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/ --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
