Hello, Chai-on. In response to your comment:
> In my understanding, capitalist property relationship is based on the
> property as the result of other's labour, which should be distinguished
> from the personal property relationship based on one's own labour.
> Feudal ownership is based on conquer (not on the serf's own labour).
> Capitalist relation of exploitation would differ from the precapitalist
> relation of appropriation. The former is based on the exchange relation
> with equal and free terms.
> Am I wrong?
I don't think so, but I see the foregoing as refining rather than
contradicting what I wrote. That is: I read Marx as affirming that usury
extended to small producers and proto-industrial merchant's capital
are cases of capitalist property relations, or more specifically
represent capitalist exploitation albeit without the capitalist mode
of production. If it is inappropriate to equate these two notions,
I'd like to hear why.
The reproduction of both historical circuits of capital was certainly
"based on property as the result of other's labour", so they seem to
meet your first condition. Similarly, neither historical circuit
depended primarily on conquest, so they seem to pass your second
distinction.
The key issue thus seems to be whether these two historical circuits
were "based on the exchange relation with free and equal terms."
Given my previous arguments about the problematic status of
price-value equivalence in Marx's theory of exploitation, I'd say the
answer to this question is yes: in the analytically relevant sense,
usury extended to small producers and proto-industrial merchant's
capital were based on free exchange relations.
Are these comments responsive to your points?
Gil Skillman