| This question <688|688> overall <726|4> Hans: <724|5>. |
| Question 739: What is the centralization of capital? Show how accumulation leads to centralization. Which effects of accumulation are enhanced by centralization? |
| [727] Hans: Vernunftehe. When I was a child, growing up in Germany, the adults around me sometimes said about a couple getting married: “This is a ‘Vernunftehe’.” ‘Marriage of convenience’ is not a good translation for ‘Vernunftehe’. It should rather be ‘marriage of reason’. Little boy Hans always wondered what the adults meant by this: shouldn't every marriage be reasonable? The adults always admonished him to be reasonable (vernünftig). What was wrong with a marriage of reason? |
| Poppy's [688] reminds me of this. She defines centralization of capital as the process where two capitalists go together in order to produce something which they could not have produced individually. Basically she is saying every centralization of capital is a “marriage of reason.” Marx has a different view. He tries to identify anonymous economic forces that drive individual capitals to centralize. This is an explanation of the many cases of centralization by broad social forces rather than by individual choices. |
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