From: Paul Cockshott (paul@COCKSHOTT.COM)
Date: Sat May 31 2003 - 16:52:13 EDT
Rakesh Bhandari wrote: And an unrelated point: that superfluous and idle capital has > hitherto warded off the complete collapse of profitability through > purely speculative investments in the US securities' market and > through conversion into the fictitious capital issued by the US > Treasury does not mean that pressure will not mount and is not > mounting for a competitve inter imperialist struggle over the control > of investment outlets. I think Allin dealt with this point, the only possible discrepancy is if you meant the market for US govt securities. In that case what we have something that I dealt with in my original post which I quote here: > If the above assumption fails, then this implies either zero > or negative accumulation. This in turn implies strong > recesssionary tendancies unless > a) the capitalists spend their profits unproductively on > servants and luxuries as they did in the UK 1870-1900. > b) state expenditure realises the surplus, financing it > with bond sales, or taxes on profit. > Option a) is only sustainable if there is no serious competition > on the world market. (b) is the condition to which capitalist > economies tend. > > > > Lenin has already been vindicated ironically as the collapse of the > Soviet Union allowed for a renewal of inter-imperial rivalries; the > collapse of speculative frenzy could well mean new inter-imperial > rivalries for the control of potentially productive investment > outlets for overaccumulated capital--Lenin would be vindicated again. I dont rule out this as a possibility. I think imperialism had effectively come to an end by the 1970s with the end of the Portugues empire and the withdrawal of the US from Vietnam. Since the fall of the USSR there has certainly been a movement to re-establish it. The US and UK governments are both commited to what amounts to a new imperialist policy. Even old Edward Heath, can see and denounce this. > > > So, I would also be interested in your comments on Henryk Grossmann's > chapter on "Die Funkion des Kapitalexportes im Kapitalismus. Die > Ueberakkumulation von Kapial und der Kampf um die Anlagesphaeren. Die > Rolle der Spekulation im Kapitalismus." I think Grossmann does a fine > job extracting the rational kernel from Lenin's theory. I am afraid I have never read Grossman. > > > In terms of theory of imperialism, Grossmann also developed Bauer's > hypothesis of how value can be transferred on a global scale through > the formation of prices of production. Of course if one rejects > Marx's theory of value that hypothesis is not available. I dont reject Marx's theory of value, though I think the theory of prices of production has been overstated. >
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