File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_1996/96-07-26.024, message 87


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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