From: Diego Guerrero (diego.guerrero@CPS.UCM.ES)
Date: Mon Oct 03 2005 - 11:36:59 EDT
Paul: 1) The activity of record keeping is distinct
from transport, in that transport involves the physical movement
of things from one place to another
Diego:
Think of postal transfers of money. Postal offices do in this case the same that banks do. There is no physical movement of money, but money has changed of place.
2) Its aim is not to move things
but to maintain and update a relation between economic subjects
and quantities of a unit of account.
I believe that money is not necessary in a post capitalist society. Therefore there will be no need of means of payment, but there will be a need for units of account, accountants and book-keeping. I think that banks do now a part of this future necessary labour.
3) The physical transport of gold coin between the safes of different
money holders is a particular way of maintaining such records, but
has been a totally subsidiary activity since the onset of capitalist
banking in the middle ages
I was not talking about transport of gold but about producing gold-money and paper-money, from mines to prints.
4) Record keeping and economic calculation are activities required in
all civilizations, but financial services are a specifically capitalist form
of record keeping and as such are not required in pre or post capitalist
civilizations
Remember that in my table I wrote "legal, financial. services" among necessary productive labour, but "Gold or credit money" as contingent productive labour. Of course, the latter part will not be necessary outside capitalism. However I agree in that I should have written "legal, some financial. services" instead.
5) In all cases such record keeping constitutes what marx called the
unproductive faux frais of the mode of production.
Would not be armaments also faux frais ot the capitalist mode of production? However, arms firms or private security services firms, or firms creating advertisements, etc., are capitalist firms that exploit their workers and extract their surplus value.
6) Since bank charges only pay for a part of the work done in banks, the
rest of the work done in the banks is paid for out of interest. Since
interest is a deduction from the surplus value...
What I mean is that interests, like commercial profits or land rents, are the source of incomes of all capitalists, in all sectors. We should no longer separate landowners from industrial or commercial capitalists because all are the same. It is then a mistake in my opinion to identify circulation labour with trade plus financial branches. All industrial, agriculture and services firms have to devote a part of their work to commercial and financial activities that are unproductive.
Think of another thing: Marx distinguished M-C-M (commercial or merchant capital) from M-C...P...C'-M' (industrial capital). However, the first is not but a special case of the second, where ...P... consists in all work done by workers in the ships, harbours and lands in transatlantic trips. Marx's distinction is correct at a theoretical level, but when making empirical measurements in real societies we have to be careful with the complex relationship between categories and realities.
7) But even that part of the labour costs of a bank that are met out of
bank charges which are thus a charge for the work of record keeping in
ordinary commercial transactions is not itself productive. Since what
these record keeping activities do is still a matter of regulating the claims
of different proprietors.
Don't confuse unproductive and contingent labour. Lawyers are defending private property, but if they are wage workers they are exploited. Also wage people working in advertising firms, private security... or even industrial firms making electronic devices to protect the mansions of major capitalists, or building their own houses and chateaux, and many other things.
8) As such they are labour expended to maintain
the social hierarchy, and no more productive than the ministry of
priests
Public ministries consist of a lot of people that produce services (use values) that are not commodities nor (transform into) money. They are paid from value created in the productive sector. But many activities such as those performed by construction firms that build the churches for your priests, are productive of surplus value even if they will not be necessary outside capitalism.
9) Iagree that the supermarkets do employ some productive workers - those involved with the
physical transport of goods. They also employ unproductive workers - those involved with
the charging for the goods being sold, or those involved with advertising and promotion.
If a supermarket devoted part of its labour to advertise itself their products, it would do unproductive labour. But as there are firms in the advertising sector where new productive workers are producing commercials, ads, etc., and new areas of capital accumulation are now possible and open to global capital, these workers are being exploited and do create surplus value!!!
Yours,
Diego
----- Original Message -----
From: Paul Cockshott
To: OPE-L@SUS.CSUCHICO.EDU
Sent: Monday, October 03, 2005 2:08 PM
Subject: Re: [OPE-L] basics vs. non-basics and financial services
Diego
-------
Financial services also include transfers of money (and other services), a special type of transport of things. May be in the future there will be no money, but I think it will keep being some sort of means of payment that will need to be "transported" from here to there, etc. Of course, if we reduce its activity to money I agree with you again.
Paul Cockshott
I am not sure that the analogy with transport is relevant here.
Banks are involved in record keeping, both to carry out payments
and to levy interest. The activity of record keeping is distinct
from transport, in that transport involves the physical movement
of things from one place to another. The keeping of account records
is something different from transport. Its aim is not to move things
but to maintain and update a relation between economic subjects
and quantities of a unit of account.
The physical transport of gold coin between the safes of different
money holders is a particular way of maintaining such records, but
has been a totally subsidiary activity since the onset of capitalist
banking in the middle ages. From the early trade fairs of the middle
ages, the settling of accounts by merchant bankers had already
displaced the physical transport of gold for most trading operations.
This enabled transport to be restricted to its proper use - the movement
of goods to where they were of use - and obviated the need to ship
gold about.
Record keeping and economic calculation are activities required in
all civilizations, but financial services are a specifically capitalist form
of record keeping and as such are not required in pre or post capitalist
civilizations. Non capitalist societies do not require the transport of
means of payment from place to place. The Inca for example had
economic calculation but did not ship gold about as a means of
payment. Instead the record keeping took the form of knots on
string. If Polanyi is to be believed the same applied to early
Summerian civilization, where there was no shipment of coin or
bullion about, but records of the movement of goods and tax liabilities
were maintained in written form on clay.
In all cases such record keeping constitutes what marx called the
unproductive faux frais of the mode of production.
I think that the bank sector's rate of profit is fixed like in other sectors. Profit here is the difference between the sum of interests received (due to loans and credits being in the assets of bank assets) and the interests paid to people and firms, and has to be compared to total capital of the banks. But what workers in the bank sector do is the same that workers in the mining sector did (and keep doing) when producing the gold necessary for money to circulate; of course, you have to add to those miners people working in making the coins, printing notes, etc. So it is this why I believe they are productive as far as they do that.
Paul Cockshott
How do you believe that the rate of profit of the banks is fixed?
This was one of the points I was trying to make. Bank charges could
conceivably be viewed as a payment for the 'commodity' of commercial
record keeping. But the banks own accounts show that the revenues
from this commodity cover only a small part of the costs of the banks.
Let us leave out for the moment whether the work on the 'commodity'
of commercial record keeping is productive and discuss that lower down.
Since bank charges only pay for a part of the work done in banks, the
rest of the work done in the banks is paid for out of interest. Since
interest is a deduction from the surplus value, that value was produced
by the labour of productive workers in the firms to whom the loans
were made. Since their wages are paid from value created elsewhere,
their labour can not be productive of value.
But even that part of the labour costs of a bank that are met out of
bank charges which are thus a charge for the work of record keeping in
ordinary commercial transactions is not itself productive. Since what
these record keeping activities do is still a matter of regulating the claims
of different proprietors. As such they are labour expended to maintain
the social hierarchy, and no more productive than the ministry of
priests.
Diego
It is the same thing that in trade. In supermarkets and malls workers do not circulate commodities more than in any other sectors. They do productive labour in transporting, ranging, stocking... commodities. Commodities are only commodities when the products that they contain are use values for the buyers as well, and they would be of no value if they did not be in the shelves waiting for their potential consumers.
Paul
I agree that the supermarkets do employ some productive workers - those involved with the
physical transport of goods. They also employ unproductive workers - those involved with
the charging for the goods being sold, or those involved with advertising and promotion.
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