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On Wed, 10 May 2000, Michael Williams wrote:
> ... I cannot see that it is appropriate to model (even!)
> commodity exchange with an exchange-at-value model unless we
> have systematically identified the economic and social
> mechanisms by which exchange-at-value can be reproduced as
> the norm. Under developed capitalism, widespread markets
> (including for labour-power and money capital) do the trick.
> In the evolution to capitalism, we can identify embryonic
> forms of such mechanisms. In definitively pre-capitalist
> societies, what are the analogues of the capitalist market
> system?
That's a fair question. The point emerging from the passage
from vol III that I cited is, of itself, just the
doctrine-historical one that Marx conceived of exchange of
commodities (approximately) at value as occurring in various
pre-capitalist formations. It's a separate issue whether he was
/right/ to suppose this. In the text I cited he doesn't
actually supply a mechanism. FWIW, I think it can be done, but
I'm not going to attempt it here and now.
Allin.
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