noted. 12/03/2011

• Commodity (Marxism) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

  • "Man really attains the state of complete humanity when he produces, without being forced by physical need to sell himself as a commodity."

     

    — Che Guevara ^[1]

     

     

  • The 7 basic forms of commodity trade can be summarised as follows:

     
    • M-C (an act of purchase: a sum of money purchases a commodity)
    • C-M (an act of sale: a commodity is sold for money)
    • M-M' (a sum of money is lent out at interest to obtain more money, or, one currency or financial claim is traded for another)
    • C-C' (countertrade, in which a commodity trades directly for a different commodity, with money possibly being used as an accounting referent, for example, food for oil, or weapons for diamonds)
    • C-M-C' (a commodity is sold for money, which buys another, different commodity with an equal or higher value)
    • M-C-M' (money is used to buy a commodity which is resold to obtain a larger sum of money)
    • M-C...P...-C'-M' (money buys means of production and labour power used in production to create a new commodity, which is sold for more money than the original outlay).
     

• Zeitoun (book) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

  tags: ps211

  • Zeitoun is a nonfiction book written by Dave Eggers and published by McSweeney's in 2009. It tells the story of Abdulrahman Zeitoun, the Syrian-American owner of a painting and contracting company in New Orleans who chose to ride out Hurricane Katrina in his Uptown home. After the storm he traveled the flooded city in a secondhand canoe rescuing neighbors, caring for abandoned pets and distributing fresh water. Soon after the storm, Zeitoun was arrested without reason or explanation at one of his rental houses by a mixed group of National Guardsmen and local police. He was not immediately charged with a crime but was imprisoned for 23 days without having stood trial. During that time he was accused of terrorist activity presumably because of his ethnicity, was treated inhumanely, and was refused medical attention and the use of a phone to alert his family. His wife and daughters, staying with friends far away from the city, only knew that he had seemingly disappeared from the face of the earth.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.