Re: Re: Exchange value of currencies

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

> Although I think politically we share a dislike of US dollar hegemony, I
do
> not quite find the reference you imply. Could you please quote the
> sentence? Am I looking in the wrong part of Section 2 - the first part
only -?

The quotes I used are from Dietz's German edition. As for the one above, you
gave any further the English edition one:
 "The barometer for the international movement of the money of metals is of
 course the rate of exchange."
What Engels does not explicitely mention, but he could not ignore it, is the
fact that this course was not variously spread, but universally determined
on the metal market of London, as it is still today.

> I am not sure that it is to do directly with the speed of capital
turnover.

This is not a theorem from Marx nor from Engels, but of mine. I have
demonstrated it in a paper that is published on irép's website, the title of
which is "Asymmetry and Accumulation, or World System's Entropy". The rates
of change are not exclusively linked to the differential turnovers of
capital, but this is the main cause and the only explanation of a
structurally strictly distributed trend of relative rates since 1971 (dollar
disconnection from gold, and flexibles changes).

>  (...)  Also I have to say that I do not see the speed of
> capital turnover within a country, being an intermediate variable between
> its increased productivity and the relative exchange rate with another
> currency.

It is not matter of the absolute speed of turnover, but of te relative one.
As a higher speed (i.e. higher productivity) determines a higher flow of
imputs (imports), and as the flow of export outputs depends on outside
demand, that is on outside imputs, the country that has the higher speed of
turnover gets a structurally trending negative balance of trade. This is
attested for the whole known history.
In gold standard, as the gold production does not follows the general
productivity rate, a negative balance of  trade must be balanced, so that
the higher productivity country cannot get its "relative surplus value". If
it has not a precious metal source at its disposal, like Ancient Athens, it
must resort to pillage the stocks of gold around, as Rome, or impose its own
currency in its foreign trade, as Victorian England and today's USA.

> Could you check that reference?  In my English edition that chapter is
> Absolute Ground Rent.

The title of the 45th chapter is indeed Absolute Ground Rate. The
consequences of the differential org. comp. distribution is developed in
pp.767-768 of the German edition. But it is more explicitely mentioned at
the begining of 9th ch., third paragraph.

Salute

RK