George Pennefather wrote:
>
> To say that the "wealth of those societies presents itself as an
> immense accumulation of commodities" is not true. Much of the 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.
Well, I think Marx was aware of that because a little way down the road
in Capital Vol. 1 he writes:
The conditions of production are also those of reproduction. No
society can go on producing, in other words, no society can reproduce,
unless it constantly reconverts a part of its products into means of
production, or elements of fresh products. All other circumstances
remaining the same, the only mode by which it can reproduce its
wealth, and maintain it at one level, is by replacing the means of
production - i.e., the instruments of labor, the raw material, and
the auxiliary substances consumed in the course of the year - by an
equal quantity of the same kind of articles; these must be separated
from the mass of the yearly products, and thrown afresh into the
process of production. Destined for productive consumption from the
very first, this portion exists, for the most part, in the shape of
articles totally unfitted for individual consumption.
and so on in the chapter about reproduction. Is that what you're
talking about or did I miss your point?
Yours WDK - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
