Date: Sun, 14 Jul 1996 22:47:33 -0600 From: Hans Ehrbar <ehrbar-AT-marx.econ.utah.edu> Subject: Re: Summary of rts2, pp. 12-14, and the ways of acting of capital Michael Sprinker sent the following email to owner-bhaskar instead of bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu, and since it was not entirely clear whether it was a private communication or not, the spoon member doing the technical rotation forwarded it to me, Hans Ehrbar, instead the list. I assume Michael wanted it to be a posting to the list, and I take the liberty to add my answer right after his thoughtful comments: Here is Michael's letter: State University of New York at Stony Brook Stony Brook, NY 117777 Michael Sprinker Professor of English & Comp Lit Comparative Studies 516 632-9634 14-Jul-1996 12:23pm EDT FROM: MSPRINKER TO: Hans Ehrbar ( _owner-bhaskar-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU ) Subject: RE: Summary of rts2, pp. 12-14, and the ways of acting of capital A technical point in response to Hans E's latest message. "Money" and "capital" are not synonymous for the mature Marx. There are several kinds of capital, money capital being only one among them. The necessity for capital to expand is indeed a law of the capitalist mode of production, but it is a law only insofar as it is obeyed by agents, viz., capitalists. Workers (or, more technically, labor) are not bound by such a law, except insofar as they are incapable of resisting the power of capital--as they most of the time are. But it's not true to say that everyone who has money must want to get more. The premise of a social revolution against capitalism is that workers will want something other--and in Marx's time and after, there have been various schemes to eliminate the oppressive aspects of a money economy. Communism was (perhaps is) one such scheme. To fail to distinguish between the kind of agents (capitalists) who always and everywhere seek to increase their share of the social surplus, and agents who may wish only to have the social surplus distributed equitbly (workers) is precisely the error of Second International socialism, and it leads on to the various reformist political strategies that have been the bane of the international labor movement for the past century. Michael Sprinker Here is my response: Thank you for correcting me. As long as I send so many messages to the list, it is really crucial that you readers take the trouble of challenging me if you think I am wrong. I am very aware of the difference between money and capital, and I wrote "capital, i.e., roughly speaking, money" only for the sake of brevity. You have probably noticed that also elsewhere in my remarks I use simplified concepts, in order to get the broad outlines of the argument across. Once one knows what to look for, one can go to the original text for an accurate formulation. Speaking of the original text, I think the best formulation of the "curse" of money, that everyone who handles money has the instinct to get more money, is given in *Grundrisse*, Marx Engels Collected Works vol. 28, p. 200, or Random House edition p. 269, or German p. 181: Marx> We have already seen, in the case of money, how value, having Marx> become independent as money---or the general form of wealth---is Marx> capable of no other motion than a quantitative one; to increase Marx> itself. According to its concept, money is the quintessence of Marx> all use values; but, since it is always only a given amount of Marx> money (here, capital), its quantitative limitation stands in Marx> contradiction to its quality. The constant drive beyond its own Marx> limitation is therefore inherent in its nature. In other words, since money gives access to all use values, its qualitative universality comes in conflict with its quantitative boundedness. In *Grundrisse*, Marx took this very seriously: Marx> It is damned difficult for Messrs the economists to make the Marx> theoretical transition from the self-preservation of capital to Marx> its multiplication, not merely as a contingent feature or a Marx> result, but belonging its fundamental character. These are my own translations, and I have the German text of Marx's quotes at the end. Here are some additional thoughts: Marx himself talks here about value that has become independent in its monetary form. It is not quite capital. Whenever value has this independent abstract form, a form in which use values are extinguished and only quantity counts, then this contradiction is active. (But perhaps one can say it still acts on an individual level, and therefore as a social law it still lives in the domain of the real but not yet the actual? Trying to apply Bhaskar's concepts wherever I can.) Money only becomes capital if this inner tendency of money is socially sanctioned and enforced. Now Michael says: Michael> The necessity for capital to expand is indeed a law of the Michael> capitalist mode of production, but it is a law only insofar as Michael> it is obeyed by agents, viz., capitalists. Workers (or, more Michael> technically, labor) are not bound by such a law, except insofar Michael> as they are incapable of resisting the power of capital. Of course it is true that no social law can be active unless some individual carries it out. But this does not mean it is up to the individuals whether these laws hold. (These last two sentences are a paraphrase of what Bhaskar says in PON, I will look up the quotes for you if you insist.) You imply that yourself in the second sentence where you say that the workers are forced to concur with the laws of capital. But the capitalists are forced to concur with them too: a non-greedy capitalist will be outcompeted or his firm will be taken over. Even if they are not greedy, they are forced to act as if they were greedy (but of course many of them are indeed greedy). On the other hand, I also see the above contradiction active with workers. Whenever anyone runs into any problem in this society, the first impulse is: if we had more money we could solve it. That is why many workers are so eager to work overtime. This is the "spell" of money as I call it, and by this they become the accomplices of capital. People succumbed to this spell long before capitalism. For a long time, society fought against the capitalists and kept them at the periphery. They only traded and did not produce. Something that needs to be explained is, how it happened that at some point society embraced this principle and production itself became capitalistic. You need labor power as a commodity for that, but not all questions why this happened are answered satisfactorily. The installation of capitalism was a very violent act and by no means voluntary for the vast majority of the population. There is a good measure of force even today. But one cannot explain capitalism by brute force alone. There is also this strong tendency which I called the spell of money. Everyone who is in contact with money tends to think about ways to get more money, and by this alone they help the laws of capitalism to actualize themselves. The summation of these many individual impulses adds to the coercion which maintains capitalism and makes it a powerful social force indeed. That is why Marx does not discuss this contradiction as an individual thing but as a social property of money. I will stop here; the rest is just the German original from Grundrisse: Wir haben schon gesehn beim Geld, wie der als solches verselbst\"andigte Wert---oder die allgemeine Form des Reichtums---keiner andren Bewegung f\"ahig ist, als einer quantitativen; sich zu vermehren. Seinem Begriff nach ist er der Inbegriff aller Gebrauchswerte; aber als immer nur ein bestimmtes Quantum Geld (hier Kapital) ist seine quantitative Schranke im Widerspruch zu seiner Qualit\"at. Es liegt daher in seiner Natur best\"andig \"uber seine eigne Schranke hinauszutreiben. (and a little later, p. 182:) Den Herren \"Okonomen wird es verdammt schwer, theoretisch fortzukommen von der Selbsterhaltung des Werts im Kapital zu seiner Vervielf\"altigung; n\"amlich diese in seiner Grundbestimmung, nicht nur als Akzidens oder nur als Resultat. Hans Ehrbar.
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