>Allin Cottrell wrote: > >> On Wed, 23 May 2001, Rakesh Narpat Bhandari wrote: >> >> > >If you believe that commodities can be resolved into labour and >> > >labour alone, then you believe in magic. >> > >> > But Steve no one is saying that; of course there will remain some >> > natural residue which is not objectified labor. Marx never said >> > otherwise. In fact in both Capital 1 and the the Critique of the >> > Gotha Programme he emphasized that wealth is the product of both >> > labor and nature...as you surely know >> >> Agreed. The non-labour residue is composed of the materials supplied >> gratis by nature, which are crucial to a commodity's use-value but >> have no bearing on its value. >> >> Allin. > >____________________________ > >Allin, the point here is not about "materials supplied gratis by nature". >That is always a part of production process. The commodity residue is >about the residue that will always remain of the *produced means of >production*. It ultimately strikes at the *originary* method of >reasoning, that is, the essence of something could be understood by >reducing it to its origin. The commodity residue argument is showing that >this is simply not true. If you want to understand *capitalist >production* or the nature of production in capitalism, you simply cannot >go back to the imaginary origin of production with the imaginary first >man/woman who had to produce something without any aid of produced means >of production. Once you begin with capitalist production, where the class >of capitalist exists only on the basis of control over the produced means >of production, then there is no logical way of reducing this state of >affair to the imaginary state of affair where no produced means of >production existed. I think this is a serious methodological issue, which >the Hegelian Marxists are dealing with by simply closing their eyes to. >Cheers, ajit sinha Ajit I only have time to write one line: it is absolutely foreign to Hegelian methodology to go back to such an originary condition. When we get to the capital form we just take C coming in with an already given value and go from there. C 17 Bristol Road, Brighton, BN2 1AP, England
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