From: Dave Zachariah (davez@KTH.SE)
Date: Wed Jan 09 2008 - 09:23:30 EST
In reply to Paul Z and Dogan. I'm fully aware of the very "formalist" definition of 'capital' that I gave. I'm hoping that Marxist economics can be put in a more precise language. Established concepts, be they 'heat', 'information', 'phlogiston' or 'captial', have either to be made more precise along with a theory or simply abandoned. Capital, as "a sum of money used to obtain more money", is a formalist concept and intentionally so: It is the "form of appearance" of an underlying relation between economic agents. Rather than Dogan's assertion, I would say that capital in general *expresses* a set of possible exploitative social relations. So I'm essentially in agreement with you both. But if one says that capital *is* a relation, then "capital accumulation" --- by definition a quantitative process --- loses its meaning and Marxist economic theory will be obscured. //Dave Z > Marx's four volume work is called "Capital". Is it about a sum of money? > I don't think so. It is about the social relationship of capitalists to > wage-laborers. > > I would argue that Dave's comment is an example of classical/neoclassical > conception penetrating marxist political economy (Marx himself had certain > ambiguous formulations -- but they were not a dominant tendency in his > work). > > Of course my argument cannot be reduced in a few emails, but consider the > first couple of pages in the chapter "General Law of Capitalist > Accumulation". It summarizes the prior chapter "Conversion of Surplus > Value into Capital". > > Paul Z. > > ************************************************************************ > (Vol.23) THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF 9-11-2001 -- U.S. softcover forthcoming > video summary from Snowshoe Films at http://snowshoefilms.com > (Vol.24) TRANSITIONS IN LATIN AMERICA AND IN POLAND AND SYRIA > ********************* http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/PZarembka >
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