Re: [OPE] State theory of money

Jurriaan Bendien wrote:
> I haven't written this up in a paper, Dave, but I have never said that
> the state theory of money is totally wrong, or that it is wrong
> "because" it does not reflect what Marx said in Capital Vol. 1. That
> is just a smear.

Jurriaan, that was a reference to a comrade in a study group.

>
>
> In the Pacific, for example, kauri shells functioned as money in
> several places although there was no state issuing kauri shells or
> controlling the supply of kauri shells. That type of phenomenon I
> think proves the validity of Marx's view, and I am not going to follow
> the Marxists in abandoning historical fact. Why should I abandon
> Marx's perfectly valid idea, in favour of a baseless Marxist
> philosophy? It doesn't make sense, it's irrational.

If your argumentation here was about the theory of money, I found the
first part of this paragraph interesting and worth discussion (perhaps
you could provide some good references too). But the second part of the
paragraph just derails into a rant that I don't want to be a part of.

I suppose this is an exemplar of what I'm objecting to: You write a lot
of interesting things, in this case about money, and that I would have
been happy to read, but I just don't understand why you keep mixing it
with your views about Marx and 'the Marxists'?

//Dave Z
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Received on Sun Jun 7 13:13:01 2009