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Riccardo and Fred,
Just a very quick note on the category mistake. Marx does not say that
money is a representation or objectification of labor per se but rather
that the money commodity/non commodity is the incarnation of universal
human labor. We wouldn't want to erase the nature of Marx's critique of
classical economics which was simply blind to the nonsense and absurdity
of everyday life.
If someone asks to see the university and then after being shown the
biology, history, physics, etc departments still asks to be shown the the
university, we understand the obvious category mistake. But everday
capitalist practice is (was) based on just such a category mistake. It's
like the mining department is actually the university; it is itself the
incarnation of the university. Money itself represents abstract labor which
seems to simply be a predicate of various forms of concrete labor. Money
however is a real hypostatization.
OK I am away from home, and my time is up through this connection.
YOurs, Rakesh
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