From: John Milios (jmilios@HOL.GR)
Date: Sat Feb 19 2005 - 22:09:14 EST
Jurriaan, you write: >Marx's argument about the "commensurability of commodities in exchange" does not depend on the existence of money, and therefore the presence of any >money-price is theoretically irrelevant. >commodities can and do exchange for other commodities without monetary mediation >Exchange-value does not have to be expressed in money, it can be expressed in a quantity of commodities offered in exchange. How then do you interpret the following statements by Marx: "The social character of labour appears as the money existence of the commodity and hence as a thing outside actual production" (CAPITAL Vol. 1, Penguin 1991: 649). "Commodities do not then assume the form of direct mutual exchangeability. Their socially validated form is a mediated one" (MEGA II, 5: 40). "It has become apparent in the course of our presentation that value, which appeared as an abstraction, is only possible as such an abstraction, as soon as money is posited" (GRUNDRISSE, Penguin 1993: 776). "The social relation is consummated in the relation of a thing, of money, to itself" (MEW 25: 405. CAPITAL Vol. 3 - Internet 1894, Ch. 24). "It is a basic principle of capitalist production that money, as an independent form of value, stands in opposition to commodities, or that exchange-value must assume an independent form in money" (MEW 25: 532. CAPITAL Vol 3 - Internet, Ch. 32). Cheers, John
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