I'm still not seeing your argument, Andy. A word is not a natural object, of course. No more than is a commodity. I haven't claimed that, nor does Vygotsky. I thought you were trying to argue that word-meaning must be an act. Are you suggesting that the commodity-form is an act?
Think about it this way. We accept Marx's analysis of the commodity, including the fact that it has a form, and an internal contradiction between two kinds of value. It has these characteristics, of course, by virtue of its constitution in human society, in social practices. But a newborn baby recognizes none of these characteristics. Marx doesn't tell us how a child comes to grasp them. That remains an untold developmental story. To tell that story we don't to rehash what Marx's analysis has already made clear. We focus instead on the child.
LSV, similarly, is not directly interested in how human language evolved, or how a language is maintained by a community of speakers. In other words, he does not analyze how words have come to have inner form, or how that form changes historically. He tells us enough to establish the fact that the form does exist, and that it does change. He is focused, rather, on the ways in which a child comes to be a full participant in the world of human language and, in consequence, of human thought.
Martin
On Apr 22, 2011, at 7:56 PM, Andy Blunden wrote:
You demonstrate my point exactly, Martin.
The commodity form is a relationship between people mediated by an artifact., not a thing.
Andy