>Jim:
>Well, the obvious is often deceptive and wrong.
>
>Charles: But not most of the time. And in this case it is neither
>deceptive nor wrong as usual.
Charles, I'm shocked a Marxist like you would say such a thing. The "obvious" is often the most ideological thing of all. To take a nonrandom example, most people in the U.S. regard market exchange as a realm of freedom - the realm of liberty, equality, and Bentham, as the Old Guy put it. To a Marxist nothing could be more wrong. The whole point of the structure of Capital - the book, not the social relation - is to uncover all the mysteries hidden behind the exchange of a simple coat for a simple table. To most people, it's obvious; to Marx, it was worth more than 3 volumes.
Doug