At 01:40 AM 1/15/2012, nathan tankus wrote:
>I forwarded my initial message in this thread to Graeber in addition
>to Doug's initial response and asked him what his thoughts were on
>this topic. This is what his response was. He kindly allowed me to
>forward it here- with a note to explain the context and thank Doug
>being so nice to him.
>
>__________________
>
>
>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
>
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