--- Louis Proyect <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Well, as I tried to point out already, Marx's > comments on slavery > appeared mostly in the form of oberta dictum. And if > you define > capitalism as requiring a free market in labor, then > Nazi Germany and > apartheid South Africa were not capitalist > countries. I find that > most unlikely.
_Capital_ is an abstract depiction of the *capitalist* features of capitalism. That is, a depiction of the social relationships that mark off capitalism as distinct from other systems of social relationships. Relationships, not definitons. Relationships, not definitions. Relationships, not defintions. Repeat. The system of free wage labour is essential to those relationships. Ricardo and Smith had already arrived at value theories based upon the magnitude of human embodied (bad word choice) in a commodity. Marx's innovation was investigating the ensemble of social relationships in which human labour power is manifested in commodity form. If none of this is important to you, you would be much better off in joining Andre Gunder Frank and rejecting the category "capitalism" altogether. That is the only consistent conclusion for the sort of argument you are advocating. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
