WTO and value

The World Trade Organisation negotiations with China is clear evidence that 
the law of
value does not operate in an unadulterated fashion. It is evidence that 
there is no such
thing as free trade in any comprehensive sense. It would appear that there 
never has been
a
free exchange of commodities in any enduring sense. The law of value and 
the specific laws
of capital operate in an significantly adulterated way. The state has 
always played an
historically significant role in relation to the circulation of both 
commodities and
capital. Consequently to try to apply Capital to the contemporary world 
economic situation
in any pure way will simply produce conceptual abstraction. Marx's Capital 
cannot be used
as a naive model that can be naively used to provide a comprehensive 
understanding of the
capitalist economic system. Capital is a work of abstraction. This may 
explains how much
of Marx's political work even after he written Capital are in at least many 
cases free
from the form presented in Capital.

Warm regards
George Pennefather

Be free to check out our Communist Think-Tank web site at
http://homepage.tinet.ie/~beprepared/