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Oops, I already found the passage.
It is in the letter from Marx to Engels that
includes the so-called 'short outline of the first part' (2.April
1858).
best wishes,
Hanno
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, January 18, 2005 1:23
PM
Subject: Re: [OPE-L] capital in general
as a real existence
Dear Rakesh and Michael,
thanx for Your hints/references!
So far it seems to me that You share my basic intention to interprete
Marx notion about the Capital-as-a-whole as a link to the 'emergence
of credit', as one could put it.
I also remembered and found the passage from Grundrisse that You,
Michael, quoted (that one where Marx amplified that in the money
market capital is posited in its totality (Penguin-classic-edition:
p.275). But You mentioned another very interesting passage:
Here, in the money market, ?capital appears as the
general element as opposed to individual capitals?; here, there is a real
presence of capital as a whole
Is this a quotation from Marx, too? I haven't found it yet.
Best wishes,
Hanno
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, January 18, 2005 4:13
AM
Subject: Re: [OPE-L] capital in general
as a real existence
At 17:23 17/01/2005, Hanno wrote:
There is a methodologically
very interesting passage in the Grundrisse, where Marx - somewhat
incidentally - phrases:
?Before we
go any further, just one remark. Capital in general, as distinct
from the particular capitals, does indeed appear (1) only as an
abstraction; not an arbitrary abstraction, but an abstraction which
grasps the specific characteristics which distinguish capital from all
other forms of wealth ? or modes in which (social) production develops.
[?] (2) however, capital in general, as distinct from the
particular capitals, is itself a real existence. This is recognized
by ordinary economics, even if it is not understood, and forms a
very important moment of its doctrine of equilibrations etc. [?] While the
general is therefore on the one hand only a mental [gedachte] mark
of distinction [differentia specifica], it is at the same time a
particular real form alongside the form of the particular and
individual? (English: Penguin Classics: 449/50, German: MEW42:
362)
SNIP
But what does Marx mean
by posing that the capital in general itself has a real existence,
too? Is there an empirical correlate to money on this level? Is this a
link to credit theory, e.g. to interest as the price of money? Marx
mentioned the economists doctrines of equilibrations here. This reminds me
of Volume 3 of Capital too, where Marx had later on elaborated the
formation of a general/average rate of profit.
I
think the link is to money-capital as the form of capital in general. In an
essay, "The Theoretical Status of Monopoly Capital" in the 1985 volume,
Rethinking Marxism edited by Wolff and Resnick, I touched on the quote as
follows (I don't have the citations because the essay will reappear in a
collection I'm putting together for Brill and I haven't edited the scanned
version yet):
It
is the perpetual tendency of capitals to bring about through competition
this equalization in the distribution of surplus-value
produced by the total capital,
and to overcome all obstacles to this equalization.
The process by
which this occurs, of course, is the shift of capital from one sphere to
another, the free movement of capital. But, this requires that capital
exists in its universal form--- money-capital. Only here does capital
possess ?the form which enables it as a common element, irrespective of its
particular employment, to be distributed amongst the different spheres,
amongst the capitalist class, according to the production needs of each
separate sphere.? Only here, in money-capital, in the money-market, do all
distinctions as to the quality of capital
disappear:
All
the different forms assumed by capital according to the different spheres of
production or circulation in which it is
invested, are obliterated
here. It exists here in the undifferentiated, always identical form, that of
independent exchange-value,
i.e., of money.
Here, in
the money market, ?capital appears as the general element as opposed to
individual capitals?; here, there is a real presence of capital as a
whole:
In
the money market, capital is posited in its totality; there it determines
prices, gives work, regulates production, in a word,
is the source of
production.
Capital is always latently One in the form of
money-capital, the form by which the equalization of profit rates is
accomplisheda process which ?implies, furthermore, the development of
the credit system, which concentrates the inorganic mass of the disposable
social capital vis-a-vis the individual capitalist?.
Welcome,
Hanno,
michael
Michael A. Lebowitz
Professor Emeritus
Economics Department
Simon Fraser University
Burnaby, B.C., Canada V5A 1S6
Currently based in Venezuela. Can be reached at
Residencias Anauco Suites
Departamento 601
Parque Central, Zona Postal 1010, Oficina 1
Caracas, Venezuela
(58-212) 573-4111
fax: (58-212) 573-7724
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