Eric Beck:
> Carrol's insistent recitations of Marxist cant about the absolute
> separation of private and capitalist economies are almost enough to make > me flee into the arms of Hardt and Negri.
Marx's categories are by their very nature only applicable to capitalism. This is a tautology. Attempts to apply them to spheres they are by definition meant to exclude is trying to square the circle. If you want to argue that housework creates "value", then have a ball, but it no longer has anything to do with Marx's use of the word.
So Carrol is absolutely right to insist on such distinctions. Otherwise we enter Andre Gunder Frank territory and there is no such thing as "capitalism".