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Capital as a Social Relation

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Abstract

Taken by itself, a sharp stone is simply a relic of some ancient and inexorable geologic process. But appropriated as a cutting instrument, it is a tool or, in a somewhat more murderous vein, a weapon. As a stone, it is a natural object. But as a tool or weapon, it is an eminently social object whose natural form is merely the carrier of the social relations which, so to speak, happen to have seized upon it.

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References

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© 2018 Macmillan Publishers Ltd.

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Shaikh, A. (2018). Capital as a Social Relation. In: The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_229

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