What is a commodity?

[H. Curtiss Leung]

Dennis writes:
>The recent postings on banks and finance capital in general raise some
>important issues about finance capital. I hate to wax utopian,
>but here goes anyway:

        "Utopian"?  This was a pretty concrete and useful post.
>
>(1) We need to be careful about lumping together all forms of mediation in
>capitalist economies as somehow identical. Stock shares are claims on
>corporate ownership; bonds are long-term loans; bank loans can be short or
>long-term loans; and pension funds are little more than deferred wages.
>Abolishing certain parts of the credit infrastructure would be
>absolutely essential to any future socialist society: i.e. divesting the
>rich of all those stocks and bonds, turning over companies to
>worker-elected bodies, capping interest rates to levels which correspond
>to real economic growth. Other parts need to be socialized: pension funds
>should be state-guaranteed for all and state-run, as in many European
>countries; nationalized health insurance for all would also need an
>appropriate financing plan; most of all, banks and capital markets would
>need to be transformed into community-run and community-owned
>institutions, run by and for the working folks themselves. Some of this
>also exists in Europe today. We shall see what the Euroleft comes up with
>in the future. 
>

        One comment/question regarding pension funds: they may be deferred
wages to the worker, but once invested in markets, don't they function in
the same way as rentier capital, i.e., pension fund managers want the same 
investment performance as well-heeled speculators do, and condone
or even encourage the same corporate behavior -- layoffs, cutbacks, 
et cetera?  This leads to an economic antagonism between the older
segment of the population, who now identify with rentier interests,
and the younger, who see their economic opportunities cut off by
market-driven corporate behavior.  Wouldn't this antagonism persist
even given worker-controlled companies and government-directed pension 
investments?


>(3) Everyone knows it, noone says it: Wall Street is going to crash.
>big-time, and then this pathetic, decaying carcass of Empire is going to
>exit the stage of History in a cloud of REIT bankruptcies, pension-fund
>bailouts, and third party initiatives. Any bets on when, and by how much?
>(I'd put a stash of euros on a 35% drop in November 1997 myself).
>

        Why November?  And why only 35%?
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Curtiss Leung                        Voice (212)267-7722 x 3033
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