Re: Primitive accumulation - Harvey on Marx
On Dec 10, 2006, at 1:28 PM, Patrick Bond wrote:
Yes, quite significant ways of deriving profits are occurring away
from the point of production,
Where do they come from? Thin air? How can the system as a whole
conjure value merely out of exchanging virtual titles to wealth? The
profits of financiers come ultimately from interest and fees paid by
business and consumer debtors, even if there are countless steps
between producers & reciipents.
Many of the examples you cite are of stocks of capitalized income
flows, not the flows themselves. But if those are to be converted
into actual cash, then the cash has to come from incomes derived (by
capital or labor) from the production of goods & services. And what
would all those profits mean if they couldn’t be converted into
actual consumer or investment goods?
There’s something a little retro and moralizing about the prominence
accorded p.a. in your & Harvey’s analyses that wants to look away
from actual production and focus instead on “gambling” and “parasitism.”
Doug