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>>> George Pennefather <[log in to unmask]> 09-03-00 19:37:57 >>> >To say that the "wealth of those societies presents itself as an immense accumulation of >commodities" is not true. Much of the wealth is in the form of industrial capital which is >not capital in the form of the commodity. This mistaken premise renders the validity of >making the commodity a starting point questionable on that basis. Hello This statement from George ignores a series of points and demonstrates ignorance of the actual history and inner logic of Karl Marx's project concerning 'the critique of political economy': 1. In the first place is was not Marx, but the 'classics' of bourgois political economy who realized the production commodity- and money-production to be the foundation of capitalism. All their (Smith, Ricardo etc.) efforts was aimed at understanding the comodity-based production as determinating factor for all other phenomenons and 'problems' of capitalist wealth. This was actually the 'progressive honesty' of classical political economy. 2. In that period of up-comming and 'progressive' capitalism the phrase was in fact self-evident for everybody. The proces of initial and violent accumulation of capital seperated the proletariat as non-owners of everything execpt their potentials as wage-labourers, i.e. of wage-labour as single commodity confronted with all other necessary items of lige as commodities accumulated byt others. This is in fact still the basic of capitalism and experienced hardly by the wast majority of the world population. 3. In that period of capitalism the appearences of crisis took the 'plastic' form of simple overproduction of commodities not finding any buyers on the market - excactly "an immense accumulation of commodities". On the sufface of things capitalism coming into crisis openly revealed its basic problem on the simple field of the market, i.e. the immediate realisation of overproduced commodities on an unregulated market. 4. Marx himself saw the historical change of capitalism through different phases and the following/constituent (from viewpoint) changes in the apperance of 'wealth'. Capital developed its forms of ownership, organisation and operation historically from small personal ownership over large industrial or commercial firmovnershops towards capital-ownership through loan-capital, banks and even bigger financial constructions. M. folloved these developments of capitalism and foresaw even state-capitalism as the ultimate tendency of the processes of competition, concentration and centralisation of capital. - These phenomenons was to M. not contradictions to the original start of analysis from the commodity-form of 'wealth', but on the contrary only explicable on this line of systematic 'exposition' (Darstellung) of the inner logic of capitalism. 5. In later development of capitalism the tendencies observed and basicly explained by Marx have of course went much futher and changed the apperances of things a lot. "Finance-capitalism", "monopoly-capitalism", "state-capitalism", "mixed economy" etc. have together with a series of technological 'revolutions' in the sferes of material production and distribution changed the world radically. But from the 'marxist' point of view the basic analysis and critique of 'political economy' holds all the way: commodity is the basic form of 'wealth', money is the visual and powefull form of the commodity and capital is - in whatever its fantastic appearence - the absolutely unpersonal and selfvaluating monsterform of commodity. 6. The basic focus of Marx's analysis on commodlty, money and capital (in its basic and single form (Das Kapital im allgemeinen) is not only 'scientifically' and historically consistent, but is also the revolutionary perspective: in explaining the roots of capitalism in commodity-production it is at the same time pointed out clearly (against all sorts of utopian and/or reformist socialists and anarchists), that the basic task of overthrowing capitalism is the abolition of commodity-production at its root - i.e. the seperation and alienation of abstract social labour from concrete usefull labour or wage-labour. I will stop it here, but conclude in another direction: George's remark reveals complete unfamiliaty with the historical tradition of 'marxism'. I could suggest a long list of readings, but ... Instead I wil suggest George to read "Das Kapital" some more and use some time to actually understand the methodology and inner logic of the complete analysis. With greetings. JH %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%