[Marxism] Thoughts on 8 Theses

[S. Artesian]

Sure.  Mostly I disagree.

Agree that neo-classical conceptions have crept in-- and most neo-classical 
of all, and most of the creeping is in this notion of trade imbalances--  
trade imbalances neither reflect nor cause breakdowns in capitalism as 
capital-- as the reproduction of expanded value.

As a matter of fact this dependence, reliance, on trade imbalance theory is 
a little more than neo-classical.  It is positively mercantilist.  Engels 
wrote an interesting piece in 1843 in the Jahrbucher on the critique of 
political economy; includes a great attack on mercantilist "balance of 
trade" worhippers.

The proof, more or less, of the inapplicability of "balance of trade" 
theorizing, you provide when you make the analogy between agriculture and 
city-- absolutely--  cities "import" much more from the countryside than 
they "export" to the countryside-- that's an index to the relative 
development of the city over the countryside-- this doesn't make the city 
financially or economically subservient to the countryside-- to the 
production of exchange value in agriculture.  There is no NEED in capitalism 
for balance; for balance between industry and agriculture-- balance is 
necessary in barter, but not in capitalist exchange.  Profit is what counts. 
Expanded value.  Not balance.

Financial investment has always been intrinsic to capitalist development, 
just as international, global expansion has always been intrinsic to 
domestic capital investment.  The bulk of the value generated, appropriated 
by the advanced capitalist countries is most certainly NOT value 
expropriated, seized, looted, unequally exchanged from "foreign 
exploitation"  if you mean by foreign exploitation-- super-profits derived 
from poorer, less-developed countries.   The overwhelming bulk of 
imperialist investment is inter-imperialist, or maybe better 
INTRA-imperialist, the overwhelming source of profits is, again, inter/intra 
imperialist, and is not derived from investments in the less-developed 
countries.

Regarding productive cores and advance countries--  US still provides the 
largest portion of the world's industrial production-- about 24-21% [think 
this is a 2007 figure] and even poor old decadent super-annuated Britain has 
a manufacturing sector providing about 15% of GDP-- not very much less than 
France's ratio.


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "D OC" <donaloc at hotmail.com>
To: <sartesian at earthlink.net>
Sent: Monday, March 02, 2009 6:30 AM
Subject: [Marxism] Thoughts on 8 Theses