Re: Capital is wrong

["George Pennefather" <poseidon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Below is a brief response to the many responses to my very brief piece on Marx's
Capital.

I wrote:

"In the opening paragraph of Capital Marx proclaims:

The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production 
prevails,
presents itself as "an immense accumulation of commodities," its unit being a 
single
commodity. Our investigation must therefore begin with the analysis of a 
commodity.
So the capitalist mode of production can prevail in more than one society.

To say that the "wealth of those societies presents itself as an immense 
accumulation
of
commodities" is not true. Much of the existing wealth is in the form of 
industrial
capital
which is
not capital in the form of the commodity. This mistaken premise renders the 
validity of
making the commodity a starting point questionable on that basis."

It is clear from many of the responses made in relation to my above posting 
that there
is
a lot of ignorance, confusion and down right refusal to face facts.

To elaborate: The point is that the wealth of capitalist society does not 
present
itself
"as an immense accumulation of commodities." Much of the wealth of capitalist 
society
is
in the form of factories. Factories are forms of capital but not commodities. 
The
factories are a form of fixed capital. Fixed capital is not a commodity form. 
Much
wealth
too assumes the form of use values. Capital assumes different forms. It assumes 
the
form
of money, of circulating capital, of fixed capital. of variable capital. 
Capital also
assumes the form of the commodity.

The thousands of cars on the roads and televisions and computers in homes are 
not
commodities. They are use values. Concerning the consumer market once the 
exchange
process
has been completed the commodities in question cease to be commodities and are 
at most
simple use values.

In short the wealth of capitalist society does not present itself as an immense
accumulation of commodities. That wealth presents itself as commodities; as use 
values
that are not commodities; as forms of capital that are not commodity forms. The 
plain
fact
is that Marx in his opening statement was plain wrong.

Warm regards
George Pennefather

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Warm regards
George Pennefather

Be free to check out our Communist Think-Tank web site at
http://homepage.eircom.net/~beprepared/

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