^^^^ CB: Novus refers us to the first Chapter of _Capital_ I. There Marx starts out explaining commodities. That's why I am asking about commodities. Marx discusses abstract Value and socially necessary alienated/waged labor in explaining commodities.
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Novus is talking about what is unique to capitalism, you are talking about the exchange of commodities which is not unique to capitalism at all.
^^^^ CB: He's saying that before capitalism, commodities were not exchanged based on the law of value (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_value) as Engels claims in the Afterword to an edition of _Capital_ vol. II ( I think). That before capitalism, commodities were not exchanged in proportions based on the amount of abstract labor time in them. But that in capitalism they are exchanged based on the law of value.
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Refusing to be Marxological, it matters not an iota whether or not some pre-capitalist production of commodities was for exchange, or if some of it was waged, or if some of it was monetized, Marx's argument is that capitalism is not defined by commodity markets, it is defined by a particular mode of waged production... a mode defined by the dominance - and, no, I am not interested in determining when and where the exact qualitative change occurred and the world became capitalist - of alienated wage labor and the particular, associated form of commodified need satisfaction.
^^^^ CB: Marx defines commodity production as production for exchange as opposed to production for use. It's pretty clear that he thinks commodity production pre-dates capitalism. Marx defines capitalism by labor power becoming a commodity, i.e. waged labor; the wage-labor/capital relationship defines capitalism in contrast with non-capitalist commodity producing activities. In pre-capitalist commodity production did not have labor power as a commodity. It had commodities but labor power was not sold majorly as a commodity. Also, in precapitalism, most of the mode of production was not commodity production. Commodity production , production for exchange was a very small sector of the total productive activity. Most productive activity was not in a cash nexus, as with capitalism.
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Sure, some people were waged across a raft of precapitalist modes of production, abstract Value existed and deeply conditioned material and social relations in none of them,
^^^^ CB: Yes, this is what I am saying. Angelus seems to disagree with this.
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however much folks bartered, trucked and paid for stuff with money. Appadurai was wrong, in a manner very similar to the way Weber was, capitalism is not defined by exchange and not all exchanges are markets. There is no ancient vs. modern capitalism, there are modes of production where abstract Value does not rule the day and one where it does.
^^^^^ CB: Agree. Marx defines capitalism as labor power becoming a commodity majorly, mainly; and commodity production predominating.
And commodity production becomes a la mode ( in the statistical sense) in the capitalist mode of production. Commodity production is not modal, the mode, in pre-capitaist modes of production.
The exchange element of markets surely contains a great deal more than the exchange of equivalent use-values but, while Appadurai makes some interesting ethnographic points, his project is basically to refute economistic Marxists - which is important - by claiming to find market homogenieties across qualitatively different cultures/modes of production... a move so anti-anthropological it made me throw the book down in disgust. I don't mind formal analysis - Simmel generated some really interesting insights - but some stuff's just ridiculous - Simmel, smartly, never made the kinds of over-reaching claims folks like Appardurai initially made (and 90% of the folks in the literature on consumption continue to make).
^^^^^^^^ CB: Yeah , you've got too many bourgeois anthropologists "finding" little capitalisms in pre-capitalist societies, bands and tribes, etc. This is exactly the opposite of Marx rendering capitalist relations of production historically limited. Another world existed before capitalism, and another world will be after capitalism; it's possible to survive without wagelabor/capital. Most human societies have.
There are of course, pre-capitalist societies that don't have commodity exchange either. let alone wagelabor/capital. See _Stone Age Economics_ by Marshall Sahlins.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_affluent_society
Gift economy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy
Watercolor by James G. Swan depicting the Klallam people of chief Chetzemoka at Port Townsend, with one of Chetzemoka's wives distributing potlatch.In the social sciences, a gift economy (or gift culture) is a society where valuable goods and services are regularly given without any explicit agreement for immediate or future rewards (i.e. no formal quid pro quo exists).[1] Ideally, simultaneous or recurring giving serves to circulate and redistribute valuables within the community. The organization of a gift economy stands in contrast to a barter economy or a market economy. Informal custom governs exchanges, rather than an explicit exchange of goods or services for money or some other commodity.[