From: Paul Zarembka (zarembka@BUFFALO.EDU)
Date: Mon May 10 2004 - 23:28:47 EDT
On Sun, 9 May 2004, Jurriaan Bendien wrote: > Well I can tell you what my understanding of it is. Capital is value lodged > in tradeable objects or money Jurriaan, No need for me to go further. "Capital" -- Marx's title -- concerns the social relation between capitalists and wage-laborers, i.e., the class relation; it is not about 'value lodged in tradeable objects or money'. (You are guilty of what Marx wrote concerning "the economists": "they transform capital from a relationship into a thing" -- T.S.V., III, Chp. XXI, p. 272.) ... > The rate of accumulation can be measured as the net increase in real capital > stock, or as the rate of re-investment of realised capital assets. Thus, capital as a thing leads to this neoclassical expression. ... > A problem of so-called "primitive, original or primary" accumulation arises > in economics, not simply because the origin of capital must be explained > without myth, but because the transformation of money capital or commodity > capital into production capital is not simply an automatic process. It > requires that you can actually buy and sell means of production and labour > capacity, and for that purpose, means of production and labour capacity must > be (1) privatised and (2) tradeable. Another way of putting the same thing > is, that market expansion is not simply an automatic process, or simply a > commercial process, but a social-political process, since making things > tradeable and privatising them, requires changing social relations and > social rules for the disposition of economic resources and assets, i.e. the > assertion of power. I'm much more comfortable with the above. Paul
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