperialism and accumulation. Additionnally, the expansion is not only a geographical one, but a sociological one, too. Ruin of peasants pushed to the town as wage-earners, as well as the current ruin of mean classes process attest this other dimension of capitalism expansion. On the contrary, Lenin's theory presupposes propensity and voluntarism of capitalists and capitalism for ever more profit, that is a behavioristic hypothesis, related to human nature metaphysics. Re: the second, could you please explain a bit more? How can you build socialism within capitalism? - Of course, I cannot. And social-democrats could not, too. I meant that the belief in an endogenous realization of surplus-value gathers Leninism and persisting social-democracy on the same side. If accumulation can be endogenous, it has no limit. Capitalism can indefinitely accumulate within a closed area and does not need to expand through the society and the world. There are then two possibilities: either to build socialism within capitalism, or to politically subvert capitalism. Persisting social democrats choosed the first way, while shismatic Leninists choosed the second way. We can today realize that both ways have been and still are historical failures and therefore were wrong. On the contrary, if realization of surplus value is exogenous, the social-democracy vs Leninism problems does not exist. Whatever be the way of political evolution or revolution, it must confront the crises and the limit of the accumulation process. By the way, the old accusation of fatalism against Rosa Luxemburg is irrelevant, as all kind of animal economy tend toward space limits, first provisional then definitive. And it is true of mankind's production, consumption and accumulation, too. It is the life law of entropy. The only difference, between mankind and other animal species is that the former is able to become aware of its limits. So that the fatality is not inevitable. It is a matter of collective conscience. The question is: will the men be collectively clever enough to realize entropy process and to act against it? Now, the current collective madness is not very encouraging to answer YES. Whatever it be, the solution can not arise from a relentless ratiocination around Leninist obsolete dogmas. i must confess that i was not able to figure out the algebraic proof given by Luxemburg in her book. would you have knowledge of any resources that might help one understand the same? - I suggest to you to manage with the algebraic problem, through the question Marx asked but could never answer: where does the money of surplus-value come from? Rosa Luxemburg gave only a beginning of answer: the mobilization of an additional external workforce. As for the money, it is first a pure money issue (the wages of the additional mobilization plus some commissions and interests) becoming a profit when it has completed its cycle of puting into debt (investment) and rescuing from debt corresponding to the production and trading cycle of any asset. So accumulation process escapes the metaphysic ability of savers to decide what is to be invested and what is to be consumed (again a dropping behavioristic hypothesis). Investment is nothing but consumption, and Marx's so-called surplus-value is nothing but consumption of capitalists and of all kind of their relatives and servants, and of public expenses. That means that the accumulated profit to capital does not depend on the labor that is not paid to the workers, but on the increase in the number of workers. That is on economic growth needing expansion. Hopping that my English writing is not too misleading,
Re: exogeneous/endogenous accumulation
nancy brumback wrote: Re: the imperialism discussion of a few days ago, i was wondering if the list had any comments about my question about the lenin-luxemburg disagreement about the nature of imperialism. I recently studied up on this disagreement. as far as i could make out, while lenin believes that imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism, luxemburg believes that imperialism is innate in capitalism because accumulation of capital is impossible without inputs from non-capitalist sources. She did point out that Marx considered his political economy to be taking place in a closed system, and i looked up her reference which i can't put my fingers on just this instant but will look it up if anyone wants it. i thought it made a lot of sense from just considering the definition of capitalist exploitation -- being paid less than your labor is worth. She did point out that Marx considered his political economy to be taking place in a closed system, and i looked up her reference which i can't put my fingers on just this instant but will look it up if anyone wants it. - Of course, Nancy, endogenous or exogenous accumulation is the crucial point of Marxism. I tried to point it out on this list, and refering to a recent dispute on it about market's supposed virtues, I apologize to be forced to repeat myself, but nobody pertinently answered my arguments. For Lenin, imperialism is motivated by the race to a superprofit. For Rosa Luxemburg, it is motivated by the accumulation process which needs relentless expansion. For the former, imperialism is the product of the behaviour of capitalists looking for ever more profit. For the latter, it is the product of an organic necessity. This contradiction has its origin in the problem of realizing the surplus-value. Trying to explain the extended reproduction of capital by the addition of an endogenous profit, Marx did not succeed. Rosa Luxemburg discovered this failure and resolved the problem by the exogenous surplus-value realization, that is by an expansion into geographical and sociological spaces. There is no doubt that current Globalization's events agree with Rosa Luxemburg's theory. Lenin's theory is reducible to the human-nature metaphysics, while Rosa Luxemburg's continues the scientific Marxism that have been ignored, even censored by both reformists and Leninists for almost ninety years. It is besides noticeable that the belief in an endogenous realizing surplus value gathers, on the same side, the persisting social-democracts and the Marxist-Leninists (including Trotskysts). If surplus value realization is endogenous, capitalism does not need any expansion and it has no limit in accumulating within a closed area. So that two solutions are possible: either to build socialism within capitalism, or to subvert this latter. Such is the difference, but basically these two streams continue the same theoretical deadlock. On the other hand, the exogenous realizing surplus value allows a theoretical approach of both imperialism history and today's Globalization, by taking together Luxemburg's and Wallerstein's works. In a closed system, the same people who work for the capitalists also buy the wares of the capitalists in order to live. If the workers are consistently paid less than their labor is worth, doesn't it follow that over time, their buying power will consistently decrease? Until the capitalists must break out of the closed system to keep from being killed by the shrinkage of their markets? I wish that your objection help some Marxists still steeped in piety begining to think by themselves. What I can add, refering to my own works, is that the problem is solved by separating the profit of capital from the profit of capitalists. The former is exogenous, as Rosa Luxemburg discovered it, and the latter is a simple tribute to support capitalists' lives, not at all a surplus value. Besides, when He was evolving in the falling profit rate theory, Marx treated his surplus-value rate as an external given, not at all as an explanatory variable. What Leninists never recognized. Regards, Romain Kroês
Re: Re: core vs. periphery
Everyone knows that the US balance of payment deficit an engine of growth on the Asia-Pacific region and China is biggest beneficiary there. What domination/subordination model is involved here? Ulhas - US trade balance deficit means that the USA pays only 75% of its importations. The counterpart of the 25% gap is an obliged investment, that is a transfer of capital, from the creditors, into the economy of the USA. A quantum of labor which is not paid. Such is the domination/subordination model. RK
Re: e: Imperialism in decline?
I am not sure Marxists have a coherent theory of contemporary Imperialism. Is Lenin's theory of imperialism relevant today? Ulhas Not only Marxists have no coherent theory of contemporary Imperialism, but they are prisoners of a contradiction between Lenin's theory and Rosa Luxemburg's. For Lenin, imperialism is motivated by the race to a superprofit. For Rosa Luxemburg, it is motivated by the accumulation process which needs relentless expansion. For the former, imperialism is the product of the behaviour of capitalists looking for ever more profit. For the latter, it is the product of an organic necessity. This contradiction has its origin in the problem of realizing the surplus-value. Trying to explain the extended reproduction of capital by the addition of an endogenous profit, Marx did not succeed. Rosa Luxemburg discovered this failure and resolved the problem by the exogenous surplus-value realization, that is by an expansion into geographical and sociological spaces. There is no doubt that the current Globalization agrees with Rosa Luxemburg. Lenin's theory is reducible to the human-nature metaphysics, while Rosa Luxemburg's continues the scientific Marxism that have been ignored, even censored by both reformists and Leninists for almost ninety years. It is besides noticeable that the belief in an endogenous realizing surplus value gathers, on the same side, the persisting social-democracts and the Marxist-Leninists (including Trotskysts). If surplus value realization is endogenous, capitalism does not need any expansion and it has no limit in accumulating within a closed area. So that two solutions are possible: either to build socialism within capitalism, or to subvert this latter. Such is the difference, but basically these two streams continue the same theoretical deadlock. On the other hand, the exogenous realizing surplus value allows a theoretical approach of both imperialism history and today's Globalization, by taking together Luxemburg's and Wallerstein's works. RK
Re: Re: Re: e: Imperialism in decline?
Does the idea of the exogenous realising of surplus value imply the existence non-capitalist modes of production? Are there any such geographical and sociological spaces left in any part of the world for the realisation surplus value? Ulhas There are very few spaces left, now. Geographically, the whole world is already more or less integrated into the net of the financial markets. Sociologically, the ruin of the mean classes is already done in Latin America and at stake in Europe and furtherly in the USA. That means that the last world system is approaching its last limit of accumulation, at which it will take the whole civilization with it to its grave, if not replaced in time. But as in besieged Bysance, scholars are still busy discussing the sex of angels. RK
Re: RE: Re: e: Imperialism in decline?
RE: [PEN-L:27676] Re: e: Imperialism in decline?James Devine writes: I disagree. Marx showed very clearly that capitalism need not suffer from chronic realization problems, i.e., that it was _possible_ for surplus-value to be realized internal to the system. - But Marx did not succeed in passing from the simple reproduction to the expanded one. Even in the 48th chapter of vol.3, after having previously claimed that the question did not matter, he continued looking for the realization of surplus value within the circulation process. Only dogmatism and devotion or reverence can explain that most Marxists still believe that Marx has solved the problem of accumulation process. Rosa Luxemburg did it. But her solution did not fit Lenin's theory of proletariat diktatorship, nor Stalin's permanent terror, assassinations and internments this theory justified. (...) in some eras (such as our own) wages are pushed down relative to labor productivity, so that realization problems due to under-consumption are always in the wings. - Wages pushed down are in not any case source of underconsumption (if not temporily in a frictionnal unbalance), as it is a transfer from the labor cost to the capital one, that is a transfer of consumption. As Marx mentioned it: a transfer to luxurious production and consumption. As for the overproduction tendency, it is related to the rise in prices with respect to the global distributed monetary purchasing power, as Juglar's works have demonstrated it. (...) Lenin's theory (though somewhat crude, as one might expect from a pamphlet that he himself saw as inferior to Bukharin's contribution) is one of a structural tension, one of capitalists continuously being _pushed_ by circumstances to struggle with each other to attain monopoly. As with Marx, Lenin's vision of capitalism doesn't start with human-nature metaphysics (the maximizing consumer, etc.) but with the structure of the system. - But what is the mysterious force that through the circumstances continuously pushes capitalists to struggle with each other to attain monopoly, if not the nature of capitalists? Where is then the relation to the system, if not in the propensity to accumulate ever more profit? A full Marxian analysis would include both the structural tensions that push individual capitalists to expand _and_ the conditions that allow the organic whole to engage in relatively harmonious expanded reproduction. - Which are thestructural tensions that push individual capitalist to expand? Were they not pulsions? When these clash -- as they regularly do -- we see economic (and sometimes social and political) crises. One solution to this kind of mess is geographical expansion, though that kind of solution (like others) doesn't solve the structural problems that produce capitalist crises. - What are these clashing? Why do they regularly do? Expansion indeed does not solve the structural problems, it only shifts them. But it increases accumulation. Did not colonialism do it ? (...) I wouldn't call it censored. It might be out of print, but that's because of low demand. I know that I have several of her books. -I do not know about the USA, but I can tell you that in France Rosa Luxemburg and her master work Die Akkumulation des Kapitals are mentioned in not any education program among the authors and works to be studied. And for having written a thesis prolonging Luxemburg's works, I am still barred from defending it. Barred by Marxists! . (...) we don't need Luxemburg's analysis to understand that capitalism often faced limits that cause profitability problems that are often solved via geographical expansion. - May be you do not need, but it is Rosa Luxemburg who first wrote it. Additionally, geographical expansion does not often but always solve crises. Is not imperialist war the recurrent mean of escaping a crisis? Best regards, James RK
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: e: Imperialism in decline?
Doug wrote: (...) Lots of international capital flows are just hot money moving in and out. They inject and withdraw liquidity, but don't necessarily get deeply involved in the local scene. Direct investment is another matter. - But what about the resultant of capital flows? If this resultant is null or randomizing, you are right. But the resultant of direct investments and returns to the main financial places is strictly directed from the periphery to the centers of the net. That means that Africa, for example, returns more capital than it receives as investments and aids. That is the reason why Argentina's internal market is dying. The world is more or less governed by the negative trade balance of the USA and by the one of Western Europe with respect to the rest of the world minus the USA. And the strictly directed resulting balance of capital is the reverse of this systematic distribution of the sign of trade balances . The integration is not yet complete. But it is on the way, and such is the so-called Globalization. Is it not the proof that Rosa Luxemburg was right against Lenin? Regards RK
Re: Re: Imperialism in decline
Tom Walker wrote: Or waiting breathlessly to see what the corpse will do for an encore. - Where? On Venus?
Re: Re: Sokal and Bricmont
From the French version of Sokal's and Bricmont's book, I got the same interpretation than Sabri from the Turkish one. The authors only denounce abuses committed by some French people labelled as intellectuals. Actually, it is not simply matter of mistakes, in using some physics principles unsufficiently mastered, but indeed hoaxes to hide intellectually empty discourses. Sokal and Bricmont do not go so far in the criticism. They are remarkably measured in their judgment, with respect to the dishonesty of people they criticize. In my (non humble) opinion, an intellectual is someone who is intested in UNDERSTANDING the world, not in playing an in-fashion and well paid character. RK
Re: Re: Protectionism US style
I have already answered this pertinent question. The asymmetry is due to the status of dollar as the wolrld account unit of debt. So that the USA are the only ones paying their debt with their debt. The very question is : why is the trade balance of world system's metropolis systematically negative through history, from ancient Athens to the USA, notably through Rome, 16th-century Europe and Victorian England? and the answer can be found in a Luxemburgist way. RK - Original Message - From: Michael Pollak [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, May 15, 2002 11:50 AM Subject: [PEN-L:26008] Re: Protectionism US style On Mon, 13 May 2002, Michael Perelman wrote: Theoretically speaking, how does a deteriorating fiscal position lead to a strong dollar? deficits = high interest rates = strong dollar. That makes perfect sense. Except how come for all other countries, growing deficits lead to weaker currencies? And how come, during the 90s, surpluses and low interest rates led to a strong dollar? And deficits and high interest rates led to a weak Euro? Are these not considered enough anomalous results to make this theory slightly questionable under present arrangements, where capital accounts are all wide open? Michael
Re: Re: Re: Re: Protectionism US style
Ulhas Joglekar wrote: Why does the world continue to accept debt payment in dollars? I remember De Gaulle refusing dollars and demanding payment in gold in '60s. During the second half of 19th century, England, because of her systematically negative balance of trade, had invented the balance sterling with wich she paid her debt with her debt. This system was possible and well self-maintained, due to holders of these sharing parts of the debt, who prefered to see their financial capital on the banks of Thames, because England was then the metropolis of the capitalist world system. But that was not irreversible, as sterling was convertible into gold at a fixed parity. Between the two World Wars, the Gold exchange standard advised nations not to demand gold in payments, but balances in any kind of convertible currency (convertible theoretically into gold). After the second World War, the treaty of Bretton Woods has reduced the previous Gold exchange standard to one bench currency: the dollar which took on itself the convertibility of all convertible currencies into gold. So that it was not necessary to demand gold in payment, as the gold of the whole capitalist world system was more secured, sleeping within Fort-Knox. Two reasons for such a belief. First, all convertible currencies were by definition in a relationship of fixed parities. Second, due to European debt toward the USA, the balance of trade of these latter was expected to be positive. In 1958, the currencies of Bretton Woods's system became, as planned, convertible. But the USA's balance of trade had become negative. Nevertheless, due to Cold War, the allies of the USA, that is the capitalist world system, did not dare to demand gold payments from the metropolis and their nuclear umbrella. Additionally, capitalist individuals and corporations perfered to see their financial capital in Wall-Street. Between 1953 and 1958, the USA balanced their debt by only 18% in gold. De Gaulle obliged Washington to increase this part to 48% between 1958 and 1962. After what it was the relentless crisis of dollar. In 1971, president Nixon unilaterally suspended, then abolished any kind of convertibility for the dollar. What was to be done, when the wold system of trade was based on dollar? The only possibility of escaping such a trap is a consensus between a sufficient huge number of nations, for do not putting themselves into debt in dollars any more. You can see the level of the problem. US trade balance is negative, but not Japan's. What is the net balance for the metropolis, Japan and EU included? European balance toward the USA, as Japan's, is positive. But European balance toward the rest of the world, except the USA, is negative. In the capitalist world system, there is a main metropolis and there are secondary ones. How would Luxemburgism explain this phenomenon? In this matter, Luxemburgism postulates an organic relationship between imperialism and capital accumulation process. Current Globalization is verifying it. RK
Re: Re: Protectionism US style
Ulhas Joglekar wrote: My question was about the nature of this organic relationship in the contemporary capitalism in concrete terms, as it impacts world's willingness to accept dollars ? Ulhas In the contemporary capitalism and in concrete terms, the Luxemburgist relationship links the imperialist expansionism (Balkans, Agghanistan, Georgia and soon Irak) with the necessities and the crises of the process of accumulation (accumulation being exogenous in the Luxemburgist conception). As for the willingness to accept dollar, it would be a choice, only if the most of nations could rise up against the empire. Yen has been high in relation to the dollar for a long time, because Japan was by force the kind banker of the winner and in this quality obliged to defend its currency against the dollar. Every time Japanese or European central banks drop million dollars on the Open Market, to defend their currency, they cancel graciously a quantum of American debt, due to the status of dollar as the world account unit of debt. RK
Re: Re: Re: Protectionism US style
Michael Perelman wrote: deficits = high interest rates = strong dollar. I propose another algorithmic system: 1. USA's trade deficit ) +) == strong dollar Dollar as account unit of debt) 2. Hardening elasticity between growth rate and price index == inflation tendency == Mr Greenspan's constipation I mean strong dollar and high interest rates are independent processes, as far as the USA are concerned. What is true of any other country and currency is not of the USA and dollar, because, due to the status of dollar as the world account unit of debt, the USA are the only economic territory which pays its debt with its debt. World-System order is an asymmetric one. Romain Kroës
Re: Bunting on French election
Madelaine Bunting is absolutely wrong. The crisis in Europe is not one of identity. It is CRISIS: growing unemployment, growing job insecurity, growing sanitary degradation, growing economic desertification of large portions of territories, dying little and middle provincial towns. Maastricht and European integration have merely accelerated the process. It is reality, and not that emotional, irrational and inarticulate discourse of Le Pen. And indeed, the solution is not headlong rush into the European integration. Crisis acts as the swell for a boat that lets in water. If there are not watertight compartments for slowing down water flow, pitching becomes worse and worse. The same is true of capital flows (see the systematically negative balance of the USA's trade, see Argentina) that request to be forced through such compartments, in order to limit the disequilibium tendency. The contrary of European policies. It is time to sober up. European Union is absolutely nothing of what it is dreamt about it. No mobility, as endebtness and weak wages prevent people from spending money ouside and force them to remain at home watching some decerabrating TV, and as unemployed cannot find another job in any other location. No competitiveness, but worsening of working conditions. No cultural boom, but fossilization into museums, death of Italian, French and German cinemas, trashing theater and litterature, break down of education, invasion of American pop under-culture. When there is a fascist danger, it is not because there are fascists, but because of CRISIS. Fascist or other criminal forces do exist all the time. They represent that pulsional which according to Freud the civilization must permanently be fighting. These forces become a danger when civilization defences are weakening. And this is precisely the case in the economic crisis periods, like in the 1930s. The trouble is that most people, including among the Marxists, refuse to see the globalizing crisis and continue reasoning in terms of development, progress, competitiveness, etc., as if the current world was a steady and eternal one. Sabri is right: very difficult to wake up those who have been sleeping for longer than a decade. Romain Kroës http://www.edu-irep.org
Plague, or cholera?
Thats for you, Chris. Last news from Paris: Jacques Chirac, the crook defender of democracy has just designed the new prime minister: a member of Démocratie Libérale, directed by Madelin, former member, with Le Pen, of the neo-nazi formation Occident. Think of that: there is not fascism because there are fascists, but historically because of capitalism CRISIS. What you are confusing with Europen competitiveness. Good sleeping. RK
Re: Re: Million demonstrators in France
I completely agree with Louis. Additionally, as the crisis deepens due to the maintaining policy of Maastrich's European integration, we are not ensured of not experiencing the come back of death penalty and xenophobia under Chirac as under Le Pen. Sunday, I shall not go and choose between plague and cholera. RK
French electoral dilemma
n° 12, 24-04-02 __ http://www.edu-irep.org - Le non-dit du dilemme électoral français What is left unsaid of French electoral dilemma http://www.edu-irep.org/actu.htm irép BP 26 94267 Fresnes Cedex France _ tél/fax: 33 1 4091 9997
Re: Re: Re: The Blame Game
Michael Perelman asks: ...How much to the right of Gore is Chirac? -- By American standards, Chirac is clearly to the left of Gore. Shane Mage That's true. Additionally, there is very little difference between Chirac's party ant the Socialist one, but the ways of doing the same politics that can be summarized by one word: Maastricht. That is to say the suppression of budget deficit, that is to say suppression of growth in order to fight inflation (inflation rate being limited to 2%). But even communists and Trotskysts dont say any word about that (communists regularly vote a Maastrichtian budget every year at National Assembly). Only two men have explicitely condemned Maastricht politiccs during the campaign. One is Chevènement who is an authentic Gaullist leftist (having resigned from his defence ministryship in desagreement with bombing of Irak). The second one is Le Pen. Chevènement was not listen from the left, which is now moaning and demonstrating, but without realizing its fault. French people who voted for Le Pen have not become fascists, they only refuse Maastricht and capitalist Globalization. RK
Re: Re: Re: The Blame Game
La Lettre de l'irép n° 11, 22-04-02 __ http://www.edu-irep.org - Un judéo-nazisme est-il possible? Ou: de l'urgence de comprendre Auschwitz Is a Judaeo-Nazim possible? Or: of the urgency of understanding auschwitz http://www.edu-irep.org/forum_6.htm irép BP 26 94267 Fresnes Cedex France _ tél/fax: 33 1 4091 9997
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The Blame Game
I would like to know how accurate Romain's account is. How much were his voters reacting against immigration and crime vs. Maastricht and capitalist Globalization? Michael Perelman The question of immigration has not been an important matter in political discourses, even Le Pen's, for years. But for thirty years, popular voters keep giving the same message in vain. When government is hold by rightists (the seventies), they vote for the left. When government is hold by the left, for doing the same Europen and Globalizing policy (the eighties), they vote for the right. But neither the right nor the left listen to this message. And hand in hand, both oligarchies continue their sapping of salaries, of employment, of social laws, of independance, of hope. Sunday, for the first time, popular voters swang over to a man who spoke (electioneeringly) against Bruxelles, against Maastricht, against oligarchies, and spoke of the real fears, fears of future. As for the security discourse, it was not mainly of Le Pen, but of Chirac and Jospin, first! It is in the traditional communist places (Seine St Denis, Pas de Calais, Loraine, etc.) that Le Pen got the higher scores, not in the richest places where are traditionnally living the rightists and the fascists. And this is the responsibility of the French communist party. There is a globalizing economic crisis with huge social and intellectual consequences! And as long as leftits will continue denying it, popular voters will continue sliding towards populism, as between the two World Wars. RK
Re: The political economy of indigenous societies
Robert Biel, The New Imperialism (Zed Books, 2000): -- Louis Proyect, [EMAIL PROTECTED] on 04/20/2002 Marxism list: http://www.marxmail.org Rosa Luxemburg made this analysis in 1913 and 1915 (Die Akkumulation des Kapitals, complete version published in 1922). She even went any further, drawing the conclusion that capitalism cannot accumulate endogenously, but exogenously through a colonialist expansion into space. How long will it take for the Marxists to rediscover a question that has been hushed up by Marxism-Leninism for eighty years? RK
Re: Re: Exchange value of currencies
Although I think politically we share a dislike of US dollar hegemony, I do not quite find the reference you imply. Could you please quote the sentence? Am I looking in the wrong part of Section 2 - the first part only -? The quotes I used are from Dietz's German edition. As for the one above, you gave any further the English edition one: The barometer for the international movement of the money of metals is of course the rate of exchange. What Engels does not explicitely mention, but he could not ignore it, is the fact that this course was not variously spread, but universally determined on the metal market of London, as it is still today. I am not sure that it is to do directly with the speed of capital turnover. This is not a theorem from Marx nor from Engels, but of mine. I have demonstrated it in a paper that is published on irép's website, the title of which is Asymmetry and Accumulation, or World System's Entropy. The rates of change are not exclusively linked to the differential turnovers of capital, but this is the main cause and the only explanation of a structurally strictly distributed trend of relative rates since 1971 (dollar disconnection from gold, and flexibles changes). (...) Also I have to say that I do not see the speed of capital turnover within a country, being an intermediate variable between its increased productivity and the relative exchange rate with another currency. It is not matter of the absolute speed of turnover, but of te relative one. As a higher speed (i.e. higher productivity) determines a higher flow of imputs (imports), and as the flow of export outputs depends on outside demand, that is on outside imputs, the country that has the higher speed of turnover gets a structurally trending negative balance of trade. This is attested for the whole known history. In gold standard, as the gold production does not follows the general productivity rate, a negative balance of trade must be balanced, so that the higher productivity country cannot get its relative surplus value. If it has not a precious metal source at its disposal, like Ancient Athens, it must resort to pillage the stocks of gold around, as Rome, or impose its own currency in its foreign trade, as Victorian England and today's USA. Could you check that reference? In my English edition that chapter is Absolute Ground Rent. The title of the 45th chapter is indeed Absolute Ground Rate. The consequences of the differential org. comp. distribution is developed in pp.767-768 of the German edition. But it is more explicitely mentioned at the begining of 9th ch., third paragraph. Salute RK
Re: Re: The exchange value of currencies
The exchange value of currencies is the measure of the relative organic composition of capital. Chris Burford I suppose that everybody had understood the sentence this way. There is something true in this sentence, but it does not make a Marxian theorem. In B.3, Ch.35, II, Marx defines the rate of change of currencies as the measure of the moves on the international market of metals. Additionally, from a Marxian point of view, the association of rate of change with relative org. comp. would lead to the conclusion that the higher rate of org. comp. goes hand in hand with the lower currency value, as the relative org. comp. reflects the relative productivity, and as productivity, according to Marx, tends to depreciate goods (and metals). Now, it is more accurately the contrary, as a higher productivity means a faster capital turnover, tending to imbalance the flows of capital coming in and going out, what is daily determining the rates of change in a system of flexible changes. The economic territory whose turnover is the fastest gets a higher flow of imports that the one of its exports, what tends to estimate its exports with repect to its imports, that is its currency with respect to the currencies of its suppliers. Gold standard was made to restore the balance. But when a country gets the opportunity to pay in its own currency, that is to say to pay its debt with its debt, as today's USA with the dollar, and formely Great Britain with the balances-sterling, the balance cannot be restored and the territories which get a positive trade balance are impoverishing. Now, although this reality does not correspond to a Marxist analysis, the notion of relative org. comp., that is of relative productivity, was discovered by Marx first (B.3, 45th ch.). Thanks to that, I have got the idea of an economic chain structured by an unequal distribution of productivity, and it runs. Have a good day, Chris RK
Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: The exchange value of currencies
James Devine wrote: Obviously, most of Marx's ideas come from previous political economists and not just from Hume (who developed quantity theory of money, not Locke). This is of Locke: So far as the Change of Interest conduces in Trade to the bringing in or carrying out Money or commodities, and so in time to the varying their Proportions here in England from what it was before, so far the change of Interest as all other things that promote or hinder Trade may alter the Value of Money in reference to Commodities. (Some Considerations of the Consequences of the Lowering of Interest and the Raising the Value of Money, London, 1691) By the way, the quantity theory of money is a bit like Newtonian physics I agree with that, as the quantity theory absolutely needs an instantaneous and global confrontation between money and goods. Hume had jeopardized his theory in the same time he wrote it, as he saw the prices rising by degree (Of money in Essays Moral, Political and Literary, Indianapolis, Liberty Classics, 1985). But what is the adjustment variable, as long as prices, rising 'by degree, have not yet adjusted demand with supply? Of course, it is the variation of stocks. Now, when stocks stop declining, that means that supply matches demand, and there is then no reason left for prices to rise. It would be hard to admit that stocks were declining during inflation (and growth) periods of 16th and 20th centuries, for example. This is the reason why neoclassicists, in order to save their inflation theory, have invented the rational expectations, thanks to which the instantaneous confrontation may do not exist on the real markets, as it is present into the minds. it applies in very specific situations but fails in other situations. The quantity theory applies best with countries with very poorly developed financial systems if they are at full employment of resources. I have been believing that for years. I do not anymore. There are indeed two specific and different situations, but I now think that the diffrence is between the character of money issuing. There is a true inflation by money, when money issuing is pathogen. That is, if some power (official or criminal, or both) issues a money that can never been destroyed because it does not exist in any liability column of any account. On the contrary, the keynesian budget deficit mobilzes the saving it allows, so that accounts are balanced. As for the poorest countries, when they are not subverted by an irresponsible or criminal power, their inflation is the result of both the price of imports and the price of the currency they have to pay import with (at random, the dollar). Best wishes to you, James RK
Re: The exchange value of currencies
Not at all, Chris. Exchange value of currencies does not belong to any Marxist theory, as Marx believed in a gold currency for ever. Actually, exchange value of currencies depends on the sign of the balances of trade, with a reversion of the law when the currency of world system's metropolis has been imposed as the common currency, like today's dollar. And this is completely out of Marxist theories. RK - Original Message - From: Chris Burford [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, April 17, 2002 12:50 AM Subject: [PEN-L:25010] The exchange value of currencies The organic composition of capital is the measure of the exchange value of currencies. Is this a correct application of marxism? Chris Burford
steel war and globalization
n°9, 08-03-02___http://www.edu-irep.org "guerre de lacier", ou limite de la "mondialisation"? "Steel war", or limit of "globalization"? http://www.edu-irep.org/actu.htm BP 2694267 Fresnes CedexFrance_tél/fax: 33 1 4091 9997
Re: Re: Re: Re: Question Romain K.
- Original Message - From: Carrol Cox [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, March 08, 2002 12:45 AM Subject: [PEN-L:23661] Re: Re: Re: Question Romain K. Romain Kroes wrote: Because historical materialism has become a label. I don't get it. Literary Criticism has become a label. Frying Bacon has become a label. We still don't usually put them in scare quotes. I don't think that Literary Criticism nor Frying Bacon can be understood in many meanings, even for people who never consumed literature nor bacon. As for Historical Materialism, what does it mean for people who have not read Preface to a Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy nor Anti-Dühring? Only one thing: it is one label of marxist philosophy, with Dialectical Materialism which is as absconse as the former, in the eyes of anybody having not read a marxist book. Unless they understand history of materialism or an historical event the name of which should be materialism, you name the next. Additionally, the very meaning of historical materialism is a pure esotericism. Example: This fixation of social activity, this consolidation of what we ourselves produce into an objective power above us, growing out of our control, thwarting our expectations, bringing to naught our calculations, is one of the chief factors in historical development up till now. (German ideology). Regards, RK
Re: Re: Question Romain K.
- Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, March 05, 2002 6:53 PM Subject: [PEN-L:23535] Re: Re: Question Romain K. Question: Why is historical materialism in quotes? And is this different from what Engels call the materialist conception of history in Anti-Durhing? Melvin P. Because historical materialism has become a label. It is not diffrent of Anti-Dühring's expression (materialistische Geschichtsauffassung), and Engels uses it as such, for example in a letter to Conrad Schmidt (5th august 1890). RK
Re: Re: Re: Suppression of Marx
- Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, March 04, 2002 5:23 PM Subject: [PEN-L:23465] Re: Re: Suppression of Marx ___ Dear Melvin, before becoming a researcher, I was a worker and an Union leader, like you. And I believed in historical materialism, too. I believed in it, because having not yet visited history by myself, I trusted Marx and Engels about the progressive evolution of society, the consciences, productive forces and superstructures altogether. But after more than 25 years of research, I know, now, that Marx and Engels had been mistaken. Like anybody in their century, they were impressed by the exploding productive forces of Industrial Revolution. And they concluded that if the development of productive forces was a cumulative process, so was the social development too. But it was a pure metaphysical reasoning, out of any historical material. Nevertheless, they got an important intuition: the intuition of something irreversible in human economy, the intuition of entropy. Rosa Luxemburg has begun to give this intuition an explicit expression, by showing the strictly exogenous origin of accumulation. The expansion within space (the geographical one and the sociological one) is concretely attested by historians from the very beginning of the known history, whatever be the mode of production. The motor of this expansion is always the asymmetry of exchanges between the places of accumulation and the periphery of raw-material extraction and working-force exploitation (see Immanuel Wallerstein: The modern World system, and Guillermo Algaze: The Uruk World System). That explains expansionism, imperialism, inter-imperialist competition, first and second world wars, then today's emergence of a single occidental imperialism and of its globalization. The asymmetry of exchanges are reflected by a systematically negative balance of trade of the pole of accumulation. That is attested for Athens, Rome, 16th century Europe, England, France, Germany, then today's USA, that is for all imperialist poles of accumulation. Such is reality, and not a class struggle that has never been so deliquescent than now. Soviet Union has imploded. New Russia has become a source of raw material for the occidental empire. China, a source of cheap working force. All communist parties have been recuperated by social-democrat ones, or atomized. Marxism-Leninism is an historical defeat, because its theoretical base was wrong. We have to admit that, in order to understand the world. Is accumulation endogenous or exogenous? That is the question. Marx's surplus value (the absolute one) postulates an endogenous accumulation. As it is included in the revenue per capita, it enables capital to endlessly make profit without any crisis other than wage earners going on strike. But that does not explain overproduction crises, expansionism, colonialism, imperialism. Actually, this so called surplus-value is not a surplus-value. It is indeed a tribute paid by labour force, but it is already included in the investment, as Keynes demonstrated it. It enriches the capitalists, but does not take any part in global accumulation of capital. That is to say globally cumulative profit comes from the multiplication of labour force, not from the individual exploitation. And then can be explained expansionism, etc. Marx and Engels have come up against a contradiction between their intuition of the limit and their theory of accumulation that is nothing but the classical-economy one which depends on the good will of the saver. Rosa Luxemburg surpassed this contradiction, but Lenin did not. Don't trust people who continue talking about class struggle that they never experienced and that they only met in the books. Salute and brotherhood, Romain Kroës
Re: Suppression of Marx
MARX AND HIS POSTERITY Admittedly the founder of what has been the working-class movement shares some responsibility in the confusion of the thought that is meant to be Marxist or Marxism-related. But he did not deserve to get zealots completely lacking of critical judgment as heirs. Marx experienced as a genuine intellectual the throes of the contradiction that let its work unfinished fourteen years before his death. As soon as he came up against it, far from denying it as his epigones today do, and despite a lot of other sufferings, he looked for resolving it, while refusing to publish anything as long as it would not be overcome, going as far as hiding his manuscripts from his close relatives and friends. Engels's and Lafargue's accounts are in this respect quite definite. Only Rosa Luxemburg, another great intellectual, was not afraid of confronting this contradiction, while opening moreover a track to its solution. Then, Marxism was made up of two intellectual streams, each of them issuing from one term of the contradiction. One of them was based on the metaphysic of absolute surplus value. The other one, without formally rejecting that metaphysic, took root in the scientific part of Marx's work, the trending profit rate to fall, which the so-called absolute surplus-value plays no part in. The so-called absolute surplus value, issuing mysteriously from the work of each wage-earning, suggests a mechanism of endogenous accumulation that a priori excludes any limit to the process. In other words, capitalism could be considered as being enabled to regenerate by itself indefinitely. What lead, within the surplus-value stream, to a break between a reformist secondary stream and a revolutionary one, the one concluding that socialism had to fit into the scheme of an almost eternal capitalism, the other that it had to put an end to capitalism, and that the only way of doing it was the subversion of the bourgeois political power. The first ones have kept, until today, the appellation of social democrats, the second ones the appellation of Marxists-Leninists. As for her, Rosa Luxemburg, although she hoped and prayed for the proletarian revolution, had understood that the accumulation could not be endogenous and on the contrary needed an expansion within space, what was attested by colonialism. She logically concluded that this expansionism was necessarily to come up against a deadline, should it be in last resort the planetary one. In other words, capitalism was necessarily to one day enter a crisis of which it could not getting out. This thesis had to experience a censorship and a purgatory that are continuing. First, social democrats pilloried it after its printing. After what the Leninists took over them. Today again, the ones and the others maintain Rosa Luxemburg's main work (Die Akkumulation des Kapitals, 1913) under a burden of ignorance, of silence and of contempt. This attitude is quite coherent with the vocabulary that gathers now the enemy brothers: development, progress, democracy, fight against inequalities, citizenship. A vocabulary which is quite out of step with reality, but which can be understood as being an exorcism against the fear of future. And this infantilization of thought does not allow neither social democrats, nor residual Leninists to admit that history has agreed with Rosa Luxemburg, against them. Social democrats saw a stable world in which democracy and progress should settle all conflicts. As for him, Lenin saw a world forever divided by the conflicts of interests between the various empires, continuing at the planetary scale the class conflicts of within each of them, and that only the dictatorship of the proletariat was able to unite and pacify. For her part, Rosa Luxemburg saw an indistinct imperialism relentlessly continuing the colonizing process, out of necessity. A necessity from accumulation. Between this two conceptions, history has decided. The dictatorship of proletariat is a failure and a persistent after-tragedy, and the USA have put an end to the conflicts between imperialists, by exerting a leadership with which all of them have agreed totally (except general de Gaulle's interlude) and have even demanded. Finally, under IMF's management, the globalization is restoring the colonialist subjection and even extending it, as a trend, to all countries. But of the two original Marxist streams, it is the weakest, the most disconnected from reality, which today continues Marxism. Really, the author of Capital deserved another posterity. Romain Kroës
Re: Suppression of Marx
CB: In Engels' day, and in Lenin's, even if there was a global limit , there was no need to wait for that limit to have the world revolution. Today, we may not even approach the limit really. First, there is no global limit in marxist-leninist theory because, according to it, endogenous accumulation is possible, so that capitalism can be endless, like in social-democrat theory. The only difference between these two therories is, that the one leads to the conclusion that capitalism must be cancelled by a revolution, while the second one concludes that socialism must be constructed within capitalism. But the very theoretical base is the same. Second, we do approach really the limit, whose name is globalization. Third, not only there is no need to wait for that limit to have the world revolution, but waiting for it will allow capitalism to bring the whole civilization with him to grave, as it is doing before our very eyes. Additionally, this argument was never put forward by Rosa Luxemburg. It was one of the Marxist-Leninist forgeries to ban Luxemburgian thought. RK
Re: Re: on the necessity of god, goddess, gods, goddesses, or a combination of the above
Indeed, there is an argument against the existence of god, the one of Claude Bernard to Napoleon: this hypothesis is of no use. - Original Message - From: Tom Walker [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, February 22, 2002 10:13 PM Subject: [PEN-L:23078] Re: on the necessity of god, goddess, gods, goddesses, or a combination of the above Jim Devine wrote, As far as I can tell, there's no logical argument either for or against the existence of god. I agree absolutely there's no logical argument for or against. My own position is based entirely and radically on grammar. Tom Walker
Re: Re: LOV and LTV
I discuss this is What's Wrong with Exploitation?, look it up, and see if you disagree. jks What is wrong is endegenous accumulation which is enabled by exploitation as the profit source. And if endogenous accumulation is possible, capitalism can not experience crises. Rosa Luxemburg understood that, ninety years ago.
Re: LOV or LTV
CB: The problem I see with this is that increasing productive capacity of the men in the trade or increase productivity would seem to be defined by fewer human labor time per unit commodity. How can that result in more work for men (people) ? And yet, it has been a historical fact for long. This paradox demands to be explained. The answer is growth. Capital runs after productivity to make profit. Now, the profit does not result from a fewer human labour per unit commodity, but from the multiplication of commodities per unit of time (not working time, but calendar's one). So that in a period of normal growth (inflation being neglected) due to an increasing productivity, the most productive sectors do not reduce their workforce. But according to Marx's assessment I recalled in my posting (differential distribution of productivity along the economic chain), the providers of the most productive sectors can not match with the increasing demand by an equal productivity rise. So that they must increase their workforce in order to compensate their productivity gap. And so on, up to the sectors that are the closest to natural cycles. This way, an increasing productivity leads to an increase in global labour force. And this is a historical fact. However, this mechanism does not work, when growth is repressed in order to fight against inflation, by repressing public expenditure and setting interest rates above price index. So that the equation I wrote in my answer to Chris is more accurately: Rate of productivity rise = Rate of change in Labour force + Price Index Such a model is detailed in my article World-System's Entropy on irép's website: http://www.edu-irep.org/Romain.htm RK
Re: LOV or LTV
Crudely, the difference between LTV and LOV is the difference between a simple equation, which may indeed be weak nourishment, and a dynamic system. IMHO Chris Burford I agree with the authenticity of LOV rather than LTV. Nevertheless, a simple equation may match a model of a dynamic system, as follows. In 1911, F. W. Taylor observed that the history of the development of each trade shows that each improvement, whether it be the invention of a new machine or the introduction of a better method, which results in increasing the productive capacity of the men in the trade and cheapening the costs, instead of throwing men out of work make in the end work for more men (The Principles of Scientific Management). This empirical observation may be done further, up to nowadays. And it may be explained by having in mind a theoretical assessment of Marx, on the unequal distribution of organic composition of capital, that is of productivity, along the economic chain (B.3, Ch.45; Dietz: pp.767-768). By putting n productive sectors in a growing-productivities order between ecosystem and final product, as an abstract model of economic chain, and by assuming that the very upstream productivity gains are insignificant with respect to the ones of the very downstream activities, we obtain such an equation at the limit of flows adaptation (just-in-time) : Rate of increase in global employed workforce = Rate of increase in mean productivity of economic chain That is to say, along economic chain, capital valorizes its productivity gains (relative surplus value) by exchanging them against labour activity. And we retrieve LOV. From the point of vue of downstream dominance (USA, Western Europe and Japan), this law is blured by relocations outside, but from the point of vue of Third-World countries, providing cheap work force and raw material, it works as it always worked, driving populations from their traditional economy towards industrializing centers (cf. Rosa Luxemburg). Such a model of mine is published at this address: http://www.edu-irep-org/ romain.htm under the title: World-System's Entropy. It is a dynamic model that notably matches asymmetric exchanges, exogenous accumulation, expansionnism, inflation by growth and the trending profit rate to fall. It demands to be harshly criticized. Regards, Romain Kroês
Re: WHAT IS HAPPENING IN TURKEY?
Another paper summarizing the current situation in Turkey: http://www.edu-irep.org/actu.htm#tur RK - Original Message - From: Sabri Oncu [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: PEN-L [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, January 21, 2002 10:36 PM Subject: [PEN-L:21692] WHAT IS HAPPENING IN TURKEY? Dear All, The two messages below should give you some idea regarding the above question: http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/msg12786.html http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/msg12788.html I send these not because I am in full agreement with their respective authors but because I suffer from the exact same pain that they are suffering from. As you may be able to deduce from these messages, the pessimism I have been displaying on PEN-L for quite some time now cannot be just because of my personal, and now definitely, fucked up psychology. We are not doing well my friends, we are not doing well!.. After about a month in Turkey, I just came back to Berkeley yesterday and am still jet-lagged. I will write a summary of my observations back there in a few days. Let me say this before I go to bed though: in Turkey, HOPE is mostly dead, borrowing a concept Billy Cristal introduced in the movie The Princess Bride, 1987. We, that is, the peoples of Turkey, desparately need work very hard to bring HOPE back to life, though no body seems doing anything meaningful. Best, Sabri
Re: theorizing capitalism
And if capitalism were not a mode of production, but a mode of accumulation? it's both. And if moreover it were nothing but the cumulation process, whatever the mode of it? I don't think we can separate the statics from the dynamics. JD The trouble is that if capitalism is a mode of production, as Marx defines it, there is capitalism only if there is an industry and (or) an agriculture employing wage-earning workers, and all other categories of work (freelance workers, slaves) are excluded from capitalist-style economy.If it is an accumulation mode, it involves all modes of production based on investment and turnover of capital. What are the "statics" and what are the "dynamics"? RK
Re: Argentina and Oscar Wilde
On Argentina story [Financial Times] : In spite of severe external shocks - an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease and a devaluation of the British pound - the 1967 programme was highly successful. The exchange rate parallel market premium disappeared overnight and by 1968 inflation had retrenched significantly. International reserves were replenished and after one year there was no need to renew a $125m loan from the International Monetary Fund. More important, in 1968 gross domestic product growth was almost 5 per cent and by 1969 it had climbed to an impressive 8.5 per cent. Or how to call for history to demonstrate its opposite. Far from being a severe external shock to Argentina, the devaluation of the British pound, in 1967, as well as crisis of the dollar, not yet freed from its gold parity, were then much favourable to the debt of the rest of the world. Today's situation is somewhat different.
Re: RE: Who will be the next Marx
I am the Next Marx! and the New Napoleon! ... seriously folks, what we need is not a new Marx but a new social movement to struggle for reform and then (in the face of capitalist resistance) flow over into replacing capitalism with something better... and I think 20th century Marxism would have done better if it had been based on the ideas of several people rather than one or two. JD OK, Jim. Now, let's begin a collective thinking. And if capitalism were not a mode of production, but a mode of accumulation? And if moreover it were nothing but the cumulation process, whatever the mode of it?
Re: Sharpening class contradictions
Together with sustained attacks on the working class growing capitalist contradictions will tend to generate increased inter-imperialist rivalry. Such rivalry developing into conflict can explode into inter-imperialist war in which the future of humanity becomes questionable. Karl Carlile Completely disconnected from reality. There is only one imperialism left, centered on the USA, the expansionism of which is called globalization. If future of humanity becomes questionable, it is due to the crisis of this last world system, taking the whole civilization to its grave. History agreed with Rosa Luxemburg, not with Lenin. Take some time to check that. RK
Re: Re: inter/ra imperialist contradictions
Romain may not agree with the idiom of Empire but I wonder whether he would say that the friction that can occur between imperialist states should better be thought of as intra-imperialist conflict Chris Burford I do agree with the concept of Empire to define the current world system. But an occidental Empire, and not (yet?) an American one, as American leadership wa demanded by older European and Japanese imperialisms, and not imposed by force to them. Of course, intra-imperialist frictions can occur, but they are on an altogether different scale from Lenin prediction. As expansion is an obsolute necessity for an imperialist economy, I think that the breaking point is crisis due to its approaching the planetary limit of its expansion. So that the question would be either the last empire will die alone, or with the civilization. We are very far from a simple class struggle. It is a struggle for mankind to survive. Thanks to don't let me alone, Chris. Romain Kroës
Re: RE: Mommy what's inflation?
What causes inflation? that's simple: too much money chasing too few goods. ;-) Such is the quantity theory. But it matches reality only if the adjustments between all goods and all money are instantaneous and simultaneous. What is reflected in market-equilibrium models of the kind of Walras-Debreu's, and what explains that Walras calls for a mythical and universal auctioneer. David Hume, who was the grand-father of that theory, saw the price rise by degrees (Of money). What means that the adjustment by prices is not immediate. Now, what is the other adjustment variable, as long as the requested price level has not yet be reached? Answer: stocks variation. As long as demand excesses supply, stocks drop. When they stop dropping, that means that supply matches demand, and then there is no reason for prices to continue rising. Now, is it possible that stocks keep dropping for thirty or fourty years? In other words, grand-father Hume killed himself quantity theory at birth. And such is the reason why quantity theorists needed a newtonian market place: to have not to take stocks variation in account. The modern theorists have well understood that, and in order to escape the trap, they invented rational anticipations. As inflation is anticipated, instantaneity and simultaneity are actualized in the mind of economic agents. Let us stop smoking. Te truth is quantity theory is absolutely wrong. Money quantity is not a cause but a consequence of increasing price level. All historic cases of inflation or even hyperinflation involve a third factor: growth or debt. Growth in long-term-inflation trends of Rome's world system, of 16th-century Europe, of occidental world after second world war. Debt in Weimar Rebublic of 1922-1923 and in today's Argentina, Turkey, etc. Growth is simple to understand, as it exerts a permanent tension on stocks, within an economic chain where basic activities are disadvantaged from the point of view of productivity
Re: RE: Mommy what's inflation?
Cancell precedent mail that was not complete What causes inflation? that's simple: too much money chasing too few goods. ;-) Such is the quantity theory of money. But it would match reality, only if adjustments between all goods an all money were simultaneous and instantaneous. So are the exchanges in market-equilibrium models like walras-Debreu's, explicitely or implicitely calling for the mythic and universal auctioneer. David Hume, who was the grand-father of the quantity theory, saw prices rise by degrees (Of money in Essays). But what is the variable of adjustment, as long as prices have not yet reached the equilibrium level? Answer: stocks variation. If demand exceeds supply, stocks drop and prices rise. When supply matches demand, stocks stop dropping, but then prices have no reason to continue rising. And can the stocks be dropping for tens of years? In other words, grand-father Hume killed himself the quantity theory at birth. And this is the reason why quantity theorists needed a newtonian market place. Modern theorists have well understood both that weakness and the absolute necessity to save instantaneity and simlulténeity. For that purpose, they invented rational anticipations, postulating, this way, that simultaneity and instantaneity are present in minds of economic agents. Let us stop smoking. Te truth is quantity theory is absolutely wrong. Money demand is not the cause but a consequence of increasing prices, as Kaldor assessed it. All historical cases of inflation or even hyperinflation involve a third factor: growth or debt. Growth in long-term-inflation trends of Rome's world system, of 16th-century Europe, of occidental world after second world war. Debt in Weimar Rebublic of 1922-1923 and in today's Argentina, Turkey, etc. Growth is simple to understand, as it exerts a permanent tension on stocks, within an economic chain where basic activities are disadvantaged from the point of view of productivity. Debt, of which the current payment can not be covered by exports, lead either to a money scarcity, or to a currency depreciation with respect to currencies in which imports are paid. And this depreciation is reflected in all production prices. Money demand has to follow, nothing else. Regards Romain Kroës
Re: RE: Re: RE: Mommy what's inflation?
Jim wrote: as indicated by the ';-)' I put in my message, I was joking. The too much money chasing too few goods cliche, like the inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon, is true by definition and thus empty, useless as an explanation of anything. It begs the question. In reality, I see inflation as being a result of irreconciliable economic, social and political conflicts. -- Jim Devine Jim, I did not suppose for one moment that you could espouse such a vulgarity. I just seized the opportunity to criticize this dogma that is still a very harmful epistemological obstacle. RK
Re: If you don't hit it, it won't fall?
That depends on whether accumulation can be endogenous, or needs an expansion into space. Hypothesis of endogenous accumulation is a consequence of surplus value as being extracted from the work of each producer. It implies a self-regenerating capitalism. In other words, it is the perpetuum mobile. And then, if you don't hit it... On the other hand, if accumulation needs expansion, it periodically meets a limit, until the last one: the planetary limit (globalization). But this does not make it any the less necessary to hit it, for if we wait and see, it will take the whole civilization to its grave. If you don't hit it, it won't fall. Mao. I rather suspect that capitalism can be depended on periodically to tear itself apart -- but it can also be depended on to put itself back together unless there is a political force that can overthrow it in at least a few nations substantial enough to defend themselves. Unless we really do think that History (with the uppercase H) is some sort of divinity, we can't guarantee the appearance of such a force. We can work for it and see what happens. (Of course it can also destroy the environment irreparably. I don't see any guarantee against that either.) Carrol
Re: crises
Jim Devine : One of the unfortunate legacies of Marx is the confusion between cyclical crises and bigger, more profound, crises. He seems to have responded to each financial panic or business-cycle downturn by writing to Engels about how it might open the door to socialism or at least important progressive change. Or am I misinterpreting Marx? You don't. It is right that according to Marx there is only one kind of crisis specifically related to capitalism: the crisis that results from an overproduction, due to credit and general inflation of prices (B.3, ch.30). And each such crisis is likely to lead to collapse. Now, the most important cyclical crises of his time do were big and profound. For example, in this connection, Marx mentions England's 1847 bankruptcy towards continental Europe's and America's wheat producers. That was not a simple clot in the pipe. If Marx is right, that is to say if there is one single kind of capitalism-related crisis, two questions arise. The first one is: why was this kind of crisis cyclical and is nomore? The second one is: why is the crisis persisting while inflation is close to zero? The answer to the first question is gold. Marx sees the transfers of gold as account closures with heaven (Rechnung mit dem Himmel zu schlieszen). Having searched in the records of Bank of England, Bank of France and Federal Reserve of N-Y, Clément Juglar, who was Marx's contemporary (but did not know Marx at all), confirms Marx's metaphor but a detail: while Marx thought that all closures were done simultanously or in a short period, Juglar discovered that gold outflowing from central bank started from the very beginining of increase in prices (Des crises commerciales et de leur retour périodique, 1857, 1891). From the central banks' point of view, the cycle is the one of bullion reserve outflowing (boom and account closures) and returning (recovery). It is quite evident that when full discharging money is no more related to gold, the cycle is no longer justified. The second question is more exciting. In the cyclical crisis, depression ended with the return of bullion to central bank, that is to say when growing credit and issues of bank notes were demanded for the purpose of growing production. Why? Always because of a public additional expenditure: a war, a colonial conquest, great public works. Should not such an expenditure be sufficient, and the depression was continuing. Is it not today's reality? Additionally, when full discharging money was related to gold, an increase in prices, associated to growth, was seen as a benefit. But nowadays, as fiat money is no more convertible in gold, a general increase in prices means a loss of purchasing power for the monetary unit, that is to say a loss of value for the financial-capital unit. So that the fight against inflation has become the priority. It means that no additional public expenditure, likely to increase the growth rate, can be decided. Such are the arguments I have found in favour of Marx's unified conception of crisis. Do you agree ? Romain Kroës
No limit ?
May I remember that Marx saw a limit (Schranke) to capitalism, due to the development of productivity (B.3, ch 15)? In fact, there are two Marxs: 1. The one of the absolute surplus value as the main factor of accumulation. That surplus value being extracted from the work of each producer, the accumulation is then endogenous. Such an accumulation has no limit, and capitalism can exist forever. So that the solution is either to make socialism inside capitalism, it is the social-democrat way, or to make a revolution, it is the Leninist way. 2. The Marx of the relative surplus value and of trending profit rate to fall, for whom productivity is the main factor of accumulation (B.3, ch.15, paragraph 3). Rosa Luxemburg pointed out that this conception could not support an endogenous accumulation and requested an expansionism, what was attested by colonialism (Die Akkumulation des Kapitales, 1913). Such a process is likely to periodically meet a limit, up to the last one: the planetary one. The related capitalism is condemned to die, even though no revolution succeeds in subverting it. Additionally, Leninist conception saw a world forever divided by the conflicts of interests between the various imperialist states, continuing at the planetary level the class struggle of within each of them. For her part, Rosa Luxemburg saw an indistinct imperialism relentlessly continuing the colonizing process. Between this two conceptions, history has decided. The dictatorship of proletariat is a failure and a persistent after-tragedy, and the USA have put an end to the conflicts between imperialist states, by a leadership with which all of them have agreed totally (except general de Gaulle's interlude) and have even demanded. Finally, under IMF's management, the globalization is restoring the colonialist subjection and extending it, as a trend, to all countries. So that the hypothesis of the limit, and moreover of the last one, is today much more accurate than the Leninist theory. The question is: does it remain space enough for a new remission before the end? Russia? China? RK
Exorcism and neo-Malthusian management of crisis in Marx's French posterity
n°8, 14-01-02___http://www.edu-irep.org___ NOUVEAU, NEW: - Palais de l'UNESCO à Paris: la "culture scientifique et technique" commeexorcisme de la crise. "Scientific and technical culture" as an exorcism of crisis. http://www.edu-irep.org/actu.htm - Postérité de Marx en France: une famille recomposée autour du consensus sur la gestion néo-malthusienne de la crise. Marx's French posterity: a family reconstructed around the consensus on neo-Malthusian management of crisis. http://www.edu-irep.org/actu.htm#mar ___ 4, bd Jean JaurèsBP 2694267 Fresnes CedexFrance_tél/fax: 33 1 4091 9997
Re: state power theory of money
Jim Devine wrote: The problem is that the kind of agreement between countries that you refer to has never fit with the interests of the hegemonic power, i.e., the U.S. Jim Devine What can be objected (in addition to Alan's recent assessment abaout Argentina's case) is the fact that examples of world hegemony of hegemonic power's currency seem to be rare in history. As far as I am informed, there are only two of them: pre-hellenistic Athens and today's USA. Even Rome had to pillage the treasure of conquerred countries and to impose a tribute on them, to pay its balance of trade. Europe of the 17th century, of which the balance with Asia was negative, needed gold from America's mines, and entered a long crisis, in 17th century, when human wastings in these mines were not enough to feed the trade deficit. Victorian England, confronted with the same problem, invented the balance sterling, that is to say the first immaterial world currency. But the reference to gold was not yet revocable, and the sterling lost the hegemony when after the first world war England entered recession. After second world war, the USA's balance of trade being normally negative, the parity between dollar and gold could only work under the condition that nobody demands of the USA that they fulfil this clause. Both General de Gaulle and eurodollar market shattered this fiction. Now, dollar is inconvertible however be the currency. But this, because dollar is accepted by the reste of the world. Should the recession or instability last, dollar would loose its current status. To summ up my thinking, so far: 1. The balance of trade of world-hegemonic power is always negative. 2. What implies the necessity that international settlements be done in its own legal currency. 3. But this gift requests the confidence from world trade. 4. The dollar being no more related to gold, this confidence lies on the USA's economic stability. 5. Indication of stability, in the eyes of the USA's creditors, lies on the financial US market where their bills are circulating. As for the military power, it can eventually be used for directly extorting tributes, but not in sustaining the dollar that is for the moment the best instrument of extortion, as long as it is accepted in stettlement of trade balance. Romain Kroës
Re: FW: Re: Re: sinking Argentina
Very interesting and relevant subject of controversy, Jim. But is the forced circulation of fiat money a reality? If it were, general level of prices would be immutable. Unless you believe in the quantity theory. Do you? If yes, it is another controversy. On the other hand, if people don't trust a fiat money, nobody can force them to use it. They use another one. I think that the problem lies elsewhere. What can be forced is not the circulation but the full-discharge payment. In other words: the account unit of the debt. Fiat money enables producers to reflect all increasing costs of production in their prices of production and, this way, to pass additional cost on to the creditors. What the ancient monetary units like raw materials, grain, silver and gold did not allow, because of the scarcity you mention and define, that is to say they did not allow to restore relative prices when upstream prices increase. So that monarchs and oligarchs were periodically lead to purge the debt (as reflected in Ancient Testament, by the jubilee). But in both cases, recurrent moratoriums or full-discharging fiat money, the purge of debt is a destruction of financial capital. And this is, I think, the reason why fiat money is seen as forced. Therefore, the problem is the one of debt a world money has first to be related to. It is matter of a full-discharging world money that depends, I agree with you, on the kind of economy which gets hegemony. If hegemony was of say oil-producers countries, world money would be oil or any currency related to oil. As hegemony is of an oil importer, world money is a fiat one that allows to govern relative and real prices between oil and final goods and services. So, the only way of getting out of monetary crises is an agreement between countries according to which every country may pay its debt in any convertible currency, but its own. The BIS can manage that. But that poses the problem of getting rid of asymmetric exchanges and of all kind of imperialism, when even UNO has become an instrument of occidental empire. Has it not? Romain Kroës - Original Message - From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2002 5:55 PM Subject: [PEN-L:21223] FW: Re: Re: sinking Argentina (By mistake, I didn't send the following to the list.) It's useful to get beyond what a world money _should_ be like and talk about what it is. I agree with the implication of Marx's theory of money that unlike with the use of a money such as gold that's naturally scarce (i.e., involves labor to produce), the circulation of fiat money within a country must be forced. That is, governmental power is needed to preserve the value of paper money (relative to its cost of production), so that its supply is limited and it is acceptable in exchange. (States that fall apart due to civil wars, etc., typically suffer from hyperinflation, as the fiat money's value goes to zero.) That implies that a world money requires a world _state_. This in turn implies that the hegemony of the dollar since World War II is based on the US military, economic, and financial hegemony -- and that any future world money will have to be based on some similar hegemony, perhaps of another country. -- Jim Devine
Re: Re: sinking Argentina
The way of establishing a world money should start with the following principle: Every country may pay its debt in any convertible currency, but its own. This principle ensures that no balance of trade be permanently negative, so that rates of change may steadily fluctuate within a narrow bracket. After what a world currency, through a single symbol or through a basket, becomes a formality. This principle not only aims at the dollar, but at the euro, too, as this currency gets the same position, in relation to the rest of the world, as the USA in relation to the EU. Like the USA with the dollar, every time the EU makes a settlement in euros, it pays a debt with its debt. I'm afraid that in these conditions the problem is first the one of imperialism. Not of two conflicting imperialisms, but of a single one, hierarchically structured: the so-called International Community. In other words, it is not merely a technical matter. The countries willing escape the spiral of crisis must resist globalization, between bombing and IMF, and for the moment without the help of first-world opinion. RK - Original Message - From: Chris Burford [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2002 1:04 AM Subject: [PEN-L:21210] Re: sinking Argentina At 07/01/02 13:13 +0100, Romain Kroes wrote: It is now becoming understandable that the way to get out of the spiral is the political decision to marginalize the dollar as international-standard currency, that is to move away from Washington's and IMF's domination. President Saa seemed to be ready to break the unstoppable chain. But the majority of Argentine politicians shrank from the difficulty. If the US dollar is likely to continue to rise while other currencies will tend to fall, it would be slightly more rational for economies like those of Argentina to be linked with the euro. Is there any possibility of a consensus emerging of a basket of currencies including the euro, and perhaps the renminbi, that assumes the dollar is likely to continue to rise for reasons of its unequal position in the world. And could such a basket of currencies be an emergent form of what Marx called world money? Chris Burford
sinking Argentina
n°7, 07-01-02___http://www.edu-irep.org___ L'Argentine laisse passer sa chance.Argentina missed the opportunity of recovering http://www.edu-irep.org/actu.htm ___ 4, bd Jean JaurèsBP 2694267 Fresnes CedexFrance_tél/fax: 33 1 4091 9997[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Turkish next currency
n°6, 06-01-02___http://www.edu-irep.org___ 1.Turquie: le syndrome de Weimar Turkey: Weimar syndromehttp://www.edu-irep.org/actu.htm 2.Ouverture d'une liste de l'irép. Pour s'inscrire: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Ecrire "Subscribe" en objet.Opening of irép's mailing list. To subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Write "Subscribe" in the subject line. _ 4, bd Jean JaurèsBP 2694267 Fresnes CedexFrance_tél/fax: 33 1 4091 9997[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: Re: Argentina
Isn't it fascinating, that people who are so involved in the economical and social policy of the last ten years be today unanimously lead to condemn this policy and to see no solution but its removal? Isn't it the proof that the crisis corresponds to an objective logic, regardless of voluntarism, interests and mentalities?
Re: Tobin Tax without the USA?
In my opinion, the main weakness of the argument against an unilateral implementation of TT lies in the implicit hypothesis that speculation gets the power to govern and to move monetary flows. But such is, too, the weakness of TT which is to fight speculation in order to stabilize exchange rates, without having demonstrated that the speculation is the main cause ofinstability. Prof. Huffschmid mentions euro trend with respect to dollar since 1998, but he seems to ignore that de basket of the eleven currencies that make up euro has shown a similar trend from 1971 to 1998 (http://www.edu-irep.org/actu.htm). Speculation does not work in a so long term. Every day, European exporters monetize their short-term bills on the USA, eitherby borrowing dollars from their bank and changing them immediately against euros, in order to escape exchange risk, orby purely and simply selling their bills toan European bank which in its turn sells them to ECB on the open market. Is it speculation? No, according to TT's promoters who do not seem to aim at this kind of operations. It is however the main cause of instability, asECB demands more dollar commercial bills, on the open market, than the USAdemand euro ones. The difference is the USA's balance of trade which is systematically negative. So that it is not speculation, but European banking system itself, which is responsiblefor the long-term appreciation in dollar value. More than a tax, which may be useful to redistribute the purchasing power in favour of public expenditure but would not reverse any trend, what Europe needs is the political courage to demand of the USA that they pay their debt in euros and no more in dollars. That would have the effect of cancelling the systematic deficit of the USA with Europe, and of stabilizing exchange rate of currencies. If not, with or without TT, the only way of stabilizing exchange rate is of using the dollar reserves to buy euros back on the open market and so of cancelling American debt, that is of confirming the USA in their aggressive policy, and of subsidizing it! As long as dollar remains the planetary account unit of debt,floatingcurrencies remain more effective than a TT associated to a steady exchange rate that would be as disastrous to Europe as it has been to Argentina. Regards, Romain Kroës
Argentina and globalisation
n°5, 27-12-01___http://www.edu-irep.org___ 24-12-2001 Nouvel article théorique sur l'Argentine: Le tournant argentin révèle les limites qui s'opposent àla "mondialisation" New theoretical paper on Argentina: Argentinian turning point shows the limits that stand in the way of "globalization" 27-12-01 L'irép souhaite à tous ses visiteurs de tenir une année de plus. irép wishes all its visitors to hold out one year more. 4, bd Jean JaurèsBP 2694267 Fresnes CedexFrance_tél/fax: 33 1 4091 9997[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: euro and ECB
Some comments on Chris Burford's textthat raises, as it seems to me,the most important theoretical controversy of the moment. That is the final decision between a Leninist or a Luxemburgist view of the current world. Or in other words, as Chris writes in its conlusion,the need of a "social consciousness of the processes occurring under our very eyes". It is firstly necessary to recall some monetary events that marxism has been neglecting for a to long time. According to theTreaty of Bretton Woods, convertible currencies were linked to the dollar, and the very gold parity was entirely born by this latter. But this clause was contingent of an expectedpositive US balance of trade. As it turned out, however,this balance was systematically negative. So that the clause of gold parity of dollar could work only if USA's allied did not demand a payment in gold from them. That is to say European countries, in addition to the regular payment of their debt to the USA, accepted that this country do not pay the whole of its importation and of its expenditure outside. But their governments were thereforefacingsome social frustrations, in the context of the existence of powerful European communist parties. So that they were separated in two categories. On one hand, the softlinercategory did not want to upset the great Ally by demanding gold balances, butits central bankssold their dollar balances to commercial banks, against other currencies or gold. This was the origin of eurodollar market. Additionally, these governments periodically resorted to devaluation. On the other hand, the hardliner category,driven by general de Gaulle, demanded the pure and simple application of Bretton Woods. Both behaviours leaded to the dollar crisis of early sixties. Economy of the USA, moreover engaged in Viet-Nam war,could not bear such a tension tending to reduce its purchasing power outside. It escaped it in 1971, by abolishing any kind of convertibility constraintsfor the dollar, though this currency remained the international one. Bybehaving so, were the USA dishonest? First, there was absolutely no obligation for Europe to accept that. USA never exerted any unbearable pressure. When de Gaulle demanded the departure of US military forces from France and gold from the Fed,there was sort of family quarrel, but US soldiers left, and gold went across Atlantic, from Fort Knox to Banque de France.When inversely, in 1973, Mr. Giscard d'Estaing reverted de Gaulle's monetary politics, he was absolutely not obliged to do it. France could contract another monetary pact with numerous gold-or-SDR-supporter countries thatat this time were likelyy to conclude. It even did not try. Second, Chris is right: while resisting US policy, France and other European countries were benefitting from uneven exchange. They had a positive balance with respect to the USA, but a negative one with respect to other parts of the world. And so, we could gradually build a hierarchical pyramid in which the resulting value flow, polarizedlike electrons by thestructural signs of trade balances,goes from the bottom to the top, and not, as peopleusually think, from the top to the bottom. Such ahierarchycan be observed throughthe known historysince the very ancient ages. Athens's balance of trade was systematically negative. Rome's one too.So was16th-century Europe's one, and permanently United Kingdom's. The USA have simplygot thejoker of every metropolis of a World System: to trade only in its own currency, in order to escape payment troubles by paying debt with debt. Until today, only Athens had been succeedingin doing that. Now, what is most astonishing is the fact that US establishment did not plan toget it.American peoplehave always believed in gold value of dollar (remember Kennedy's campaignpromising to maintain35$ an ounce, despite dollar crisis)andhave beendriven to today's situation, under the influence of an incidental logic. Reciprocally, governments of positive-balance countries, although these latter are impoverishing at maintaining such a balance (Argentina for current example),don't see it as an evil, on the contrary. Last but not least, although the USA are evidently benefitting of their negative balance of trade, without any concernfor dollar, there are numerous American people who worry about it, not by spirit of justice, but by simple wariness. Andhere is the point where we have to mull over Rosa Luxemburg's theorem, according to which accumulation needs and means expansionism towards economies still not integratedto thefinancial markets of the imperialist power. In such a process, the accumulated value corresponds toa debt never paid: the structural déficit of empire's trade. Accumulation needs and means expansionism, and expansionism needs and means a negative balance of trade.Reciprocally, only the centers of accumulation can afford long-period-negative balance of trade. Now,
La BCE et l'euro, euro and ECB
n°4, 16-12-01___ http://www.edu-irep.org ___ 14-12-01 Alors que l'euro métallique arrivait dans les banques européennes, la Banque Centrale Européenne apportait sa contribution àcette promotion, en rehaussant le cours del'euro, sur le marché des changes, au taux de 0$90 pour 1 qui semble être devenu sa nouvelle ligne de défense dans l'espoir de remonter un jour à 1 pour 1. Ce faisant, la BCE montre que ses "experts" ignorent le passé des onze monnaies qui composent le nouveau symbole monétaire ou ne veulent pas le voir. Un panier de ces monnaies, pondéré par les PIB, montre pourtant que l'euro, bien que créé en 1999, glisse par rapport au dollar depuis 1971, au rythme moyen de 6% l'an.Lacourbe esten page actualité du site de l'irép. La BCE montre également qu'elle n'a tiré aucune leçon de l'exemple dramatique de l'Argentine. L'actualité de la crise qui s'aggrave est sur le site de l'irép. 14-12-01 While euro coins were arriving to European banks, European Central Bank contributed to this promotionby raising euro exchange rate to 0$90 for 1,which seems to be its last line of defence in the hope of reaching, one day, a 1-for-1 rate. By doing it, ECB shows that its "experts" do not know the past of the eleven currencies that make up the new currency, or refuse to know it. A GDP-weighted basket of these eleven currencies however shows that euro, although it was created in 1999, has been sliding with respect to dollar since 1971, at the mean yearly rate of 6%. Thecurve is in news page of irép's web site. Additionally, ECB shows that it has not mulled over any lesson from Argentina's tragic example. News of worsening crisis are on irép's web site. 4, bd Jean Jaurès BP 26 94267 Fresnes Cedex France _ tél/fax: 33 1 4091 9997 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Stupid profit rate question
Bonjour. The perpetual come back of the question of profit rate is a theoretical fascinating thing. It means that this question is not yet resolved, despite the abundant litterature about it. Do you remember Marx's question (WO kommt das Geld zur Versilberung des Mehwerts her? zw.B, 20.K) which he never answered (as Rosa Luxemburg realized it) ? There, is the trouble. If surplus value is not included in added value per capita, but in the multiplication of added value, the problem is resolved. The mean profit rate is then nothing but growth rate. And as growth rate decreases, in crisis periods, the theory of trend of lowering profit rate is verified. And as such a profit depends on expansionism, the Marxian and Luxemburgian hypothesis of the limit is verified, too. I have tried a model on this hypothesis, and it works (it can be visited at http://www.edu-irep.org, under the title Asymmetry and accumulation, or World System's entropy). Isn't it time to admit that Rosa Luxemburg was right against Lenin, on the subject of accumulation and imperialism? Cordially Romain Kroës
Re: [PEN-L] empiricism in p.e.
Doug Henwood wrote: Actually I've mostly phrased this as a question, not an assertion, a question that runs more or less as follows: "What do the Marxian value categories tell you about recent economic history that the intelligent use of bourgeois statistics can't?" By intelligent, in this context, I meant through Marx-informed eyes. I asked because I really want to hear answers, and not a lot of empty purist bluster. Doug An answer can be found in the Joseph M. Gillmans attempt to check the marxist version of the « falling profit rate law », by the means of the available statistics (London, 1957 ; New-York, 1958 ; Paris, 1980). Gillman didnt success in demonstrating the « law », for his time-series show an increasing as well as decreasing variable, without any significant trend. But in the scientific research, experimental failures arent at all nul results. That one could be explained in three ways : 1. The « law » is wrong 2. Statistics are wrong 3. The « law » and statistics are wrong or insufficient Whatever it be, the answer is most important. In a prime analysis, it appears that Gillman attempted to check a law that is closely associated to the « period of production » variable, by the means of datas that are closely associated to an invariable unit of time. So that it seems possible to choose the answer number 2. But in a deeper analysis, it appears that the marxist expression of the « law » is itself jeopardized by a contradiction, notably concerning the « surplus-value ». So that the answer rather seems to be the third one : the marxist law of value is contradictory to itself, and statistics dont integrate an essential variable : the necessary gestation time of labour products. But both of marxist theory and available statistics can and must be asked, until a very « economic science » end the debate. Regards Romain Kroes
Re: [PEN-L] Re: empiricism in p.e.
Gerald Levy wrote: Doug Henwood wrote: Why is it "more important to determine the rate of exploitation through a rejection of wage share" than to explore income polarlization? What does it reveal? You seem to be asking: "what does exploitation reveal?" [!] In general, "productive" workers are better paid than "unproductive" ones - who feels and looks more exploited. To define productive and unproductive labour, don't you first have to define surplus value? Value categories may be important for examining the inner dynamics of capitalist economies, Well ... that's certainly a wishy-washy statement. Are they important or are they not? If they are important, how are they important? Please be specific. Jerry May be is it relevant to distinguish tribute and profit ? Why hasn't Marx success in trying (during fourteen years) to transform his "surplus value rate" into a "profit rate" ?
Re: the crash and politics
Tom Walker wrote: Long-time means long story. Exactly. And, to nudge the story back one step longer, the 1958 return to convertability also marked the transition from a world economy of post-war reconstruction in which the US supremacy as a supplier of capital goods (and capital) was unrivaled to a world of restored industrial competition between the US and Europe (and later Japan). For a nifty insight into how clearly this process was perceived already thirty years ago, see the 1967 monograph "Export Credits and Development Financing" from the U.N. Dept. of Economic and Social Affairs. So, not only is the crash a symptom of a long-term monetary crisis, the long-term monetary crisis is itself a symptom of a SYSTEMIC (not a periodic) crisis of overproduction. Sorry, Tom, but fourty years of "systemic" overproduction are simply impossible. If it was, stocks would have been always oversaturated, and one would have never success in lauching the tight streams. And how do you explain a continuous rise in prices in a period of overproduction ? The trouble is, Tom, that Marx didn't explain at all the capitalism crises, only the cyclical fluctuations of the demand-supply adjustments. But who asked his epigons to question and exceed his thought ? The "Mohr" himself. Salut et fraternite Romain Kroes
Re: global inequality data
Louis N Proyect wrote: The World Bank has excellent figures. (www.worldbank.org) On Tue, 21 Oct 1997, Thad Williamson wrote: Dear Pen-L'rs, Does anyone know of an easy reference source for figures on the GLOBAL distribution of income and wealth, and historical trends in regard to each? Both internet and paper references appreciated. thanks, Thad Thad Williamson National Center for Economic and Security Alternatives (Washington)/ Union Theological Seminary (New York) 212-531-1935 http://www.northcarolina.com/thad Penn World Tables (PWT 5.6) Look for it at NBER Home Page Regards
Re: Marx making a comeback?
Ricardo Duchesne wrote: Date sent: Mon, 20 Oct 1997 10:03:25 -0500 (CDT) Send reply to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: "William S. Lear" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject:Re: Marx making a comeback? The labor theory of value in its classical form is untenable. Today science and technology play a greater role in the creation of value than productive labor. In the GRUNDRISSE Marx recognizes this: "But as heavy industry develops the creation of real wealth depends less on labor time and on the quantity of labor utilized than on the power of mechanized agents which are set into motion during the labor time. The powerful effectiveness of these agents, in its turn, bears no relation to the immediate labor time that their labor cost. IT DEPENDS RATHER ON THE GENERAL STATE OF SCIENCE AND ON TECHNOLOGICAL PROGRESS, OR THE APPLICATION OF THIS SCIENCE TO PRODUCTION." (Italics added). But Marx did not integrate these ideas into his formulation of the labor theory of value in Capital...It is beyond me why marxists continue to insist on the labor theory of value when it is obvious that labor, as Marx says in the Grundrisse, is no longer the principal source of wealth. RICARDO On Fri, October 17, 1997 at 17:37:56 (-0700) anzalone/starbird writes: It was actually Adam Smith who first summised that labor produces all wealth. David Ricardo, arguing against the corn laws of England proceeded Marx in making that same deduction; and invented the labor theory of value. Ricardo quoted Smith, "The real price of everything...is the toil and trouble of acquiring it...Labour was the first price-the original purchase-money that was paid for all things." which I think is on page 6 of Ricardo's rebuttal to Malthus. And that's the way it was in 1815. Wasn't it Locke who first proposed the classical formulation that labor creates all value? It is labour ... which puts the greater part of value upon land, without which it would scarcely be worth anything. ---John Locke Of course, Locke was interested in showing that thereby private property was natural and good. Paul Mattick has some pertinent words: The labor theory of value became an embarrassment for the capitalist class as soon as the newly-arising frictions between bourgeoisie and proletariatreplaced and overshadowed those between the feudal and the capitalist regime. If the value of commodities is determined by the quantity of labor time required for their production, and the product of the whole of social labor is divided into rent, profit, and wages, it would seem to follow that the elimination of profit and rent would allow for an equal exchange of commodities in accordance with their labor-time. Ricardian economics gave rise to a school of "Ricardian Socialists," which demanded an exchange system that would assure producers the full value of their labors. Marx did not draw similar conclusions from the labor theory of value. ... He knew that the social labor process itself has nothing to do with either value or price but only with the time-consuming physical and mental exertions of the laboring population, and that "value" and "price" are fetishistic categories for existing social production relations. ---Paul Mattick. _Marx and Keynes_ (Porter Sargent: 1969, p. 28). Bill The problem of marxist theory of value is the working time as the unity of measuring value. Not the fact that wealth is created by labour. And Marx didn't success in trying to transform his "surplus-value rate" into a "profit rate", because of that. Regards RK
Re: Physicists Take Philosophers to Task in Paris (N.Y. Times)
Sokal's criticism is justified, but a little bit unilateral. If intellectualism of some french intellectuals, which wouldn't have been a blot in the Moliere's theater landscape, is pretty well pined, as being all things but scientific ones, the following it benefits from US universities is as guilty as it is. That following constitutes, in a way, the Empire's support to the censorship of one of its dominions. For there is a real scientific thought, in France, notably in economy, freudian psychanalysis, sociology and psychology of labour, for example, but it is unpublished or despised. And the anglo-saxon world won't know it, for this world is still too much fond of every kind of metaphysics. Salut et fraternite RK
[PEN-L:12680] Re: Can Marxism explain the Holocaust?
Louis N Proyect wrote: Unless the socialist movement finds a way to put an end to capitalism and disarm the war-makers, the survival of the planet remains in question. While we can not "explain" the genocide adequately no matter how sharp our theoretical weapons, one thing is for sure. We have a sufficient explanation for the need to abolish capitalism: it is an inherently irrational system which threatens the human race. Louis Proyect I agree withe taht conclusion. The survival of humanity remains in question. Nazism was (as long as we're informed of history) the first conscious acting out against civilization. The law was no more the law, and all things were permitted. S Marxism can't explain "the
[PEN-L:12681] Re: Can Marxism explain the Holocaust?
Unless the socialist movement finds a way to put an end to capitalism and disarm the war-makers, the survival of the planet remains in question. While we can not "explain" the genocide adequately no matter how sharp our theoretical weapons, one thing is for sure. We have a sufficient explanation for the need to abolish capitalism: it is an inherently irrational system which threatens the human race. Louis Proyect I agree with that conclusion : unless men find a way to put an end to capitalism, the survival of society and humanity remains in question. Nazism, as long as we're informed of history, was the first acting out against civilization. The law was no more the law (and precisely the Law was intoduced in our christian culture by the jews, especially in Germany), and all things were permitted, all frustrations and impulses could be exhausted. So that a crowd of uncultured men efficiently served the nazism. So I'm convinced, though I be marxist, that marxism can not explain the "holocaust", unless marxist thought integrate the freudian thought, that is to say abandon the rousseauist one. I'm not sure that capitalism is "irrational", but the whole of capitalism defender arguments, nowadays, is entirely irrational. "Inflation", "market economy" and so on are only metaphysics, and that's notabily the reason why the so called "economic science" remains everything but a real science. Whatever it be, today's capitalism, by promoting egoism and "laisser faire", is a daily aggression against culture and civilization. In that sense, it's going to give birth to the next avatar of nazism, which one we'll be anable to recognize according to the Primo Levi's prediction, the last one for the last step of history. But don't forget, too, that Marx believed in the extinguishing of the State, and so laboured himself, in this case, under the bourgeoisie's ideology ... Regards RK RK
[PEN-L:12654] Re: Third World economic decline
Anthony P D'Costa wrote: Growing unemployment? Where? The S'pore PM wants foreigners to drive the economy, obviously under a controlled system. The govt is worried that Singapore's won't be reproducing itself so the govt is getting educated people together (matchmaking through the internet)! True, the S'pore economy is really an exception but even in other countries employment is not stagnant. I don't think we can write off these "miracle" (I hate the word) economies as simply export oriented and therefore on shaky grounds or that their growth has come to an end because of environmental damage. These difficulties are there but capitalist institutions and foundations are pretty solid and hence the systems are subject to capitalist crisis. But they are not transitory as is often being claimed by the left. Anthony P. D'Costa Associate Professor Senior Fellow Comparative International Development Department of Economics University of WashingtonNational University of Singapore 1900 Commerce Street10 Kent Ridge Crescent Tacoma, WA 98402-3100 USA Singapore 119260 Ph: (253) 692-4462 Fax: (253) 692-4414 Doesn't asian "miracle" a simply export oriented economy ? Malaisia : 89%. Thailand : 35%. Philippines : 30%. Indonesia, which is the country that resists best the monetary crisis (but not the productivity madness): only 21%. These lands, except Singapore and Taiwan (may be both 2% of the non-OECD total GDP) doesn't export high added values, only raws and generic products. Isn't the "miracle" slowing down ? IMF urges these countries to orient more and more their economy towards export, by the mean of a drastic reduction of internal market activity, and a correlative impoverishment of the populations. Interest rates on three months on interbank market : Philippines 16%, Thailand 24,5%, Indonesia 30%. All works of internal development are cancelled. As for "unemployment", I'd better write : growing unemployment or(and) slavery. Evicted from their villages by the low costs of their productions (they're not competitive enough, you know...), people reach and inflate the towns where they look for jobs and find only slaves ones. The time has come of sobering up! RK
[PEN-L:12635] Re: Third World economic decline
James Devine wrote: My impression is that the "economic miracles" of East Asia, including that of market-Stalinist China, are based to a large extent on the grossest abuses of the natural environment (not to mention of workers). Yes, I know that the UK and US did likewise when they had their "industrial revolutions" (a.k.a., "takeoffs"). But aren't we a bit closer to global environmental disaster than we were in the 19th century? So these miracles can't last... Jim Devine ... And it can be added that the growth rates associeted to the "miracle" are widely made of a transferance process of activity from the former traditional domestic productions to other ones that are now devoted to export. Such a "miracle" is nothing but the last step of the subversive and substitutive expansion of capitalism over the world. The proof of it is the growing unemployment accompanying the "miracle". RK
[PEN-L:12618] Re: Culture
Whatever it can be, we're suffering, nowadays, the natures's fighting against culture. Such is the so called and mystifying "market economy". RK
[PEN-L:11533] Re: Intuition in Math Reasoning
Wojtek Sokolowski wrote: Therefore, the mystification of mathematics in modern economics can be compared to cargo cults that spread on some Pacific isalands after World War II. The Americans established air bases on those islands, and to buy the aborigines' loyalty, they showered them with goodies which, of course, they transpored by air. After the war, the Gringos left, and the trickle of goodies dried up. To reverse their fortune, the aborigines started to emulate what the Gringos did -- building aircraft carrying the goodies to the islands. Except that lacking the proper materials, the aborigines built those aircraft from sticks and straw. I like very much the metaphor above. Actually, it suits the economists. All attempts to construct an original axiomatic basis in economics remain still uncompleted, and mainly the marxist one. The 28th january 1884, Engels wrote to Lavrov: "The Third book, capitalist production taken as a whole, exists in two draftings which have been written before 1869 ; later, there are only a few notes and a notebook full of equations to calculate the numerous ways of surplus-value rate changing into profit rate." So, 14 years before Marx's death, "The Capital" was already, and for ever, an uncompleted work. If his pages of equations had enabled their author to transform the "Mehrwertsrate" in a "Profitrate", the mathematical notebook would have been followed by new writings concluding or rectifying the "Third book", and by a publishing. Not only Marx didn't go on writing, but he died without having told anyone about the state of his work. The 2nd april 1883 (Marx was dead the 14th march), Engels wrote to the same Lavrov: "Tomorrow, I'll have at last some hours to spend on revewing all the manuscripts the Mohr has left us (...) But he always hided from us the state of his works ; he knew that once aware of what was ready to be published, we'd have violeted him until he consents." And this silence lasted 14 years! Due to dogmas and neuroses accompanying the value accumulation process, to the merchants struggle for contending with the political institutions for power, and to the awfully effective scholastic and working consensus by which the ad hoc ideology can reproduce, neoclassical economists are unable to overcome the lesser epistemologic obstacle. But because of a paralyzing devoutness, Marxists never tried, too, to go beyond the conceptual contradiction against which Marx came up. Except Rosa Luxemburg (by the way, a woman who readily confessed she was hopeless at mathematics... ) But all that doesn't mean that an economic science, using mathematics, can't be. It only means that an original economic tool, taking place beside the other social sciences (and no more above them), is still ahead ... Sincerly, Romain Kroes (Warning : Engels letters translation here is of mine, and from a french version, the only one I had handy)
[PEN-L:11547] Re: Re: Intuition in Math Reasoning
James Devine wrote: what specific conceptual contradiction are you talking about? the "contradiction" of the so-called "transformation problem"? neoclassical economists are unable to overcome the lesser epistemologic obstacle. what obstacle? how do they overcome it? As for "paralyzing devoutness," assuming that you're talking about the "transformation problem," you should look at: _Marx_and_Non-equilibrium_Economics_ (editors: Alan Freeman, Guglielmo Carchedi; Cheltenham [England] Brookfield, Vt.: Edward Elgar, 1996). This book defends Marx's approach to the transformation without any devoutness at all. In fact, they attack the devoutness of the neoclassical and neoclassical-Marxist belief in equilibrium. Why didn't Marx succeed in transforming his surplus-value rate in a profit rate ? Because he had postulated that the profit issued of productivity gains (the "relative surplus-value") were globally nil. That is global accumulation were impossible, from a growing productivity. Now, what are we observing, today ? A poursuit of profit related to the lowering of the work sharing part in the product unit. The contradiction is : work is actually the only supply of wealth, but capitalist accumulation of value depends on the productivity gains. What Marx gave as a "surplus-value rate" is a relative one, and what he gave as a "relative surplus-value" is globally capitalizable. So Marx could not explain the "enhanced capital reproduction", as Rosa Luxemburg realized it (Die Akkumulation des Kapitales, 1913). That's the reason why I put forward the idea of an "epistemologic obstacle", since we are facing a conceptual inversion. As for equilibrium, I don't think it's a matter of believing or not. Equilibrium is a concept : the decretionary reference to stability. For exemple : the equilibrium can be defined as being the zero price index. But it's from the capitalist point of vue. If, on the other hand, one prefers the employment rate and the welfare state, as references of equilibrium, one has to consider that price index has been invariably positive for more than fifty years, and to explain that both equilibriums (money and growth) have become incompatible. And this is the point where we meet Rosa Luxemburg intuition... Salut et fraternite Romain Kroes P.S.- Although that discussion and your company are highly fascinating, I must move away from my computer, up to 25th august. But I'll come back on the Pen-L.
[PEN-L:3736] Kroes romain did not provide any subject!
Andrew K wrote: I'd like some help with a simple general equilibrium model I'm constructing to show that technological change can reduce labor demand and employment, even given all the usual neoclassical assumptions. I've got two goods, labor and one other input, two output prices, the wage rate and the other input price. I also think I've got enough equations. Wouldn't a n-goods model be more consistent with GET? Why do you think that technological change would reduce labor demand and employment "even given all of the usual neoclassical assumptions"? That seems counter-intuitive to me. Don't the nc results necessarily flow from the assumptions and parameters of the GET model? Jerry May I object that the very theorical problem to be resolved is not the negative relation between the technological changes and both the labor demand and employment, but rather the inverse one ? Intuitively, one understands that an increasing productivity involves a reduction of employment. Above all if the growth is limited by a restriction of credit. But what economic theory has ever explain (with economic arguments and theorems, please!!!) that both labor demand and employment were growing since the machine tool revolution until nowadays, through taylorism and fordism, that is about one century and half ? In other words, does yet a true economic science (and then the possibility of constructing a simple general equilibrium model) even exist ? Regards Romain Kroes
[PEN-L:3559] Kroes romain did not provide any subject!
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[PEN-L:3576] Kroes romain did not provide any subject!
RATHER PUT A LIMIT IN YOUR ECONOMETRIC MODELS Marxist predicative econometrics are impossible, because the main marxist equation is wrong at the macroeconomic scale. Refer to the courageous but unsuccessfull Gillman's attempts on rate of profit. Keynesian predicative econometrics are impossible, because, among others, the so-called multiplier isn't explicit. Refer to PK authors and politicians who are splitted between their conviction about the necessity of a boosting policy, and their resignation in vew of the supposed jamming action of inflation. Neoclassical predicative econometrics are impossible, because this thought is unable to establish a difference between the by the costs inflation and the shortage on goods one at which the former is always reduced. Refer to Friedman, according to who raises in prices invariably are the result of an only cause : the excess of money, even in the cases of overproduction regarding to the demand! That is to say no predicative econometrics are presently possible. There are only pages of equations in the thread of whose, as Keynes already said (preface of GT), their authors forget, at the begining of each page, the hypothesis of the previous ones, most of these hypothesis being ad hoc ones. Nevertheless, I think predicative econometrics on macro policy intervention are possible. My certitude is founded on a double observation that everybody can do in macroeconomics. Firstly, the matter is the trend of both growth and inflation, tending simultaneously towards zero by the positive values. Secondly, this trend is nothing but the opposite sign one of the previous positive trend of both growth and inflation we've known in the sixties. Such an observation reveals the mathematical reflection of a limit. A limit which is totally independent of the macro policy paradigm. The moneytarist one, purchasing the stability of money, spoils economy and society. The keynesian one succeeds to establish growth and social stability, but to the detriment of the value and its owners. It was not always so, but it is the reality now. That is that authenticates the limit. No one of the known models is able to identify a limit, because all of them postulate the human economy as an intrinsic equilibrium without its having to enter in an exchange with an external environment : that is natural constraints are systematically ignored. Because, too, all of them postulate the capitalist space as an isotrop (non oriented) one : that is the resultant of all geographical and sociological trajectories of capital movements is implicitly supposed to be null or random. I have been working on that theory of the limit for years, and I think I have identified the entropic factors of the limit. They are the strict trend of productivity, and the transformation of the increasing productivity in an accumulation of value. And what about social components ? They exist in an other investigation referential than the strictly economic one. I think this last principle is the only way for getting out of the hodgepodge. Do I succeed in picking the collective brain ? R.K. (I apologize for the syntaxic faults : writing in English is a task I'm just begining to complete)
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