A clear strength of Marxian dialectics, by contrast, is the insistence that when qualitatively different content comes into existence, generated by and productive of qualitatively different dynamics, then the form of what existed before/elsewhere cannot be named or understood to be the same as that which now exists unless one is going to insist on grounding positions in contentless and always underspecified purportedly universal forms. Commodity exchanges (which I am, here, differentiating from use-value exchanges more generally) have always been tied to markets, so Weber defines capitalism in terms of markets, and understands 19th C capitalism as simply a more intense version of what came before, intensified further by the intensification of other and more other aspects of social rationalization. Suffice to say that Marx's analysis of the new mode of commodity production and social reproduction argues otherwise.
My sense of Dennis' unpacking of the assumptions behind Shane's argument about translatability and defendants/evidence support this position.
On Thu, May 20, 2010 at 4:31 PM, Michael Pollak <mpollak at panix.com> wrote:
>
> On Thu, 20 May 2010, Somebody Somebody wrote:
>
> Somebody: Even apes have a sense of fairness. That in itself is good
>> reason to believe there's probably an innate element contributing to human
>> morality.
>>
>
> An innate element (which I firmly believe in) has zip to do with there
> being a common morality, any more than a hard-wired drive to language makes
> us speak the same languages.
>
> Just as all languages can share deep structures and yet be mutually
> incomprehensible, so can all moralities. They might all have taboos, they
> might all have a sense of right and wrong. But what counts as right or
> wrong can -- and is -- often entirely the opposite. And nothing about
> innateness or common deep structures changes that.
>
> Michael
>
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
-- ********************************************************* Alan P. Rudy Dept. Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work Central Michigan University 124 Anspach Hall Mt Pleasant, MI 48858 517-881-6319