• BashfulBob [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    2 months ago

    Capital =/= production or the real economy.

    I think someone else referred to this definition before. But

    “Capital (goods)” = “those durable produced goods that are in turn used as productive inputs for further production”

    What is the difference, exactly? What is the 75$ difference? As a really shitty and lazy and probably somewhat flawed simplification- this is the “capital,” the “capitalization” you’re talking about.

    No, that’s the marginal cost.

    What’s more, a Marxist “all else equal” analysis would say the $75 difference in cost is ultimately a labor cost + profit. One big reason why Russia can build artillery cheaper than the US is simply due to its limited number of middle men between raw materials and deployed weapon.

    That inflates the raw labor cost (the US MIC procurement system is a jobs program that rewards inefficiency) and extracts an admin fee at every step.

    But that price differential isn’t capital. It’s cost.

    Am example of capital would be the mineral gathering operation used to create explosives. Another would be the machinery to create the bomb housing. Another would be the training school for the engineers who assemble the bombs.