Re: (OPE-L) Rising organic composition (was: From Ian Wright on Weeks....)

[Paul Cockshott <paul@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Rakesh Bhandari wrote:
And an unrelated point: that superfluous and idle capital has

> hitherto warded off the complete collapse of profitability
> through
> purely speculative investments in the US securities' market and
> through conversion into the fictitious capital issued by the US
> Treasury does not mean that pressure will not mount and is not
> mounting for a competitve inter imperialist struggle over the control
> of investment outlets.

I think Allin dealt with this point, the only possible discrepancy is
if you meant the market for US govt securities. In that case
what we have something that I dealt with in my original post
which I quote here:

> If the above assumption fails, then this implies either zero 
> or negative accumulation. This in turn implies strong 
> recesssionary tendancies unless 
> a) the capitalists spend their profits unproductively on 
>      servants and luxuries as they did in the UK 1870-1900. 
>  b) state expenditure realises the surplus, financing it 
>     with bond sales, or taxes on profit. 
> Option a) is only sustainable if there is no serious competition 
> on the world market. (b) is the condition to which capitalist 
> economies tend.

 

Lenin has already been vindicated ironically as the collapse of the
Soviet Union allowed for a renewal of inter-imperial rivalries; the
collapse of speculative frenzy could well mean new inter-imperial
rivalries for the control of potentially productive investment
outlets for overaccumulated capital--Lenin would be vindicated again.

I dont rule out this as a possibility. I think imperialism had effectively
come to an end by the 1970s with the end of the Portugues empire
and the withdrawal of the US from Vietnam. Since the fall of the
USSR there has certainly been a movement to re-establish it.
The US and UK governments are both commited to what
amounts to a new imperialist policy. Even old Edward Heath,
can see and denounce this.

 

So, I would also be interested in your comments on Henryk Grossmann's
chapter on "Die Funkion des Kapitalexportes im Kapitalismus. Die
Ueberakkumulation von Kapial und der Kampf um die Anlagesphaeren. Die
Rolle der Spekulation im Kapitalismus." I think Grossmann does a fine
job extracting the rational kernel from Lenin's theory.

I am afraid I have never read Grossman.

 

In terms of theory of imperialism, Grossmann also developed Bauer's
hypothesis of how value can be transferred on a global scale through
the formation of prices of production. Of course if one rejects
Marx's theory of value that hypothesis is not available.

I dont reject Marx's theory of value, though I think the theory
of prices of production has been overstated.

>