In 6402, in response to Rakesh's suggestion that I haven't been able to establish the *significance* of my Chapter 5 (etc) critique, I wrote Really? I would have thought our disagreement was over the details of my argument, not its significance. Let me check this by asking you a question, Rakesh: Is the commodification of labor power *essential* or *incidental* to the process of transforming money into capital, according to Marx's account in Volume I of Capital? to which Rakesh responds in 6406: >It is indeed essential in Marx's account (though not in reality) >because in his "account", i.e., his theory of a pure advanced >capitalism, Marx rules out by assumption the putting out system or >some variant thereof (you give examples of usury and merchant >capital,right?); he assumes that workers have been expropriated and >that we are on free wage labor island and then concludes that despite >appearances free wage workers cannot be alienating their labor time >in exchange with Mr Moneybags if money is being transformed into >capital. [Etc] Whoa, Rakesh, you've jumped immediately into the *details* of the argument, confirming my suggestion that our disagreement is over these details, not as you've contended, the *significance* of my argument. So, before getting back into details, you indicate that the commodification of labor power is *essential* to the process of transforming money into capital, *according to Marx's account.* Would you then agree that a refutation of Marx's explicitly stated basis for asserting this essential relationship is *significant*, if valid? Gil
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