From: Paul Bullock (paulbullock@EBMS-LTD.CO.UK)
Date: Wed Apr 14 2004 - 17:45:18 EDT
Dear Jurriaan, in your discussion with Jerry you referred to a short comment I had made on a previous occassion. I should like to add a little below. Best regards Paul Bullock ----- Original Message ----- From: OPE-L Administrator To: OPE-L@SUS.CSUCHICO.EDU Sent: Sunday, April 11, 2004 3:02 AM Subject: [OPE-L] (OPE-L) Re: the economic cell-form and form-analysis -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: (OPE-L) Re: the economic cell-form and form-analysis From: Jurriaan Bendien <jurriaanbendien@yahoo.com> Date: Sat, April 10, 2004 10:58 am Hi Jerry, .............. Paul Bullock for his part writes: "The 'cell form' is necessary for the existence of capitalism, but in the form of a product it is not itself sufficient to transform into capital, what is necessary for this is that labour power itself be forced to take on the commodity form as well." But actually Marx's own text shows very explicitly that for Marx at least, this is not true. The transformation of the commodity into capital requires only the existence of money and the ability to trade in it, so that more money is obtained from the trade. The transformation of capital into capitalism, does not necessarily require that labour-power becomes a tradeable commodity either, because it requires only that the surplus-product of that labour-power can be appropriated and traded (i.e. the double appropriation involved in capitalist accumulation can occur, that is, the appropriation of use-value and the appropriation of exchange-value as capital - this is explained more in my essay "Rescuing Marx from Marxist self-activity"). What you say here is true in the sense that buying in order to sell dearer is indeed the source of genuine merchants capital. It takes place in circulation. BUT it is impossible by circulation alone to account for the formation of surplus value. Merchant capital can only have its origin in shoving itself in between the seller and the buyer. Merchant capital (and interest bearing capital) are in fact derivative forms, although they appear historically before the modern standard form of capital. Here the dialectical logic is demonstrated perfectly by Marx. Something is taking place in the background, and it is this historically evolving background - the use of labour power as a commodity - that Marx studies from Chapter 6 of Vol 1 onwards of course. The sentence you take from me starts with capitalism, by which I took myself to mean the era of the capitalist mode of production. Certainly the middle ages handed down merchants and userer's capital, but this could not become capitalism as such. It remained, as Marx noted ' capital quand meme'. The 'idyllic proceedings' of primitive accumulation were necessary for this to take place. Now, since I expressed by self carelessly by saying 'capital' in my third line rather than 'modern capital', I understand your concern, but on the other hand the point I was making was that specific social conditions are necessary for capitalism to develop, much as you have emphasised the deadly affect of concepts used by 'the Marxists' without historical understanding. The 'cell form' has itself to develop, it is not a static idea. Paul Bullock
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