At 8:21 AM -0800 2/17/97, Tom Walker wrote: >I wrote, > >>> Probably no more >>> than one in twenty "marxian economists" would see commodity production as >>> odd. That doesn't mean it's _not_ odd. > >And Max Sawicky replied > >>This gives an unexpected meaning to the word >>'odd.' > >It may be unexpected, but it's not original. The idea that commodity >production is "odd" comes unembelished right out of chapter one of Capital >-- more precisely the last section on the Fetishism of the Commodity. This is an important point. In a time when so many of the dwindling band of radical political economists are in hot pursuit of respectability - math, suits and/or stockings, and everything - it's easy to lose the sense that capitalism is a really weird social system. Not only the fetishism of commodities, but the ghostly power of money, the colonization of mental and erotic life by what Keynes called the Benthamite contraption... I could go on. In finance, the capitalist subfield I spend all too much time following, human ingenuity and material resources are devoted to crafting inverse floaters, swaptions, reset notes, and butterfly spreads. Capitalism does give new meaning to the word odd, though by now it shouldn't be unexpected. Doug -- Doug Henwood Left Business Observer 250 W 85 St New York NY 10024-3217 USA +1-212-874-4020 voice +1-212-874-3137 fax email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> web: <http://www.panix.com/~dhenwood/LBO_home.html>
