Re: [OPE-L] (new book) _The Metaphysics of Capital_

From: Jerry Levy (Gerald_A_Levy@MSN.COM)
Date: Tue Oct 17 2006 - 08:20:24 EDT


> It is in our genes?

Hi Phil:

Not according to Ruiz in the following:

> Capital, that is, the
> coining of the term--is not synonymous with its inception, or more
> saliently, there is no immaculate conception of Capital. Like the genetic
> Code, our identification of it did not make it so; make it exist, as it
> were.

Genes existed before our identification of it in thought;  so too
capitalism came into being before a 'code', a mapping in thought,
of 'modern society' came into being.  That's not so hard to grasp,
is it?   Clearly, as what came to be capitalism began to emerge historically
during the period of  what is sometimes called merchant capitalism our
grasp of that phenomenon lagged behind. Who could have known in the
17th Century that one of the defining characteristics of  "modern society"
would have been the generalization of wage-labor?

But, I will admit that the language -- the 'Code' , as it were -- which
Ruiz uses in the excerpt is not the syntax and rhetoric that I would have
selected. On that grounds alone there is the possibility that I may have
misunderstood the 'product description".

In solidarity, Jerry


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