From: Jerry Levy (Gerald_A_Levy@MSN.COM)
Date: Wed Feb 15 2006 - 16:23:00 EST
> Perhaps I've got it wrong, but I had understood that > centralization referred to the trend to a smaller number of > capitalist controlling a larger proportion of society's total capital > resources, and concentration referred to the growing mass of capital > focused on any given sphere of activity. Hi again Paul A, What you give as a definition of concentration is what is referred to in IO literature as _market_ concentration. There are separate concentration statistics for the overall (macro) economy. A quick look at some references in my apt. suggests that Marxists define the centralization of capital and the concentration of capital quite differently. Often, they are conflated. At one point in _Capital_, [Vol. 1, Ch. 25] Marx refers to "centralization proper": "Capital grows in one place to a huge mass in a single hand, because it has been lost in another place by many. This is centralization proper, as distinct from accumulation and concentration." Centralization thus has a central *spatial* dimension. The centralization and concentration of capital are often distinguished in Marxian literature in two other ways: 1) the *form*, or process, by which capital is combined: thus centralization is often thought to be a consequence of mergers and acquisitions and is tied to the processes of competition and credit. 2) there is an assertion of *temporal* difference: e.g. Fine and Saad-Filho wrote: "Concentration is a slow process diluted by inheritance, but centralization through the lever of a highly developed credit mechanism and stock markets accomplishes in the twinkling of an eye what would take concentration a hundred years to achieve." (_Marx's Capital_, 4th ed., p. 86). I am not satisfied with these definitions. To begin with -- to state the obvious -- if these terms are to be commonly used by Marxians, we should have an agreed upon meaning of them. Or, is that too much to ask? The first of the 2 ways above [ 1) ] does not incorporate the spatial dimension which is apparent from the definition of "centralization proper". The second of the two ways above, understates in my opinion the way in which concentration can proceed (at times, i.e. unevenly) very quickly independently of mergers and acquisitions. E.g. during a crisis, many units of capital can be wiped out quickly. I would like to have different terms which distinguish a process which leads to the combination of capital in one geographic area vs. the combination of capital in a branch of production or macroeconomy. The former is a useful distinction when thinking about the uneven spatial distribution of capital internationally. I also think that, other things being equal, it would be desirable to define concentration of capital in a similar way as is done in mainstream literature so that we can use without re-calculation concentration statistics which are (infrequently) published by governments or research institutes. In solidarity, Jerry
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