The Journal of Agrarian History
Online ISSN : 2423-9070
Print ISSN : 0493-3567
Volume 16, Issue 4
Displaying 1-9 of 9 articles from this issue
  • Article type: Cover
    1974 Volume 16 Issue 4 Pages Cover2-
    Published: July 20, 1974
    Released on J-STAGE: October 30, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
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  • Yuki Abe
    Article type: Article
    1974 Volume 16 Issue 4 Pages 1-23
    Published: July 20, 1974
    Released on J-STAGE: October 30, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS

    This article concentrates on the problems relating to the process of the reorganization of the Standard Oil Group after World War I. It is in this period that the oil industry had become one of the leading secstors in the structure of American economy and had begun to accumulate unprecedented amounts of capital. At the same time this full-scale development of the oil industry created large numbers of new enterprises and sharpened the competition among capital groups. The whole of this process reflected the formation of new interest groups and the reorganization of existing groups and their stiff battle centering around the control of the petroleum industry. For the purpose of concrete analysis, we will choose the Rockefeller Group as offering the best example to clarify the formative process of finance capital based upon the petroleum industry. This is the very core of the problem. By the beginning of this period the petroleum industry had developed enough to become one of the main fields where active strategic operations for the cotrol of the industry were pursued by finance capital. The reorganization of the Standard-Rockefeller Group took place with such a general background. We must first follow the process of this general development of the petroleum industry. The important point here is the change of the structure of the oil industry since the turn of the century, from the kerosene industry to the essential energy industry. This tendency was led by the growth of demand for gasoline and fuel oil. During W. W. I it became clear that petroleum was the important munitions material and the strategic key material for the national economy. The incentive to control the crude oil resources and to build a complete system of vertical integration was very strong and dominated the direction of this industry in this period. The integration movement and the merger movement became the dominant characteristic of the accelerated activity of petroleum capital. Secondly, we must follow the process of the "dissolution" of the "Standard Trust". The Standard Oil Group, a kerosene monopoly in the 19th century, was obliged to reorganize itself in accordance with such developments as stated above. As a result of the "Dissolution" of "Standard Trust" in 1911, each member of the group became an independent enterprise, as a matter of form at least. Since "then each company expanded and integrated its operations, and the group was strengthened as a whole. But, on the other hand, some "chips of the old bloc" left the group and in thier search for capital came under the influence of new financial power. Thirdly, we must pay attention to the process by which Rockefeller executives reinforced the Financial conditions for their operation. The Rockefellers (J. D. Rockefeller and his cabinet) gained control and made Equitable Trust Co., which had been affiliated with the Kuhn-Loeb Group, into their core bank until the mid of the 1920's at the latest. On the other hand, Chase National Bank and J. P. Morgan & Co., etc. also began to make an entry into the petroleum industry, intervening in the reorganization of the Rockefeller Group. Above all, the behavior of the Chase group-provides a significant case. A. Wiggin's Chase National Bank experienced extremely rapid growth after W. W. I, expanding its financial influence in various industrial sectors. As for the petroleum industry, the allied power of A. Wiggin, H. Sinclair and E. Walker (Blair & Co.), with Sinclair Consolidated Oil Co. as their base company, entered into this rising industry by gathering up the old chips of the "Standard Trust". Indiana Standard, Prairie Oil and Pierce Oil all became related in varying degrees to C. N. B. It's partly because of this reason that Rockefellers had to pursue an institutional strengthening of their finance and even the new

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  • Hidenao Takahashi
    Article type: Article
    1974 Volume 16 Issue 4 Pages 24-41
    Published: July 20, 1974
    Released on J-STAGE: October 30, 2017
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    Karl Marx explains in his "Capital" the necessity of the transformation of the price of labour-power into wages. But his explanation is not regarded as the demonstration of the necessity, for the reasons that on the assumption of the transformation he merely explains the affairs how this transformation reflects the idea of people in the bourgeois societies, and does not point out the objective bases of the transformation. These opinions are based on the confusion of objective reality with ideological and phenomenal form of it, or on the mechanistic interpretation of materialism: the ideal is immediate reflection of the material. Wages as "the price of labour" is no more than ideological and phenomenal form of the price of labour-power as objective reality. The necessity of such a thing should be explained not only by the material bases of it's existence but the subjective moments in the reflection of the material to thought. So "the necessity" given by K. Marx is an indispensable part of the necessity for such a description as he explains on the subjective moments. Then does K. Marx describe it without pointing out the objective bases of it? The fact is that he points them out from part I to part V in vol. I of his "Capital". And the key subject" of them is that "the exchange between capital and labour presents itself to the mind in .the same guise as the buying and selling of all other commodities", i. e. "the buyer gives a certain sum of money and the seller an article of a nature different from money", because the material moment of the circulation of commodities is the social circulation of matter. In most theories the objective basis is the deferred payment of wages or "the selling of labour" as the material overlook of the selling of labour-power. The former is one of the objective bases, but it only intensifies the phenomenon. From this point of view, the theory that the deferred payment of wages is the objective basis is insufficient. The latter is the imaginary expression itself, so it is not the objective basis. As this example, this theory is based on same mistakes. These theories come from the assumption that the imaginary expresion of "the price of labour" or the price of use-value of commodities haunts only the buying and selling of labour-power, and from this assumption they emphasize that the peculiarity results from the inseparability of labour-power from bodies of workers. But they are mistakes, for such expressions also haunt the buying and selling of all other commodities.
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  • J. Nakae
    Article type: Article
    1974 Volume 16 Issue 4 Pages 42-60
    Published: July 20, 1974
    Released on J-STAGE: October 30, 2017
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  • H. Watanabe
    Article type: Article
    1974 Volume 16 Issue 4 Pages 61-68
    Published: July 20, 1974
    Released on J-STAGE: October 30, 2017
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  • M. Kobayashi
    Article type: Article
    1974 Volume 16 Issue 4 Pages 69-72
    Published: July 20, 1974
    Released on J-STAGE: October 30, 2017
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  • Article type: Appendix
    1974 Volume 16 Issue 4 Pages 73-76
    Published: July 20, 1974
    Released on J-STAGE: October 30, 2017
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  • Article type: Appendix
    1974 Volume 16 Issue 4 Pages 76-
    Published: July 20, 1974
    Released on J-STAGE: October 30, 2017
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  • Article type: Bibliography
    1974 Volume 16 Issue 4 Pages 77-78
    Published: July 20, 1974
    Released on J-STAGE: October 30, 2017
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