--- Jim Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > The word "essence," unfortunately, has idealist > connotations.
But abstract labour *is* an ideal! It is because commodities are exchanged through a universal medium (money) that their physical qualities are necessarily abstracted from in favor of a shared "essence." In the first printing of Capital, unfortunately not reprinted in the subsequent edition but reprinted in Iring Fetscher's five-volume Marx anthology, there is a great analogy by Marx about how it's like in addition to all these real animals like rabbits or tigers there actually existed an independent, actual being called an "animal." That's precisely what is so topsy-turvy about the value form. It is an idealization with material force. Lenin once remarked that intelligent idealism is closer to Marxism than vulgar materialism. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Music Unlimited Access over 1 million songs. http://music.yahoo.com/unlimited
