This question <17|17> overall <14|16> Eastwood: <579-5|19>.

Question 18: Would it have been possible to start the book Capital with a more common sense definition of capitalism, such as, capitalist production is production for profit?

[15] Eastwood: Capital.   Marx could have started “Capital” with such a definition, but he would have to elaborate. For instance why would he open with the word profit, when profit has to do with “monetary wealth” which does not account for non-monetary variables of wealth in societies? Also profit measures monetary gains of individuals or firms and rarely is used when talking about societies. By not adding the term commodities to the sentence it almost makes it sound as if Capitalists are producing profit, or in other words making money in factories. What Marx actually wrote had to do with Capitalists producing commodities which are exchange of a capitalist society.

Hans: You mean non-monetary variants of wealth or, better, non-monetary kinds of wealth, not “variables”. And I assume when you wrote “making money in factories” you meant “printing money in factories.” Your very last sentence is malformed and I could not figure out what you wanted to say.

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