[p2p-research] Fwd: [ox-en] No more money trickery propagandaplease

[Christian Siefkes]

Hi Michel, all,

Michel wrote:
> In one of the last posting on list-en, Stefan argues that no money can be
> made through interest, something easily disconfirmed by anyone having a bank
> account or working for a credit card company, or any economist looking into
> the techniques of rent extraction in capitalism. Not only did he deny that
> possiblity, but he thinks that people making such a empirical observation
> must be deluded ('propaganda' 'esotericism').

There is a difference between what can be empirically observed and how such
an observation can be explained. Let's consider two assumptions: (a)
interest is an inherent property of money (and can thus be removed by
modifying the properties of money); (b) the Sun revolves around the Earth.
Both assumptions seem to correspond to empirically observable facts, yet
further analysis shows that they aren't true. In both cases, rigorous
scientific investigations are necessary in order to discover the truth--if
we're unwilling to undertake such investigations, we will have the
impression that we understand things (isn't the superficial explanation
"empirically" true?), but we don't really.

Whether the Sun revolves around the Earth, or vice versa, can only be
decided through deeper empirical investigations--which of the two theories
fits better with the facts as we observe them? In case of the interest
question, things are actually easier since we already know from basic
physical laws that there can be no thing that grows or goes on forever
without requiring an external source of energy--such a thing would be
Perpetuum mobile <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_motion> which is
physically impossible. So we already know, without even having to look at
the empirical evidence, that money cannot generate other money (interest)
out of itself, that there must be some other explanation for interest.

That much we can learn without even having to look at the evidence, but in
order to find out more--to discover the actual source of interest--, we need
to take the empirical evidence into account and find a theory that fits it
best. Marx has formulated one such theory, which says, in a nutshell, that
interest in capitalism is derived from *profit,* and that profit results
from the fact that some people are forced to sell their labor power, while
others control the means of production and can thus benefit from their
labor. See
http://www.keimform.de/2009/03/07/marx-theory-of-value-and-why-exchange-can-be-equal-and-still-bad/
and
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-March/001714.html.

So, from Marx' theory it follows that we cannot get rid of interest without
getting rid of profit, and that we cannot get rid of profit without getting
rid of the necessity to sell your labor power.

Now, I'm sure it can be discussed whether Marx' theory is the one that fits
the facts best or whether there is a better one (which might lead to
different conclusions about interest). But anybody who claims that interest
is an inherent property of money (and can thus be removed by modifying the
properties of money), argues in violation of all possible theories, since
such a thing is physically impossible.

Best regards
        Christian

-- 
|-------- Dr. Christian Siefkes --------- christian at siefkes.net ---------
|   Homepage: http://www.siefkes.net/   |   Blog: http://www.keimform.de/
|   Better Bayesian Analysis:           |   Peer Production Everywhere:
|   http://bart-project.com/            |   http://peerconomy.org/wiki/
|------------------------------------------ OpenPGP Key ID: 0x346452D8 --
Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to find
easier ways to do something.
        -- Robert Heinlein

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