From: glevy@PRATT.EDU
Date: Sun Feb 08 2004 - 12:05:42 EST
Rakesh wrote: > But Marx's movement from the accidental to the expanded to the > general form of value is not meant simply as a dialectical unfolding of > ideas in an analysis; it is also a a practical dialectic. Exchange > beginning in simple barter--the purely occassional exchange of this for > that--did develop into systematized exchange, into buying and > selling, which presupposes logically and historically an accepted > universal form of value, distinct from and opposable to all > particular exchange values, whatsoever. In a word, exchange > begets--Money. At every point the movement of Marx's dialectical > analysis (the inadequacies or incompleteness of the lower forms of > value) reproduces (or claims to reproduce) the actual historical > movement. Money did grow out of barter. While Marx, at various steps in _Capital_, suggests that a particular logical category or trendency is mirrored by an actual historical process, the question is whether this represents a _necessary_ step in the dialectical reconstruction in thought of the subject matter. You will, of course, recall what Marx wrote in the "Introduction" to the _Grundrisse_ about why one should _not_ begin with population. I suppose we could go on to discuss simple commodity production .... In solidarity, Jerry
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