M-TH: Credit

[boddhisatva]

		Rakesh,



	While credit can create a "facade of..credit induced prosperity"
it can't be dismissed for those excesses.  First, credit is completely
necessary for economic growth.  Fundamentally, credit values the economy
on expectation and trust, rather than on immediate exchange.  Such a basis
for valuation is, with seeming irony, what socialists plan to implement in
the economy, in one way or another.  It's interesting to me that the
capitalist press grunts disapprovingly at the inevitable downside of
consumer credit, but gives hardly a thought to the same, and greater,
excesses and failures among business borrowers.  They grumble about
changing the laws, not for all bankruptcies, but personal bankruptcy. 
(Frankly, I think it may be the duty of every revolutionary to file for
personal bankruptcy.) 


	Late capitalist dependency on credit sets the stage for new levels
of action against capitalism.   The fact that credit under capitalism
leads to crisis, while credit under socialism is overwhelmingly stable,
leads to the possibility of a real, organic shift in economic thinking.
It seems to me that too many Marxists reject thinking about credit out of
hand, because their understanding is based on Marx's limited writings
where credit was portrayed more like a symptom of a disease rather than
the economic fact it has become.  Credit implies things many Marxists
reject: money, independent economic actors, business firms, the market.
If one goes beyond those knee-jerk reactions, and develops a more complete
theoretical view of credit, its dialectical significance can be discussed
dispassionately.   


	For example, consumer credit seems to be an extension of the old
"company store" strategy of keeping the worker down by saddling him with
debt.  What happens, though, when the *capitalist* becomes dependent on
that consumer debt?  Doesn't this shift the power, or at least shift
potential power to the worker?  Doesn't the capitalist reaction to
personal bankruptcy prove this point?  I have a friend at Chemical Bank
who concluded that massive institution could be toppled if credit card
holders simply stopped paying their bills simultaneously - for a very short
time.  Being completely bourgeois, he didn't understand why I smiled at
the news. 





	peace






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