Dear OPE-Lmates:
1. First of all, a piece of information about Bolivia
that, perhaps, is not circulating in international media:
Since 3 days there is an strong conflict in a mining gold
zone of this country (Dept. of Potosi). Until now,
goverment forces (army and police) HAVE KILLED AT LEAST 8
PERSONS AMONG MINERS AND PEASANTS...
2. I am leaving Bolivia for a month. I will be in
Argentina, mainly in a small town called Parana.
Unfortunately, I think I will not have means to follow
OPE-L discussions from there.
3. A brief comment on 2 points of Jerry's OPE-L [3866]:
1. In a simple closed economy where there is a commodity
money system, what are the causes of inflation?
* I think the cause of inflation would be the reduction in
the labor-time needed to produce commodity-money. This is
the kind of situation Marx presents in Value, Price and
Profit (Int. Publ.), p 52 which I cited in OPE-L 3801. In
this case "inflation" provokes an increase in the rate of
exploitation.
* In general terms, this means that "inflation" in Marxian
terms means that "money" (commodity-money, symbol-money or
credit-money) represents less labor-time that in some
precedent period.
2. How does the above change when we have a credit-money
system?
* I think Jerry is forgetting an intermediate possibility:
in V.1, Ch. 3 Marx does not present only "commodity-
money", but also "symbol-money". So, it is possible to
firstly analyse inflation in a situation simpler than that
involving credit money. In this case the key relation is
that between commodity-money and symbol-money.
Alejandro Ramos M
22.12.96