[net.politics.theory] Business Cycles

carnes@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP (Richard Carnes) (05/09/85)

In article <> mck@ratex.UUCP (Daniel Kian Mc Kiernan) writes:

>Business cycles are indeed not a strong point of Capitalism; nor are they a
>weak point.  They are, in fact, not a point of Capitalism at all, but rather
>of government manipulation of the money supply which distorts patterns of
>savings and investment.

Please clear something up for us, Dan'l:  Are you using "Capitalism"
as a synonym for the Free Economy?  Or are you using the term in my
sense of a society in which production is undertaken to serve the
accumulation of capital, by using exchange-value to produce more
exchange-value in an endless cycle?  Is it possible to have business
cycles under capitalism in your sense, even if capitalism itself is
not the cause of business cycles?

And no, we're not going to ask you to demonstrate that manipulation
of the money supply is the cause of business cycles.  And even if you
do, we're not going to ask you to explain what causes governmental
manipulation of the money supply.

Tx,
Carnes