A-list message, RE: [A-List] Internal contradictions of capitalism

I’d be interested to hear what Michael has to say about Gowan’s thesis of the Dollar-Wall Street Regime as the outcome of the rentiers’ escape from New Deal “financial pole repression.” I’m also attracted to Hornborg’s ideas about the thermodynamic contradictions of capitalism and the fetishism of the machine (I’m working on a piece about this now.) I cite you often, Michael, on the subject of debt and have found your book very helpful. I still think, however, from the standpoint of organizing, we have to keep our eyes on live-labor. The transition from surplus-labor to excess-people, as the thermodynamic reality kicks in, is passing some kind of point of no return that can only produce profound disorder… outlines of the actually existing New World Order, one of long and terrible strife and sorrow.

Stan

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Subject: Re: [A-List] Internal contradictions of capitalism

Stan refers to the internal contradictions of capitalism.
      I believe that the major internal contradictions have turned out to be finance and rent-yielding property (real estate, mineral rights and privatized monopolies). Finance is tearing apart industrial capital by turning erstwhile industrial firms into financial vehicles.
      The process of avoiding taxation meanwhile leads to shifting the tax burden onto labor and creating a permanent fiscal crisis, U.S.-style, as well as an international and domestic debt crisis.
      Marx believed that finance capital would become subordinated to the technological imperatives of industrial capital. He was too much an optimist in his "materialist view of history."
      Marx also thought that industrialization would get rid of Ricardian rent, by "industrializing" the soil through chemical fertilizers, etc. He was right and Ricardo wrong, but he had little to say about the rising role of "rent of location" and of property income and "unearned" rentier income far overshadowing profits.
      The largest element of property in modern industrial economies remains land, not industrial capital.

      Michael Hudson