The owners of fictitious-capital have two contradictory sources of revenue upon which their wealth and power is based. On the one hand, they can obtain large revenues in the form of interest/dividends on their shares, bonds and other financial assets. On the other they can obtain large capital gains as a result of significant rises in the prices of these assets, and they can then convert these capital gains into revenues, by selling a proportion of those assets. A rise in the price of assets, unless it is a reflection of the increased revenue produced by the asset, results in a lower yield, i.e. ratio of the revenue to the price of the asset. If yields fall, the owners of shares can compensate, by having their representatives on company boards increase the proportion of profits going to dividends, but this then reduces the amount going to real capital accumulation, and so undermines revenues and fictitious capital in the longer-term.
If interest rates rise, then asset prices fall, and so yields also rise. The owners of revenue producing assets see their revenues rise, but they see the price of their assets fall. The total return might then also fall, as the capital loss outweighs any increase in revenue. But, ultimately, it is the real productive capital that dominates, because it is the source of profits, and thereby of these other revenues and capital gains. The owners of fictitious-capital, as ruling-class, seek to protect themselves from this contradiction. They have central banks print money tokens to buy up assets, to reflate their prices, when they crash and so on. They seek to have the state regulate the economy to a greater extent and on a wider geographical basis, so that the profits that are accumulated as real capital, can be more effective and produce greater profits and so on, But, eventually, the prices of assets cannot continue to rise at a faster pace than the growth of revenues, and revenues can only grow if surplus value grows, which requires the accumulation of real capital, and so the employment of additional labour.
Ultimately, this question of the accumulation of real capital has to be addressed. That was the property question that imposed itself in the 1920's, and again in the 1930's. It requires a restructuring of real capital on the basis of a technological revolution that qualitatively raises productivity, and, thereby, the rate of surplus value and rate of profit. The owners of fictitious-capital are forced to accept a large-scale write down of their paper wealth, as interest rates rise, and financial and property markets crash, but their main concern then becomes to retain control over the real socialised capital, which now becomes the focus of their wealth and power.
In the 1920's and 30's, it is when they see a threat to this control, as workers and sections of the professional middle-class, who are the personification of this large-scale socialised capital, begin to rationally demand control over it that the ruling class now turns to the fascists to protect its interests. The ruling-class is tiny. To protect its interests as against the old landlord class it looked to the proletariat. To protect its interests against a revolutionary proletariat it can only look to the petty-bourgeoisie, and lumpen proletariat in addition to its state. The interests of these elements are contradictory to the interests of large-scale socialised capital, and so, therefore, the long-term interests of the ruling class, but the ruling class is immediately concerned with its own survival, and is forced to think about its longer-term interests only after having dealt with the proletariat.
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