What is Credit? 1 of 2

Now, more than ever, there is an imperative need for people to understand the nature of credit in a capitalist society. In a time when we are seeing the high seas of finance increasingly rocked by rolling crisis and systemic instability, from Enron to the sub-prime mortgage debacle to the dot.com bubble to the asian financial crisis- in such a time it is imperative that average citizens develop a useful critique of the way credit functions in the global economy.

Full text of the video can be read at:

http://kapitalism101.wordpress.com/what-is-credit/

Category:

Education

Tags:

• credit
• capitalism
• circuit
• of
• capital
• fictitious
• value
• speculation
• speculative
• bubble
• karl
• marx
• david
• harvey
• federal
• reserve
• recession
• depression

[TheRoadsidePicnic]

Brendon - That is truly absurd. You have to practice what you preach. Marx didnt, why should anyone else. Lifestyle is fundamental to Marxism! Of course it is. Class consciousness is lifestyle. Far from being random - the fact that Marx lived a burgeois life makes his theory hypocritical. This point has been seized upon by Capitalist critique of the the 'Burgeois Marx'. The other communist leaders ended up in the same cushy lifestyles more or less while the workers toiled. Anyhow nuff said.

[brendanmcooney]

@TheRoadsidePicnic. No marxism is not about lifestyle politics at all. Changing your consumption habits has nothing to do with revolutionary politics. 2ndly Marx was extremely poor his entire life. He had to beg for money to feed his family. How is this a hypocritical lifestyle? The reason he was so poor was because he spent his whole life working on radical theory instead of doing normal wage labor. He sacrificed his health and well being for the sake of revolution. How is this hypocrisy?

[CajunCommie]

Havanna grows 60% of its food within city limits.

Just food for thought!

And not just verticle farms, but how about housing? I'm sure people living in shitty tenements and public housing would rather an apartment in a retrofitted Manhattan skyscraper to call home. Skyscrapers were built to conserve space in dense urban areas, but zoning laws mean mixed use structures are scarcer than they should be. Mixed-use buildings are much more sustainable and easier to use.

[brendanmcooney]

@TheRoadsidePicnic. I don't see anything hypocritical about Marx's lifestyle. Marxist theory is a not a theory about lifestyle politics, it doesn't state you change the world by conforming your lifestyle to some idealistic notion of authenticity. And I see no relationship between this and the hypocrisy of stalinist ideology. I think are making really random connections here.

[TheRoadsidePicnic]

You not heard the old 'How come Marx lived in a Burgeois house on hamstead heath, did no physical work, had a mistress, sponged off an industrialist and had played stock market? Im surprised. The Hypocrisy critique is KEY to understand Marxism failure more than value theory etc. Its why British communists promise to take 'workers wage' once elected and why electorate think.. 'yeah sure you will' Marx was brilliant economist but Capitalism has already 'appropriated' best ideas to the system

[brendanmcooney]

@TheRoadsidePicnic. I've heard many different and good analysis of why 20th century "communism" failed- the problems of socialism in one country, the problems of development, failure to overthrow value production, the vanguard party model, etc.- but I don't think having leaders that believed what they said is a contender for one of these theories. If anything the use of Marxist jargon by Stalin was purely disingenuous, a verbal facade to facilitate brute politics.

[TheRoadsidePicnic]

I mean, the revolutionaries were 'Idealists' in they believed what they preached - unusual for politiicans. This idealism lasted till came into power and then catastrophie occured repeatedly.

Its worth examining Marx again,  he was a economist, but also firey dead certain revolutionary who 'knew' the best. This trait was common to many communists with murderous results. I dont think capitalilst contradictions (70 years to work on that) was problem but Marxist Contradictions ,

[brendanmcooney]

@TheRoadsidePicnic.Marx isn't idealism at all, it's materialism. And wouldn't it be a very good thing to discuss and figure out why USSR/China/etc failed to escape from contradictions of capitalist accumulation that marx theorized? Rather that seeing Stalin/Mao etc as a reason to dismiss marx I see them as a reason to examine marx much further- we need to know why it was so hard to overcome the law of value so that we can draw lessons for future situations.

[TheRoadsidePicnic]

Great stuff. The Marxist economic analysis is the only one that reveals the trade secrets of the system. Secrets that are suppresed. If only it werent for Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Id be a convert, but Marxism needs to sort out its own inherent contradictions

and the old 'That wasnt the true Marxism, if we did it now it would be different' argument I dont buy. The same often genocidal Totalitarian system resulting from an Initial Idealism occured too many times for this to be the case.

[VCC900]

ok so what is "give me credits if you use this" or something plz reply

[tuberesponder]

INVESTMENT is not a type of "credit". It's an exchange of ownership, facilitated by a medium of exchange,

Credit "can" be used to finance investments, but is NOT empirically necessary.

The Source of Credit is NOT investment. The Source of Credit is the "good faith and credit" of the Creditors. The creditors CREDITS are enforced through LEGAL TENDER.

It's LEGAL TENDER status that gives FICTITIOUS CREDIT it's "value."