chapotraphouse

Sometimes I have like manic episodes, for lack of a better term, in which I fixate intensely on a topic and I'm suddenly extremely motivated to learn as much as possible (i don't think they're real manic episodes and I'm mentally fine so dw), but for the first time I want to actually follow up on this momentum and learn about the topic I'm fixating on. Behold my ramblings:

What books should I read to learn about the stuff below? If no such books exist, I'll write one.

Overall question: what are the mechanisms by which capitalists extract surplus value from labor? And how can the working people of the world dismantle these mechanisms?

• I use the phrase “what are the mechanisms by which” and not the word “how” intentionally, because I know that the answer to “how” is “by violence or the threat thereof.”

• The question I want to answer is more in the financial “nitty-gritty” of the process. It is obvious that, for example, a coffee farmer in Ethiopia, stevedores in various ports all over the world, and a barista at the Starbucks in my neighborhood all produce value which is extracted by the Starbucks corporation as well as other companies involved in the production process of a cup of coffee (international shipping companies, the companies that make the plastic cups used at Starbucks, etc.). But how, precisely, does that extracted surplus value turn into wealth (not just money in a bank account but wealth in the broadest sense of the term) for the people who own those corporations?

• The most obvious answer is in the dividends paid to shareholders and the increase in the stock price of the various companies involved. But what else? Surely there is a huge obfuscatory architecture of financial tools that hides the true extent of the wealth of the haute bourgeoisie.

  • Examples that jump to mind include: money laundering via fine art (e.g., Salvator Mundi), off-shore bank accounts, and shell and holding companies

  • What do the “bank countries” (Singapore, the Cayman Islands, the City of London, etc.) have to do with this?

• Of course, the final question to ask is: how can we destroy these mechanisms? What are their greatest vulnerabilities? Taking control over any given state seems like an insufficient response, since international capital has numerous bases from which it can operate to hide the extent to which the haute bourgeoisie are hoarding wealth and there’s no indication they can’t create more if we did manage to destroy one. How can the proletariat take control of international finance?

Background reading

• What do the Panama Papers tell us about this question? What other work has been done so far to unravel the obfuscatory architecture mentioned above?

• To what extent would Marx’ Capital provide a framework in which to answer this question? What about writings by later Marxists?

I apologize if this makes no sense at all

Death to America