Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/281441 
Year of Publication: 
2023
Citation: 
[Journal:] Revista de Estudios Globales. Análisis Histórico Y Cambio Social [Volume:] 3 [Issue:] 5 [Publisher:] Universidad de Murcia [Place:] Murcia [Year:] 2023 [Pages:] 13-40
Publisher: 
Universidad de Murcia, Murcia
Abstract: 
Political economists, both mainstream and Marxist, find it difficult to reconcile the «real» and «financial» appearances of capital. The conventional view is that «real» capital is an objective productive entity; that «finance» merely reflects this reality; and that, unfortunately, the reflection is often inaccurate, causing the two to «mismatch». This convention, we argue, is baseless if not fraudulent. First, although economists know full well that «real» capital, comprising different capital goods, cannot have a unique objective quantity – they measure this pseudo quantity anyway, arbitrarily. Second, when they realize that their arbitrary measure of «real» capital differs greatly from the corresponding magnitude of finance, they blame the deviation on invisible fluctuations in intangible capital, investor irrationality and market imperfections. And third, they insist that «real» accumulation drives «financial» accumulation, even though their own measures show that the two processes move in opposite directions!
Subjects: 
capital accumulation
finance
Marxism
measurement
Neoclassical economics
real-nominal duality
Tobin's Q
JEL: 
P
E01
E13
B14
B24
G3
G
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by-nc-nd Logo
Document Type: 
Article
Document Version: 
Published Version

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