Re: [OPE] Abstract Labor (a note for Dave Zachariah)

Jurriaan Bendien wrote:
> There is not a shred of historical evidence that it was the state
> which originally invented money, and an enormous amount of historical
> evidence that money-tokens of various kinds existed before the state
> assumed the power to issue currency. That is, the state only aimed to
> regulate and stimulate trading processes which existed already, as
> well as profit from them.

The point is that the state establishes a universal equivalent in order
to appropriate a part of the surplus product. It is simply not true that
there is not a shred of historical evidence in favour of this. Innes
made pioneering study and recently Ingham, Wray and Forstater have
brought together the available evidence for Mesopotamia, medieval
Europe and colonial Africa.

Given the style of your last post I doubt there is any point that I
should continue writing. Perhaps you ought to follow your own advice:

> You might as well just say what you want to say, without the
> obligatory religious reference to Marx.

//Dave Z
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Received on Thu Mar 5 15:49:46 2009