From: Jerry Levy (Gerald_A_Levy@MSN.COM)
Date: Wed Nov 30 2005 - 08:46:45 EST
> There are lots of self-reproducing systems, totalities, that are the > object of scientific investigation. We ourselves are one and could > begin by investigating some causal mechanism, e.g., the heart, lung, > axon, etc., essential to our own persistence. Hi Howard: In referring to the commodity as the "economic cell-form", Marx was claiming by way of analogy to the human cell that the essential character of "modern society" could only be grasped by unpacking a "concrete entity the commodity [Konkretum der Ware]". [Is the idea that an understanding of the human anatomy begins with the cell outdated? Wouldn't most scientists instead begin with the subject of DNA?] > Assume then a social totality. When we start with value by abstracting > from the relation of exchange, what is it to which we refer? I am surprised that you wrote this. Perhaps I am just not grasping your meaning. Who starts with value? Who extracts from exchange? If we start with the commodity then we are not abstracting from the relation of exchange. [Now, had we started instead with a trans-historical 'product' then we could extract from a relation of exchange since, historically, production preceded a division of labour and exchange relations. This is a reason why the commodity, rather than a product in general, must be the starting point for an analysis of the _capitalist_ mode of production.] In solidarity, Jerry
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