Re: (OPE-L) accumulation and de-accumulation of capital?

From: glevy@PRATT.EDU
Date: Fri Apr 23 2004 - 13:36:29 EDT


Hi again Paul C.

A quick response before I head to the afternoon session of the
"Globalization and Empire"  conference and hear David Harvey talk.

> Are you talking in stock or flow terms.

Flow. I.e. For capital to accumulate, surplus value must be
productively consumed at a greater scale than before by
investing more money-capital in c and v.

> In flow terms, the dimension of variable capital is people,
> specifically the number of people needed to reproduce the
> work force in the capitalist sector.

The dimension of v is not people but the quantity of _money_
paid to productive wage-workers in exchange for the commodity
labour-power. A flow.

> This is implicitly a stock analysis you are making but
> even in this form it wildly wrong.
> Your account only makes sense with gold money, with modern money
> an accumulation of money is a purely paper operation and
> does not represent an accumulation of value.

All I was saying is that if we look at the circuit M - C - M' then
for there to be capital accumulation the M that goes towards the
purchase of c and v in the next period of production must be
greater than the M that began the previous period.  Thus, the M
in Period 2 must be a greater quantity than the M that began
Period I.  There is no need here for complications that arise
because of commodity-money vs. non-commodity-money regimes.

In solidarity, Jerry


This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Apr 24 2004 - 00:00:02 EDT