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----- Original Message -----
From: Jurriaan Bendien <djjb99@worldonline.nl>
To: <ope-l@galaxy.csuchico.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, January 11, 2000 5:35 PM
Subject: [OPE-L:2088] Re: Re: *What will happen in the 21st Century?*
> Clyder wrote:
>
> >Any unit of production that purchases its inputs and requires to sell its
> >outputs in order to reproduce itself is a capital, so that any economy is
> >based
> >on such units is a capitalist economy.
>
> Where is your proof ? What about administered prices ? "Reproduction" as
> such does not make a capital. Expanded reproduction under conditions of
> private ownership, does (unless we agree to change the meaning of capital
> in the Marxian sense).
>
> In solidarity
>
> Jurriaan
>
I am not sure what you mean by proof here. Why I consider such an economy
to be capitalist is that the basic circuit of capital m-c-m' would have to
operate here.
The existence of regulated prices is not terribly relevant. Forms of price
regulation
exist from time to time in capitalist economies. All that price regulation
does is
a) in areas like utilities which are natural monopolies it reduces
differential rents.
b) in areas like agriculture, where prices are raised above value by state
intervention
it raises differential rents.
By themselves these are analytically no different from the effects of
private property
in land.
Note that I said that a unit of production that must sell its outputs in
order to
reproduce itself is a capital. You reply:"Reproduction" as
> such does not make a capital. Expanded reproduction under conditions of
> private ownership, does (unless we agree to change the meaning of capital
> in the Marxian sense).
If the unit of production has to purchase means of production then it as a
unit
owns them. It is a juridical subject. Since as a juridical subject it is not
identical
with society as a whole, it stands opposed to it as smaller private part, we
have private property. Hence if the economy is growing, it is by your own
definition capitalist.
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