Phillip, you wrote,
> okay - this gives me a better idea about your meanings - i was also
> wondering if you were also referring to capitalism, as making money from
> money through money investments and returns - dividends and interest.
> >
Actually capitalism, as in the capitalist mode of production, only becomes
fully realizable when large scale industrial production creates a condition
in which individual laborers are necessarily subordinated to collective
processes of production that they do not, and cannot own individually and
that have no value without the collective process of appropriation. This is
precisely what gave labor movements strength, the capitalist owned the means
of production but they were worthless to him without the workers who put
them into motion. Dividends and interest are two of the basic forms in
which surplus value is converted (dividends=profits, interest as payment on
money itself.) There is a wonderful study of the development and
legitimation of interest--this being an essential element of the Protestant
revolution that was one of the multiple threads that flowed into the fabric
that was to be capitalism: Lewis Hyde's The Gift. I recommend this as much
(or more) than Martien's book which is somewhat ideographic. Hyde goes
right to the point about different forms that money can assume.
> also, having read Fernand Braudel's history of
> capitalism ( it's a formidable read, three volumns of about 1000 pages
> each ), it is fascinating to read about how narrowly marginalized
> capitalism was in its origins, and remainded so for several centuries.
This is true but one can almost just read the pictures, maps, and tables and
get a good deal of information!
Braudel's history, you'll note, only goes up to the industrial revolution
(last chapter, 3rd volume) If you've never read volume 1 of Marx's Capital,
you might well enjoy reading Part IV: the production of relative surplus
value. Capitalism cannot be explained on the basis of the circulation of
capital but must be explained on the basis of its production, the essence of
capitalism is not money mediated exchange but the separation of labor from
the means of production. The role of the development of the division of
labor through pre-industrial manufacture through the factory system is the
basis for the final development of the seeds of primitive accumulation that
is really the focus of Braudel's work. You might also be interested in the
famous Sweezy-Dobb debate about the origins of capitalism from the late
1940s and early 1950s if you find this kind of thing interesting.
take care,
Paul H. Dillon
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Jan 27 2004 - 11:29:00 PST