Re: Question re basics

[dmschanoes <dmschanoes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

As a first offering....

On this question, and indeed the current and recent conditions of US
capital-- the "economy" or rather, the  Economy....

1.  Certainly there has been a defensiveness regarding Keynes, this
the reflection of capitalism's ability to more than survive, but recover,
recuperate, and counterrevolutionize, despite the
fact the "Keynesianism" itself really has little to do with that recovery,
recuperation itself, other than to function as an ideological description
and justification for a particular set of circumstances.

2. While it may be useful to consider the role of finance as a direct
connection  M-M', the actual significance of finance both in function and as
a sector "finance capital" is in its role as the compressed, or condensed,
manifestation of all that capital strives to become-- its self-presentation
as pure detached, universal value able to overcome all the contradictions in
time and place of commodity production-- and never can become, thus all the
contradictions compose and manifest themselves as disruptions in finance, in
foreign exchange, in currencies, in derivatives.  And all of  these miracles
of  non-manufacture begin their  existence in the "lags" of capital's
metamorphoses between production and realization, between purchase and sale,
between investment and expanded reproduction.

3. Thus, the peaking and stumbling of the rate of profit in the in 1997-1998
reverberates as the currency crises in the NIE's of Asia.  In reality the
currency crises have their origins in....overproduction.

4. The RATE of return on investment in the US peaked in 1997, declined
modestly in 1998, and then plumped itself up, like a pufferfish sucking in
air in 2000.  The recovery in the US rate of profit in the 90s  was
prefigured by the previous decade's dramatic "short rationing" of labor, and
reduction in fixed assets.  The expansion after 1991 is marked by rising
investment, particularly in the means of circulation-- transportation and
telecommunications  (one example-- the BNSF railroad's capital expenditure
program for 1998 exceeded the expenditure for the entire industry in 1990).

5. Now I'm prejudiced on this point, but I really think the answer to the
why's and how's of capital are to be found in an analysis of
overproduction-- and the starting point  is to grasp that overproduction is
not underconsumption.