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in the abstract maybe.
depends i suppose on what the exercise is that's being done here, yes? the idea was initially to talk about capitalism by way of something like a state of nature argument, which became an example of a type of exchange---a barter relation, say---posed in no particular time-space. i guess therein lay the problem....if you push the example away from the contemporary period, such that it floats as an abstract thought-experiment that may or may not enable a thinking-through of categories, then the upside is that this thinking through is maybe possible but the downside is getting from there back to something as complex (an porous and strange) as capitalism seems a long long way to go.
if we do the opposite and simply say: ok this is a barter relation that happens now, then the advantage is that it'd be relatively simple to track back to capitalism (since we never left the form of life, say) but it'd also be more difficult to step outside the dominant frames of reference because, even at the level of imaginary characters, the abstract agents (A and B, say) who play the game of bartering can be supposed to operate through the same frame of reference as you or i.
if that's the case then it makes sense to import stuff like "the law of supply and demand" and have it mean something--because no matter whether there *is* such a law that the terms *refer* in the present context means that for us there is at least a signified, yes?
but if the example is pushed away from the present, there'd at least in theory be some friction about introducing the category.
that seems to me where we are at the moment.
i'm kinda agnostic about the matter, but am trying to think of whether there's another way to go about this. not that i object to this one---i'm just wondering.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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