Re: Re: The exchange value of currencies

["Romain Kroes" <romain.kroes@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>
> The exchange value of currencies is the measure of the relative organic
> composition of capital.
>
> Chris Burford
>
I suppose that everybody had understood the sentence this way. There is
something true in this sentence, but it does not make a Marxian theorem. In
B.3, Ch.35, II, Marx defines the rate of change of currencies as the measure
of the moves on the international market of metals. Additionally, from a
Marxian point of view, the association of rate of change with relative org.
comp. would lead to the conclusion that the higher rate of org. comp. goes
hand in hand with the lower currency value, as the relative org. comp.
reflects the relative productivity, and as productivity, according to Marx,
tends to depreciate goods (and metals). Now, it is more accurately the
contrary, as a higher productivity means a faster capital turnover, tending
to imbalance the flows of capital coming in and going out, what is daily
determining the rates of change in a system of flexible changes. The
economic territory whose turnover is the fastest gets a higher flow of
imports that the one of its exports, what tends to estimate its exports with
repect to its imports, that is its currency with respect to the currencies
of its suppliers. Gold standard was made to restore the balance. But when a
country gets the opportunity to pay in its own currency, that is to say to
pay its debt with its debt, as today's USA with the dollar, and formely
Great Britain with the "balances-sterling", the balance cannot be restored
and the territories which get a positive trade balance are impoverishing.
Now, although this reality does not correspond to a Marxist analysis, the
notion of relative org. comp., that is of relative productivity, was
discovered by Marx first (B.3, 45th ch.). Thanks to that, I have got the
idea of an economic chain structured by an unequal distribution of
productivity, and it runs.
Have a good day, Chris
RK