From: Rakesh Bhandari (bhandari@BERKELEY.EDU)
Date: Wed Jun 20 2007 - 15:55:53 EDT
Michael H wrote: > > >Other recommendations of Marx about reading "Capital" I do not know. >But it would be extremely strange if he had recommended to skip >chapter 1 after he had spent so much time of reworking the material >of this chapter. > How do people describe the commodity with which Marx begins? How are commodities differentiated from gifts and sacred or inalienable objects? Marx did not have the anthropological knowledge to make such clarifying distinctions, I do not think, though one finds them many introductory books to social anthropology. And taking Partha Dasgupta's summary of Arrow's distinctions...Does Marx's vast accumulation of commodities include services, dated and/or contingent commodities (e.g. the replacement home I buy with a monthly insurance premium), is it implicitly a private good whose use is rivalrous and excludable? Are commodities distinguished from whatever can take the commodity form--organs or reputation for example. Shouldn't have Marx begun with the question of what cannot or is not supposed to take the commodity form under a fully developed capitalist mode of production, the question of what cannot be exchanged on the account of its sacredness--the human person herself? Why not begin with the contradictions or antinomies of liberalism? Marx's beginning is too crude and blunt in light of modern distinctions (gift, inalienable object, commodity) and actual diversification in the types of commodities. Or at least the kind of commodity he is analyzing needs to be specified for modern students. Rakesh
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Jun 30 2007 - 00:00:04 EDT