Dave B
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The fullest explanation by Karl of the idea that the increase in ‘token money’ supply increases prices or inflation is as below. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/ch02_2c.htm However what is often overlooked is also ‘his’ idea that the rate at which money circulates, or the velocity of money, will have a counter or inverse affect on inflation. Or in other words if the velocity of money falls it will slow the rate of inflation. This idea so happens to coincide with the ideas of some of the ‘bourgeois’ economists like Friedman?; hence it is a topic of their analysis. They can be useful to read as they often have access to more useful inside information than we have. Their general view, backed up by their data, is that the velocity of money is falling and is at all time lows. As far as the cash rich and finance money capitalists are concerned, and affect it; the velocity of money is lowered by the general level of higher economic risk from investment and low rates of interest and profit. It is fairly simple in theory; if the rate of return on investing capital is low and risk high you sit on your cash and essentially withdraw if from circulation. In fact it was a central theme of Karl’s analysis of economic crises that that was ‘symptomatic’ of a withdrawal of money from circulation. These ‘bourgeois’ economists talk of huge ‘stagnant pools’ of cash held by the capitalists and massive ‘money chests’ held by corporations. Which they ‘should’ be using to purchase productivity enhancing and expanding working capital; which they ‘aren’t’. There is always a connection or relationship between the average safe rate of profit and interest rate on money capital. Normally if the ‘safe’ rate of profit is 5% and money capital can be loaned at 1% then you can borrow £20 million at 1% and buy shares in productive capital that returns 5%. The difference of 4% is generally referred to by terms like ‘margins’ ,‘leverage’ and ‘yields’ etc [Usually the finance capitalists expect you to stump up and risk £1 million of your own ‘profiteer of enterprise’ (Karl) money to show that you are serious.] The fact that in theory you could borrow £500 million from the Bank of Japan for 10 years at 0.5% and build another identical factory to the one I work in, and don’t, much; should say everything about the rate of profit and status of current economic risk etc. In parallel, in Karl’s ‘fictitious capital theory’; the capitalists think that that the value of their capital eg factories is determined not by its actual labour time value but by the income stream, or for us surplus value, that it generates. Thus if ‘something’ generates, or even potentially generates, an income stream of say £10 million and in the real and general aggregate world of capitalism the rate of profit on concrete productive capital is say 5% then for them that ‘something’ is worth £200 million; or maybe something a bit less? A real life example was a Manchestersoftware house that I knew about and the people who worked for it etc. It was making a million a year in profits in the 1980’s with an actual asset value of almost nothing. The building was rented and it maybe had £500,000 of hardware etc. The 1970’s hippies who set it up sold it for £30 million to investors and ‘venture capitalists’ who borrowed most of that money. The difference for Karl between the real capital value of £500,000 and the £30 million ‘market value’ would be, ‘fictitious capital’. Or in other words the ‘market value’ of the capital of that ‘business’ was fictitiously ‘inflated’ above its actual value. This problem goes onto to steroids when money can be rented through QE for free by finance capitalists. You can call it ‘asset’ price/share price inflation and bubbles as the ‘bourgeois’ economists do or that an increasing proportion of the ‘market value’ or price of shares and stock etc is ‘fictitious’. You can sort of arrive at the same end position by just looking at it from a different direction. These ‘bourgeois’ economists tell us that these CEO’s are borrowing money from QE to buy up shares to raise its price. It reminds me of Emile Zola’s book ‘Money’. The capitalist class are being duped themselves into thinking that their increasing fictitious market value of thier capital is ‘profit’ rather than what it is, hot air.I mean who cares about 1% dividends and and 'real' surplus value if the fictitious value of your stock has miraculously gone up by 5% ? Karl’s general view was that if you could borrow money at 1% and use it to buy a replicated factory of another successful going concern operating at 5%; then capitalism would nicely equilibrate and balance itself etc. I think he failed in some respect to appreciate the massive concentrations of capital required for advanced production. Thus if you are going to go into making aeroplanes or whatever, you are going to have to go in big and if there are three players and you intend to be a number four you are talking about over production and supply and a nasty dog eat dog high risk economic fight to the death. Which is a bit different to incrementally and gradually moving into a lucrative market for blue suede shoes or whatever.
I think when it comes to Christian ‘communist’ documents maybe one of the most interesting is the ‘Didache’ as it is considered by academia as perhaps one of the oldest Christian documents with the best provenance. Normally dated to late first and early second; although as with all these things there are a problems as regards the extant version being the same as perhaps the original was. http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/didache.html It reads like a declaration of principles. The passage of interest is; Chapter 4. Various Precepts Do not turn away from him who is in want; rather, share all things with your brother, and do not say that they are your own. But on the downside! Do not enjoin anything in your bitterness upon your bondman or maidservant, who hope in the same God, lest ever they shall fear not God who is over both; for he comes not to call according to the outward appearance, but to them whom the Spirit has prepared. And you bondmen shall be subject to your masters as to a type of God, in modesty and fear. http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/didache-roberts.html And for additional interest? Chapter 3. Other Sins Forbidden Be neither money-loving, nor vainglorious, for out of all these thefts are engendered. I thought the following passage was interesting as it sort of links in to Lucian of Samosata’s AD 170 Passing of Peregrinus think about rogues free loading on Christian communes. Eg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passing_of_Peregrinus Back to Didache; Chapter 12. Reception of Christians. But receive everyone who comes in the name of the Lord, and prove and know him afterward; for you shall have understanding right and left. If he who comes is a wayfarer, assist him as far as you are able; but he shall not remain with you more than two or three days, if need be. But if he wants to stay with you, and is an artisan, let him work and eat. But if he has no trade, according to your understanding, see to it that, as a Christian, he shall not live with you idle. But if he wills not to do, he is a Christ-monger. Watch that you keep away from such. It looks like that perhaps this kind of presentation of Christian communism and its focus might be something more like some kind of artisan/bondsman ‘Guild Socialism’; versus rich merchants? I think as historical materialists we should be looking at the socio economic base in which early Christianity was received. Whilst acknowledging heavy historical bias in the sense that the illiterate ‘bondsmen and maidservants’ might have had a slightly different take on things that hasn’t been passed down. Even if any original hadn’t been tampered with. As we have done the Mormons and Maronite popes it might be interesting to discover the ‘left’ Greek and Russian Orthodox Christians as I believe John Chrysostom c. 349 – 407 is still an important figure in that religion and his somewhat left of centre communistic commentary is very extensive. I think he is more of a redistribution of wealth revisionist Kautskyist. I seem to remember he was banished in a no punch pulling Charlie Hebdo incident for comparing the then emperor's wife to Herodias? I am still pretty ignorant of the socio economic bas of John Chrysostom’s immediate Christian city congregation; so far I believe it was predominantly artisan [80%] with 10% as the ‘rich’, maybe mostly merchants? There has always been economic tension between the rich Merchants and our artisan Proudhonist. I suppose that leaves out the primitive accumulation/surplus value of agricultural/rural and serf/slave production. I don’t like Rosa’s, Fred’s and Bauers bias urban city state analysis of early Christianity as what is most obvious in he historical record left to us.
FYIRosa LuxemburgSocialism and The Churches(1905) Part Three "Thus the Christians of the First and Second Centuries were fervent supporters of communism….." https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1905/misc/socialism-churches.htm
I think there are so many problems with analysing early Christianity and its history that you can’t even just list them on a side of A4. One problem with reading academic articles on it re their alleged communist roots is almost universal bias. The Christians and the ‘Marxists’ are almost equally apoplectic at the idea. Consequently I have tried to read original source material which is a real ball ache as you have to trawl through so much crap to find interesting nuggets of information. Eg Contra Celsum Eg; Origen’s Contra Celsum written around AD240 in response to a Book called True Doctrine by a Celsus written itself allegedly circa AD180; dated as that from a forensic analysis of the text that there were two emperors at the time. Something Origen perhaps understandably overlooked as he professed ignorance and irritation at not knowing ‘who’ had written it or when. My opinion is that it was a work commissioned by the Roman state, maybe drafted by a committee at the intellectual centre of the Eastern Mediterranean, the Celsus library at Ephesus. It attacks Christianity from multiple and ‘philosophically’ mutually exclusive directions. One moment it seems to be taking an Epicurean ‘atheist’ position, the next standard Greek Gods stuff and then from Judaic monotheist perspective. [Including saying JC’s mother was a whore and the product of a liason with a named Roman Legionnaire.] A hostile Celsum tells us that nearly all Christians were low life working class, like it’s carpenter founder and ‘sailor’ apostles, and uneducated gullible idiots and it couldn’t be taken seriously as there were no educated and thus high class Christians. You can tell from the intellectual Origen’s reply that he almost looses his temper at that without actually denying it. He is much calmer when Jc's parentage is called into question as part of an academic historical debate, I accept that all pre AD350 Christians were not ‘communists’ but in spite of the difficulty of getting a accurate historical perspective from what is left from that period there is I think too much of it scattered around to dismiss it. A lot of the other ‘early Christian communist’ stuff also appears as part of hostile criticism of certain sects. It is possible I suppose that you might just accuse someone of ‘communism’ as a vile calumny just because you take issue with their views of the holy trinity or attitude to the Greek God’s or whatever. A lot of the big debates within early Christianity was around the Bolshevik like centralised democracy (Paul) versus the ‘church’ as a federation of autonomous branches in which many seemed to be giving too much latitude towards the opinions of women. Up to 1844 Karl accepted Feuerbach’s Essence of Christianity’ psychological’ analysis. Which was that it was an expression and anthropomorphic ‘projection’ of an innate ‘human essence’ or communist ‘social instincts’. [That was 70 years or so before Freud and Jung did that kind of thing.] It wasn’t until Darwin’s second book that the idea was resurrected in which he speculated that generalised notions of ‘morality’ and ‘justice’ etc might in part have a ‘material’ base in a ‘social instinct’.
I think the thing about the Whinstanley material is that we can’t know how much pre Whinstanley material there was and has been lost or destroyed by the ruling classes in control of preserving this kind of material or not. I seem to remember that Whinstanley’s stuff was rediscovered quite late by Bernstien was it? Karl had never heard of him but was just aware of the Diggers or Levellers. Whinstanley I think made a credible historical materialist analysis of Norman feudalism counterpoising it to the supposed previous and more ‘favourable’, ‘Anglo-Saxon’, clan and Mir type system. In manner not dissimilar to Marx, eg; Let us now transport ourselves from Robinson’s island bathed in light to the European middle ages shrouded in darkness. Here, instead of the independent man, we find everyone dependent, serfs and lords, vassals and suzerains, laymen and clergy. Personal dependence here characterises the social relations of production just as much as it does the other spheres of life organised on the basis of that production. But for the very reason that personal dependence forms the ground-work of society, there is no necessity for labour and its products to assume a fantastic form different from their reality. They take the shape, in the transactions of society, of services in kind and payments in kind. Here the particular and natural form of labour, and not, as in a society based on production of commodities, its general abstract form is the immediate social form of labour. Compulsory labour is just as properly measured by time, as commodity-producing labour; but every serf knows that what he expends in the service of his lord, is a definite quantity of his own personal labour power. The tithe to be rendered to the priest is more matter of fact than his blessing. No matter, then, what we may think of the parts played by the different classes of people themselves in this society, the social relations between individuals in the performance of their labour, appear at all events as their own mutual personal relations,and are not disguised under the shape of social relations between the products of labour. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm The utilisation of the ‘class analysis’ and ‘proto- Marxist’ material in the New testament material by Whinstanley was probably facilitated by the translation and printing of it into English by Tyndale circa 1525. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Tyndale The bible was [one of?] the first book to be burned by the state. Having studied early Christianity in some depth it was a surprise to me how long this ‘leftist’ ideology persisted as part of the mainstream; it seems to run into late 4thcentury. In the second century Christianity was understood by its ‘pagan’ critics eg Celsum as then an almost exclusively ‘working class’, anti-authoritarian, anti state and communist movement popular with ‘women!’. My thesis is that it was a deadly and infectious fusion of Greek Cynicism [anarcho-primitivism] and Judiac Apocalypticism; two rampant ideologies in that region and period. Working out a historical materialist/economic analysis of Greek cynicism is a problem I think. Judiac Apocalypticism is perhaps more straightforward. Judiac ideology was basically that an omniscient interfering all powerful god was on their side and all the shit they had to put up with was punishment to correct their ways and paternal tough love etc etc. After 500 years of imperialism and being invaded by every Tom Dick and Harry, banning circumcision and trashing their temples etc etc. They made a ‘historical materialist’ analysis that Satan and his ruling class helpers were in control of the ‘World’ economic system. [Karl said that Capitalism was vampire like after all.] When that was mixed in with the great big dirty, ugly and foul tempered camel like rich thing going through needles etc and blessed are the poor, was passed on to, ‘bacillus’ like, to the ‘gentile’ working class of the roman empire. It took off. I think there maybe a potentially historically ‘sociological and ideological’ parallel between the link between contemporary anti imperialism (from a ‘working class’ perspective and allied with the economically frustrated ‘middle classes etc) and modern ‘proto-Marxism’. And the Judiac ideological milieu out of which Christianity appeared to spring. History repeating itself in different costumes? Modern Christianity is based on the writings of Paul who unlike the original gang of twelve was a proud member of the Roman ruling class; even in execution, decapitation being a privilege of the ruling class, and crucifixion for the workers. Paul didn’t seem to get on very well with the original proletarian gang of twelve and as the ‘Jesus never existed’ people eg Richard Carrier, say there is nothing in Paul’s material about what JC was about. [The die hard anti Christian atheists like Richard Carrier seem to accept that most of the Pauline material as valid contemporary historical documents; that was a shock to me and I think we as Marxists need to get up to speed on this kind of thing.] Paul after his ‘Road to Damascus’ revelation spent most of his time questioning other peoples ‘Road to Damascus’ moments. There seems to have been many types of Christianity in the second century one of interest amongst many are the Carpocratians eg; “It claims that differences in class and the ownership of property are unnatural, and argues for property and women to be held in common” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpocrates “Women to be held in common”; whatever your opinion is, is of interest as it was something that the diggers were ‘accused’ off.
Perhaps they the pope is slowly regressing to the original version? As in The Passing Of Peregrinus by the comedian Lucian of Samosata in the middle of the second century . circa AD 170? From ‘The Cynic Philosophers; From Diogenes to Julian translated by Robert Dobbin, Penguin Classics 2012.Page 150, on the early Christians; “ added to which, their first law giver taught them that they were all brothers, as soon as they commit the collective crime of repudiating the Greek gods, worshiping that crucified sophist himself and living by his commandments. They despise all worldly goods…. [ie Bling and the means of production- interestingly conflated]… and consider them common property…. Even though Lucian seemed to have got about a bit in that corner of the world and seemed to have been well ‘informed’;maybe he had just read and was lifting stuff from the famous Acts 2;45 “to each according to need thing” ? There is an interesting and fairly recent thesis that early Christianity was a sort of fusion of first century anti-authoritarian Greek Cynicisim (a bit like Anarcho-Primitivism) and Judaism. However there is a bit of a gap yet to be crossed admittedly between masturbating in public as a counter cultural political act (Greek Cynics) and Roman Catholicism. According to Engels the Anti Christ was the recently deceased Nero; as in the ‘Maoist’ Revelation of Saint John, written in ‘bad Greek’ in AD 69. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894/early-christianity/index.htm Although it wasn’t; Fred was being a Teutonic bourgeois snob it was written in Koine or common ‘pidgin’ Greek.
