Home Forum Political Economy Does capitalism have a growth imperative? Reply To: Does capitalism have a growth imperative?

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I would also review the works of Tim Di Muzio, who has done a lot of work regarding debt and money applying the prism of CasP.

http://bnarchives.yorku.ca/view/creators/Di_Muzio=3ATim=3A=3A.html

Most of the materials linked to above are free downloads. That said, I highly recommend the two books Debt as Power (with Richard Robbins) and The Tragedy of Human Development.

For me, capitalism has a growth imperative because of how modern money is created (by private banks extending credit subject to compounding interest).  Compounding interest is built into the net present valuation process, i.e., CasP’s central ritual of “Capitalization,” which allows one to compare the value of stocks to the value of bonds (a more fundamental form of capital).

Similarly, again speaking solely for myself, I view “differential accumulation” as most fundamentally being about seeking a return on capital that exceeds the growth of the economy as measured by inflation (Piketty’s r>g).  Sure, there is a strata of capitalists who care about beating each other (i.e., “the average”), but most are concerned with ensuring that what they have already accumulated does not evaporate with the passage of time (consider “the time value of money” and Prospect Theory), which is why fixed income financial assets, which focus on capital preservation, continue to exist.