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GS English: Competition of capitalists – Chapter II: Accumulation of capital: Expansion of production and commerce

Von • Jul 4th, 2020 • Kategorie: International

GS English (July 2020):

 

Competition of capitalists

Chapter II

Accumulation of capital: Expansion of production and commerce

 

§ 7 Growth

 

1. Growth: The capitalist’s natural need, dictated by his source of revenue 2. The turnover of capital: The necessary requirement for additional capital as well as the source of it; Profit is reinvested, thereby guaranteeing income 3. This means more work, for the industrialist as well; The profession of ‘executive officer’

Additional remarks: The wage worker and his working time

 

§ 8 Expansion of the market

 

1. Trusting in buyers’ ability to pay, and competing for it 2. How the merchant class serves the business of industrialists, and the price of this service: A new front in the competition for sales and market price 3. Liquidity for a growing market: Replacing money by money tokens; Bank (deposit) money 4. How the need for more work is served in a cost-saving way

 

§ 9 State tasks

– Within its borders

1. Capitalists’ demand that society serve their needs for growth: An agenda for the public power 2. The first service of the bourgeois lawgiver: equipping the money interests of citizens with the necessary quantity of proper force according to their class position 3. First requirements for the national budget: The country and its people must be tailored to capitalists’ drive for growth 4. State money with a fixed exchange rate, for the liquidity requirements of money dealing; The first necessity for a national treasury 5. Ensuring sufficient state funds while sparing capital and its growth (1): The tax system

– Beyond its borders

1. Contracts between force monopolists for capital growth beyond national borders 2. Government revenue from the commercial success of foreign capitalists: Tariffs

3. How states settle cross-border trade between each other, and the second function of the national treasury 4. Subjecting the globe to the necessities of growth: Imperialism & colonialism

 

§ 10 Loan capital

1. Lever for growth by separating the expansion of production from the turnover of capital 2. The equation ‘capital = credit’: The two-sided business with debt 3. Pitfalls of the cooperation between industrial capital and bank capital 4. The means of circulation: From money tokens to credit tokens

 

§ 11 The state as creator of a national credit money

– Within its borders

 

1. How the lawgiver recognizes and controls the use of debt as money and capital 2. The state as “bank of banks” with a “banknote monopoly”:

Guarantor of doing private business with debt, and autonomous credit creator 3. Inflation (1):

Necessary collateral damage from credit-financed growth 4. Ensuring state funds (2): State credit-tokens with the quality of money as the source of government debt capacity; Inflation (2)

 

– Beyond its borders

 

1. Foreign trade on the basis of credit monies created autonomously by states 2. The central bank ensures convertibility of currencies 3. The state’s purpose for cross-border trade: Mass and quality of national credit money

 

§ 12 The dogma of growth as the good purpose of all economic activity, and the solution to all the problems it creates

 

– 1. “Growth” in popular thinking

 

1. Growth is great, since it provides more of everything you need 2. So it’s good if money works too … 3. … but bad when there is inflation, which is the government’s fault

 

– 2. “Growth” in academic thinking

 

1. Business administration does its own calculations to show how a company is supposed to calculate — while growing 2. Economists rave about I = S 3. On the contribution of foreign trade to growth & prosperity

 

 

https://en.gegenstandpunkt.com/articles/competition-capitalists-ii

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  1. GS English (January 17, 2021):

    Competition of Capitalists
    Overview

    Competition of Capitalists will appear continuously in the political quarterly magazine GegenStandpunkt. This page provides an overview of the table scheme as it has been finalized so far. Updated January 17, 2021.

    https://en.gegenstandpunkt.com/article/competition-capitalists

    https://en.gegenstandpunkt.com/sites/en8/files/article/competition-capitalists-overview.pdf

    Competition of Capitalists
    Chapter III
    Increasing growth: The productivity of capitalism

    § 13 Reducing unit costs

    1. The dictate of the market: reduce unit costs
    2. The remedy: even more advanced capital so that fixed costs lead to a saving of labor costs
    3. From the market price determining the rate of profit, to the profit-rate calculation determining the selling price
    4. The method: radically changing the production process, and systematically applying the formula to the use of wage labor and its payment

    § 14 The market: Where capitalist progress does its work and is put to the test

    1. Demands on the market, effect on the market: Price, mass, and speed of the turnover of goods pass their judgment on the capitalistic usefulness of productivity
    2. Competing for an attribute called ‘competitiveness’
    3. A progress-geared labor market, through and for a progress-geared capital growth
    4. The public’s buying power: both demanded and restricted; two top products of the market: customer and advertising

    § 15 Growth through progress: a new catalog of tasks for the lawgiver

    – Within its borders

    1. Legal assistance for the competition over progress through technology,[i] in the factory and on the market
    2. A public foundation for science and technology
    3. Legal conditions for using society’s workforce to promote growth
    4. Forming and maintaining a serviceable working class
    5. Dealing with troublesome protest from “the grass roots”: rejection but also recognition, and treatment as a collective welfare case
    6. Making sure that capital, land ownership, buying power, and the environment work together to serve the common good
    7. How the state budget divides the working class

    – Beyond its borders

    1. Benefit and disadvantage of progress in international competition
    2. Growth policy based on protective tariffs and free trade
    3. Modern location policy
    4. The imperative to be competitive, and the conditional validity of local patriotism in capitalism

    § 16 Power and powerlessness of credit in the competition for competitiveness

    1. Necessity and function of credit in capitalist producers’ competitive struggle for increased capital productivity
    2. Speculative reality in the development of productive forces: The banking industry directs a competition that causes selection. Insolvency and bankruptcy

    § 17 The state as promoter, user, and guardian of the credit system

    – Within its borders

    1. New tasks for the law: Separating conscientious risk from fraud, and properly handling the regular exceptions to the required growth
    2. Public debt to protect and preserve an effective credit system

    – Beyond its borders

    1. “Strong” or “weak” currency: The abstract summary of the nation’s world-market successes and failures, and its significance
    2. Everything for a “strong” currency

    § 18 Success alongside failure, the standpoint of real and imagined victims & beneficiaries as an opinion-forming productive force

    1. “Mismanagement” is popular business theory
    2. “Rapacious” vs. “productive” capital is an entrenched part of cultural heritage[iv]
    3. One is allowed to ask if the government should really permit some things, much less support them
    4. It is lamentable that jobs end up elsewhere
    5. Equally lamentable: the state of health of the environment, but saving it is compatible firstly with the economy, and secondly with technology, whose progress nobody wants to stop

    The bottom line: The ethics of capitalism

    https://en.gegenstandpunkt.com/article/competition-capitalists-iii