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it strikes me that this is what one would say from a static structural reading of Marx - that is, assume a total system modeled on industrial capitalism as it existed in Marx's Europe in the mid-19th century, contrast it with "past ages" each taken as a whole... But what I was trying to do in my book was take a more historical account, and from that perspective, there's a real problem. As I put it in the book:
"Here we come face to face with a peculiar paradox. It would seem that almost all elements of financial apparatus that we've come to associate with capitalism-central banks, bond markets, short selling, brokerage houses, speculative bubbles, securization, annuities came into being not only before the science of economics (which is per haps not too surprising), but also before the rise of factories, and wage labor itself."
It struck me that this was the challenge I was throwing out to Marxist theorists. I don't think Marxist theorists are beyond answering it, not by any means, but it's an interesting question and deserves addressing. A mere restatement of orthodoxy such as below doesn't seem to be much help David