Paul writes:
> Gils account of capitalist exploitation would apply also
> to other modes of production - exploitation by a landlord class
> in a pre-capitalist economy for instance.
> Now it is certainly a helpful effect of considering the economy
> in the aggregate that such timeless characteristics of exploitation
> are brought to the fore, but I think there is more to an analysis
> of the specifically capitalist form of exploitation than this.
Of course there is: that is the central task of (Marx's) historical
materialist analysis of specifically capitalist production, as I
said. But I reiterate my main point: this task does not depend
in any fundamental way on Marx's "law" of value, as becomes clear once one
grants, as Paul seems to here, that my earlier post presents a coherent account
of exploitation via circuits of capital (thus it doesn't apply to
*all* previous modes of production). It would be hard not to grant
it, because it's all in CAPITAL.