----------------- HES POSTING ----------------- I agree with Peter Stillman about Aristotle's economics. However, I find no basis for his belief that Marx considered Aristotle "a kind of reactionary". Marx refers to Aristotle as "the great thinker who was the first to analyse so many forms, whether of thought, society, or Nature, and amongst them also the form of value" (Capital, volume I, chapter 1, section 3). He notes approvingly that Aristotle perceived that "the money-form of commodities is only the further development of the simple form of value" and that the value-relation requires the equalisation of the commodities (the comparation of two different commodities as commensurable quantities). For Marx, Aristotle could not develop his analysis of value only because the historical conditions of Greek society (slavery) prevented him to see human labour as the essence of value: "The brilliancy of Aristotle's genius is shown by this alone, that he discovered, in the expression of the value of commodities, a relation of equality. The peculiar conditions of the society in which he lived, alone prevented him from discovering what, 'in truth,' was at the bottom of this equality." Marx criticized many of his contemporaries that were trying to turn the capitalist social relations back to a previous form, instead of promoting new forms (socialist) of social relations. But the fact that Aristotle disapproved the development of "chrematistic" (the art of making money, as something opposed to "oeconomic", the art of gaining a livelihood) and saw that it could erode the social relations which prevailed at his time doesn't turn him into a reactionary. As Karl Polanyi pointed out (and I think Peter Stillman would agree with him), Aristotle's disapproval of "chrematistic" reveals his sensibility to the potential disruptive effects of money-making trade and usury. Hugo Cerqueira Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais ------------ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ------------ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]