re Alejandro's 6579 > >This passage is amazing: While Tugan openly states that his theory is not >Marx's (see below), Hilferding says that "It is Marxism gone mad, but still >Marxism"! But isn't Hilferding quite correct about Tugan's implicit denial of consumption as the aim of production being quite in the spirit of Marxism, however mad Tugan's own results. > > >In Chapter 1 of the Studies, Tugan writes: > >"The valorization of social capital takes place by mediation of money. >Commodities must be sold in order to be transformed into new commodities. >Yet, in the abstract analysis of the social reproduction of capital, we can >leave out of account completely the role of money in this reproduction. >This does not mean that we deny that the interruptions in the money >circulation provoke disturbances in the process of the reproduction of >social capital. But, for the moment, is not our task to investigate such >interruptions. As far as money plays only a mediating role in exchange, >products are purchased with products. We proceed from this assumption in >the following analysis." (p. 65) Whether Tugan works on the assumption of barter or Marx posits a growing gold sector may not matter in terms of what the purpose of the schema actually is. The schema into which are built all kinds of fantastic assumptions were never meant to show either the historic limits or the limitlessness of capital accumulation. We are agreed, right? They are not even a growth model a la Harrod Domar. I don't even think they are fundamentally meant to show that accumulation is possible, and need not founder on a permanent consumption deficit. The schema are meant to show the great liklihood of endemic disequilibrium. That's it. I want to look back at Meghnad Desai's analysis. I think what Duncan does with them is his own original theoretical contribution, e.g., to show how finance, realization and production lags slow down the rate of accumulation. Note his equation 5.25 (which is introduced before he considers inter-departmental relations, so I am going off point here): g=ln(1+pq)/Tf + Tr + Tp. "It shows that the rate of expansion does indeed depend on the key parameters of the system, the markup q, which reflect the social relations of production as the product of the rate of surplus value and the composition of capital; p, the rate of capitalisation of surplus value, which determines how much of the surplus value reenters the circuit of capital; and the time lags in the various phases of the circuit. the rate of expansion increases with the mark up and capitalisation rate and decreases with the rises in any of the time lags. This equation thus provides a basic framework for the analysis of the political economy of accumulation in capitalist societies, because it shows the proximate variables that policy must affect in order to alter the rate of accumulation.", p. 74 But I don't think the Marx meant to isolate those variables manipulation of which could lead to the achievement of a maximum growth rate, though I must say that I have been asking Fred why if the rate of capitalisation picks up, a falling rate of profit ipso facto results in a declining demand for labor relative to its supply. In short, a falling rate of profit does not mean that accumulation cannot founder on a shortage of labor power if despite a falling rate of profit the rate of capitalisation is increasing and the relevant time lags shortening. rb
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