>> The mistaken premise behind this argument is that the USSR got rid of
>> the commodity. I don't even think Soviet economists would make that
>> argument. robert wood
> Hmm. In the Dictionary of Marxist Thought entry for "Commodity," it says
> commodities are "products produced for a system of exchange." Was the
> Soviet economy a system of exchange? In any event, the way I originally
> phrased the issue, before slipping into a shorthand version, was:
> "Commodity exchange was abolished (at least as the dominant form of
> economic activity) in the Soviet Union."
In Marxist thought the defining feature of capitalism is the generalized exchange of the commodity *labour power* (working ability) for a wage or salary. At no point in the Soviet Union's history was that less than the dominant form of economic activity.
-- Lew