Re: [OPE] Abstract Labor (a note for Dave Zachariah)

From: Dave Zachariah <davez@kth.se>
Date: Wed Mar 04 2009 - 08:42:52 EST

2009/3/4 Jurriaan Bendien <adsl675281@tiscali.nl>

> The state did not originate money, but rather created a universal
> equivalent
>

It seems to me that there is massive historical evidence to the theory that
what is taken as the universal money of account --- the universal equivalent
--- within a society was always established by the state and its
taxation/expenditure.

> Ideologically, the "state theory of money" becomes a way to evade all kinds
> of problems of the circulation of money, capital and commodities
> independently of the state.
>
>

I disagree. On the contrary the state theory of money provides an
explanation of how wage-labour and therefore capitalist relations of
production arose in pre-capitalist regions of the world colonized by
capitalist states.

At the critical point, the Marxists always drop Marx & Engels in favour of
> some or other bourgeois theory.
>

I'm quite immune to this form of appeal to authority. The question is
whether the theory is scientifically sound or not. I think the commodity
theories of money are really mystifying and are weakly supported.

//Dave Z

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Received on Wed Mar 4 08:44:48 2009

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