Re: Capital is wrong

 "George Pennefather" ailto:poseidon@eircom.net:  wrote:

> It is clear from many of the responses made in relation to my above
posting that there is
> a lot of ignorance, confusion and down right refusal to face facts.

This is a strange line to put in a message signed "warm regards"  In fact,
if anyone is "guilty" of this "behavior" it is you.  I will not engage in an
arid, pointless and trite debate on whether Marx was "right" or "wrong" so
you can consider my comments below my last words on the topic.

In the first place, as Andy and I tried to show, the reason for Marx's claim
about the centrality of the commodity has little to do with the actuality of
the commodity and more to do with the fact that the commodity, for Marx,
represents the LOGICAL, not the real nor the historical,  starting point for
the expostion of his thought in Capital.

Second, factories are mosty certainly commodities.  In fact, entire
companies are commodities. Are they not bought and sold on the basis of
their exchange value and not their use value.  Isn't the stock market
precisely about the commodification of fixed capital.

 Everything in a capitalist society is, once was or can again be a
commodity.  The fact that someone chooses to extract the use value out of
that commodity does not, unless that use value is totally exhausted(and some
times not even in these cases), preclude the item from being converted into
a commodity again at some later point in item.  After all, isn't this what
happens when you buy a used car or a used computer or, for that matter
anything used.

.Finally,  and  to be blunt, what's the point.  If your point is to prove
that Marx's is wrong, this is no big deal.   Marx acknowledged that he was
wrong and any clear headed person familar with Marx's work would also
acknolwedge that Marx was wrong about several things?  Moreover, what
difference does it make that not everything in a capitalist society is, at
all times, a commodity?  Does it change the character of capitalist society,
does it make exploitation and oppression less onerous?

Carl Dassbach