[OPE-L:2856] on the money?

From: Gerald Levy (glevy@pratt.edu)
Date: Sat Apr 15 2000 - 09:36:49 EDT


[ show plain text ]

Re Rakesh's [OPE-L:2854]:

> instantiations.

Define.
 
> Money however is a real hypostatization. As absurd is that is.

"hypostatize: ... to treat or regard (a concept, idea, etc.) as a distinct
substance or reality" _The Random House Dictionary of the English
Language_.

(note: the spellchecker in the Pine system doesn't recognize this word).

Why are you using words like these? If the reader of e-mail on this list
has to look up a word in a dictionary, then it is the fault of the writer.

It is true that money comes to be regarded as a "distinct substance or
reality" but it can only be fully comprehend when this category is linked
to other categories connected to the commodity-form.

> Money is simply a category mistake. Not Hegel but Ryle, correct?

A category mistake? How so? The category of money arises in connection
with the subject of the value-form since money is a necessary form of
appearance of the value-form (and value) in a capitalist economy. This is
the case irrespective of whether money itself takes the commodity-form or
not.

> The more we probe money the less we can discover the secret
> of its fetishistic power.

Thus we know now less about the fetishistic power of money than we ever
have in the past?

> I'd say it's not so much that there is no theory of the necessity of'
> money in Keynes (at least from the textbooks I have); there is simply
> no convincing theory of its fetishistic power, though of course this is
> what puzzled Keynes the most--how one this one thing can become the object
> of desire which cannot be readily produced even as the demand for it cannot
> be choked off.

Do you really think that is what -- "of course" -- puzzled Keynes the
most?

In solidarity, Jerry



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Apr 30 2000 - 19:59:44 EDT