Tuesday, May 1, 2018

Richard Wolff - How Marxism and Modern Monetary Theory Go Hand-In-Hand



In this Majority Report clip, Sam Seder and Professor Richard Wolff discuss how Marxism and modern monetary theory are a match made in heaven.

I wondered when Richard Wolff would cotton onto MMT. He say's the MMT people don't say what they will spend the money on, but 'we' do. KV

18 comments:

Andrew Anderson said...

What?! I've read that Marx was a gold-bug. How does that square with MMT?

Kaivey said...

You're probably right. I guess it's Richard Wolff's version of Marxism.

Andrew Anderson said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Andrew Anderson said...

The truth of the proposition that, 'although gold and silver are not by nature money, money is by nature gold and silver," is shown by the fitness of the physical properties of these metals for the functions of money." Karl Marx quote from http://www.thegoldstandardnow.org/key-blogs/1894-karl-marx-gold-standard-advocate

Admittedly, the above source ARE gold-bugs and Marx may have been referring to the value of gold and silver as anti-counterfeiting measures. Still those measures have long been obsolete, at least in principle, since the invention of central banks, assuming that all fiat users could have accounts there.

Let's hear from Tom or others familiar with Marx.

AXEC / E.K-H said...

Note on Richard Wolff - How Marxism and Modern Monetary Theory Go Hand-In-Hand

Interesting to learn that Marx, too, was an agenda pusher for the one-percenters. See

How MMT fools the ninety-nine-percenters
https://axecorg.blogspot.de/2018/03/how-mmt-fools-ninety-nine-percenters.html

Political economics: Who hijacks British Labour?
https://axecorg.blogspot.de/2018/03/political-economics-who-hijacks-british.html

MMT = proto-scientific junk + deception of the 99-percenters
https://axecorg.blogspot.de/2018/01/mmt-proto-scientific-junk-deception-of.html

MMT and grassroots movements
https://axecorg.blogspot.de/2018/01/mmt-and-grassroots-movements.html

Keynes, Lerner, MMT, Trump and exploding profit
http://axecorg.blogspot.de/2017/12/keynes-lerner-mmt-trump-and-exploding.html

MMT and the promotion of Wall Street socialism
http://axecorg.blogspot.de/2017/11/mmt-and-promotion-of-wall-street.html

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke

Andrew Anderson said...

Interesting to learn that Marx, too, was an agenda pusher for the one-percenters. Egmont Kakarot-Handtke

And you aren't? What are your proposals again? I don't recall them but I do recall my extreme dismay that you too had no truly ethical proposals.

Matt Franko said...

I thought money was time?!?!?

https://youtu.be/8Moh7DXMk8g

Tom Hickey said...

Marx’s Theory of Money
Ernest Mandel

The Power of Money
Karl Marx

Marx’s objections to credit theories of money
Anitra Nelson

I would say that an orthodox Marxist economist would seem be committed to a commodity of theory of money in holding a strict interpretation of Marx.

On the other hand, Marxian economists are free to hold a credit theory of money while using other aspects of Marx's social and political approach to economics in updating Marx.

Richard Wolff is a Marxian economist rather than an orthodox Marxist.

Andrew Anderson said...

In the same way as his theory of rent, Marx’s theory of money is a straightforward application of the labour theory of value. As value is but the embodiment of socially necessary labour, ... from Marx’s Theory of Money.

Yeah, what could be more socially necessary (as well as good for the environment!) than digging gold out of the ground in order to rebury it in central bank vaults? /sarc

Marx should have read the Bible more (if at all?) and thus avoided embarrassing himself, e.g. "Render to Caesar what is Caesar's" is an extremely early exposition of the "State Theory of Money."

Tom Hickey said...

For Marx, the real basis of money is labor time.

This is legislated by the MMT JG that fixes the value of $ a unit of labor time with the issuer using its monopoly power to set price.

Shh. Don't tell anyone though.

Andrew Anderson said...

For Marx, the real basis of money is labor time. Tom Hickey

So that a country with no automation should have a more valuable money supply than a highly automated one? It appears to be not so, bro.

The real basis of money is what it can buy, not how much labor was expended.

Andrew Anderson said...

make that a more valuable money supply per capita

Tom Hickey said...

In Marx's view, it is of course true that one "value" of money is what money can buy (purchasing power).

But this valuation can exceed the contribution of labor, which is the real basis of value in that labor produces both commodities for sale and the capital goods (technology) that are used to make them.

The excess "value" as purchasing power is "fictitious value" compared with the real value of productive labor.

It is an aspect economic rent as gain in excess of productive contribution, giving those doing the extraction greater purchasing power over those that actually produce commodities for sale and also produce capital goods.

This institutionally privileged cohort receives a disproportionate share of production and control over wealth that is unearned. It's a shuck.

Matt Franko said...

Its USD/T so time is in the denominator... so a nation with the higher output in USDs per unit time would have the stronger currency to reflect the increased terms of trade...

Andrew Anderson said...

It is an aspect economic rent as gain in excess of productive contribution, giving those doing the extraction greater purchasing power over those that actually produce commodities for sale and also produce capital goods. Tom Hickey

Which is why private credit creation should not be privileged AT ALL since equity owners, for no other reason than that own some equity, are automatically so-called worthy of what is otherwise, in essence, the public's credit but for private gain.

Bob Roddis said...

I'll bet you guys didn't know that "Modern Monetary Theory" in Ukrainian is pronounced "Holodomor".

AXEC / E.K-H said...

Tom Hickey

The philosopher/agenda pusher/fake scientist Marx had no idea what profit is#1 and how the value of money is determined.#2

The same holds for MMTers in general and Tom Hickey in particular.

The common denominator of Marx, MMT, Tom Hickey is that they claim to promote the cause of the ninety-nine-percenters but ― intentionally or unintentionally does not matter ― effectively advance the cause of the one-percenters.#4

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke

#1 Profit for Marxists
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2414301

#2 The creation and value of money and near-monies
https://axecorg.blogspot.de/2017/12/the-creation-and-value-of-money-and.html

#3 MMT: NO sound scientific foundation
https://axecorg.blogspot.de/2017/09/mmt-no-sound-scientific-foundations.html

#4 MMT is ALWAYS a bad deal for the 99-percenters
http://axecorg.blogspot.de/2017/12/mmt-is-always-bad-deal-for-ninety-nine.html

Calgacus said...

Oh, thanks for those papers, Tom. Anitra Nelson's & others are rare contributions that lift the study of the relation of Marx & Hegel above even the Chick Publications level.