[lbo-talk] Ingo Elbe: Between Marx, Marxism, and Marxisms

[c b]

Ok Angelus, the following is from Chapter One of Capital Vol. I. It is
Karl Marx speaking. He even uses the word "simple" to refer to
commodity production in ancient Asiatic, and other ancient,
non-capitalist modes of production.

"In the ancient Asiatic and other ancient modes of production, we find
that the conversion of products into commodities, and therefore the
conversion of men into producers of commodities, holds a subordinate
place, which, however, increases in importance as the primitive
communities approach nearer and nearer to their dissolution. Trading
nations, properly so called, exist in the ancient world only in its
interstices, like the gods of Epicurus in the Intermundia, or like
Jews in the pores of Polish society. Those ancient social organisms of
production are, as compared with bourgeois society, extremely _simple_

 (emphasis added -CB) and transparent "

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm#S2