And I actually, after a month or so, still owe it to Charles to write my concluding post in favor of my position on that question.
Except that, lazy and self-indulgent bastard that I am, I went to consult the Urtext for arguments, and instead of mining it for arguments, I got sucked into reading the Urtext. I think the Urtext supports my position, but I would've never gotten around to actually reading it if not for Charle's constant needling on the question of simple commodity production.
So, at least, thanks Charles for pushing me to get around to reading the Urtext.
Note to readers: the "Urtext" is the short name for the so-called "Urtext zur Kritik der politischen Ökonomie" ("Original Text of the Critique of Political Economy"), one of those many unpublished manuscripts that Marx produced during his life as a preliminary work towards _Capital_. Only a fragment survives from this manuscript, the content roughly corresponds to the same content of Chapters 2-3 of Vol. I of _Capital_. In other words, the original raw draft of the value-form analysis never survived the gnawing criticism of the mice, but the stuff on money did. It is available in the MEGA2 edition, in one of those expensive volumes. However, in the 1950s, the official publication of the Grundrisse in the GDR had the Urtext as an appendix. Frustratingly and irritatingly, the official publication of Vol 42 of the Marx-Engels-Werke (the "Grundrisse") no longer has the Urtext as an appendix, which really pisses me off. Luckily I found an old copy of
the Grundrisse with the appendix at the bookstore in Karl-Liebknecht-Haus.
Anyway, it is available online here for anyone who is interested: http://www.marxists.org/deutsch/archiv/marx-engels/1858/urtext/index.htm
^^^^^^^^ CB: Thanks for your attention to my comments on this , Angelus.
It still is very clear from the text of _Capital_ that Marx thought that barter ("simple" commodity production) corresponds to actual historical activities. I don't see the prior Critique changing that. Whatever he said in the Critique , by the time of his statement to the world, he must have thought that simple comm pro was real historically.
He says the "substance" of the Criitque "is summarised in the first three chapters of _Capital_ I in 1867,in the Preface to the First German Edition:
"The work, the first volume of which I now submit to the public, forms the continuation of my Zur Kritik der Politischen Oekonomie (A Contribution to the Criticism of Political Economy) published in 1859. The long pause between the first part and the continuation is due to an illness of many years’ duration that again and again interrupted my work.
The substance of that earlier work is summarised in the first three chapters of this volume. This is done not merely for the sake of connexion and completeness. The presentation of the subject matter is improved. As far as circumstances in any way permit, many points only hinted at in the earlier book are here worked out more fully, whilst, conversely, points worked out fully there are only touched upon in this volume. The sections on the history of the theories of value and of money are now, of course, left out altogether. The reader of the earlier work will find, however, in the notes to the first chapter additional sources of reference relative to the history of those theories. "
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/p1.htm