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>Rakesh, if you agree that Chapter One is about the capitalist mode of
>production, then you have no basis for claiming commodities having the
>"property of value before capitalism". That is, *value* is a property
>within the capitalist mode of production only, just as is *surplus value*.
>Paul Z.
Hi Paul Z, Marx clearly argues that before capitalism commodities were
produced with their value character already in mind (i.e., they were
produced in order to be exchanged), though this presupposes a sufficient
extension and development of market relations. But not fully developed
capitalism necessarily. However that value character is changed as the
commodity becomes the general form of labor because then value as an
apparently objective, albeit supra-sensate, characteristic of commodities
obviously has to regulate by itself the distribution of social labor now
that patriarchal family and the traditional division of labor have
dissolved and production is privately undertaken by means of wage labor for
profit. It's this *emergent property* of the value property of commodities
as the commodity becomes the general form that Marx seems most interested
in Capital I, part one,, not the transhistoric characters of commodities as
such. But, logically speaking, can there be properties (regulator of
social labor) of properties (values)? Can there be second order properties?
And perhaps we need a methodological discussion of the possibility of
emergent properties in Marx's underlying and hardly discussed ontology. As
I have said I am out of my philosophical depth.
Yours, Rakesh
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