> it seems much more historical. And perhaps this taints Marx' screed.
"Taint" is actually a pretty good word. Some Marxologists -- namely Hans-Georg Backhaus and Helmut Reichelt -- argue for a "popularization" thesis, whereby Marx, in his exchanges with Engels and Kugelmann, was convinced to tone down the Hegelian stuff, which they regarded as too esoteric for a popular audience. As a result, the "dialectical" unfolding of categories gets diluted to the point where it looks like a historical account.
I have my own problems with the "popularization" thesis, because in other respects and in other sections of _Capital_, Marx actually improved his argument (like some changes that were incorporated in the French version of Vol. I, or the passages from Vol. II that Carrol pointed out. Vol. II, incidentally, is the "freshest" manuscript in terms of being the one last updated by Marx before his death). But still, I'll go along with the argument that Marx's essentially logical argument is tainted by some historicist echoes.
Hi Charles:
> Hello Angelus, this is the passage I've been too lazy to look up
lately. Marx's position is that barter historically exists and
develops into money exchange.
Yeah, there's no disputing that Marx is making a flat-out historical assertion in that passage. I'll leave it to the anthropologists to determine if he's actually correct.
But that doesn't mean Michael P. is correct to assert that the value-form analysis in Chapter One of _Capital_ is a historical narrative, and it's also difficult to reconcile with Marx's claims elsewhere that abstract labor-time as the substance of value presupposes exchange.
P.S. I'm worried that shag carpet bomb might consider this a wanky esoteric discussion with no bearing upon concrete political work, so let me say that attendance numbers for the most recent Vol. I class at the RLS in Berlin were so big that it had to be split up into four (five?) smaller groups. Young people with radical inclinations want to read _Capital_, and I have the sense that this will continue as the global revolt started in Wisconsin-Greece-Egypt-Wall Street will deepen and expand.