Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

NOTEBOOK “α”

(“ALPHA”)


STILLICH, MONEY AND BANKING

Dr. Oskar Stillich, Money and Banking, Berlin, 1907.

A super-popular piece.

a Proudhonist
fool and banker
against money
 p. 95. Banker Julius Hucke, The Money
Problem and the Social Question
(5th edi-
tion), 1903.

p. 143: “No banking operation brings in such high profit as the issue of securities.”[1] Profits from the issue of securities are higher than anywhere else.... There have been attempts to justify profits from the issue of industrial shares by pleading expenses and anticipated higher returns, but in reality this is economically unearned profit, and according to the Deutsche Oekonomist it amounts, on an average:

N.B. 1895— 38.6% N.B. idem more fully in
Sombart, The German
National Economy in
theNineteenth Century

(2nd    edition,
1909), p. 526, appen-
dix 8
1896— 36.1%
1897— 66.7%
1898— 67.7%
1899— 66.9%
1900— 55.2%
 

N.B. “In the ten years, from 1891 to 1900, more than a thousand million marks were ‘earned’ by issuing German industrial stock.”[2]

 p. 138. “Reconstructions”.... “Shares
are amalgamated and their nominal value
decreased. A classic example of such writing
down of share capital is the Dortmund
Union founded by the Discontogesellschaft.
In the first volume of my Economic Studies
in Big Industrial Enterprise
(Leipzig, 1904),
I examined in detail the financial history
of the unfortunate offspring of this bank. In
the course of thirty years, more than 73,000,000
marks were written off the books of the Union
by a series of operations decreasing the nomi-
nal value of shares. At the present time the
original shareholders of the company possess
only 5 per cent of the nominal value of their
shares (138)[3]
N.B.
good
example
!!!
!!!

Current Accounts—a means of exerting influence on industry.

 “How great the banks’ influence over their
clients is shown, for example, by the fol-
lowing letter, reproduced from the Kuxen-
zeitung
, sent on November 19, 1901 by the
Dresdner Bank to the Board of the German
North-West Cement Syndicate. The letter
states: “As we learn from the notice you pub-
lished in the newspaper Reichsanzeiger of
November 18, we must reckon with the possi-
bility that the next general meeting of your
syndicate, to be held on the 30th of this
month, may decide on measures which are
likely to effect changes in your enterprise
which are unacceptable to us. We deeply
regret that, for these reasons, we are obliged
henceforth to withdraw the credit which
has hitherto been allowed you. Accordingly,
we ask you to cease requests for money
from our bank and at the same time we respect-
fully ask you to return not later than the end
of the current month the sums owing to us.
But if the said next general meeting does not
decide upon measures which are unacceptable
to us, and if we receive suitable guarantees on
this matter for the future, we shall he quite
willing to open negotiations with you on the
grant of a new credit”[4] (146-47).
good
example!!!
!!
!!!

good
example
!!!  ...“The daily occupation of a number of
employees in our big banks consists solely of
calculating the interest on current accounts.
In the course of time they achieve real virtu-
osity in this matter.... They are an example of
how capital suppresses personality and turns
the individual into a machine” (148)....
!!

 N.B.     “‘Every bank is a Stock Ex-
change
’, and the bigger the bank, and the
more successful the concentration of banking,
the truer does this modern aphorism ring”
(169).[5]

ha-ha!!
cf. K. Ka-
ustky
 “Through their subsidiary banks the Pereires
(founders of Crédit Mobilier) “wanted to
entangle various nations financially and in
this way promote world peace” (180)....

“Spheres of operation” “for bank capital”

in the seventies—German railways (nationalised at the close of the seventies)

in the eighties—Rhine-Westphalian heavy industry

in the nineties—electrical industry (and engineering).

attitude
to
employees
“In 1906 the four Berlin “D” banks (Deutsche
Bank, Discontogesellschaft, Dresdner Bank,
Darmstädter Bank) concluded an agreement
not to engage an employee of any of these
banks who had not been freed from his post!”
(203). The opposition of the employees com-
pelled a “substantial” (??) “modification”
(??) of this agreement ((in what respect?
how????)).

End


N.B.: H. Withers, Money and Credit in England, 1911.
    Philippovich
    Sombart
    Principles of Social Economics (Bücher, Schulze-Gaevernitz, etc., etc.).


Notes

[1] See present edition, Vol. 22, p. 234.—Ed.

[2] Ibid., p. 234.—Ed.

[3] Ibid., p. 235.—Ed.

[4] Ibid., pp. 223-24.—Ed.

[5] See present edition, Vol. 22, p. 215.—Ed.

  SOURCE REFERENCES | LIEFMANN, CARTELS AND TRUSTS  

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