[PEN-L:4800] Re: Marx, Usury, Exploitation

[mmeeropo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Mike Meeropol)]

I found Jim Devine's discussion very interesting.  I wonder if he has seen
the analysis of the lending monopoly in the post-Reconstruction crop-lien
system (which in many cases reduced former slaves and white tenants and
share-croppers alike to debt peonage) in Ransom and Sutch's _One Kind of
Freedom_.  As I read Jim's analysis, I wondered if the role of the
monopolized credit system (with quite amazing interest rates as calculated
by Ransom and Sutch) could be an example of the seizure of a surplus --- not
by owners but by "merchant capital" --- which can then (help to) explain the
slow development of capitalism in the post-bellum South.

On the other hand, one might argue that the concentration of pools of
financial capital in the hands of local furnishing merchants could have been
the basis of true industrial capitalist investment.  But it wasn't -- most
of it went into land-ownership and the expansion of cotton production
[except for the amount that was drained out of the region to the banks who
lent to the furnishing merchants].

All the best, Mike
--
Mike Meeropol
Economics Department
Cultures Past and Present Program
Western New England College
Springfield, Massachusetts
"Don't blame us, we voted for George McGovern!"
Unrepentent Leftist!!
mmeeropo@xxxxxxxx
[if at bitnet node:  in%"mmeeropo@xxxxxxxx" but that's fading fast!]