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Backhaus 'Materials for the Reconstruction of Marx's Theory of Value'/'Materialien zur Rekonstruktion der Marxschen Werttheorie' I-IV from the collection 'Dialektik der Wertform' by stage-managed machine translation
Materials for the Reconstruction of Marx's Theory of Value
I.
In the literature of social science, no other text is known whose formal structure and substantive meaning are as controversial as the first four chapters of Capital. Marxist accounts of the theory of value, with few exceptions, would like to leave no doubt that the derivation of value is clearly and distinctly, as it were more geometrico accomplished. One and the same text, whose clarity and distinctness seem to be immediately evident to some, is regarded by others as the opposite of clarity and distinctness: as dark, confused, contradictory. Böhm-Bawerk considers it "completely impossible that this dialectical hocus-pocus was the reason and source of conviction for Marx himself. A thinker of Marx's caliber - and I esteem him a thinking power of the very first rank - could not possibly have searched along such a bent and unnatural path, he could not possibly have stumbled into all the described logical and methodological errors one after the other (...) out of mere unfortunate coincidence." He can only explain this contradiction as follows: "He believed in his thesis as a fanatic believes in his dogma."1 This explanation, which seems a bit simple, can be presented in a more differentiated way today. Thus, at least in the positivist literature, the explanation put forward by Werner Becker seems to prevail that obscurities and logical errors in Marx's text can be attributed to a methodological irrationalism, namely dialectics. But whether the errors claimed by the critique are attributed to psychological or methodological causes, bourgeois Marx criticism is compelled to construct a highly enigmatic person: Marx appears to it, on the one hand, as a "force of thought of the very highest order," on the other hand, as a "fanatic" and a "methodological irrationalist" who, afflicted with these qualities, committed the very grossest errors of thought. This is not only the well-known "contradiction" between the first and the third volume - much worse and even more puzzling: within one and the same chapter, Marx is said to have made logical mistakes in an almost unbelievable way, theorems and whole sections are said to contradict each other, not in a way that is difficult to see through, but in a way that is obvious and easily recognizable for everyone - violations of elementary laws of logic.
The dilemma of bourgeois Marx criticism can be formulated as follows: according to their own statements, they are dealing with a "highly subtle method" (Klaus Hartmann) and a "power of thought of the highest order" - according to their interpretations, however, Marx's method is the strict opposite of a respectable achievement, his work and even individual chapters are hardly more than a string of "nonsense assertions" (Werner Becker). One would think that the construction of "nonsense claims" as a consequence of a certain model of interpretation would be recognized by the interpreters of an important theorist for what it is, as an indication that they have gone astray with their model. One would think that this self-critical insight would soon cause them to review their incomplete knowledge of Marx and to correct the judgment based on it. The state of bourgeois Marx criticism, however, gives the impression that the majority of critical interpreters keep themselves free of scruples of this kind and instead follow the maxim: The more absurd, the more correct. In any case, they hardly ever respect the rule that the absurd consequences of an interpretation, in case of doubt, lead the interpretation itself ad absurdum.
Let us take some examples from the literature of Marx criticism. The respected professor of theoretical economics Karl Muhs does not want to deny his recognition of Marx's perspicacity. Thus, in his opinion, Marx's doctrine of the first peculiarity of the equivalent form "is to be completely agreed with; with greater conciseness (...) the qualitative structure of exchange value cannot be expressed." Muhs, who, like Werner Becker later, wants to see a blatant contradiction in the relationship between the "quantitative conception of value" and the "qualitative structure" of the value equation, admittedly comes to the indignant conclusion a few lines later: "The lack of principle of the Marxist value analysis again appears with brutal consistency". It is therefore "difficult for him to comment in a measured way on this method of "abolishing" obvious contradictions of the partial propositions of value [Partialtheoreme des Werts]".2
Werner Becker, who discusses the same problem in his Kritik der Marxschen Wertlehre (1972), can discover in Marx's argumentation only "harebrained false conclusions", "logical nonsense", in general "nonsense assertions". Becker sees the reason for the fact that an astute author like Marx "the whole thing (...) has evidently turned out to be nothing more than a logical ruse"[*4] in the "sophistication of dialectical theory-building", which he wants to convict of "logical-methodical eyewash" and "methodological irrationality".3
One would be oversimplifying things if one were to attribute criticisms of this kind solely to political and theoretical bias. Indeed, it could be very quickly demonstrated that the Marxist literature on value theory is by no means capable of convincingly refuting every objection of the other side; it is itself not free of serious interpretive deficiencies and is at odds with itself. This can only be hinted at here by means of two examples.
Becker's critique stands and falls with an interpretive premise that until recently4 was one of the few undisputed components of Marxist literature and unchallenged structured the mode of reception of Marx's theory of value: the misinterpretation, triggered by Engels, of the first three chapters of Capital as the theory of value and money of what he christened "simple commodity production."5 It will be shown that from this fundamental error the Marxist theory of value had to block the understanding of Marx's theory of value. It has basically been able to understand quite little - neither the epistemological intention and method of Marx's theory of value, nor the specifically Marxian version of such basic concepts as value and labor, and certainly not that formula which Becker places at the center of his critique: the definition of the commodity as the "unity of the contradiction of use-value and value." When Becker criticizes the "common agility" with which "it is handled by Marxist theorists of all varieties (...)", he is to be agreed with. Insofar as he reproaches them for never having asked and answered the question "what it means and how it comes about from a logical-argumentative point of view,"6 Becker could even have referred to an important Marxist theorist, Henryk Grossmann, who wrote: "In what the opposition of use-value and value in the commodity consists, and why it assumes ever greater dimensions, has not even been treated as a problem."7
The helplessness of some Marxist reviewers to engage with Becker's argumentation in a serious way, however, now makes it obvious that the Marxian text is not comprehensible by itself and is at best accessible to specialized Marxian philology.
The controversies about the value-price transformation and the relation between the first and the third volume of Capital are well known. Repeatedly suppressed, however, are three other controversies that have been triggered by the apparent or actual indeterminacy of "Marxian basic concepts." The first complex concerns the key term "abstract labor."
The differences here are mostly hidden and are seldom consciously brought out - a behavior that creates the appearance of fundamental agreement. However, this quickly proves to be illusory as soon as an interpretation of subtle concepts has to be worked out, e.g. the doctrine of the fetish character of the commodity, or even a further development of such concepts related to present times. Then, however, astonishing things can be learned. Thus, in his pamphlet Einige Probleme der Arbeitswerttheorie (Some Problems of the Labor Theory of Value), the East Berlin economist Otto Lendle wants to show that "with respect to the concept of labor value (...) there are some principled confusions or errors which have the consequence that the materialist content of Marx's theory of value is lost and that it is transformed into an idealist theory."8 If one follows Lendle, then in the Marxist literature there is basically "misunderstanding", "misjudging", "overlooking", there are only "erroneous conceptions", "deviations" and "confusions". The main blame for the fact that one sees the "value, the common equality of commodities, in their quality as products of labor, probably lies with Karl Kautsky. (...) According to that false interpretation, however, all products of human labor would have to be commodities (...), since they are all products of labor." What the Marxist literature "usually does not pay enough attention to" is the "conception of the formless labor-value, which although abstract (...) is no less real (than), say, our abstract conception of gravity."9 It is quite "strange that the difference between exchange value and value is often not sufficiently considered" by Marx commentators, since the "confusion of exchange value and value leads to idealism in the theory of value."10 In addition to Kautsky, Hilferding, Rosa Luxemburg, and Karl Renner are criticized, in whom the "flattening (...) reaches its deepest level, as it were." "These earlier authors obviously did not pay attention to the importance of dialectics in the theory of value. (...) Although considerable progress has been made in this respect, there are still ambiguities and errors especially in the theory of value."11 But even Lendle soon had to be told "that he does not correctly grasp the social nature of value" and that his "basically naturalistic conception of value (...) is reminiscent of Kautsky's conception of value, which has long since been refuted."12
To the outsider, such esoteric-seeming controversies must present themselves as late Scholastic conceptual tinkering. Basically, every interpreter criticizes every other one for having "not quite grasped" the doctrine of value. In fact, there is hardly any interpretation that cannot be proved to have misunderstandings and blanks. It seems to require a kind of neoplatonic vision of ideas to recognize the "correct" idea of Marx's theory of value. Philosophical or pseudo-philosophical quibbles seem to confuse even English authors lately. For example, it will be shown "that many of Marx's aims and methods have been permanently distorted by the majority of those commentators who like to be called Marxist economists. Let us begin with the most influential, Maurice Dobb. (...) The method directly underlying Dobb's work has nothing in common with Marxian analysis."13 Indeed, it implies "a distortion of Marxism in the general direction of positivism." Just as, according to Schelsky, every sociologist reproaches another for not being "a real sociologist," so in the discussions of value theory every Marxist reproaches every other for not being a "real Marxist." "Lendle brings together (...) a dozen different interpretations of the dual character of labor and abstract labor. The views, which by their formulation contradict each other in content, in part considerably, make clear the state in which the appropriation and further development of the "point (Springpunkt) around which the understanding of political economy revolves" is (...). (...) It is clear that this confusion in the definition of these categories, which cannot be overlooked, must considerably inhibit the further development of political economy."14 This quotation is taken from an article written as a contribution to the discussion on the occasion of a great controversy about the meaning of the commodity-money relation in socialism. One should take this discussion, which has been suppressed in Marxist literature, seriously; indeed, the scholars involved in this controversy had to make the striking experience that no agreement could be reached on the meaning of an elementary concept, the "jumping point around which the understanding of political economy revolves." The confusion assumed such an extent that the opponents were obviously unable to respond at all to each other's arguments. The controversy had to be broken off without result, and the participants continued to maintain their opposing positions. This is to be noted as the depressing result of the debate: Marxist scholars found themselves unable to define the meaning of their own basic value-theoretical concepts in a generally binding way. The fatal course of this discussion may have provided the impetus for the fact that an expert soon began to trace the development of central concepts of Marx's theory of value in an extensive investigation. It was supposed to "contribute to finally overcoming the misconceptions of important categories such as abstract labor (...), some of which still exist today."15 One would think that the comprehensive work of a Marxist Marx specialist would have led to the clarification of certain "misunderstandings" and to the "correct" understanding of the theory of value. Not at all. Once again the strange constellation reproduced itself, that one Marxist reproached the other for not having judged this and that correctly in the presentation of elementary concepts. "For example, it was criticized that Walter Tuchscheerer (...) somewhat overvalued the quantitative determination of value (...) compared to the qualitative side. (...) It is not sufficiently expressed in these passages that Marx discovered precisely the qualitative side, the value substance in abstract social labor. (...) This has also led the author to the dubious thesis that the theory of commodity and money fetishism..." etc.16
The second major controversy, the far better known dispute over Marx's theory of money, the opposition between "nominalists" and "metallists," is more than sixty years old, but has not undergone any significant development during this period. The dispute cuts across all political directions within the Marxist camp. The nominalist concept, going back to Hilferding and Varga, is present in the Soviet textbook Political Economy of Contemporary Monopoly Capitalism17, while the "metallist" direction, represented at the time by Kautsky and Otto Bauer, is present in the official textbook Political Economy.18 One point in particular seems to me to be of special interest in this controversy. Both concepts tacitly assume that a nominalist theory of money is compatible in principle with Marx's theory of value. The self-understanding of Soviet nominalists is certainly a Marxist one, but "metallists" are also unlikely to deny the Marxist character of the textbook Political Economy of Contemporary Monopoly Capitalism. We do not want to pursue here the problem of the limits within which something definite can be said about "inflation and currency problems in contemporary monopoly capitalism" if a unified Marxist theory of money does not exist at all. In our context, the first question is whether, from the Marxian position, a Marxist nominalism can be more than a wooden iron.
It seems to me that the common view of treating Marxian value theory and Marxian money theory as principally different pieces of doctrine misses the essence of value-form analysis. The latter intends the "derivation" not of any arbitrarily substitutable, but of a quite specific theory of money, which can be characterized in a preliminary way as nonnominalistic. For it could be shown that already on the third page of the text of Capital the structuring of the value-theoretical problematic includes that of the money-theoretical one.
But if now the untenability of Marx's theory of money is asserted, then also the validity of Marx's theory of labor value can no longer be held. The fact that the inner entanglement of value and money theory has not been discussed seems to me to be an indication that the Marxist reception of Marx's value theory is to be distinguished from it in principle. The Marxist theory of value remained on the ground of the pre-Marxian theory and can be determined according to its conceptual structure only as a terminologically novel version of the left-Ricardian labor theory of value.19
That the corrections in monetary theory must logically lead to the abandonment of the labor theory of value can be shown by the example of a Soviet author who participated in the debate on the Marxist theory of money that was rekindled in the USSR. The author wants to draw from a number of facts the "conclusion that today price fixing is carried out not only by means of money, but also by equating one commodity with another." The structure of this mechanism, admittedly, remains completely obscure:
"Some reject this view, believing that value can be measured only by means of gold. Yet, even when gold was a necessary means of circulation, it was not possible to read from it how many hours of socially necessary labor were in it."20
This author seems to harbor the naive notion that Marx's doctrine of gold as a measure of value involves the assumption that gold and commodity producers agree on exchange relations on the basis of a comparison of labor time.21 "The number really underlying the commodity value has always been tested via the market by comparison of utility, which, however, used to be done in a roundabout way via gold (...) and is done today directly by fixing the exchange proportions between commodities with different utility properties." The paper money is "today directly bound to the goods (...). The advocates of the 'gold conception' would have to be reminded of Marx's definition, according to which money is the 'unit of measure of values and means of circulation'. And if gold is not a means of circulation (...), what unit could we be talking about?"22 Since these remarks do not reveal a trace of categorical determination, it is unnecessary to ask what the author might have in mind when he speaks of "comparison of utility," "determination of the proportions of exchange," and "direct binding" of paper money to the commodity. Marxist analyses of the world currency crisis almost invariably lack categorical determination - Soviet Marxist-oriented analyses of "state-monopolistic capitalism"23 as well as those of neo-Marxist provenance.24
A third controversy around the theory of value has developed from the fact that Marx's theory of value is always already "more" than an economic theory in the sense of the conventional division of labor of bourgeois social science, from which the necessity arose to discuss the basic concepts of value theory in their sociological and philosophical meaning. Max Adler, Alfred Sohn-Rethel, and Theodor W. Adorno want to decipher Marx's concept of social labor as the "secret hidden behind synthetic apperception,"25 "because what is meant by transcendental synthesis cannot be detached from the relation to labor in its own sense."26 For the Frankfurt School of sociology, social labor is social totality: "The principle of the equivalence of social labor makes society (. .) to the abstract and to the very real, just as Hegel teaches it of the emphatic concept of the concept."27 The basic concepts of the Frankfurt School are thus the basic concepts of the theory of value: "Exchange value, compared to use value a mere thought, rules over human need (...); appearance over reality. (...) At the same time, however, this appearance is the most real thing, the formula according to which the world has been bewitched."28 The emphatic concept of society is conceived from Marx's theory of value, as is the objective concept of ideology: "The deduction of ideologies from social necessity (...), their derivation from structural necessity (...). ), their derivation from structural laws such as the fetish character of the commodity, which names the proton pseudos",29 is based on a conception of "theory of society" to which the "critique of sociological categories"30 is peculiar in the sense of Marx's representation and "critique of economic categories". The fact that the Frankfurt School's concept of society and ideology can only be understood from Marx's labor theory of value, but that this value-theoretical dimension has nevertheless been completely ignored in the German positivism controversy as well as in the commentary on this controversy, indicates that Adorno and Horkheimer themselves have methodologically inadequately reflected the labor theory foundation of Critical Theory. Although, in Adorno's and Horkheimer's opinion, the basic concepts of Marx's theory of value transcend value theory as a specialized economic discipline, a surprisingly small amount of care was taken in interpreting these concepts, which were fundamental to Frankfurt sociology and philosophy. Considering the extraordinary function ascribed to a single "concept," value or social labor, one can only wonder that Adorno and Horkheimer completely ignored the sociologically and philosophically relevant tenet of the labor theory of value, the value-form analysis.
If in the positivism controversy Adorno could only present his concept of totality in a highly indeterminate way,31 this is mainly due to the fact that totality cannot be explicated in a rationally comprehensible way from a blurred concept of exchange and value. While Adorno and Horkheimer failed to recognize the connection between value, money, and society, the example of Simmel's philosophy of money makes it clear that the objectivity of society can only be determined from the "appearance" of value. For Simmel, as for Critical Theory, "society (...) is the supra-singular entity, which is nevertheless not abstract (...); it is the general, which at the same time has concrete liveliness".32 For the idealist Simmel, the attempt to develop an objective concept of society cannot be realized without the systematic reflection of money, in which for him social and ultimately transcendental unity is represented. If the affinity between the problems of value-money-society-transcendental unity is more prominent in Simmel than in Critical Theory, this is mainly due to the fact that Simmel's reflections on money theory are more intensive.
If one surveys the controversies on the theory of value, one first notices that one and the same object of dispute has been discussed in three seemingly completely heterogeneous problem areas. The discussion on value theory in the narrower sense seems to be irrelevant for the discussion on monetary theory and methodology, while the discussion on monetary theory seems to be irrelevant for the discussion on value theory and social theory, etc. The discussion on value theory in the narrower sense seems to be irrelevant for the discussion on monetary theory and methodology. In general, the grotesque phenomenon that Marxist philosophers and sociologists on the one hand and Marxist economists on the other hand can hardly relate to each other can be observed for a few years. All in all, these controversies strengthen the impression that the first chapters of Capital have evaded an adequate interpretation until today. It is by no means sufficient to state that "the first sections seem to be written in Chinese to the layman who is reading them for the first time".33 Not only to the layman, but also to scholars - and among them most of all to economists - the first chapter offers "almost insurmountable difficulties". Karl Renner, who, measured against the theoretical level of the II International, has written unusually perceptive interpretations, sees these difficulties thus: "It is as if the author had rolled a cyclopean block in the way of those who approach, in order to admit only the very most called. Thus Marx himself has barred the access to his main work to innumerable willing readers. (...) It is the spirit and the method of the first half of the last century that speaks from Capital."34
As before, two views are diametrically opposed in the assessment of certain passages especially of the first chapter of the first volume. The specialist economist is fundamentally uninterested in understanding those passages that present themselves to him as "dialectical hocus-pocus": "The Marxian Hegelian jargon causes a certain difficulty, but too much fuss has already been made of it. One quickly becomes accustomed to that stuff, (...) the reader misses little if he omits the pedantic third part of chapter 1, on which the Hegelian legacy weighs all too heavily."35 The ominous third part of chapter 1 contains the core of Marx's value-form analysis. The elimination of this doctrine is characteristic of that direction of interpretation, still dominant today, which can be called "economistic"36. The opposite position has been advocated with all brusqueness and provocative consistency by Lenin: "One cannot fully comprehend Marx's Capital, and especially the first chapter, unless one has studied and comprehended the whole logic of Hegel. Consequently, after half a century, none of the Marxists has understood Marx!"37
Apart from Georg Lukács and the Austro-Marxist and later Austrian President Karl Renner, this view was probably only championed by Lenin at the time - a view that has not remained uncontested, but has been widely held since the publication of the rough draft. Nevertheless, it cannot be overlooked that Lenin's note, which comes from the Philosophical Nachlaß, has received a rather ambivalent reception; its frequent use should not obscure the fact that its claim has not been redeemed in either philosophical or economic a'beites and has remained an "aphorism" - an "aphorism" that is often and gladly quoted, but never quite taken seriously. Who among the professional Marx interpreters would want to accept the consequence of this sentence: "Consequently, after a whole century, none of the Marxists has understood Marx." Basically, no textbook on Marxian economics should have been written ignoring Lenin's interpretative guidance. In fact, however, not a single one exists that would have followed Lenin's insight; on the contrary, anyone who looks around at Soviet Marxist textbooks on political economy must get the impression that Lenin must have been mistaken. Clearly and distinctly the argumentation of the first chapters is developed here. The reader will "grasp it perfectly" without having "studied through and grasped the whole Logic of Hegel." One does not even find a hidden hint that in the textbook one possibly has to do only with an "exoteric" presentation. In short: The textbooks seem to lead Lenin's estimation ad absurdum. Where dialectical formulations are exceptionally used, they end up in meaningless or utterly nonsensical sentences that blatantly distort the meaning of Marxian categories.38
That "dialectical" interpretations of basic economic concepts have so far not only failed to clarify controversial problems, but have rather led to an increase in the confusion of basic concepts, can be shown by the East Berlin discussion on the commodity-money relation. Lendel's argumentation differed methodologically from the positions of his opponents in that he sought a philosophical foundation for his interpretations: for him, the "criteria of correctness and truth of theoretical views in Marxist political economy" included "conformity with the principles and laws of materialism and dialectics.39 With the need for interpretation of these "laws," however, such a wide latitude is apparently set that the "laws" themselves seem to permit contrary conclusions: "Lendle tries to support his (...) thesis philosophically by making abstract labor the >being' and concrete labor the "manifestation" of human labor. If the use of these categories in this context is supposed to have any meaning at all, then it is probably only that, conversely, concrete labor (...) is >being' and abstract labor is the form in which (...) concrete labor (...) appears under certain historical conditions."40 The East Berlin philosophers, who here had the unique opportunity to prove their right to exist in a lasting way by reflecting on problems that could no longer be decided scientifically, preferred silence in this controversy. As far as the textbooks of Soviet philosophers are concerned, we also look in vain in them for an instruction on the "esoteric" content of Marx's theory of value and for information on why one cannot "fully comprehend" Capital and especially the first chapter.
That neo-Marxist connoisseurs of Hegelian logic have not only not advanced the interpretation of Capital one step, but have committed errors of interpretation of the kind denounced by Marx in his marginal glosses on Adolph Wagner, is an indication that Lenin may have formulated necessary but not necessarily sufficient conditions of an adequate Marx interpretation.
The basic concept muddle of Marxist value theory now has an interesting counterpart in the basic conceptual miseries of bourgeois theory. For several reasons, therefore, the procedure of reconstructing Marx's theory of value in the confrontation with the difficulties of bourgeois concept formation is recommended. For the assumption suggests itself that these difficulties and the basic conceptual dilemma of Marxist value theory have one and the same reason and could be determined quite generally as difficulties of "economistic" concept formation. The Marxian method would then have to be reconstructed as the attempt to resolve the basic conceptual dilemma of economistic thinking - a thinking that finds its expression in the Marxian theory of value as much as in the bourgeois one.
The procedure of reconstructing Marxian value theory in the critique of Marxist and bourgeois value and money theory is advisable for two other reasons. The critique of Marxian value theory often enough evokes the impression that the bourgeois economist, for reasons of principle, methodological and not only terminological, is barred from engaging substantially with Marx's mode of argumentation. This manifests itself in the fact that very often Marxist and bourgeois economists argue on entirely incommensurable conceptual levels and complain to each other that the other side is missing the core of the problem. Marxian conceptualization and theorizing seem to have developed merely in the confrontation with the objective theory of value and the metallistic-quantity-theoretical theory of money of classical economics. In any case, this aspect of the critique of political economy was most pronounced in Marx's terminology. The partially observable incommensurability of bourgeois and Marxist economics is at least partly due to the fact that in modern bourgeois economics the objective theory of value was replaced by a subjective one and the metallistic theory of money had to cede its leading position to the nominalistic one.
Marx's theory of money emerged in the confrontation with a type of theory that can be defined as a uniform "bourgeois" one, precisely because it presented itself in opposing, antipodally related schools - not only in the opposition of currency and banking schools, but also in that of bourgeois metallism and nominalism. It contains both poles of this double opposition in itself as "cancelled" moments and insofar stands beyond the opposition of metallism and nominalism. After all, the metallistic moment is a constitutive component of Marx's theory of money. The triumph of the younger nominalism brought about the almost complete disappearance of bourgeois metallism. With the symbiosis of nominalist "monetary theory," subjective value theory, credit creation theory, and macroeconomic conceptualization, the incommensurability of modern and Marxist monetary theory became almost irrevocable. It seems to me particularly urgent to make the theories of money and credit of both directions commensurable by means of an analysis of the genesis of this incommensurability. Marx's theory, which originally arose as a critique not only of the nominalist but also of the metallist theory of money, apparently had to lose the object of its critique at the same time as this opposition disappeared, and now presents itself as metallist. Marxist economics today is faced with the choice of accepting nominalism as a coherent theory and thus ultimately dissolving itself as a unified whole, or of proving that in the various directions of modern nominalism the old opposition of nominalism and metallism has in truth reproduced itself in a hidden form. It goes without saying that the quasi-metallistic variants of modern nominalism - e.g., Otto Veit's real theory of money - will be more interesting than the apparently internally coherent instructional and symbolic theories of money. The study of the bourgeois theory of money also seems to me to be necessary because the contrast between dialectical and analytic philosophy of science can be excellently specified on the basis of problems in the theory of money. The latter, as is well known, wants to show that the "definitions" of basic economic concepts are and can be nothing else than nominal definitions: "Let us take, for example, statements of the form: "... "The value is so and so" ... "The costs are this" ... "No, they are that"" ... The form of these sentences leads to the erroneous view that it is about something other than a linguistic question, that one is talking about things, not words."41 Sentences of this kind are nominal definitions and as such can be neither true nor false. They should therefore be translated into a "formal way of speaking", for example: "In the Marxist linguistic system, "'value' is defined as follows: ... We must 'tolerate' the definition of others and confine ourselves to pointing out its inapplicability and inappropriateness."42 Hutchison arrives at a radical consequence from this position: "Just as pure geometry completely disregards surfaces, straight lines, points, etc., which we ... perceive, so pure national economy looks completely away from the market form, money, etc., which we ... perceive, and the pure theorist as such does not need to know anything about them."43 But this is precisely the problem of modern national economic theorizing. It has long been recognized that the separation of "goods economy" and "monetary" approaches has prevented the formation of a generally valid theory of inflation. In our context, however, another question is of interest: can the economist usefully speak of perceiving "money, etc." in a manner similar to surfaces, straight lines, etc.? What is the being of money? To explain his view that the basic concept problem can be eliminated in economics in much the same way as in natural science, Hutchison quotes from the methodological work of a well-known natural scientist a passage "in which the following can be applied mutatis mutandis to the purely theoretical national economist: We think of three kinds of things, which we shall call points, straight lines, and planes; now what actually are these things? Not only do we not know anything about them, ... and anyone who has never seen a point ... could just as well work in geometry as we do. Since the expressions "passing through" ... do not evoke any image in us, the former is simply the same as "being determined".44 Hutchison himself points out the problem of the "mutatis mutandis" of his transfer of this observation to national economic disciplines: "More difficult to understand are these remarks - though therefore equally applicable - if the analysis is carried out in colloquial language, which inevitably evokes images in us."[^48] The problem of national economic "language systems" would then be primarily whether the words of the vernacular can be translated into signs. In this text, Hutchison eskamotizes this problem, which can hardly be answered satisfactorily even from the position of analytic philosophy of science. Geometry is able to perceive its objects and to determine them conceptually beyond colloquial language, economics, on the other hand, does not perceive its object: it does not see money and capital, but always only metal and paper. If now always only single, sensually perceptible things exist, then one could not speak of an object "money" at all; on the other hand already the concept of the quantity of money makes clear that this sensually not at all perceptible "something" must be more than a thought, a thought-thing or a norm. It is very unlikely that the confusion of terms in the theory of money and capital has its root in the defective distinction between nominal and essential definitions. This distinction is well known to economists. Shouldn't their tendency to seek "definitions of essence" rather be related to the fact that the question of the concreteness of economic objects is exceedingly difficult to answer? Hutchison's essay was written in 1937; the formalization of economics has made enormous progress since then, and we must therefore ask to what extent modern national economics has succeeded in eliminating the problem of "essence definition" as an "illusory problem," and especially that of the most confusing and disreputable of all images of economic colloquialism, the word "value."45
Should the following sentence have slipped into the work of a distinguished national economist only by chance? "Both in the case of amortization rates and in the case of circulating capital that has become money again, we can speak of funds that 'have become detached from their embodiment in capital goods.'"46 - Before we enter the thorny field of capital theory, however, we want to turn to another discipline of empirical science which is obviously still attached to pre-scientific forms of thought, namely to those which, according to the analytic theory of science, are to be regarded as metaphysical: in the theory of money we find again and again economists who seek definitions of essence, i.e., who "see conceptual issues where they are actually statements" - quite in the manner of the theoreticians of the 19th century. Thus we read in Michael Kröll: "There is no theory of money which does not put some concept of money at its head, but for the most part it is an illusory concept. A catalog of money functions does not yet result in a concept of money, unless one were to prove strictly that one of these functions is constitutive and to derive the others from it, which, however, hardly ever happens. Neither are genetic terms of any use, such as money (...) is based on the "mass habit of acceptance". To define money as "means of payment" is a circle, because "payment" presupposes money and money terms beginning with "instruction" or "demand" are not even legally tenable, because money is a 'thing'."47 For the time being, let us hold: an economist who speaks of money as instruction or means of payment does not really know what he is talking about; he does not know what he is saying when he calls money means of payment. Thus, the majority of economists work with "bogus terms." Kröll justifies his effort to work out a definition of essence with a position diametrically opposed to that of Hutchison: With all phenomena in nature and culture, it is always necessary to determine the kind first, and only then the quantitative relations. "First the principle, then the degree."48 Kröll's point of view is that of an economic functionalism: "From its function in the cycle, an exhaustive concept of money is to be developed first."
Against this procedure, the skeptical objection is certainly justified that there are various and contradictory "definitions of the essence" of money, and the question arises quite naturally whether and how "illusory" concepts can be distinguished from "correct" concepts. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that functional definitions quite generally lead to circular reasoning and tautological statements, and therefore any theory of money, contrary to all methodological instructions of analytic philosophy of science, is compelled to introduce definitions of essence, either openly or in a covert form. Then, however, it must be seriously discussed whether under these conditions any scientific progress in modern monetary theory is conceivable at all. As is well known, modern economics is not only confronted with the annoying fact that in the current debate between monetarists and fiscalists both schools accuse each other of a lack of scientific foundation of their monetary concepts, but this debate also refers "to the scientific evidence for the theses put forward. The fact that there is bitter disagreement about this is remarkable. It is hard to imagine similar disputes taking place in the natural sciences (...). "49 If it continues to be true that the currently prevailing different views on money "were already held more than a century ago"50 and yet "despite a century of scientific research on the supporting concepts, such a difference of opinion persists,"51 then it is appropriate to ask whether the methodological foundations of this discipline permit any progress at all. The reasons given by the representatives of this discipline why a "theory of money" in the proper sense of a "self-contained doctrine (...) does not exist at all",52 are strange: "The real reason why the theory of money does not come to any really clear result lies only in the fact that one tries to explain the essence of money simply from the object of experience without establishing an unambiguous object of knowledge."53 Moreover, "the problem of money was also under a hypnosis of value which could almost be called a fixed idea. (...) This incorporation of the theory of money into the theory of value (...) was, as it were, the obstacle to arriving at a clear solution of the money problem. The value theory and its adherents are therefore also primarily to blame for that state of conceptual confusion and ambiguity in which the theory of money has been for so long and still is."54
The prevailing theory of money is a rather strange doctrine. What a well-known scientist could call the obstacle why "money theory does not come to any really clear conclusion" - the amalgamation of money theory with the subjective theory of value, long since banished from price theory, can be celebrated as the "most significant progress" almost twenty years later: the previously frowned upon "integration of money and value theory". Money is rediscovered as a commodity with "intrinsic value," and the argumentation of Karl Helfferich, which proves the value-theoretical conceptions of money theory to be a "circular argument," is said to be "refuted." Don Patinkin has shown "how to escape the spectre of the "circular argument."55 But what is the "most significant further development of monetary theory since Keynesian theory"? In the "application of the basic principle of the theory of capital (...) to the theory of money".56 One is astonished that the theory of money expects scientific progress from the application of the hopelessly controversial theory of capital, of all things, and learns quite strange things as soon as one looks for the new concept of the theory of capital: "Human assets (or "human capital") are equal to the discounted equivalent of the income of the factor of production labor. The non-human assets (or non-human capital) consist of the physical assets (i.e. the means of production (...), the land and the durable consumption goods) and the financial assets (money)."57 One would have liked to hear from the representatives of the analytic theory of science what to make of these propositions. Are these propositions of such a nature that they can be refuted by experience, or are they metaphysical propositions that cannot fail in principle because of experience?
Notes
Footnotes
E. v. Böhm-Bawerk, Kapital und Kapitalzins, Abt, 1,511 f ↩
K, Mulis, Anti-Marx, 87, esp. 98 f. "On the one hand, exchange value does not contain an atom of use value; on the other hand, use value is expressed in the usefulness of the commodity. (...) The contradiction is glaring: either exchange-value is independent of use-value. (...) Or exchange-value is bound to the condition of utility." (Ibid., 69) ↩
Important elements of the concept of "simple circulation" in the overall bourgeois production process were first elaborated by Helmut Reichelt. ↩
This concept, coined by Engels, which cannot be traced in Marx's work, also determines Werner Becker's interpretation, so when, in agreement with the Marxist secondary literature, he seeks to understand Marx's analysis of the simple value form as a "reference to early historical primitive exchange relations" (ibid., 52). Becker is mistaken in thinking "that it will be difficult to interpret Marx's text on the simple value form in any other way than has been done." (Ibid., 62) ↩
"Paper money ceases to be merely the representative of gold. (...) The price of gold in paper money, which under the conditions of the gold standard was merely an irrational expression of the gold content per monetary unit, can hardly be regarded as such under present conditions. Gold receives its own price in the paper money measure, which dominates in the economy of every country today." (Institut für Weltwirtschaft usw., Politische Ökonomie des heutigen Monopolkapitalismus, 571) The conceptual vagueness of these categories does not permit any statement as to whether, in the opinion of the authors, the "paper money measure" is also to be regarded as a measure of values. There is not a trace of an effort to derive present-related determinations from Marxian categories. The indeterminacy of qualitative determinations corresponds to the indeterminacy of quantitative statements. "The price of gold is the subject of state monopolistic regulation, the possibilities of which prove to be very great." The attempt to indicate limits of this possibility of regulation now leads again to a "metallistic" reasoning which directly contradicts the preceding statements: "The exchange relation between gold and the other commodities, which is realized through their prices in paper money, is (...) based on the labor input. (...) Therefore, the state-monopoly regulation which seeks to fix the price of gold in paper dollars (...) encounters difficulties and contradictions." The section concludes with the banal sentence, "The role of money remains extraordinarily large and is essentially determined by its function as world money." It is left to the reader to answer the question of how to think about the relationship of the categories and statements that are, after all, initially probably mutually exclusive - gold price, paper money measure, world money. The whole section on the role of gold is, in reason, only a paraphrase of its opening sentence: "These questions remain among the least analyzed in the political economy of monopoly capitalism" - apparently because the role of gold "is related to such important problems as (...) inflation in capitalism today". ↩
In the two textbooks on political economy (written by different institutes) nominalist theories of money are explicitly rejected. In the 1972 volume, we read, "The basic error of nominalism was that it did not take into account the commodity nature of money was denied." (N. A. Zagalow et al. (eds.), Lehrbuch Politische Ökonomie, 153) The circulation of paper money reduced "its real value to the value of that quantum of gold which ought to circulate in its place." (Ibid., 407) The other textbook, written by the Institut für Wirtschaftsstatistik, similarly states, "The non-redeemable paper money is a sign of the quantity of gold it actually represents." (Ibid., 281) "Money is neither a concept (such a conception of money has idealistic character) nor a thing (suchc conception of money is typical fetishism). Money is a reified relation of production represented in things." (Ibid., 114) However, should it turn out to be true that "gold itself still receives a price in a paper money measure," money is no longer a relation of production represented in a thing. What is it then? The question arises whether Marxist theory can still hold to a unified concept of money at all. ↩
We must refrain from arguing this thesis in more detail in this essay. A few key words must therefore suffice. The Marxist labor theory of value differs from Ricardo's only in that it insists on the historical character of value and money in the manner of the Left Ricardians, but presents this as an assertion, i.e. it is not able to derive the contradiction between private and social labor from the form of value and to reconstruct the form from this contradiction. This is expressed above all in the fact that concepts and constructions of Marx's theory of value, which transcend bourgeois and left-Ricardian "economism" alike, have either not been received at all or only very vaguely and contradictorily, e.g. the doctrine of the value-form and of the fetish character of the commodity. The left-Ricardian mode of reception is characterized above all by the fact that it establishes a merely formal-logical relation between the theory of value and the theory of money, and therefore regards the two as fundamentally separable pieces of doctrine. The construction of the connection between the two is reduced to the trivial statement that with commodity production the necessity of money is set - a statement which is a commonplace of bourgeois monetary theory. That with the Marxian concept of value a very specific concept of money is set, is in no way recognizable from the left-Ricardian representations of Marxian value theory. Furthermore, the left-Ricardian interpretation has only an external relationship to Marx's concept of ideology. ↩
The argumentation put forward here comes from the arsenal of bourgeois nominalism: "The man would still have to be born to whom, in front of a villa that is supposed to cost 70,000 Mk, the thought of a 50-pound gold nugget occurs." (F. Bendixen, Das Wesen des Geldes, 13) That this foolish comparison of values, which is imputed to metallism, does not even do justice to the ideas of bourgeois metallism, can be gathered from the writing of Melchior Palyi (Der Streit um die staatliche Theorie des Geldes, 58 f). Incidentally, it is precisely the most modern variants of nominalist theories which, insofar as they insist on a "property" of money, assert precisely this foolish comparison of values imputed to metallism by the founders of nominalism: "A quantity of money and a quantity of other goods are compared with each other; this results in an exchange ratio called the exchange value or purchasing power of money." (O. Veit, Währungspolitik als Kunst des Unmöglichen, 167 ) ↩
The textbook of the French CP (P. Boccara et al., Der staatsmonopolistische Kapitalismus) intends a present-day further development of Marxist money theory on the basis of an orthodox, i.e., "metallist" position. However, the formulas "quasi-money," "quasi-bank money," and "relative dematerialization of money," which are frequently used in this book, are suitable for pretending to solve problems where merely a problem complex has been named. ↩
Paul Mattick advocates a nominalistic theory of money, insofar as, in his opinion. "the concept of money depends on that of debt" and the gold standard was "based on an intergovernmental agreement during laissez-faire capitalism" and thus "constituted a deliberate intervention in the market mechanism." (Marx und Keynes, 183, 186) The effort of Elmar Altvater, Christel Neusüß, and Bernhard Blanke to develop a nominalistic theory of money by means of value-form analysis, namely the doctrine of the three peculiarities of the equivalent form, amounts to turning the meaning of this doctrine into its opposite. The sentence: "In the dollar, a specific national labor (...) becomes the representative of universal labor" (Kapitalistischer Weltmarkt und Weltwährungskrise, 69) is the nominalistc inversion of a theorem that gains meaning and significance at all only as a justification of a non-nominalist theory of money. In the theoretical section of their paper, the authors use words that are commonplace in bourgeois money theory but are not graspable as concepts either there or in Marxist nominalism, for example, in the sentence: "Paper money must in every case represent value quanta." (Ibid.) What does "value quanta" mean? Can a conceptual content be assigned to the word "represent"? If so, how is the relation between the represented and the representative to be thought? A decidedly non-nominalist position is taken by Erncst Mandel, Der Spätkapitalismus, 374. ↩
J. Borchardt, introduction to K. Marx, Das Kapital, XIII. ↩
K. Renner, Die Wirtschaft als Gesamtprozeß und die Sozialisierung, 5 f. ↩
M. Blaug, Systematische Theoriegeschichte der Ökonomie, vol. 2, 222 u. 225. This view is especially widespread among economists: "He loved to bear witness to his Hegelianism (...). But that is all. Nowhere did he betray positive science to metaphysics." (J.A. Schumpeter, Kapitalismus, Sozialismus und Democratie, 25) "Marx's arguments are merely less polite, more prolix [compared to Ricardo's, author's note], and 'philosophical in the worst sense of the word.'" (Ibid., 47) ↩
The expression "economistic" is intended in Marx to characterize critically the economist's specialized orientation. "Labor-time immediately presents itself economistically one-sidedly in Franklin as a measure of values." (13/42) ↩
V. I. Lenin , Zur Kritik der Hegeischen 'Wissenschaft der Logik', 99. ↩
Thus in the sentence: "contradiction of money, which consists in the fact that money (...) is the unity of the real commodity possessing material substance and its opposite, the sign of value (!)." "The Gcldsystcm as the unity of opposites - of the cash and the non-cash circulation of money, of the private instruments of payment and of money as such." (N. A. Zagalow et al. (eds.), Lehrbuch Politische Ökonomie, 147 u. 404) ↩
O. Lendle, Zur Meßbarkeit des Arbeitswerts, 1528. ↩
F. Behrens, Wie ist der Wert meßbar? 424. H Neumann also imputes to Lendle an only "apparently dialectical treatment of the problem," which can in no way conceal the "nature of the polemic, which in some cases borders on sophistry". (Zu einigen falschen Auffassungen über die Bestimmung der Wertgröße im Sozialismus 415) ↩
T.W Hutchison, Theoretische Ökonomie als Sprachsystem, 194 f. ↩
Ibid, 195. on this see Ch. Helberger, Marxism as Method, 91 ff. ↩
T. W. Hutchison, Theoretische Ökonomie als Sprachsystem, 196. ↩
G. N. Halm, Geld, Außenhandel und Beschäftigung, 129. A well-known classic of economics, Sismondi, could only visualize this state of affairs in quasi-metaphysical terms of thought: "Capital - permanent value (...); this value tears itself away from the commodity that had created it; it remained, like a metaphysical unsubstantial quality, always in the possession of the same cultivateur for whom it clothed different forms." (Cit. n. 42/185) ↩
Hans Möller, Das Ende einer Weltwährungsordnung, 70. ↩
E.-M. Ciaassen, Probleme der Geldtheorie 40. When an author of that period states that one would find "questions completely unresolved as to what the essence of money and its task consists in, (...) how it works, what effects it has and which it does not have" (B. Price, Geld und Bankwesen, 2), and these questions are supposed to be substantially the same a hundred years later, the assumption suggests itself, however, that aporetic structures are peculiar to bourgeois monetary theory. ↩
Materials for the Reconstruction of Marx's Theory of Value: II.
The thesis put forward in the first part of this paper, that there are differences in principle between Marx's and the Marxist theory of value, while the Marxist and the subjective theory of value are to be characterized as merely different variants of the same type of theory, will be substantiated step by step in this part and in the following parts of the paper.
The structural sameness of the two theories of value has been justified primarily by the monetary-theoretical indifference of their basic concepts: both theories have been associated with metallist as well as nominalist, with quantity-theoretical as well as banking-theoretical theses about money. Both theories advance theses about a real or fictitious economy of natural exchange and shall therefore be characterized as premonetary theories of value.1 This characterization refers primarily to the peculiarity of their basic concepts: they are self-contained and neither accessible to nor in need of further definition in monetary theory. However, even from a historical point of view, both theories of value appear as premonetary in the accounts of some authors, insofar as the validity of their theorems is asserted for the real exchange relations of a natural exchange economy.2 However, the subjective and the Marxist theory of value also differ methodologically from the Marxian theory. If one defines the dialectic of Marx's theory of value from the task of systematically unfolding the inner connection between value and money and of "defining" the various functions of money in the manner of a self-developing and self-determining progression, then the methodological commonality of the Marxist and the subjective theory of value can also be described negatively as a non-dialectical form of conceptual development. The monetary-theoretical indifference and the non-dialectical form of concept development are basically just two aspects of the same thing.
Marx's theory of value is to be conceived as a critique of premonetary theories of value; it is essentially money theory at the level of representation of simple circulation,3 This interpretation, however, now includes the claim that in the conventional interpretation the substance of Marx's concepts changes. It will be necessary to prove the thesis that in the Marxist theory of value, especially in the doctrine of the fetish character of the commodity, Marx's concepts take on the structure of empty formulas and, as "conceptlessly dull ideas," elude any conceptual specification. The "rational core" of the Marxist theory of value then turns out to be a particular variant of the left Ricardian theory of value. In the decades-long controversy over the Marxian theory of value, the peculiarity of the object of dispute has been misunderstood by both opponents.4 The idea that a theory of value could solve the task of developing the "concept" of money and, by means of this substantial definition, at the same time develop the regularities of money, is still alien to the subjective as well as to the Marxian theory of value. It cannot therefore be regarded as a coincidence that in the discussion of the relationship between the first and third volumes of Capital a revealing sentence could be read past. In the tenth section of the third volume, which deals with the relation between value, production price, and market price, there is the terse statement:
The value of the commodity as a foundation remains important, because money can be developed conceptually only from this foundation, and price, according to its general concept, is at first only value in money form. (25/203)5
The "conceptual development" especially in the Grundrisse, the 'rough draft' of Capital, makes it very clear that Marx's theory of value is to be interpreted as a synthesis of an economic and a "philosophical" theory of money. The discussion of Marx's theory of value would have to deal with the logical and scientific-theoretical implications of this synthesis and, at the same time, with its money-theoretical presuppositions and consequences. The issue is the possibility of substantive definitions and the possibility or impossibility of gaining conceptual clarity in monetary theory by other means. The debate with Marx's theory of value would thus have to be conducted primarily at the level of basic concepts of money theory. For the time being, however, there is no clarity about what a "conceptual development" of money accomplishes and what, conversely, the merits and shortcomings of a "non-conceptual development" consist of.
The discrepancy between Marxian and Marxist value theory is expressed particularly clearly in those textbooks and value-theoretical treatises that merely refer to "labor-value-theoretical" concepts,5 but tacitly pass over money theory or even advocate nominalist theses that contradict Marxian value and money theory. In the account of the Marxist theory of value, the function of value is exhausted in regulating the exchange relation of one commodity for another. It seems to be quite indifferent for the representation of the concept of value whether the values are expressed as money prices and the exchange is mediated by money or not. The relation of commodity and money or that of value and money-theoretical concepts is thus understood as a relation of simple and complicated phenomena or of simple and complicated concepts. Another conceptual relation is not even conceivable for the prevailing logic of science. This wrong understanding of the relation between commodity and money is also conveyed by those textbooks which merely refer to the "development" of value forms and the "functions" of money for the sake of completeness.6 But even those sparsely represented works which emphasize the "inner relation between commodity and money" ultimately grasp this relation in a rather external way. Thus Vitali S. Wygodski emphatically points out that "in the revelation of this necessary connection (...) consists one of the most essential tasks of the theory of value." He very aptly emphasizes that "Marx conceived the understanding of the category 'money' as a criterion for whether the essence of value is actually grasped."7 The characteristic emphasis in Marxist literature on Marx's "discovery" of the source of surplus value and the complete neglect of that "discovery" no less important to Marx, the solution he claimed to the "riddle of money," also lead in Wygodski's work, which is well worth reading, to the fact that neither the dialectical structure of this "inner" connection nor the critique of bourgeois money theory resulting from it are unfolded.
In the juxtaposition of subjective and Marxian value theory, academic economists - in agreement with the vast majority of Marxist economists - have assumed the commensurability of the two doctrines as theories of value of one and the same type. According to this view, as in the Marxist one, value is nothing but the determinant of the exchange relation of commodities and, as such, "utility" or "labor." The Marxist economists, as is well known, add another property: value as the "expression of a social relation," though now the attempts at a conceptual specification of this "qualitative" property and its relation to the "quantitative" function have, to all appearances, created insoluble difficulties. Subjective theory has always attributed to utility only a quantitative function. Now one will have to see the peculiarity of this basic concept of subjective theory in contrast to the Marxian concept of labor above all in the fact that no other function can be ascribed to it at all. For it is in no way conceivable to develop a "concept" of money from the concept of utility. If it should make sense at all to apply the categories essence and appearance in the theory of value, then only labor could be grasped as an essence, not utility. From this it follows again that only on the "basis" of labor could a "concept" of money as "manifestation of value" be developed, not at all on the "basis" of utility. The categories essence and appearance are obviously not applicable to arbitrary contents: Money as an appearance of utility is an entirely meaningless construction. From the the subjective school's concept of value no step leads to the concept of money. Subjective economics must therefore treat the theory of value and the theory of money as two heterogeneous doctrines which cannot be related to each other, or at least only very externally. The Marxist theory of simple commodity production can be characterized in the same way: in so far as the style of construction of the two theories is identical, the juxtaposition of natural and monetary economic terms does not even permit any other relation than that of "simple" and "complicated" terms: The abundant use of dialectical terms in Soviet Marxist textbooks should not obscure the fact that there the connection between value and the manifestation of value is established only superficially. It is therefore not at all surprising that the verbal-dialectical construction of these textbooks could not prevent certain representatives of Soviet monetary theory from developing nominalist theories of money. The deficient specification of dialectical concepts in the Marxist theory of value and the indifference of this theory to monetary theory are two sides of the same factual problem.
The separation of value- and money-theory in subjective economics has the advantage that the basic concepts of value theory are more clearly representable than in Marx's conception. This clarity is gained because the concepts of value theory have been separated out from the confusing variety of problems in the theory of money. The question is, however, whether this extraction is permissible at all. Indeed, it is quite conceivable that the supposed clarity of value-theoretic concepts and the metaphysical obscurity of some of the problems of money and capital theory are mutually dependent. In the natural economic model, the difficulties of the subjective theory of value do not become visible; they arise, as it were, beyond itself: where the monetary references have to be restored and the real categories have to be reconstructed. These difficulties manifest themselves in the well-known circular reasoning of subjective price and money theory and in the problem of transforming the natural economic model into a monetary economic model by means of a completely indeterminate concept, the abstract unit of account.8 The abstract unit of account is obviously the sore point of subjective economics and of academic national economics in general. The indeterminacy of this term implies that the transformation is actually done only by means of a definitional trick. In any case, it has not yet been shown that, other than by metaphysical or phenomenological means, the abstract unit of account can assume descriptive content and, other than by metaphysical means, the subjective concept of value can be brought into a conceptually articulable relation to the concept of money.
The difference between the Marxian and the subjective theory of value has often been fixed on the problem of the measurability of value. Labor, however, as a determinant of value, is just as unmeasurable as utility. The hint that labor is an extensive, utility a merely intensive quantity, could lead one step further. The difference between the two theories, however, is to be grasped as more principled. The Marxian theory of value differs in content and method from the subjective one primarily in that one and the same "principle" of a dialectically conceived concept of social labor is ascribed several functions9: it is supposed to regulate in the last instance the quantitative exchange relation of commodities; it is supposed to be possible to derive from it those conditions which lead to the transformation of commodities into commodities and money; the mere existence of commodities and money would be conceived from its ground; finally, it is supposed to make possible a substantial definition of money, a "development" of its "concept". While so far all attempts of bourgeois theory have failed to elaborate a generally valid definition of the relation between commodity and money,10 this definition of essence is supposed to conceptually structure the mutual entanglement of commodity and money by means of dialectical figures conjuncturally relevant laws would then be derived from a substantial definition of money.
With this ambitious concept of Marx's theory of value the problem of its conceptualization is set at the same time. Immediately some questions arise, which are not or only inadequately answered in the Marxist methodology: What are these laws which do not base their validity on observable behavior and which can hardly be translated into an operational concept of the quantity of money which is amenable to empirical testability? They are "derived" and perpetuated in a priori form, as it were. Thus, the law of money circulation is derived from the concept of value and the first determination of money and then characterized as a "fundamental law", namely as a conceptual foundation for the derivation of further laws: "From the determination of money as a measure, as secondly from the fundamental law (...) follow closer determinations, which we will develop only where and insofar as they coincide with related economic relations, credit circulation, exchange rate, etc." (42/681) Using this fundamental law as an example, two problems would now have to be discussed. On the level of representation, the derivation is an a priori one, as it were; on the other hand, the genesis of this law is not even conceivable without Tooke's comprehensive empirical investigations. What is at stake, then, is the unresolved relationship between modes of research and modes of representation, between "empirical" and "a priori" elements in Marx's theory.
The concept of "derivation" and the concept of law itself thus lead to the discussion of Marx's definitions of essence. Here two further questions arise, which are not or only inadequately considered even in academic methodology: first, the completely unresolved question of the mode of being of economic objects in general. This question, of course, is not posed in this "philosophical" form. In its "scientific" form, however, it is still the subject of lively controversies as the problem of the determination of objects in theoretical national economics.11 In its "philosophical" form, it would burden the discussion with a problem which, according to modern philosophy of science, is recognized as a "pseudo-problem" and therefore no longer needs to be discussed: the question of the possibility of objective determinations of essence.
As is well known, there are very different definitions of essence: metaphysical, phenomenological, dialectical and neopositivist.12 It is therefore understandable that the literature of monetary determinations of essence, which emerged mainly in the interwar period, eventually triggered a general disinterest: After all, what is one to make of determinations of essence if they mutually negate each other?
Marx research, of course, cannot avoid taking up the discussion of this vexed topic once again. First of all, it would have to clarify which validity criteria of monetary determinations of essence are contained in Marx's theory of money. These attempts would amount to developing "theories of money and credit" in analogy to the Theories of Surplus Value, as it were, as a preliminary introduction and as a concluding supplement. Efforts of this kind could be based on numerous remarks contained mainly in the rough draft. This work would have to examine the logical structures of Marx's critique of ideology and the logic of Marx's dialectic of economic forms. And the discussion of the validity criteria of dialectical determinations of essence would have to work out a number of assertions implicit and explicit in the Marxian critique of monetary theses. The very broad task would then be to verify or falsify these assertions in a discussion of academic monetary theory. One could start from the following considerations:
the Marxian position contains the assertion that any serious attempt by academic monetary theory to articulate conceptually the ideas associated with the word "money", namely to translate the "conceptlessly dull ideas" (13/139) of everyday language into logically tangible determinations, necessarily contains elements of a definition of essence.
It would have to be shown that metaphorical and tautological determinations enter into these definitions and must lead to circular reasoning.
The discussion would have to show that the manifold attempts of academic theory to conceptually define the functions of money and the essence of its unity can ultimately be reduced to polar opposite basic positions, and that a third mediating position is untenable.
The monetary theoretic interpretations of the individual money functions and of the quantitative commodity-money relation would have to be characterized as mutually exclusive and, at the same time, presupposing determinations.
It would have to be shown that the dialectically interrelated statements do not owe themselves to the subjective arbitrariness of individual authors, but are necessarily set with the structure of an object which is contradictorily structured in itself. They would then be recognized in their "genesis", i.e. "derived" from the contradictory structure of the object.
The determinations of the essence of money would have to be unfolded and concretized in a theory of capital; they would thus be "suspended", as it were, in a determination of the essence of capital.
The procedure of Marx's theory of money would have to be described analogously to the Hegelian dialectic in such a way that the theses of the academic theory of money are dialectically negated in their rational core and are contained, as it were, as suspended moments in Marx's theory. At the same time, the exclusivity claim of this procedure has to be pointed out. The program of a dialectical presentation of concepts of money- and capital theory implies the assertion that beyond this presentation the contents of the concept of money cannot be articulated and that only in the process of presentation do conceptual determinations of money become articulable. The object meant by the word money could thus only be made objective in a conceptually comprehensible way by means of a dialectical presentation. Thus, the assertion would have to be investigated that in the way of metaphysical, phenomenological or neopositivistic determination of essence no meaningful statements can be made about the basic economic and sociological concept of money.
In the 'rough draft' it says once: "If we speak of capital here, it is only a name. The only determinacy (...) is...". (42/186) The determinacy is then concretized step by step. This procedure characterizes Marx's procedure in general. Thus, there can be no question of axioms and basic assumptions at the beginning of the development of thought, from which other propositions can be deduced. At the beginning of each section there are categories which are found in the textbooks of bourgeois economics and are themselves a piece of social reality. But these categories are now mostly mere "names", their elements often merely "conceptless dull ideas". The function of the dialectical presentation thus obviously consists in making the categories speak, namely in opening up the contents meant and unfolding them "conceptually". It seems that only in this way can conceptually articulable contents be assigned to the "names". One could also say that the "conceptual development" is for Marx the mode of representation appropriate to the economic "object", insofar as its objectivity is a completely different one than that of objects and processes that can be grasped scientifically and psychologically. The "mode of being" of these objects, however, is just as little that of social norms, ideational entities and intelligible entities.
Modern scientific logic, which is interested in problems of operationalizability, does not attach any significant importance to these questions. In fact, the scientific relevance of these questions, especially their monetary and capital-theoretical relevance, is difficult to assess; their importance can therefore be seen, for the time being, only in clarifying the peculiarity and epistemological problems of a "dialectical representation". Marx's ideas about the possibility and functions of monetary determinations of essence could be discussed on the basis of a few quotations that have received little attention so far. It seems to me remarkable to comment on a passage taken from Wilhelm Roscher's textbook, which frequently appears in the monetary theoretical accounts of the neoclassical period. Roscher writes: "The false definitions of money can be divided into two main groups: those which consider it to be more, and those which consider it to be less, than a commodity (...). It cannot be denied, by the way, that most recent national economists have not kept enough in mind the peculiarities which distinguish money from other commodities. (...) In this respect, the semi-mercantilist reaction (...) is not entirely unfounded."13
One could assign the mercantilist theory to the "more", the metallist quantity theory to the "equal", and the nominalist theory of money to the "less". It becomes clear that the question of the nature of money boils down to the question of how the relation between money and commodity is to be thought, first of all, from a qualitative point of view. If I want to define the thing called money conceptually, I would seem to have gained with "commodity at all" the generic concept of price-determined commodity and money the concept of a premonetary commodity, a "medium of exchange". The difficulty of defining money now manifests itself in the fact that one can hardly add the specific difference of "general" and "non-general" to this "generic concept" of means of exchange without changing its structure at the same time. A further difficulty is added: What are the definitional possibilities to articulate the specific difference conceptually? For it is open whether the generality of the general means of exchange can be determined in any other way than psychologically as a "mass habit of acceptance". The problem of positively determining the "otherness" of money is also unsolved in modern monetary theory.
If I, like Roscher, equate money with commodities, I abstract from those very properties which have just caused me to call a certain commodity money and to distinguish it first of all in a nominal way from the other commodities. Thus Roscher also gets caught in the contradiction that on the one hand he identifies money with commodity and on the other hand has to speak of "peculiarities" "which distinguish money from other commodities," which now, however, provoked the ironic question of Marx: "thus, after all, more or less than commodity?" (23/107 fn.) It will be shown that the objection directed against Roscher can be turned against all attempts of academic monetary theory to determine the peculiarity of money: "More less not enough insofar as not quite!" Such paraphrases express the embarrassment to be able to conceptually determine the something called money in another than merely negative way. "What conceptual definitions!" is Marx's sarcastic comment. (Ibid.) Conversely, one could understand the dialectical presentation of the category of money as an attempt to conceptually articulate the otherness of money vis-à-vis the commodity, which is on the one hand a "more" and on the other a "less" "Begriffsbestimmungen." It seems that such conceptual definitions can only be developed on the basis of value and a dialectically conceived concept of labor.14 The Marxian method of "conceptual development" will be confronted in more detail with modern attempts to circumscribe money as a carrier of highest liquidity.
The Marxian program of a critique of monetary theses contains several aspects that are to be presented in more detail elsewhere. For now, a few references must suffice. The doubling of the commodity into commodity and money a "mediating movement" "disappears in its own result and leaves no trace behind." (23/107) In the Bailey critique in Yheories of Surplus Value, it now becomes clear that by means of this figure a dialectical critique of premonetary theories of value in general, and especially of the marginal utility school, could be justified.
The elaboration of a dialectical theory critique would have to deal primarily with some passages of the 'rough draft'. Thus Marx confronts the neo-mercantilist and the liberal theory of money and sees the genesis of these antipodal positions in the hypostasis of moments of "self-contradictory determinations" of money. He speaks of the "illusion about its nature, i.e., the holding of one of its determinations in its abstraction, and with disregard of the contradictions contained in it" (42/152). "What makes the conception of money (...) difficult are difficulties which political economy seeks to escape by forgetting one of its determinations over the other and, when one is held against it, appealing to the other" (42/165).15 The close connection between money theory and ideology critique already emerges from the fact that in the section on the fetish character of the commodity the task of resolving money-theoretical aporias is very definitely set for value-form analytical considerations. The inadequate analysis of the form leads to the fact that within the labor-value-theoretical school "the most motley and contradictory conceptions of money" arise. Marx does not speak here of money per se, but makes it very clear with the following sentence that the value-form analysis intends the resolution of subtle problems of the credit-theoretical and monetary-political controversies of his time: "This becomes strikingly apparent, for example, in the treatment of banking, where the commonplace definitions of money are no longer sufficient." (23/95) If this sentence is permanently ignored in the hardly manageable literature on the fetish character of the commodity - the inadequacy of this literature is at least partly due to this omission - this is also related to the fact that in Engels' treatment of the credit-theoretical fragments the causal relationship between a non-dialectical development of the concept of money and the money-theoretical controversies no longer "emerges strikingly" at all.16 Even the works on money theory take no notice of this proposition and have so far refrained from elucidating these controversies in a value-form analytical way.
Dogma-historical studies of the great money-theoretical controversies of the nineteenth century are necessary above all because Engels, according to his own statement, "failed" in reconstructing Marx's theory of credit, the "most involved subject of the whole book," namely, the third volume: "Here, then, is not a finished draft, not even a schema (...), but only an approach to elaboration, which more than once runs out into a disorderly heap of notes (...). I tried at first to complete this section (...) by (...) elaborating the fragments that were only hinted at, so that it offered at least approximately all that the author had intended to give. I tried this at least three times, but failed each time (...). I would have had to go through the whole mass literature of this field." (25/12 f.)17 The very fact that some Marxist economists adopt the bourgeois credit-creation theory as their own, although this doctrine is, according to Valentin Wagner's investigations, entirely incompatible with the monetary-theoretical theorems of the second and third volumes, makes it clear that the constructions of Marx's credit theory are inaccessible not only to the layman, but often also to the economic expert.
The basic idea of dialectical theory criticism has been memorably formulated by Marx himself. Namely, his method consists in criticizing alien views in a way that is quite unknown to bourgeois theory and also not at all comprehensible: they are to be criticized by means of and through "presentation". Engels formulated it like this: "The critique of the individual (...) modes of conception is then (...) already given in the logical development itself." (13/477) The lack of understanding of Marxist monetary theory towards this procedure is somewhat astonishing. Marx's distinction between the measure of values and the measure of prices is a prime example of the method of providing "critique by presentation" of monetary categories. The meaning of this distinction is, of course, inadequately grasped if the "transformation" of the measure of values into the measure of prices is not seen at the same time and, above all, the possibility of its "confusion." This confusion underlies a certain theory of money, namely the doctrine of "the ideal measure of money" known to us today under the name of nominalism, which in James Steuart is so "completely developed (...) that his unconscious successors, by not knowing him, find neither a new turn of language nor even a new example." (13/62)18 We have already pointed out above that the Marxist critique of modern nominalism seems to have remained unaware of the Marxian critique of older nominalism.
As far as I can see, this Marxian doctrine has also been left out of the controversy between Marxist nominalists and "metallists" by both sides.
Let us summarize again the problems discussed so far, which are set with the attempt to reconstruct Marx's theory of value as a logically consistent context of meaning:
the program of a dialectical theory of money can only be realized on the basis of a concept of commodity which can grasp and perpetuate the commodity as a unity of contradictory determinations.19
Marx's talk of the "riddle of money" amounts to the assertion that adversarial positions necessarily had to develop in the monetary theoretical disputes of the 19th century and that the antinomic structure of this conflict does not allow for mediating positions. Money as a "self-contradictory object" must continuously reproduce antinomial statements in a non-dialectical theory. These contradictions and controversies, which appear in ever new forms, cannot be resolved for an economic theory of money for reasons of principle. They are therefore essentially the same controversies that have persisted from the 19th century to the present. According to this view, a "philosophical" theory of money is able to develop dialectical determinations of essence which make it possible to mediate and auto-solve contradictions in monetary theory.
It might already cause considerable difficulties to convince Marxist economic theorists that a dialectical theory of money can be formed and developed in relation to the present; for the modern concept of science such a concept of theory is completely unacceptable backward metaphysics of the 19th century.
Marx's talk of the "riddle of money" amounts to the assertion that adversarial positions necessarily had to develop in the monetary theoretical disputes of the 19th century and that the antinomic structure of this conflict does not allow for mediating positions. Money as a "self-contradictory object" must continuously reproduce antinomial statements in a non-dialectical theory. These contradictions and controversies, which appear in ever new forms, cannot be resolved for an economic theory of money for reasons of principle. They are therefore essentially the same controversies that have persisted from the 19th century to the present. According to this view, a "philosophical" theory of money is able to develop dialectical determinations of essence which make it possible to mediate and auto-solve contradictions in monetary theory. ¶Therefore, a discussion between the representatives of a dialectical and an economic theory of money is difficult to initiate. However, it should be possible to clarify the "preliminary questions" of a "philosophy of money" discussion on the level of an "economic" theory of money beyond the presently hardly decidable dispute about the existence of a "self-contradictory object". Whatever one may think about the possibility of a "self-contradictory object," a joint discussion could shed light on whether one still has to hold on to the adversarial opposition of banking and quantity theory today and whether the controversies relevant to monetary theory and monetary policy can indeed be reduced to this opposition. For example, it cannot be ruled out from the outset that eclectic positions can be developed further or that, from completely new conceptual approaches, the classical contradictions and thus also Marx's "riddle" of the money form turn out to be "pseudo-problems of monetary theory."20
If the presentation of the categories is to be possible only on the way of dialectical theory criticism, then the following would have to be shown: a) that the theoretical statements also of the subjective money and capital theory implicitly contain Man's concept of value; b) that dialectical figures have entered into the categories of academic theory and money is actually discussed, even if not in a conscious way, as an "object contradictory in itself"; c) that only on the way of dialectical determinations of essence the basic concepts of the economic theory of money can be articulated conceptually. Generally speaking, the problem can be formulated as follows: "The question is whether there are contradictions in the concrete economy which Marx traces, specifies, and exhibits dialectically, or whether Marx elevates something to contradictions which lacks such contradictions."21 If one does not want to attribute the dialectical theory of value to the biographical coincidence that Marx studied Hegel's metaphysics, and instead advocates the opinion that this theory has its ground in the matter itself, one will have to prove dialectical structures also in the representations of those authors who are not "preloaded" from any philosophical past. As far as these are concerned with the theoretical penetration of objective structures, these would have to express themselves also in the statements of a non-dialectical theory. If this proof should be possible, one will not be able to deny dialectics a "rational core" completely independent of the result of the discussions about the possibility of a dialectical logic. If this proof fails, one will hardly be able to counter with convincing arguments judgments of the kind that Bortkiewicz, for example, has made: Marx had the "perverse tendency to project logical contradictions into things themselves in the Hegelian manner".22
Now how has "conceptual development" been understood in Marxist theory, and especially by Friedrich Engels himself? In this context, we will have to deal with another problem that has always been suppressed by Marxist economics, namely, the fact that the "economic" theory of money has remained a fragment. In Marx's work one can recognize the "outline of a comprehensive doctrinal building of money theory, in which every problem of money would have its place. But this extensive edifice has not been completed by Marx, indeed in some parts it has hardly gone beyond the first sketchy drafts."23 This statement is found in an essay by Friedrich Pollock from 1928. Since then, hardly anything has been done in the Marxist literature to fill this gap and to eliminate the basic deficiency of the economic theory of Marxism. Pollock would have had to repeat his verdict today "that a sufficient, systematic and critical account of Marx's theory of money is still lacking",24 and could only point to laborious works that are to be regarded as "contributions to the preliminary work of the systematic and critical re-creation of Marx's theory of money"25 called for at the beginning. The specific form of Marx's theory of value is the result of intensive studies of the money and business cycle theory of his time. In his essay Das Elend der Philosophie (The Misery of Philosophy), he famously still advocates Ricardo's theory of money. In the letter to Engels dated February 3, 1851, Marx deals for the first time with the Ricardian doctrine of gold automatism and the "rules of the game" of gold circulation currency. (27/173 ff.) Here he deals with the precursors of what today are called the discount rate and the open market policy of the central bank. It is the quantitative problems of an "economic" theory of money that Marx studies intensively in the period from October 1850 to November 1851 and then again from September 1856 onward.26 In the exposition of the theory of money, things look very different: Essence determinations and dialectical "derivations" absorb the reader to such an extent that he may forget altogether the telos of the conceptual development, the solution of quantitative problems of the theory of money. The development of this form of value is so opaque anyway,27 that hardly anyone knows quite what these strange constructions are all about. The economic expert, at any rate, is not likely to attach too much importance to this derivation and to refer to it more for the sake of completeness, but with a shrug of the shoulders.
The separation of value and money theory is repeated within money theory as a separation of qualitative and quantitative determinations. It could be shown, however, that with this separation the meaning of the essential determinations changes fundamentally and the quantitative elements of the theory of money take on an interchangeable character. Here, first of all, the question is of interest in which role within the Marxist literature the essential determinations of Marx's theory of money are seen. It must be surprising that Marx's definitions of the essence of money have not been discussed either in the monetary theory literature or in the philosophical literature, although the scientific-logical status of these concepts and the doctrines of monetary theory resulting from them are quite unsettled.
Although the quantitative function of the determination of the essence is negated, the Marxist theory has a well-known answer to the question in what the meaning of the derivation of money can be seen: Marx had derived the necessity of the formation of money from the opposition of private and social labor. This proof is, on the one hand, directed against the Proudhonists and other "hourly ticklers" and, on the other hand, against those who misjudge the historical character of economic categories. Pollock's assertion is only representative of others: "this exposition has the decisive systematic task of proving money to be necessarily founded in the essence of the commodity economy".28 With this proof, Marx had deciphered the "whole secret of the money form". Following Engels, Marxist economics always sees only the one aspect of Marx's derivation of money, that "Proudhonian (...) socialism, (...) which wants the commodity but does not want money, is to be broken in its foundation." To this sentence, however, Marx adds the remark: "But apart from all polemical purpose, you know that the analysis of the simple forms of money is the most difficult (...) part of political economy." (29/573) The importance of this analysis is admittedly estimated very differently.
Engels' reaction to Marx's derivation of money was somewhat curious. He recommended that "what has been dialectically gained here should be somewhat more widely demonstrated historically, that we should, as it were, make the test of it out of history." (31/303)29 How so? Is historical analysis merely to "supplement" and "illustrate" the definition of essence, or even to "correct" and "verify" it? Engels apparently was not able to get a proper clarity on these questions. In his review of Marx's work Zur Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, Marx's "logical mode of treatment" is understood to be "nothing other than the historical" one "only stripped of historical form and disturbing contingencies." The "train of thought", as it is presented in Marx's writing, "can be nothing but the mirror image (...) of the historical course". According to this view, therefore, the logical development of the value forms in Capital is also merely the "mirror image" of the real development, a "corrected mirror image" of it by eliminating the historical contingencies. One could think that Engels recommends the "logical mode of treatment" only for reasons of labor economy, because history runs "in zigzags", "would have to be followed everywhere" and then "much material of little importance would have to be taken up". The history of economics (and thus the history of money) cannot be written "without that of bourgeois society, and thus the work would become infinite, since all preliminary work is lacking." From this state of affairs Engels draws the consequence: "The logical mode of treatment was therefore alone in place." (13/475) The abstract analysis is obviously felt to be something deficient: the logical development is "by no means compelled to keep itself in the purely abstract domain." Because its peculiarity and thus the assumed deficiency are not presented, the following sentence does not want to be understood either: "On the contrary, it needs historical illustration". Why actually? What is the meaning of the vague formulation: it needs "the continuous contact with reality"? (13/477) There is no answer to be gained to the question in what the meaning of the contradictions consists and what their object is, as far as the logical development keeps itself in the purely "abstract area". One cannot make sense of the proposition that the contradictions obtained logically-systematically "at the same time" represent and "reflect" something else, if one side of the "at the same time" remains undetermined. Marxist theory has therefore always seen only the other side of the "simultaneous": namely, the logically determined contradictions are supposed to "reflect" the difficulties of simple exchange, more precisely: "the impossibilities (...) to which this first crude form of exchange necessarily leads" (13/476). Now, as is well known, "difficulties" of this kind are vividly described in the textbooks of academic theory. The form of presentation differs quite considerably, but it is also impossible to see why these difficulties should be "presented" so drastically that the difficulties of barter come to an "impossibility" and this impossibility finally finds only the universally known "solution", namely money. One must ask oneself what is actually gained by the dramatic intensification of contradictions in Marx's mode of development, when the solution can be grasped much more plausibly and, to all appearances, even Engels can present money merely as a "cleverly devised means of information" (13/36) that is supposed to overcome the "technical inconveniences" of barter that have arisen in the course of the extended division of labor. Engels and, in his wake, the Marxist "textbooks" thus merely confirm academic theory's time-honored notion of the origin and function of money. The Marxian ironization of this notion seems quite out of place.
It is understood, only a hypothesis about the origin and development of money "needs" a "historical rehearsal" and the "historical illustration". If, on the other hand, the peculiarity of the logical development consists in the fact that it should not produce a hypothesis, but a determination of the essence of modern money, then it does not "need" a historical rehearsal or illustration at all. On the contrary, the historical material can only be ordered and understood from the "logically gained". Of course, the logical development is then no longer determinable as a "mirror image" of the historical development. But what is it then?
Finally, what is the point of the cumbersome, difficult-to-fathom dialectical development, if one finally only learns that money exists and money exists necessarily, namely as an element of a market economy order? The necessity of money is quite undisputed and can also be justified in another way, with tangible pragmatic arguments, indeed in this form much more simply and convincingly than by way of "logical development."30 If one were to follow Engels' interpretations, then the crawling mountains of Marx's dialectic would have given birth to little more than a mouse.
Engels sees above all the "polemical purpose" of the derivation of money: the "necessity of the formation of money." His proposal is therefore to prove to the "philistine by historical means the necessity of money formation" (31/303). Marx gives the following answer: "It is not only a question here of the philistine, but of the knowledge-loving youth, etc." Above all, "Besides, the matter is too decisive for the whole book." (31/306) It is revealing that in this letter the "economists" and the "knowledge-loving youth" are named as addressees of the value-form analysis - there is no more mention of Proudhonism. But even in his first presentation of the form analysis, in the writing Zur Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, Marx only superficially pursued a "polemical purpose": "It is quite necessary to go au fond of the matter for the audience and for me, individually, to get rid of this nightmare". (29/232) Thus it is clear "that, apart from all practical purposes, the chapter on money will be interesting for experts" (29/383). For the expert, Proudhonism is a dilettante affair anyway. Marx wants to discuss his constructions of value and money theory with economists, with connoisseurs; with whom else, after all, since these constructions make the emphatic claim to solve the "money riddle" and to decipher the "whole mystery of the money form." It can therefore hardly be doubted that Marx understands by the "dialectically gained" a definition of essence which is supposed to establish an "economic" theory of money by means of philosophical figures of thought.
One has the impression that Marx and Engels were thinking of quite different things when they talked about money and the method of its derivation. Marx tries to develop a "concept" of money, Engels seems to move only in the preconceptual medium of "imagination" when he speaks of the "necessity of the formation of money." He is less concerned with a what-determination; he was interested in the mere existence of money and its transitory character.
If the thesis of Hartmann31 should prove to be correct, that Marx and Engels have formed opposite views about the relation of the logical and the historical, then there would also be different views about the meaning of a "conceptual" derivation of money. In a discussion of this problem, one should consider above all the fact that it is impossible to work out an adequate interpretation of the "conceptual" development of the forms of value from Engels' theory of simple commodity production. This theory has given rise to the completely untenable claim that Marx presented the theory of money in simple commodity production in the third chapter of the first volume of Capital.
The correspondence also indicates that fundamental misunderstandings had occurred about the nature of a dialectical derivation of money. Engels wrote: "I often have to search with difficulty for the dialectical transitions, since all abstract reasoning has become very strange to me." (29/319) If Marx occasionally complained that "even good minds did not quite grasp the matter correctly, so there had to be something defective about the first exposition, especially the analysis of the commodity" (31/534), one will probably have to go a step further and ask whether even Engels "grasped the matter correctly."
Notes
Footnotes
The separation of value and money thcoric in subjective economics is described schr clearly by Gunnar Myrdal: "Value (...) had to be (...) accessible to scientific investigations that abstracted from the money phenomenon. It had to be studied virtually in this isolation from money and money price. (...) The actual price theory, too, these theorists then built on a study of relative exchange values, leaving the money problematics out of consideration or, better, postponing it as a complication that was to come separately for treatment only later." (Der Gleichgewichtsbegriff als Instrument der geldtheoretischen Analyse, 371 f.) The present efforts of academic theory to integrate subjective value theory and money theory do not change the fact that subjective value and the determinations of money belong to entirely different conceptual levels. Therefore, at most quantitative, but no qualitative relations can be established. ↩
The Marxist variant of the premonetary theory of value comes out with desirable clarity in the work of E . W Ilyenkov: "The theoretical determinations of value as such can be obtained only by examining an objective economic reality which can exist before and outside of, and independently of, all phenomena which have subsequently arisen on its basis. This elementary, objective economic reality existed long before the appearance of capitalism (...). This reality is the direct exchange of one commodity for another." (The Dialectic of the Abstract and the Concrete in 'Capital' by Marx, 124) In the interpretation of the premonetary theory of value, "value as the starting point of the theoretical conception is to be conceived as an objective economic reality" in this way. From this position, hardly any difference can be found between the Marxian and the Ricardian conception of value: Ricardo and his predecessors "examined (...) the direct, moneyless exchange of one commodity for another. To the extent that they proceeded in this way, they arrived at a truly objective conception of value." (Ibid., 125) From this assertion it can be clearly seen that the premonetary interpretation of Marx's theory of value must lead to views that turn the critical content of Marx's form analysis into its opposite. ¶¶ The subjective theory tends to develop only a model of premonetary exchange relations: "The assumption of a state of developed exchange taking place without the mediation of a general common means of exchange is scientific fiction." Mises describes very aptly why the analysis of a historically existing economy in kind is irrelevant for economic theory: "Quite inconceivable without the use of money is the market as the epitome of the interaction of all elements of supply and demand, as modern theory presupposes it and must presuppose it" (L. Mises, Die Stellung des Geldes im Kreise der wirtschaftlichen Güter 316.) There are different views in the Marxist literature, which are to be presented in more detail in the following part of the paper. The majority of authors assert the validity of the law of value for the real exchange relations of a natural exchange economy; so explicitly E. Mandel. The variant of the Marxist theory of value represented by these authors can then be characterized as premonetary from a historical point of view. Parvus already treats "simple commodity production" as a model and would therefore reject all the more decisively the idea that Marx "derived" the laws of exchange from a real existing natural economy. "Our discussion by no means excludes (...) the possibility of constructing an abstract case of independent commodity producers exchanging according to quantities of labor." (Quoted in F. Eberle, Bemerkungen zum Erklärungsanspruch der Marxschen Theorie, 382 fn.) Eberle characterizes this view as follows: "Thus also the type of society (...) in which commodities exchange for their values would not be conceived as a real historical epoch that has existed, but as a "theoretical construct"" Eberle correctly sees that in "this interpretation of the 'mode' of simple commodity production," Marx's constructs would contain the serious methodological error "that Marx derives, on the basis of a "construct," categories which empirically claim real existence." (Ibid.) This statement implicitly negates the possibility of interpreting Marx's constructs as "theoretical constructs, Ronald L. Meek conceives of Marx's 'value analysis' as a "series of determinations about the way in which relations of production affect the prices of goods in that abstract pre-capitalist form of society." This is neither "in Marx nor in Smith (...) intended to provide an error-free representation of economic reality. (...) Usually I say (...) that it is not a myth, as some critics claim, but rather a mythodology." (Die ökonomische Methode von Marx, 18 f.) For Nutzinger and Wolfstetter, "Meek arrives at insights that are at best hinted at in the older Marx discussion (...). (...) This myth of simple commodity production, however, has an important methodological significance for Marx." They would like to see "the essential object of knowledge in the determination of the social content of Marx's value theory" (Introduction to: Einleitung zu: Die Marxsche Theorie und ihre Kritik, vol. 1, 3 f.), but completely ignore Marx's value-form analysis and instead recur to Franz Petry's completely untenable neo-Kantian inspired interpretations. Marx's theory of money is tacitly passed over in the collection of texts. ↩
The internal entanglement of value- and money theory has been misjudged above all by the quantity theory. Ricardo "does not grasp (...) the connection of this labor with money (...). Hence his false theory of money" (26.2/161), "because he does not examine value in form at all (...), but only the quantities of value" (26.2/169), "Ricardo's false presupposition that money (...) exchanges itself as commodity for commodities." (26.2/198) "But this wrong conception of money is based in Ricardo on the fact that he has in mind only the quantitative determination of exchange value at all." (26.2/504). The fact that these propositions are ignored in the numerous works on Marx's analysis of the value-form characterizes the basic mangcl of this literature: they apparently does not want to admit that Marx elaborated his analysis of the value-form with the declared intention of resolving economic-theoretical antinomies. ¶¶ Roman Rosdolsky makes it very clear: "They are not two different "models at all, but one and the same model that of the modern capitalist mode of production." (Zur Entstehungsgeschichte des Marxschen 'Kapital', vol. 1, 211). However, the money-theoretical significance of Marx's value-form analysis is not examined by Rosdolsky any more than by H. Lehmann, whose comprehensive account of the great controversy of subjective and Marxist value theory inadvertently yields the evidence that in this dispute the opponents missed a fundamental aspect of Marx's value theory. One will not have to disagree with Lehmann that "the theory of marginal utility has been comprehensively examined Marxistically for the first time in the present work" (Grenznutzentheorie, 412); it is just that the Marxist position agrees only very conditionally with Marx's. ¶¶ Lehmann deals with some interest-psychological variants of vulgar Marxist critique of ideology and aims to show, "For several decades Marxist theoretical criticism has in this way overlooked a significant insight of dialectical materialism and has fallen back on the positions of mechanical materialism." Lehmann's own critique of marginal utility theory is certainly much more differentiated than the conventional Bukharinian observations; but this does not change the fact that even his critique still remains attached to the "positions of mechanical materialism." These are not already overcome with the rejection of an interest-psychological "ideology critique" which, in the tradition of the priestly fraud theory, "explains false and reactionary theories as barren nonsense and ideological fraud." (Ibid., 409) "Significant insights of dialectical materialism" are "overlooked" not only by the criticized authors, but by the critic himself, when for Lehmann the "significant insights" ignored by Bukharin and yet so "significant" turn out to be the vulgar Marxist empty formula: "the basis of social being is, after all, the economy." (Ibid., 409) ¶¶The theorems of a dialectical theory critique understood by Marxist philosophy as "significant insights" are, as is well known, quite different. This would have to perform an "analysis of the objectively real inversion of the essence and appearance of bourgeois relations" and to examine "the problematic of the false, inverted or mere appearance under which the true essence of these relations appears objectively concealed, mystified, inverted." (H.-Ch. Rauh, Hegel und die marxistische Ideologiekritik, 165) In Lehmann's investigation there is not even a rudimentary attempt to trace back the critique of the theory of marginal utility to the ideology-critically decisive "unraveling" of the basic mechanisms (...) of the mode of commodity production. (Ibid., 184) One will have to ask again why these "significant insights" have not yet got around in the circles of Marxist economists and why economic theory criticism is not able to redeem the ambitious program of a theory criticism oriented to philosophical categories. Even more serious, however, are the failures of the philosophers and sociologists themselves. Where and when has a Marxist sociologist or philosopher ever tried to fulfill the high demands in the field of economic criticism and to establish a dialectical critique of theory in an exemplary form? I am not aware of any other than vulgar Marxist presentations of "overlooking significant findings". ¶¶ It must be shown that this decades-long "overlooking" has an objective reason and cannot be attributed to a subjective inability of individual theorists. The weaknesses of Marxist ideology critique are based to a considerable extent on uncomprehending interpretations of Marx's doctrine of the fetish character of the commodity, which in turn are rooted in the impossibility of developing a premonetary theory of value dialectically. This will have to be examined in more detail; here only a hint: The "base" of a premonetary theory of value obviously produces with "necessity" the "superstructure" of a vulgar Marxist ideology-critique.¶ ¶ A dialectical theory critique would have to derive the subjective theory of value primarily from the contradictory form determinations. The question is only whether it is at all possible to develop a doctrine of "self-contradictory" [sich sich selbst widersprechenden] objects and thus also a dialectical theory of value and money. ↩
The fact that the value-theoretical positions of the opponents were based on a common ground not seen through by either side - the indifference of their theorems to the theory of money - could be convincingly demonstrated by the course of the discussion on the theory of value organized by the "Verein für Socialpolitik", which, according to Franz Oppenheimer, was supposed to bring "the downright desperate situation of the theory of our time to the clear consciousness of the experts", "for a discipline which has to see more than a dozen different theories fighting for victory over its central theme - and that is, in spite of everything, the value problem! - must fight for victory, is not yet a science". (Die ökonomische Theorie des Wertes, 149) Here all monetary theorctical problems were banished from the debate, although Gustav Cassel's critique of the theory of value should have led to the discussion of the monetary value problem. ¶¶ Karl Kühne, in Ökonomie und Marxismus, gives a comprehensive account of Marx's value theory within academic national economy. He refers to no less than eight variants of interpretation of Marx's "value theory" (1) as a kind of historical stage theory (2) as a doctrine of basic prices (...) (3) as a purely mental auxiliary construction (4) as a doctrine of (...) "just income assessment" (5) as a doctrine of the forces which determine the "right" distribution of labor in the national economy (6) as the doctrine of the "units of efficiency" (7) the interpretation as microeconomically determined cost or distribution theory as well as (8) finally the interpretation as macroeconomic income distribution theory." (Vol. 1, 99) These eight variants contain those "four arguments in favor of a wholly or partly persistent validity of the law of value" discussed by Böhm-Bawerk. (E. v. Böhm-Bawerk, Zum Abschluss des Marxschen Systems, 48) One sees that a monetary variant of interpretation has never been put up for discussion. (Cf. also the other contributions to the discussion in the text collection of Friedrich Eberles.) Only Geoffrey Pilling insists that Marx's theory of value is value-form analysis and as such intends the solution of the "riddle of money." This essay and, more generally, the wcrtformanalytic literature, however, expose themselves to some objections which remain to be discussed. For the time being, only this: the wcrtformanalytic works omit, without exception, an attempt to present the mysteriousness of the "Gcldrätscl" that is to be taken seriously from a gcldthcorctical point of view. Thus, Pilling also speaks of the "mystery of the commodity form" (Das Wertgesetz bei Ricardo und Marx, 329 f.) and of the "mystery of the gcldform". But what the mysteriousness consists of and why the solution of the mystery should be closed to the academic theory of money remains a mystery of neo-Marxist value gate analytics. ↩
P. Fischcr, Die Marx'sche Werttheorie-, R. Luxemburg, Einfiihrung in die Nationalökonomie; 1.1. R u b i n , Studien zur Marxscheu Werttheorie; E. M ä r z , Die Marxsche Wirtschaftslehre; P. M. Swcczy, Theorie der kapitalistischen Entwicklung; W Hofmann, Ideengeschichte der sozialen Bewegung; H. M a r c u s c , Reason and Revolution; E. M a n d e l , Introduction to Marxist Theory of Wutschaft; P. Mattick, Marx and Ke}'nes; W Beckcr, Critique of Marx's Theory of Value; K. G. Zinn, Labor Theory of Value; W. F. Haug, Lectures on the Introduction to iKapitah. It should still be noted that Hartmann is also interested in the matcrialcn problems of the Gcldthco!" ric is hardly interested: "We pass over here Marxen's closer remarks on Gcldtheorie as on paper money." (The Marxian Theory, 293) ↩
One could point out that in the textbook Political Economy Pre-Socialist Modes of Production the "inner connection between value and money" is occasionally emphasized (134 and most misleadingly, 133). Even more, in the sentence: the "essence of money (...) is expressed in its functions" (ibid., 143), even the connection of qualitative and quantitative gcldbcstimmungcn is indicated. In the argument with the nominalistcn there is even the assertion: "First, the functions of money are the manifestations of its essence." (Ibid., 154) Now, one could delete sentences of this kind without having to change anything in the presentation of the function of money. It is referred to in a conventional, i.e., non-dialectical form and is merely given a different name: "manifestations". That is all. Nowhere is there an attempt to assign a conceptually comprehensible process to this word, namely to develop the functions as manifestations of a being. That only vcrbaldialcktic constructions are present here can be shown by the inadequate critique of the subjective theory of value, which is not criticized as a premonetary theory of value and therefore not recognized in its basic mangcl, and by the even weaker critique of nominalism, which is not opposed by any arguments but only by counter-assertions: "The basic error of nominalism was that it denied the commodity nature of money. Its representatives consequently did not understand that the use of money as a measure of value (...) and the possibilities of substituting full-value money (...) is only an expression of its nature as a special commodity (...)". (Ibid., 153) What would have to be proved is tacitly assumed, namely that substantial money definitions can be developed. The omitted mediation of essence and function in this textbook seems to provide the unintended evidence that the nominalist denial of being able to apply the categories essence and appearance to money is quite justified. ¶¶ The textbook Political Economy Capitalism makes the shortcomings of "dialectical" concept formation even more obvious: "Commodity and money form a unity of opposites. Their unity consists in the fact that money is also a commodity". (Ibid., 92) Here, not even the word "manifestation" is found. The assertion is merely made: "This function results from the intrinsic nature of money as a general equivalent. All other functions of money are conditioned by and connected with the first function of money (...)." (Ibid., 94) The categories essence and appearance are obviously too indeterminate for the authors of this textbook; in their critique of the nominalistcn theory of money they therefore have to refer to a worldview axiom: "The nominalistcn (...) stand on an idealistic position. (...) But money is neither a concept (such a conception of money has an idealistic character) nor a thing in itself." (Ibid., 114) The two Lchrbüchcr recur just as little as other Marxist treatises to the arguments advanced by Marx against nominalism (see 13/59 ff), ignore the important distinction between qualitative and quantitative measures of value, and give no account of the fact that the Marxian distinction between the measure of values and the measure of prices has above all the task of "deducing" the origin of nominaiism: the "confusion" of the two measure functions had "given rise to the most fantastic theories" (13/55), nominalist theories namely. These problems are to be described in more detail in one of the following parts of this paper. ↩
W. S. Wygodski, The History of a Great Discovery, 54 f. For E. Mandel, the "inner connection" is nothing more than a "logical application of ArbcitswcrtIchrc to money. If the exchange value of all commodities represents nothing else than the quantity of (...) labor (...), it is consequently clear that money based on precious metals is not a pure means of circulation, as Ricardo represents it. For gold itself is a commodity and therefore possesses its own exchange value. (...) From this it follows that the quantity thcoric of money repeated by Ricardo (...) is not applicable." (Origin and Development of Karl Marx's Economic Doctrine, 85) This misrepresentation of Marx's critique of the quantity thcoric is quite prototypical. In the Marxist literature there is not a trace of an effort to attribute ''the false gcldtheory'' to the fact that Ricardo does not examine value in form at all. ↩
The problems referred to here will be discussed in more detail in Part IV. ↩
Hartmann emphasizes: ''Marx's project is (...) essentially different from that of earlier representatives of the Arbcitswcrtlchrc (...). Smith and Ricardo (...), however, overlook the specific value-form, the commodity-form we may add: the commodity-form as transcendentally non-original, challenging to critique." (The Marxian Theory, 284 f.) The qualitative difference of both theories of value, however, is quite inadequately grasped. It is significant that Hartmann does not perceive the connection between Formanalysc and Ricardo's theory of money. He also does not see the incommensurability of Marxian and subjective value theory. In a quite conventional way he puts forward the argument: "that there can be other candidates for such a common the use-value itself or the need." (Ibid., 266) ¶¶ It must be disconcerting that Flartmann, who as a representative of a dialectical social philosophy wants to examine the "ganzhcitlichc Gestalt einer Gesellschaft" (Marxens iKapitali in transzendentalphilosophisch Sicht, 11) completely ignores Marx's efforts to grasp social labor as totality. He is no more interested in the difference between special and general labor than he is in the economic significance of the "opposition" between private and social labor. The Marxian "principle difference in the concept of labor," the "difference principle" of his theory of value (Die Marxsche Theorie, 422 f.), is, in my opinion, interpreted by Hartmann completely inadequately. The double character of labor in Marx would consist in the fact that labor "on the one hand is to be grasped positively, qualitatively, as the production of use-values." (Ibid., 268) Marx gained this definition of labor on the basis of his "anthropological-nominalistic attitude, which insists on the benign, individuated and at the same time socially total labor." (Ibid., 279) The "benign" side is that man works for his needs. Labor is "on the other hand (...) negatively 'substance' of a non-utilitarian, substance of exchange value." (Ibid., 268) According to this interpretation, abstract labor is supposed to be negative in two respects: mechanization "denaturalizes labor as a quantity of labor" and social "opposition, particularization" prevents "intcrpersonal encounter." (Ibid., 276) Hartmann shows himself strangely dcsintcrssed to grasp the categories of value theory dialectically; he does not examine Marx's concept of the commodity as a unity of contradictory determinations, but still wants to grasp "commodity as transcendental principle" (ibid., 271). In his interpretation, the Marxian concept of the commodity is an "ontologischcr Zwitter, (...) a transformation of the good into the pejorative." (Ibid., 268) "The commodities thus mean in the system that mediation under the aspect of abstract labor is not an interpersonal one as immediate, total (...), (...) but one (...) as isolated." (Ibid., 276 f.) ¶¶ It goes without saying that in this interpretation, which is one-sidedly oriented to Marx's early writings, the doctrine of the manifestations of abstract labor and the doctrine of the peculiarities of the equivalent form find no place. Hartmann cannot find an explanation for these concepts and regards them as nonexistent. ¶¶ On the other hand, he looks for a dialectic of concepts where it cannot be cntdcckcn with the best will in the world: "Basically, all economic concepts in Marx are in themselves dicschlächtig: concepts such as value as exchange value and use value." (Ibid., 408) One will also have to attribute to a deficient textual analysis the assertion that Marx made "an unacknowledged distinction between exchange-value and value". "He does not examine the right to do so." (Ibid., 269 fn.) One might "ask whether this subtle distinction is stated and justified." (Ibid., 269) This question remains entirely unresolved. The serious deficiencies of this attempt to interpret the "Arbcitswertlchrc as transcendental Ökonomickritik" are primarily related to the fact that the "difference of principle" of private and social labor is flattened into the "difference" of alienated and "benign." "The commodity must be seen on the foil of benign labor and from there stands as negative. The difference of positive and negative permits the negative principiicrung of the further." (Ibid., 422) It can then be shown very nicely that this "difference principle" does not permit the "Prinzipiicrung" at all, which already proves that the Marxian method as "undialcktisch-dialcktische contains a philosophical error". However, one will be allowed to concede: "This much we can already see that it is a highly subtle theory, a complex theory as well, which allows for several dcutungscbcncn or even levels of misunderstanding." (Ibid., 257) ¶¶ The criticism of Hartmann's interpretation this interpretation understands itself as dialectical, but overlooks Marx's basic dialectical figure of doubling should not, however, detract from the merit of this work, that here, for the first time, some important features of Marx's conception of theory are brought out. The objections raised by Hartmann against a nominalistic dialectic are incompletely reported here and make further discussions necessary. These would also have to specify the correct idea that, in contrast to 'model platonist' theorizing, the "pure case has principle function for the concrete." One is probably not mistaken in supposing that Flartmann's notion of the dialectic of principle and principiate is based on constructions developed by Hans Wagner in Philosophie und Reßexion (70 ff.). Wagner's discussions of a transcendental philosophical-dialectical method make it clear that a principle in the original sense wants to establish Gegenständlichkeit par excellence, but can by no means lead to economic Gegenständlichkeit. (Ibid., 299 ff.) Marx's 'Principle' Labor claims to constitute this specific form of Gegenständlichkeit. It would be important to work out the distinguishing and the common features between the philosophical and the Marxian concept of principle. The specification of Marx's concept of principle requires a discussion of the representationality of economic objects. Hartmann's own proposal of a transcendental philosophical interpretation of Marx's theory forces the discussion of a problem which Hartmann obviously wants to exclude. ¶¶ M. Godelier also wants to prove a transzcndentalphilosophicalc method as the "secret of the inner Gcsamtaufbau of Capital." The "ideal genesis and this relation between ground and justified are not Hcgclschcn modes of procedure, but a genesis similar to the Plusscrls. (...) The method goes from the constitutum to the constitutcns. Precisely in this the comparison between Marx and Husscrl would find one of its firmest points of reference." (Rationality and Irrationality in Economics, 172 f., 178) Commodity analysis is dialectical because it "inaugurates and establishes the order of categories." (Ibid., 242) ↩
H . H . Lechner speaks of a "resignation of basic research". "The question of what money is and what actually or supposedly distinguishes it from the other goods or, more importantly, what it has in common with them, is no longer raised at all today or answered with superficial explanations and definitions. The low inclination to deal with the essence of money would be understandable if the supporters of the idea that money is something special in the circle of goods would at least agree on what this specialness is. But this is by no means the case. (...) If there is already no clarity about the essence of money itself, there must also be a lack of an exact elaboration of the functions of money. (...) The same applies to the problem whether there is a demand for money or not. None of these questions, which may stand as examples of many, can be regarded as settled." (Market Theory of Neutral Money, 5 0 ) ↩
See the controversy between Amonn and Stonier in the Journal of National Economics. In his paper 'Essence and Meaning of Economic Science', Amonn takes issue with L. Robbins, who wants to "make clear" "what it is that national economists are discussing. (...) We are all talking about the same things, but we have not yet reached agreement on what it is we are talking about." (Cited in ibid., 307) In Amonn's opinion, the object of national economics is "not the behavior of economic subjects, (...) but it is the particular forms of social relations." These "forms" are "prices, wages, interest, rents, etc." which are obviously not "human behavior." (Ibid., 315) The theoretical statement refers "not to human behavior, but to the behavior of an exchange magnitude." (Ibid., 320) See further Helmut Koch, Die theoretische Ökonomik, 690 ff. This outline of an "individualanalyticcn Flandlungsthcoric" is directed against the ncoclassical view that "the money and goods transactions formed the result of actions (...), which in and of itself could be thought quite independently of the actions of these individuals." (Ibid., 695) ↩
G. Simmel, Philosophy of Money; K. Englis, Foundations of Economic Thought; F. Wilken, Outlines of a Personalistic Theory of Value; F. Kaufmann, Logic and Economic Science.↩
Cit. n. 23/107 fn. The majority of national economists probably join J. Schumpcter in assessing the Roscher formula: Wicksell's "comments on this problem clearly show how little such general statements mean to the serious scholar. But the contradictions between them contribute to diminish the prestige of economic science in the eyes of all those laymen and historians who take them too literally and believe that everything else must follow from them." (History of Economic Analysis, vol. 2, 1319) Schumpeter's attitude, however, was very ambivalent. On page 854 (vol. 1), he himself uses this formula to classify the opposing directions within the older money theory. ↩
Maurice Godelier speaks of "the magic words of political economy, (...) the concepts of capital and money." (Rationality and Irrationality in Economics, 328) Joan Robinson states, "Money and interest rate, like goods and purchasing power, turn out to be inconceivable concepts if we really try to hold them." (Doctrines of Economics, 109) ↩
Henryk Grossmann points out that Engels misjudged the gcldthcorctical importance of Marx's theory of capital turnover. Marx had attached an undeserved importance to a "little important circumstance" (24/286). On this Grossmann remarks: "It was not Marx who overestimated the importance of the release, but Engels who decidedly underestimated and even misunderstood this problem and saw incorrectness where cinc is deep solution of a problem." (Das Akkumulations- und Zusammenbruchgesetz des kapitalistischen Systems, 324) How right Grossmann was is shown by cinc remark in the Rohentwurf: "The opposition of labor time and circulation time contains the whole doctrine of credit, insofar as here the currcncy history etc. comes in." (42/561) Engels' lack of understanding of gcldthcorctical problems raises the question of whether Engels' treatment of the credit-theoretical fragments could do full justice to Marx's intentions. ↩
See also 37/243, 38/233 u. 457, 39/36; "the whole context presupposes that the reader is well acquainted with the main works on this subject, such as Tooke and Fullarton." (37/243) An elementary introduction to the problems of credit from a Marxist point of view is given by: E.J. Bregel, Banks and Credit; E. Kaemmel, Financial History. The theoretical and institutional problems of the major credit policy controversies are presented in more detail by A. Wagner, Die Geldund Kredittheorie der Peel'sehen Bankakte. See also F. Burchardt, History of the Development of Monetary Business Cycle Theory. ↩
Roman Rosdolsky sees very correctly that the logical coherence of Marx's conceptualization in value and money theory stands or falls with the possibility of grasping the commodity as a dialectical unity of contradictory determinations: "But what is the real meaning of this contradiction" (Zur Entstehungsgeschichte des Marxschen 'Kapital', vol. 1, 148), "how often was Marx's proposition (...) repeated? (...) But how seldom has an effort been made to develop this proposition (...)? In reality (...) it is here (...) a proposition without which all the conclusions of Marx's theory of value and money appear mutilated." (Ibid., 165) It not only appears "mutilated" but simply become meaningless. Whether Rosdolsky's own interpretation helps solve the problem he very clearly recognizes will concern us in the next part of this paper. ↩
See Otto Veit's treatise of the same title. Contemporary Geldtheorie interprets the origin and nature of their differences very differently. W. Neubauer (Strategien, Techniken und Wirkungen der Geld und Kreditpolitik, 26 f.) gives a synopsis "of the political money and credit theories that have been advocated in recent decades and are often presented in the literature (...) as controversial, although they hardly contradict each other, but only seek to reach their goal in different ways that are adequate to the more or less tacitly assumed complex of conditions." If such an solution could be verified, then also those theories of money whose problems and concepts are oriented to the solution of a "money riddles" would be disqualified as idle mind games. Also the representatives of eclectic positions, such as those of E. Wagemann, would reject the attempt to take the differences within academic monetary theory as antinomic. D. I. Fand sees the controversies of monetarist and fiscalist as opposites in principle, reflecting "quite different models of the monetary process and are not merely a matter of emphasis, opinion, or focus." (A Monetarist Model of the Monetary Process, 3 6 2 ) ↩
K. Hartmann, Die Marxsche Theorie, 440. "The question (...) whether a non-contradictory theory of this economy is possible" (ibid., 441) would have to cause some difficulties for a Hegelian-oriented Marx critic. For Hartmann, too, "social reality (...) is dialectical, categorial, graspable, apart from its facticity. (...) Marx affirms the dialectic and its relevance for the social region, as do we." (Ibid., 582) The answer to his question then also reveals a certain uncertainty. On the one hand, it is "not really one of the questions we have to answer. It would be its own, positive project" (ibid., 441); on the other hand, however, he advocates the thesis "that there is at least one non- contradictory consideration of the economy as concrete" (ibid., 442), namely in the form of the neoclassical theory. The "proving of the functional interpretation, especially the ncoclassical one" makes "philosophizing about the concept of value superfluous." (Ibid., 404) Hartmann, however, now shows himself strangely dcsintcrcssic on the controversies within ncoclassicalcn price theory. The neo Austrian school's critique of total microeconomic analysis a la Walras and Cassel is a critique of a nontranscendental theory that treats "everything coexisting on the same level of being" as "equal and interdependent." It seems that such a non-transcendental theory necessarily entangles itself in circular reasoning (on this, see FI. Mayer, Der Erkenntniswert der funktionellen Preistheorien). As is well known, the ncoclassical theory of capital is also exposed to critical objections of a similar kind. It has by no means proved to be insufficient only "in the light of empirical facts" (K. Hartmann, Die Marxsche Theorie, 442); Sraffa and Robinson can prove inconsistencies. That Hartmann also ignores the money-theoretic controversies is all the more strange for a "Hegelian," since Hegel himself wants to see dialectical structures in the commodity-money structure: "the object itself is divided into the particular, commercial article, and the abstract, money." (Jenaer Systementwürfe, Vol. 3, 246) Another "Hegelian", Bruno Liebrucks, would like to see money interpreted dialectically. (On the Logical Place of Money, 265 ff). ↩
Cited in R. Rosdolsky, Zur Entstehungsgeschichte des Marxschen 'Kapital' vol. 1, 149 fn. ↩
Ibid, 209. See also his dissertation Zur Geldtheorie von Karl Marx, VII: "The task of exposing this Grundriß to its full extent (...) has yet to be accomplished. An attempt in this direction would have some prospect of producing something useful only in connection with a corresponding achievement for the other parts of the system. The present pages do not make the slightest claim to undertake it." Advanced interpretations of Marx's theory of money can be found in the French literature: S. de Brunhoff, La monnaie chez Marx; L'offre de monnaie; J.-L. Dallemagnce, L'inflation capitaliste. ↩
See on this: Karl Marx. Chronik seines Lebens in Einzeldaten, 29, 97, 103 ff, 113 f., 160. ↩
On this, see J. Ritsert, Probleme politisch-ökonomischer Theoriebildung, 116 f. ↩
Although the remark refers to the darstcllungswcisc in Capital, its content coincides with his characterization of the relationship between logical and historical elements in Marx's Zur Kritik der politischen Ökonomie. ↩
"To the full extent money has the functions mentioned only in the market economy." In the vcrwaltungswirtschaft, "the expression in monetary units must be supplemented by other scales. A machine is (...) allocated." Its value is not expressed in price. Money acquires the character of an instruction. (O. Veit, Real Theory of Money, 52) ↩
Alfred Schmidt, similar to Klaus Hartmann, tries to work out "that the subjective progress of cognition is objectively, according to its content, a regress." (Geschichte und Struktur, 62) "Marx, too, is convinced that the "backward-going substantiation of the beginning (...) and the forward-going detrmination of the same" takes place uno actu." (Ibid., 64) Nevertheless, Schmidt cannot bring himself to criticize Engels's "dialectic" of the logical and the historical as a 'vulgar Marxist misunderstanding.' Engels, however, had emphasized the parallelism "more than is objectively justified and serves the interest of a theory wclchc wants to avoid vulgar materialist misunderstandings." (Ibid., 44) Heinz Malorny does not show that the Engels interpretation of the logical method as a reflection of the historical course "is extremely significant for the understanding of the whole logical construction of Capital." (Zum Problem des Verhältnisses von Logischem und Historischem, 100) It is "to note that the logical derivation is not always merely an abbreviated reproduction of the historical course." (Ibid., 102) Marx "does not hesitate to take a path directly opposite to the historical course in the logical treatment of a problem." (Ibid., 105) How can we still hold to the view that the two methods "condition each other", "complement each other" and "interpenetrate"? The "penetration" is supposed to consist in "the fact that the logical analysis (...) reveals the wcscnsgchalt of the historical processes." (Ibid.) The derivation of the forms of value "at the same time reflects the essential in the historical development of commodity production" (ibid. 101). Why, in fact? In what does the measure of the essential consist if it at all meaningful to construct a dialectical relation of essence and appearance on this viewing level? I do not know in which way the "logical development" of the value forms could cause the separation of "essential" and "non-essential" facts. For the character of exchange antecedents in primitive societies, the researches of modern ethnology and economic anthropology are more revealing than those trivial facts which, in Marx, can have only illustrative significance. (On this, see Godelier, Rationality and Irrationality in Economics, 333 f.). Malorny knows a second case of the "interpenetration" of logical and historical method, namely that "the logical deductions are illustrated by the representation of historical processes (...)." (Zum Problem des Verhältnisses von Logischem und Historischem, 105) It would be time to first determine the logical relation of the terms illustration, interpenetration and dialectic. ↩
Materials for the Reconstruction of Marx's Theory of Value: III.
In the first part of the materials, the little-known and repeatedly suppressed fact should be brought out that the Marxist theoreticians tried in vain to win an understanding on the meaning of certain basic concepts of Marx's theory of value. It should further be recalled that the representatives of Marxian economics have long since given up trying to reach an agreement on the validity of Marx's theory of money. Finally, it had to be pointed out that not only the economic, but also the social-theoretical and methodological significance of the basic concepts of Marx's critique of economics in terms of value and money theory are highly controversial. The question arose whether the inconclusive course of the various debates could possibly also be attributed to the fact that, completely in accordance with the academic division of labor, the internally related problem areas were not discussed in their interconnectedness, but always only in isolation.
In the second part, we began to work out an inner connection between Marx's theory of value and his theory of money. In the third part, the central idea underlying the first two parts was then to be unfolded and justified by a detailed textual analysis.
The main point was the thesis that the different variants of the Marxist theory of value are bound to the way of thinking and the problem horizon of the academic theories of value. The seemingly quite heterogeneous and incommensurable value theories of Marxist and academic provenance could be understood as merely different manifestations of a value theory that is identical from a methodological point of view. The common and also constitutive feature of the seemingly contradictory theories would be that their concepts are supposed to describe interdependent exchange acts of a natural exchange economy. Thereby, the logical admissibility of the construction of interdependent and at the same time premonetary exchange acts is tacitly assumed. From their object of knowledge, the premonetary economy of natural exchange, these theories were characterized as different manifestations of a premonetary theory of value. The methodological novelty of Marx's theory of value was not understood until it was recognized as a critique of premonetary theories of value. The understanding of the Marxian theory therefore requires that it be distinguished not only from the classical and subjective, but also from the Marxist theory of value. Its peculiarity is not limited to its character as a critique of value-theoretical categories. It must be understood above all in its dual character as a critique of premonetary value theories and as a justification of certain "fundamental laws" of monetary theory. In this respect, it is no longer justified to classify Marx's 'value theory' as an independent discipline separate from money theory. Since its first argumentation figures are already influenced by money-theoretical problems, it can just as well be understood as money theory.
One could add: insofar as for Marx the product "is distinguished from itself as value" not only qualitatively but also quantitatively, and value is therefore to be understood not merely as "appearing" but above all also as "processing" (23/169), the theory of value conceived in this way can be described as a theory beyond the separation of value, money and capital theory. Marx's theory of value transcends the boundaries of the separate individual disciplines of established economics of academic or Marxist-Leninist provenance.
It is easy to see that such an interpretation is bound to the possibility of a strictly 'logical' interpretation of the categories and thus excludes a historicist interpretation. Thus, the question posed at the end of the second part of the materials, whether Engels, too, must be counted among those "good heads" who - according to a Marxian statement - had "not quite correctly grasped" the basic idea of the theory of value, was meant merely rhetorically. The 'logical' interpretation of the chapter developed by the modern Marxist secondary literature following the rough draft seemed to me, moreover, to have provided convincing proof that Engels, with his concept of "simple commodity production," had absurdly misunderstood Marx's basic concept of "simple circulation." This proof should merely be concretized to the effect that with the interpretation of the first chapter as a theory of value of a premonetary natural economy and of the third chapter as a monetary theory of 'simple commodity production' Engels ignored above all the monetary-theoretical intention of Marx's theory of value. With this statement the possibility seemed to be offered to explain the Engelsian misreception from his lack of money-theoretical interests and knowledge.
This alone should be added. With this it is already said that in the third part of the materials only the interpretation of Marx's theory of value as a critique of the premonetary theories of value and as a justification of a certain theory of money, which was initiated in the second part, was to be continued. For if it was justified to regard Engels' theory of simple commodity production merely as a curiosity, it must also have seemed a useless occupation to report in more detail than in a brief marginal note on the inner-Marxist controversy over 'logical' and 'historical' which had flared up again in recent years. After all, the 'logical' interpretation had apparently so conspicuously proven the argumentative superiority of its 'new Marx reading' that there seemed to be no reason whatsoever to take serious note of a controversy that was considered antiquated.
A written fixation of this 'logical' interpretation of the 'theory of value' as a critique of premonetary theories of value1, developed already in 1973 and presented several times since then, had to be omitted at first for quite external reasons. When the author finally started to write it down and on this occasion leafed through the relevant texts of Marx and Engels once more, he now became aware of some passages which could neither be inserted into the 'logical' interpretation advocated by him, nor into a historicist, 'logical-historical' interpretation. Thus, the problem of the 'logical' and the 'historical' suddenly came to the fore, of which the author had just believed that it had long since found its non-historical, 'logical' solution. The resulting necessity to re-examine the secondary literature under the aspect of 'logical' and 'historical' and to present its blind spots led to the fact that it was no longer possible to directly follow up the topic of the second part.
If I interpret the passages completely ignored by the various directions of the secondary literature correctly, they indicate a certain uncertainty on Marx's part to determine the origin and validity of the concepts he used. This uncertainty manifests itself above all in a different and more or less dogmatic treatment of the 'historical'.
From these observations arose, above all, the necessity of fundamentally reviewing the concept of a 'reconstruction' underlying the first two parts of the materials. This concept is based more or less tacitly on the idea, which now seems to me quite naive, that the Marxian critique of political economy is composed, so to speak, of two superimposed layers that can be clearly distinguished from each other: an exoteric surface and an esoteric depth layer. Something like a'reconstruction' basically consisted only in removing the vulgar Marxist overlays of Engels-Lenin provenance, but above all certain exoteric layers of Capital, in order to then be able to reveal an esoteric layer of depth. Essential elements of this deep layer, however, do not even need this uncovering, but have fortunately been preserved in the form of a separate Marxian manuscript, namely the rough draft of Capital. In this two-layer model of 'logical' interpretation or 'reconstruction' the esoteric method of a 'logical' development of economic categories is to be clearly and unambiguously distinguished from the pseudo-method of a 'logical-historical' development of economic stages of production. According to this view, what Marx criticized in Smith is repeated in Marx's work, namely a dualism of "exoteric" and "esoteric" value theory. Unlike Smith, however, in Marx's theory of value the elements of the conflicting conceptions are not said to "interpenetrate" each other, but to exist separately. The ambiguity of certain formulations is only an apparent one. Rather, it would be possible to extract the "logical" elements clearly and unambiguously from the various versions of the theory of value and, in connection with scattered individual remarks in the rough draft and the theories of surplus value, to reconstruct what Marx had clearly and unambiguously envisaged as the idea of a dialectical theory of value, but which, due to a didactic misfortune, he had merely brought to realization in an ambiguous and abbreviated manner. The interpretation intended during the writing of the first and second part of the materials was understood as a first contribution to such a reconstruction of the theory of value.
In the light of the text passages ignored until then, this "logically" conceived interpretation now proved to be an unjustifiable simplification of the problem of "representation", which had been inadequately solved for factual and by no means merely didactic reasons. The critical and monetary content is only one component of Marx's theory of value, so that the problematic peculiarity of this theory of value can only be grasped if one simultaneously keeps in mind the opposite component, its "logical-historical" intention. Only the recognition of certain ambiguities conveys an adequate picture of Man's theory of value.
Now, as is well known, a similar view is held by Louis Althusser, who, however, makes exclusive use of well-known passages: "With regard to the identity or non-identity of "logical" and "historical" order, Das Kapital gives us a series of answers."^[2] He asserts "the complexity of the answers given by Marx"2 and points to certain texts "where one could speak of a Marxian historicism".3
And it is precisely these points that have been largely hushed up in the orthodox meta-criticism of Athusser. All the more urgent is the question of how the orthodox literature can be made to take note of the arguments of a constructive Marx critique, which are quite unfamiliar to it. In other words, how will it be possible to convince in a penetrating way the representatives of the two orthodox directions, who are fixated on a "logical" or "logical-historical" univocity, that certain ambiguities and contradictions are inherent in Marx's texts? Probably not by a discussion, no matter how subtle, of hitherto ignored passages of the text. An ambiguous text, as is well known, points to unresolved factual problems, and it is a political, but also a natural interest to avoid the uncertainties resulting from this. The interpretation of an ambiguous, "multilayered" and in places "dark" text is furthermore dependent on certain assumptions and thus burdened with some risks. The apologist is thus easily offered the opportunity to produce seemingly plausible answers in order to be able to lecture the critic that he allegedly did not understand this or that quotation deeply enough or even overlooked it completely. A direct commentary on the continuous text therefore seems to me to lead nowhere for this reason alone.
The proof of a certain ambiguity, "multilayeredness" and "darkness" of some Marxian texts does not need to be provided today directly on the basis of the texts themselves. Rather, it should be conducted through the Marxist secondary literature, which, in its hopeless disagreement, has provided this proof far more convincingly than a critic of Marx's texts could ever do.
In the third part of the materials we will first deal in an introductory section in general form with strange phenomena of Marxist secondary literature. In a special part they will be further specified by the example of some authors and on the basis of some selected problems. Admittedly, it was necessary to refrain from discussing in more detail the most important topic of contemporary Marx research, namely the problem of method. This restriction was necessary above all because the unsolved problems of Marxian methodology are to a considerable extent identical with the problems of a theory of money and capital based on value theory in general. This is, of course, only one side of the methodological problem - its economic aspect. Its other side is described by what K-O. Apel called "the essence of dialectics that remained unthought between Hegel and Marx "4 - it is about its scientific-theoretical and philosophical aspect. The problem set with the Marxian theoretical approach is best characterized by the remark that the difficult-to-fathom intertwining of the two problem areas has not yet been sufficiently recognized by either economic or philosophical authors. The elaboration of Marx's approach, however, can now be characterized in some sense as the task of overcoming the dichotomies of contemporary philosophy of science. The complicated interpenetration of problems of economic science and philosophy has been seen within the Marx-oriented literature only by Althusser, and in the academic one probably only by Georg Simmel and Bruno Liebrucks. The absolute sterility of the orthodox literature will have to be judged as an unmistakable indication that the problems opened up by Marx can no longer be sufficiently advanced with Marxian means of thinking. Then Althusser is to be agreed with. But whether these means of thinking are now provided by structuralism seems to me quite doubtful.
All these questions can only be hinted at in passing here. It can only be a matter of documenting the methodological perplexity and helplessness of Marxist authors, whereby it should not be overlooked that some of the authors consulted cannot be considered representative of the great majority of Marxist interpreters because of their above-average problem consciousness.
It hardly needs any special emphasis here that even the academic representations of Marx's Capital, especially of the theory of value, have not caught up with the Marxian level of problems. A metacriticism of academic Marx criticism, however, must be reserved for special study, as must a detailed and systematic analysis of the Marxist secondary literature.
The third part of the materials deals with the thesis that one can use certain arguments of the 'logical' interpretation to invalidate the validity of the 'logical-historical' interpretation, but also, conversely, that one can use certain arguments of the 'logical-historical' interpretation to point out some unsolved problems and the merely partial justification of the 'logical' interpretation. The stalemate of the two adversarially opposed models of interpretation is admittedly to be understood as an indication that the methodologically so significant problematic of 'logical' and 'historical' has been unsatisfactorily solved in Marx himself. This issue, however, cannot be discussed until the fourth part of the materials, where the actual textual analysis will be attempted.
The primary discussion of the secondary literature and thus the redisposition in the structure of this work seems to me justified for other reasons as well. First of all, it should be pointed out that we currently have a literature on capital that is growing into the infinite, that is only manageable for specialists, and that is in some ways almost incoherent. It is true that three relatively homogeneous directions of interpretation can be distinguished; but even within these groups there is hardly anything perceptible of an effort to find a common, consensual specification and further development of certain Marxian concepts in relation to the present. Between the three major directions - the 'logical-historical', the 'logical' and the model platonist interpretation - there exists rather a kind of mute coexistence. However, the ideas about objectives, problems and methods are so diametrically opposed that one would not even like to believe that the interpretative efforts of these diverging directions have the same work as their object, Marx's Capital.
Instead of a serious confrontation of conflicting interpretations, which in the controversy should at the same time show their inner togetherness and therefore seriously engage with the arguments of the opposite side, one finds either mutual indifference or merely a pseudo-referring and pseudo-criticizing. It is well known that these pseudo-discussions often turn into open irrationality and wild polemics5 - and this about concepts which claim highest scientific objectivity: about the basic concepts of "scientific socialism."
When Gisbert Rittig, with regard to the opposition of the labor theory of value and the theory of marginal utility, asked the question "whether there could be two theories in one and the same science with regard to its core, and whether this scandal should continue to exist for another hundred years",6 one will have to deal today first of all with the always suppressed scandal that even in one and the same theory with regard to its core there exist at least three disparate propositional systems. The scandal of this triadicity of mutually negating Marxist interpretations of capital has never been addressed so far for two reasons:
the inner-Marxist disputes could so far always be classified into the following problem complexes:
a. philosophical or political questions of principle,
b. special economic problems,
c. revisionist or orthodox assessment of Capital.
This triadicity of contradictory interpretations of capital, however, does not fit into this scheme and therefore represents a completely new problem.
The adherents of these three forms of reception are not yet ready to recognize the triadicity described above. Each direction is still convinced that it can either absorb the others or ignore them as scientifically irrelevant. The novel problematic therefore becomes conscious only to the extent that it becomes more and more obvious that each direction is able to assert itself argumentatively against the other two. The emergence of a new kind of interpretation, the "logical" one, does not in itself lead to a new kind of problem. But as soon as it becomes apparent that its spread is reaching its limits and that a certain equilibrium is settling between the three interpretations, the disconcerting and shocking fact also comes to the fore that Capital is apparently accessible in principle to divergent ways of reading it.
The extent to which the problem posed by the triadicity eludes conventional explanatory patterns of a political and philosophical nature is evident above all from the fact that it cannot be traced back to the opposition between "revisionist" neo-Marxism and "dogmatic" Soviet Marxism. Approaches of "logical" ways of reception can be found even in Soviet literature. The dispute over what can be meaningfully understood by a dialectical contradiction and a dialectical method in Capital is also not alien to Soviet literature. Using the Soviet example, it is possible to demonstrate, in a way that can hardly be refuted, that dogmatic agreement on the traditional "basic questions" of Marxist philosophy did not succeed in preventing the emergence of irreconcilable disagreements7 on the methodological problems of Capital. The Soviet interpreters themselves seemed to want to provide evidence that a new kind of problematic was gradually emerging which was located beyond the traditional oppositions. One may conclude from this that its reappraisal requires the development of a new kind of economic-philosophical conceptual system.8
It should also be noted that only Capital and the rough draft have been received affirmatively by the "logical" interpreters. The 'new reading of capital' has emerged in the circle of the Frankfurt School9 and therefore owes itself above all to the Frankfurt critique of the theory of reflection and the dialectic of nature as well as of the basis-superstructure theorem. It behaves orthodoxly only towards Marx's critique of economics, but quite revisionist towards certain leading philosophical ideas of Marx and Engels. Because of this ambivalent attitude, one could characterize the "logical" direction of the interpretation of capital as neo-orthodox.
It should, of course, give pause for thought that out of this orthodoxy, which in its origins was thoroughly anti-dogmatic, the new dogmatism of a text-believing Marx philology was able to emerge,10 which tends to confuse a "correct" interpretation of Marx's texts with a consensual explication and solution of economic and methodological factual problems. The text of Capital is regarded as sacrosanct, its hundred-year history of influence, on the other hand, as the history of a great error brought into the world by Engels and Lenin. The representatives of Leninist theory were able to replicate with the argument, which in itself is quite correct, that the renunciation of an epistemological reflection of the basic economic concepts amounts to the establishment of a new dogmatism11 . This dangerous argument, which could possibly turn out to be a boomerang, can of course be brought into the field against the "logical" interpretation as a whole. In any case, one cannot avoid the question whether the strange structure of a new dogmatism has not emerged with a certain inevitability from the new orthodoxy.
Moreover, it could be shown that also the model-platonist and the "logical-historical" interpretation can hardly be assigned to a political or philosophical faction. Indeed, the two different forms of reading capital can be found in both the revisionist and the orthodox literature of the Second International. They can, of course, also be traced in the otherwise politically and philosophically homogeneous Soviet Marxist literature. Although the 'logical' interpretation is only very timidly and contradictorily advocated by Soviet authors,12 it can be summarized that all three forms of reception are quite indifferent politically and philosophically within certain limits. The triadicity of Marxist interpretations of Capital is thus at odds with the traditional inner-Marxist oppositions.
All the more surprising and also disturbing must be the fact that even beyond these opposites the Marxist interpreters do not know how to agree, but new barriers have arisen. It cannot be ruled out, however, that the new problematic will gradually push back the traditional oppositions. In any case, their perception and intellectual penetration should generally precede the actual textual analysis.
The priority discussion of certain problems of the secondary literature seems to me to be justified above all on the basis of the already mentioned fact that it should have a certain indicative function. If it should turn out to be true that not only one, but every Marxist direction in the interpretation of Capital gives arguments to problematize the position of the other, then it is obvious to assume that the Marxian text itself gives reason to argue with Marx against every Marxist interpretation and ultimately also with Marx against Marx. It is therefore a plausible assumption that the existence of contradictory types of Marxist interpretation merely reflects certain contradictions and unresolved problems of Marx's critique of economics.
Such assumptions, of course, require a detailed analysis of both the secondary literature and Marx's texts. That they may claim a high degree of plausibility, however, can already be demonstrated in this introductory development of the problem.
In this context, it is a matter of the phenomenon, which has already been stated several times in this work, that a whole number of weighty problems are meanwhile characterized by a quasi antinomic character. Some of them were already discussed more than seventy years ago, and again and again fruitless attempts were made to solve them. At the same time, the optimism regarding a final solution stands in a strange contrast to the fact that these inner-Marxist controversies tend again and again to veer into the irrational. An inner-Marxist and at the same time rational discussion seems at times a 'contradictio in adjecto'. If one further considers that Marxist scholars have for decades proved incapable of closing the gaps of the second and third volumes, of carrying out the extensions planned by Marx on the basis of the given, and above all of developing a theory of science oriented to the paradigm of Capital,13 one will hardly be able to suppress doubts about the viability of the foundations. Thus, the perpetuation of the crisis of foundations is obviously not only a characteristic of the academic theory of money, capital and the business cycle. The frequently made comparison between value-theoretical economics and metaphysics is thus justified at least in the respect that not only in metaphysics the "study is far from having taken the sure course of a science, but is a mere plodding along."14 The continued "plodding around" of Marxist economics would remain quite puzzling if Marx had succeeded convincingly in carrying out the "revolution of the mode of thought" claimed by Kant for epistemology in the theory of money and capital as well.
On the other hand, it is a very strange phenomenon that more than a hundred years after the publication of the first volume of Capital, we still have to speak of an "obscure area"15 of this work and of an "unknown Marx."16 The paradox of the Marxist secondary literature is thus not only that it has disintegrated into a multiplicity of contradictory interpretations and, moreover, that it has proved incapable of bringing Marx's work to a conclusion, let alone continuing to develop it in relation to the present, but above all that even the appropriation of this fragment has succeeded only superficially.
In fact, some very significant problems and attempts at solutions can be traced, which have not found their way into any of the established models of interpretation and have also remained absolutely alien to their counterpart, academic Marx criticism. One can even go a step further and argue, with Althusser, that "we all stand only at the threshold of the territory" that "Marx discovered and opened up for us."17 Even from a decidedly non-structuralist position, I think it is possible to argue that Marx's efforts are directed toward "the radical founding (...) of a new problematic"[^19] and that the spokespersons of traditional reception and criticism have, without exception, remained "ignorant of what Marx has to say to us."18
There is now good reason to assume that one as well as the other had to take place with a certain necessity: It was certainly no coincidence that three disparate Marxist forms of reception emerged and that none of them proved capable of developing the Marxian fragment economically and theoretically. And it was certainly just as little a coincidence that all three modes of reception missed central questions of Marx's critique of economics.
If Marx can obviously only be received in a contradictory way by Marxist authors, and if it is still possible to detect in his work problematics and constructions which, even a hundred years after the publication of the third volume, have remained hidden from both the apologetic and the critical interpreters of Capital, then one will finally have to come to the conclusion "that Marx in his time did not possess the concept which would have enabled him to think in an adequate way what he actually produced."19 Again, it should be emphasized that this thesis of Althusser's rightly exists even if one is strictly opposed to his proposed structuralist solutions. It only needs to be remembered here that, notwithstanding some differences in principle, similar views have also been put forward by the Frankfurt School.
Basically, then, there are two different but complementary theses under discussion. The first is that some weighty concepts and constructions belong to disparate and in some respects even contradictory structures.
This thesis seems to fully confirm the negative evaluation of Marxian economics by academic Marx criticism. On the other hand, it is a matter of the fact that these concepts and constructions refer to precisely that radically new dimension of the problem which has not merely remained hidden from the various variants of Marxist interpretation, but precisely from academic Marx criticism. In this respect, the second thesis also relativizes this critique in a certain way.
The proof of a "dark area" of Marx's work is by no means bound to a structuralist reading of capital. It was provided in the Federal Republic by those who had endeavored to reappraise dialectical figures of thought and led, as is well known, to the neo-orthodox reading of Capital. The reappraisal of these figures is far from complete, which is especially noticeable in the still unsatisfactory, in some ways still pre-dialectical definition of Marx's concept of labor. The actual failures of the neo-orthodox direction, however, lie in a completely different field. For it has always scrupulously avoided the discussion of the fact, which cannot be ignored, that it has basically not dealt with Capital at all, but with the rough draft. One may twist and turn it however one likes, it remains a fact that in Capital only a pale trace of the dialectical figures of thought present in abundance in the rough draft has remained.20
But if Marx ascribes only a part of these figures to the "rational core" of the dialectic, then one will have to deal primarily with the question of the nature and the conditions of validity of that standard which legitimates a distinction between "rational" and "mystical" categories of an economic dialectic. The question of the "rational core" of the dialectic thus reproduces itself once again within Marx's work.
The existence of an "area lying in darkness" can be vividly demonstrated by the value-form analysis contained in the third section of the first chapter. Although Marx wanted to have accomplished with this analysis what "the human mind (...) has sought in vain to fathom for more than 2000 years" (23/12), as is well known, it was permanently ignored even by Marxist interpreters until a few years ago - incidentally, a solid proof that Marx did not know how to convincingly explain the necessity of a transition from the second to the third section or from substance to the form of value in any version.21 If in Marxist literature and occasionally even in academic Marx criticism quite a lot of fuss is now made of this value-form analysis, this should not obscure the fact that with this analysis - as well as with the doctrine of the fetish character of the commodity that follows from it - usually only diffuse ideas are associated. Its actual purpose as well as the problems resulting from it are familiar to almost no Marx interpreter. This is especially true of the present representatives of the older orthodoxy; it will be shown by way of example in this part of the work that they literally do not know what they are talking and writing about. If they knew what the historicity of the value form is really about, they would have to give up either the Marxian value form analysis or their Soviet Marxist orientation. But not only from the point of view of economic theory, but also from the point of view of scientific theory, the value form analysis has remained a closed book.
It goes without saying that even the critics of Marx's theory have not been able to develop the slightest sense of what Marx actually intended with value-form analysis and the doctrine of the fetish character of the commodity.22 It cannot be ruled out a priori that Marx wrestled with pseudo-problems or worked out unacceptable solutions. But before such an answer can be given, one will first have to familiarize oneself with the problems themselves and at the same time develop a consensual theory of economic pseudo-problems. With respect to value-form analysis, however, academic Marx criticism is far below the level of Marx's problems, and the fiercely feuding camps of academic economics are further away than ever from a consensual theory of pseudo-economic problems.
If, however, a central piece of Marx's critique of economics has been able to stubbornly evade appropriation by the Marxist and academic secondary literature, then one may conclude from this strange phenomenon alone that there cannot have been merely certain "deficiencies of presentation" here. If one considers, moreover, that Marx repeatedly attempted to remedy these deficiencies he identified,23 then only one conclusion seems plausible to me: the "deficiencies of presentation" are in truth merely the expression of inadequately solved factual problems, deficiencies of the material analysis.
But not only the value-form analysis, but also other problem areas opened up by Marx, e.g. the problem of "imaginary" or "conceptless" categories, but above all the problem of the determination of the object of theoretical economy, have so far either not been received at all or only very inadequately.
This strange failure of all established directions of Marxist interpretation of Capital cannot be attributed as a general phenomenon to a subjective inability of individual interpreters. Nor can it be derived from apologetic intentions, because the same blindness to certain questions also characterizes academic Marx criticism. One will only be able to understand it if one starts from the assumption that the "discovery" of those new problem areas "theoretically went far beyond the available philosophical concepts."24 Marx saw himself unable to articulate his own discovery sufficiently clearly and distinctively by means of the economic-philosophical concepts he used, which, after all, belong to quite different theoretical models. Only in this way is it possible to understand the strange fact that the wealth of ideas, but also the problems of Marx's critique of economics are by no means exhausted in the summation of affirmative and critical interpretations. And only in this way is it possible to understand the never-ending chain of new interpretations, each of which claims to understand Marx better than the previous one, but in fact does nothing other than refine a certain model of interpretation and thus further deepen the difference or contrast between the models.
It goes without saying that even the basic defect of Marxist theory, the triadicity of its interpretations of Capital, remains a puzzle if one starts from the assumption that Marx's critique of economics is an unfinished whole but logically coherent from its design. If, however, one proceeds from the opposite assumption, that heterogeneous or even contradictory elements and structures are united in Capital, one gains at the same time a key to the explanation of that strange triadicity of the Marxist secondary literature.
The in some respects quite homogeneous and logically coherent types of Marxist interpretation can be understood as the various manifestations of unsolved methodological problems in Marx himself, which affect the modes of appropriation of Marxian theory. This will be elaborated in the following example of the reception of the "core" of Marx's theory.
Within traditional Marxist value theory, two opposing directions can be distinguished: One mode of reception of Marx's theory of value is common today, especially among neo-Marxist economists, and could be characterized as a 'model Platonist' or 'economist'. The other mode of reception is that of the older orthodoxy, which at present is advocated by almost only the great majority of Marxist-Leninist authors. In conscious contrast to these two traditional directions, a completely new interpretation has been gaining ground in recent years, which has been referred to here as younger orthodoxy.
The first of the two traditional directions is 'model platonist' oriented, namely insofar as it interprets the conceptual operations of the first three chapters of Capital as the construction of a model of simple commodity production, which is approximated to the reality of capitalist commodity production by way of a successive concretization. This model, he argues, is preceded by a further methodological abstraction, to which corresponds historically a priceless, mythical primordial state. Ronald L. Meek therefore believes he can characterize Marx's methodology as 'mythodology' - an expression which, in my opinion, very aptly characterizes a model-platonist view of Marx's method. One can speak of an 'economist' direction because its representatives are only interested in quantitative problems and are not able to recognize in Marx's value-form analysis problems relevant to economic theory.
The Marxian "development" of value forms is understood as a historical excursus on the emergence of money, which is more to be assigned to economic history than to economic theory. The model-platonist interpretation of the first three chapters, of course, entails the difficulty that with simple commodity production, value must also be judged as a merely useful fiction.
The older orthodoxy, following Engels, insists, as is well known, on understanding the "development" of the value form 'logically-historically', namely as a 'logical' representation of a historical development; otherwise than in a logical-historical way, the validity of the value-theoretical categories could not be justified.
In his "Abrechnung mit der sterbenden Wertlehre" v. Gottlott Lilienfeld shows that certain "fabeleien" about "Urtausch und Urpreis" are peculiar to all theories of value known to him, the subjective as well as the objective ones. In its various variants, the theory of value invents a "partner in exchange" whom it "endows with the wonderful gift of the immediately great 'estimation' which would go to the 'value' itself or the utility, etc.."25 Certain laws are imputed to the acts of estimation of these subjects of economics, ironized by Marx as "primal fishermen and primal hunters"(13/46), which are supposed to have regulated the exchange relationship of goods in those "preadamitic times" (13/44).
As far as the value-theoretical systems allow a systematic sequence of economic categories at all, one could say that a premonetary beginning forms the starting point of both the economic-theoretical and the economic-historical, both the 'logical' and the historical 'development'. The first stage of this double-meaning 'development' is characterized by the category "exchange value", which is conceived as something real and not merely as a mental auxiliary construction. All theories of value regard this category as a determination logically and historically existing for itself, which is logically and historically replaced by another determination, the price. There is no question of a 'continuous development' or 'continuation' of the first category.
Depending on whether the acts of estimation are related to 'utility' or to 'labor', one distinguishes subjective and objective theories of value. With certain limitations, today this difference is identical with the opposition of non-Marxist and Marxist positions. Within the traditional Marxist theory of value, a further distinction must then be made between the "model platonist" and the "logical-historical" concepts. The "model platonist" or "methodological" direction, taken by the vast majority of the "subjective" authors, would like the actors of those acts of estimation to be understood as model figures, while the "logical-historical" direction insists that such economic "primeval men" really existed.
The value theories, which are very heterogeneous in content and partly even contrary, are based on some common premises, so that they can be seen through as merely different manifestations of a very specific type of value theory. They tacitly and unreflectively assume the logical permissibility of the procedure of abstracting from the "money veil" and of interpreting the result of this abstraction as the model of a fictitious or as the structure of a historical natural economy and ultimately as the 'being' of the modern money economy hidden under the "money veil". The natural economic processes are regarded as the "essence" of the monetary economic ones; the natural economic categories shape the character of the monetary economic ones: there is no difference in principle between "exchange" and "exchange value" on the one hand, "purchase-sale" and "price-money" on the other hand. The logically developed "laws" of premonetary acts of exchange in the fictitious or historical natural exchange economy are not supposed to differ from the "laws" of monetarily mediated acts of exchange of a modern monetary economy.
Insofar as these premonetary theories of value of Marxist or non-Marxist provenance conceive the laws of "exchange" in the premonetary and the monetary "exchange" economy as structurally identical ones, they could also be characterized as deformed analyses of essence: the "economy of natural exchange" is regarded by them as the "essence" of the monetary economy; they both want to find out what is hidden "behind" the prices mediated by money. From a methodological point of view, the difference between the two theories is actually merely a terminological one: what one calls a "money veil", the other calls an "appearance". In both cases the 'veil' or the 'appearance' can merely be thought away and only by thought experiments can be brought into 'experience' what actually happens. In both cases it is assumed that the 'being' merely refers externally to its 'appearance' and therefore can be separated from its appearance by mental operations just as the kernel of a nut can be separated from its shell. This 'analytical' procedure, however, turns out to be not at all unproblematic at a closer look: The 'measure' has doubled itself under the hand, it exists once as 'benefit' or 'work' and on the other hand as 'abstract unit of calculation'. Thus, it is not really to be seen any more, how 'benefit' or 'work' could be mediated with the 'abstract unit of computation' in thought. Thus the question arises how to ascend from 'being' to 'appearance' again.
The traditional theories of value, the Marxist ones as well as the subjective ones, can be characterized as variants of the same value-theoretical model mainly because they are not able to reflect this problem: More or less arbitrarily they link 'being' and 'appearance', value and money. This disjunction of 'being' and 'appearance' is the real reason for the dichotomy of value- and money theory. Each of these two disciplines is just as externally related to the other as the 'being' is to the 'appearance': they each possess their own material object, develop their own conceptual apparatus and, as such a logically closed whole, can even be presented in separate textbooks. Thus, there are numerous Marxist treatises on the theory of value, which conclude with the presentation of the first chapter of Capital or immediately lead over to the theory of capital. Also, the discussions within each discipline have in principle nothing in common with the discussions within the other. Thus there is full agreement between Marxist and non-Marxist theorists that the dispute over Marx's theory of value has in principle nothing to do with the dispute over Marx's theory of money, and vice versa. The broad-based value-theoretic discussions within academic economics are very precisely separated from the money-theoretic controversies; the well-known money-theoretic discussions within Marxist economics have in turn been very precisely separated from the value-theoretic controversies. An analysis of all these discussions could very well bring out the common traits of the apparently quite incommensurable Marxist and 'bourgeois' theories of value.26
The value-theoretic indifference of monetary theory and the money-theoretic indifference of value theory is the characteristic feature of premonetary value theory and of monetary theory correlating to it. It is particularly evident in the fact that contrary theories of value have often been combined with the same theory of money, or the same theory of money has often been combined with contrary theories of value. Thus, although the combination of the Marxist theory of value with quantity-theoretic or even nominalist theories of money has been severely criticized again and again, it has never been combined with the otherwise very quickly raised accusation of having completely misunderstood the fundamentals of Marx's theory of value. There is general agreement that a Marxist who is heterodox in terms of monetary theory can certainly be an orthodox Marxist in terms of value theory. One could also express this in this way: The orthodox attitude of a Marxist economist was measured primarily by Marx's doctrine of the substance of value, but hardly by the doctrine of the form of value. That the form analysis is essentially money theory and seeks to substantiate theorems very relevant in economic theory cannot be seen at all from the position of a premonetary theory of value.
If the Marxian 'theory of value' now differs from the traditional, especially the Ricardian, by criticizing the money-theoretical indifference of these theories, then it seems to me justified to subsume the Marxian as well as the subjective one to the generic term of a 'premonetary theory of value' and to oppose it to the Marxian 'theory of value', which could actually only be justified as a critique of these premonetary theories of value.
Separation from the other disciplines of theoretical economics is, of course, a constitutive feature of what is commonly understood as value theory. Also, the idea of a contrast between subjective and Marxist or objective value determination has become so firmly attached to the concept of value theory that the structural similarity is not recognized and therefore the attribute "premonetary" has not by chance never been used so far. The differences in content, however, could only be seen through as superficial if the common premises were reflected and problematized.
In its first versions, Marx's critique of economic categories was still very clearly determined by the intention to destroy the premises of the premonetary theory of value. Marx wanted to show that the concept of a premonetary and at the same time labor-divided market economy and thus also the model of a natural exchange economy cannot be constructed without contradictions. The concept of a premonetary commodity was to be recognized as one that is impossible to conceive. This included above all the proof that the construction of an exchange process of premonetary commodities must necessarily fail.
The critical content of Marx's theory of value is inseparable from its positive statements. Marx was primarily concerned with the development of the thesis that the connection between value and money must be understood as the connection between the "immanent" and "appearing" measure of value, between the substance and form of value. Value, then, cannot be thought of as a premonetary substance existing by itself, externally related to a third thing called money. Value does not exist beyond and independently of its "adequate" manifestation. As an "economic dimension" of things - value "exists" in this way and not otherwise. To deny its "existence" would be to deny the "existence" of money and price. Marx thus grasps the problem of "absolute" value as the problem of money, and vice versa. But if value cannot be thought without money and money cannot be thought otherwise than as the "existence" of "absolute" value, then a theory of value cannot be constructed before and beside the theory of money. The organic connection of value and price finds its theoretical expression in the fact that the theory of value must "cancel itself out" in a certain theory of money. The "germ cell metaphor" has just its rational core.
The model of a natural exchange economy forms the "conditio sine qua non" of conventional monetary theories. Therefore, from the critique of the premonetary theories of value results a critique of the monetary theories corresponding to it.
From Marx's 'theory of value' there can thus be derived four kinds of problems:
The justification and development of value as the determinant of the exchange relation. These are the traditional problems of the quantitative theory of value;
the critique of premonetary theories of value;
the justification of a particular theory of money;
the critique of the theories of money corresponding to the premonetary theories of value, whose aporias are said to have arisen primarily from the separation of the organically related categories of value and money.
These four problem areas refer only to the 'theory of value in the narrower sense'. Now value is not merely "appearing" and as such money, value in the emphatic sense is 'processing' and thus capital. Consequently, only the theory of value in the narrow sense is money theory, in a broader and proper sense it is the theory of capital.27
The separation of the theory of value in the strict sense from the theory of capital therefore permits only a preliminary discussion of the genesis of the money form. It is very probable that certain concepts of the theory of value, namely those belonging to the doctrine of the 'substance' of value, can be specified and substantiated retroactively from more concrete stages of the 'development' of the concept of value. These include such concepts as abstract labor and simple circulation, the discussion of which must therefore be deferred. This procedure seems to me justified because the doctrine of the derivation of money entails certain problems which are hardly visible at the more concrete stages of the "development" of value.
The eminently important problem of the transformation of values into prices and the no less important one of the relation between simple and complicated labor can be examined here just as little28 as the problem of the labor-time calculation, which is connected with those questions and is extraordinarily important for the evaluation of Marx's value-form analysis. On this occasion it should not be omitted to point out that it is hardly possible to say anything conclusive about the validity of the value-form analysis until more light has been thrown into the darkness of the quantitative problems of the theory of value. Although the qualitative and the quantitative problem areas ultimately refer to each other, they possess a certain independence from each other.
The discussion of the qualitative theory of money must also be postponed here. Only to clarify the problem background, some aporias of academic money theory are pointed out.
This catalog of problems can now also be taken as an indication that the theory of value and thus the traditional theory of money and capital must be regarded as a rather problematic entity in general. Their theorems have already been judged earlier as an expression of a "word-bound thinking". The possibility of such a theory is currently disputed by the analytic philosophy of science: on the one hand, it asks the "'what is it?' questions" frowned upon by analytic philosophy, and on the other hand, it is not able to falsify its answers to these questions. Such an entity must therefore be denied scientific status.
One may be divided about the criteria of meaning and delimitation of analytic philosophy, but the problem of non-falsifiable statements undoubtedly leads to the question: How is value theory possible as science?
The object of knowledge of theoretical economics can neither be conceived as a natural, sensually experienceable object or process nor as an individual or social context of action or meaning. The disjunction of explaining and understanding, scientific and hermeneutic procedures, a posteriori and a priori statements does not do justice to the objects, concepts and problems of traditional economics. Their object has always been treated as an individual, sensuously experienceable and at the same time as a non-individual, sensuously non-experienceable, as a thing and at the same time as a supra-individual context of action or meaning. Its terms therefore at least partly elude operational definitions and its statements at least partly elude the possibility of empirical falsification.
An empirical science in the sense of the various demarcation criteria discussed by analytic philosophy of science is certainly not the traditional theory of money and capital - the subjective one just as little as the classical and the Marxian one. Therefore, at least some basic concepts and problems of these theories would have to be judged as illusory concepts and illusory problems of economics and eliminated from economics understood as an empirical science. For example, it is not to be seen how the concept of the 'abstract unit of account' could be defined operationally and how the statements operating with such a concept could be tested empirically. Admittedly, it should give food for thought that even conventionalist strategies have failed again and again. The same is true for the notion of a 'factor' that is supposed to cause 'costs' and produce 'returns'. The obscure notion of the 'abstract unit of account' is now needed, however, in order to be able to relate the different 'factors' to each other at all. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that in economic reality 'calculation' with indefinable units and 'factors' are related to each other. Nor does it seem entirely pointless to ask about the 'sources' of interest, although they must be quite hidden ones, which as such can be found only by 'pure reflection'.
However, the elimination of these concepts and problems as illusory concepts and illusory problems can only be avoided if beyond the dualism of logical empiricism and hermeneutics a 'method sui generis' can be explicated.29
If one assumes the possibility of such a non-falsifiable theory of money and capital, which would be able to elaborate the problems of classical economics from Hegelian figures of thought and to critically develop its categories, then only a position between the empirical sciences and a dialectical philosophy could be characterized as its theoretical location. While a 'pure' empirical science can be classified as an autonomous, philosophically indifferent discipline, there is a relationship of mutual justification between the Marxian qualitative analysis of money and capital and a certain philosophy. At present, one can hardly do more than make a few assumptions as to whether the system of dialectical materialism envisaged by Marx and Engels is at all suitable to function as a kind of metatheory of political economy and whether other approaches might not prove far more useful to specify and substantiate the categories used in political economy in a generally valid way.
Already the attempts of Marx and Engels were not at all convincing to take some provisions of the critique of economics as 'proven' laws in eco nomy as well as in natural science. The completely inappropriate comparisons between the categories 'being' and 'appearance' used in economics with certain relations in natural science are, in my opinion, a solid proof that Marx did not know how to clarify the logical status of the categories he found or applied in the analysis of money and capital. The controversies within Marxist-Leninist philosophy over the meaning of what Marx understood as a "dialectical method of development" (31/313) must also provoke skepticism as to whether Marx was on the right track in his search for a complementary philosophy demanded by his critique of economics. This is also evident from the problem of the relation between the 'logical' and the "historical" in Marx's theory of value. The original concept of this work, to attempt a logical reconstruction of Marx's theory of value, could claim a whole series of good reasons. Namely, it can be shown that the value-form analysis gains a graspable meaning and a non-trivial propositional content only if it is interpreted as a critique of premonetary theories of value and, in unity with it, as a qualitative theory of money. This double character of Marx's analysis of form can now only be recognized and elaborated on the basis of a "logical" reception.
Those passages ignored so far by the "logical" as well as by the "logical-historical" direction seem to me to confirm that even the "logical" interpretation does not do justice to certain problems of Marx's theory. First of all, it must be emphasized that Engels, the founder of the "logical-historical" interpretation, at times very clearly recognized some structural features of a "logically" conceived theory of value and even rejected a "logical-historical" interpretation as a blatant misunderstanding. The historicist turn in his late works would remain quite puzzling if it could not also be shown that Marx sought to relate the "logically" developed categorial analysis to a "logically-historical" development. This tendency, already present in the rough draft, finally emerges so strongly in the fifth and last treatment of his "Genesis of Money," the value-form analysis in the version of the second edition of Capital, that one might wonder whether Marx had not completely changed his methodological concept. It seems to me justified in some respects to speak of a process of 'historicization' of the 'logical'.
These newly arisen problems are, of course, only capable of relativizing the 'logical' reconstruction of the theory of value as an interpretation. There is no doubt that the problems of money theory do not allow such a 'historicization' of the 'logical' at all. The 'logical' reception of Marx's categorial analysis is therefore to be criticized only as an interpretation, whereby it must not be overlooked that this interpretation is to be regarded as a necessary stage of passage for a more adequate grasp of Marx's attempt to abolish aporias of money and capital theory. And also only ex post the statement has become possible that it was based on a rather naive concept of reconstruction.30
However, not only for reasons of monetary theory, but also for reasons of economic history, the older orthodoxy, which is currently only present in Marxist-Leninist textbooks, is not a serious alternative. Its doctrines on the historical genesis of money and on the acts of exchange of the "immediate commodity exchange" are based without exception on "a priori conceptions of development."31 It goes without saying that a "logical-historical" method operating with pure "fables" about "history" is irrevocably obsolete.
Although the ideas of the older orthodoxy of a simple "commodity production" seem hopelessly antiquated as a theory, one cannot deny them a certain justification as an interpretation. The "logical" interpretation will finally have to take note of the fact that the 'logical-historical' interpretation of Capital is not plucked out of thin air, but is quite capable of invoking some strange facts.
Thus an objection has been raised by a representative of the Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy, Klaus Holzkamp, which cannot be brushed aside lightly. Holzkamp rightly asks "what interest Marx should actually have pursued with his historical remarks, if they actually contribute nothing to the comprehension of bourgeois society after all". The representatives of the 'logical' interpretation left "in the dark in what way the historical (...) as separated from the logical and externally opposed to it, should be able to fulfill even the reduced function of an illustration of the "logical" reasoning procedure of the critique of political economy."32 Indeed, it is not quite clear what value "historical explanations" should have in an investigation whose "logical" i.e. non-historical peculiarity should express itself precisely in the fact that it is directed exclusively to capitalist value categories. As "logical" it should therefore also take its "illustrations" exclusively from capitalist relations, but in no case from pre-capitalist and certainly not from archaic ones. It is also quite unclear what "illustration" of logical analyses can meaningfully mean.
One cannot refer to popularizing intentions, if only because Marx declared that he only wanted "the analysis of the value substance and the value quantity (...) to be popularized" (23/11); there was absolutely no talk of popularizing the analysis of the value form. Finally, it is also quite unlikely that Marx could have made a mistake in the selection of his illustrations merely due to a pedagogical misfortune and not have seen their "historical" suggestive effect. One should, after all, trust him with the foresight that his "illustrations" could only be understood as they were actually understood: as illustrations of a "logical-historical" construction.
The most important argument for the view that the "historical explanations" cannot have an "illustrative" character has, strangely enough, not yet been discussed by either party: of the four stages of the "development" of money, at least one, namely the general value form, has an unquestionable "logical-historical" character. The empirical correlate of this form exists only in pre-capitalist societies, and the "historical explanations" are here "moment" of the "logical" construction and not merely "illustration".
If, however, even a single link of the series possesses unquestionable "logical-historical" character, the following alternative suggests itself: Either the other links also possess "logical-historical" character and thus the series as a whole - in this case the systematic unity of Marx's "development" of the value forms would be saved, but the historical problematic of this construction would come into play; the "logical" interpretation would have to be abandoned. Or the other links do not possess a "logical-historical" character - in this case, the "logical" interpretation could be saved, if only in the form of a critical reconstruction; however, the logical coherence of Marx's "dialectical method of development" would have to be disputed and it would have to be examined very carefully whether a genesis of the money form could be justified differently and better.
In any case, one cannot get past the statement that Marx at least "flirted" with "logical-historical" constructions and was not able to cope with any difficulties of a "logical" development of the categories. Otherwise it cannot be understood that in the fifth version of his 'genesis of money' he replaced the "logical" mode of development by a conception that allowed for a "logical-historical" interpretation.
The idea that Marx clearly and unambiguously understood his "dialectical method of development" as a "logical" one seems to me problematic for other reasons as well. First of all, it should be pointed out aut the following:
a clearly and unambiguously identifiable method would have to make it possible to specify the basic concepts of categorial analysis in a generally valid way and to continue the elaboration of the system at the point where Marx had to break it off. Compared to the original drafts of the plan, Marx, as is well known, brought only a small part of the projected system to execution. Now not only traditional Marxism, but also the neo-orthodox direction has seen itself unable to carry out an intersubjectively binding specification of the basic concepts and to complete in a collective effort the Marxian system fragment by those parts which were projected by Marx. With this inability, however, the concept of "method" itself has become quite problematic. For the question arises what a method can actually mean, if it was not able to provide the methodical means to bring a begun work to a conclusion. The assertion that Marx understood his method as "logical" remains somewhat indeterminate as long as the meaning of what Marx understood by 'method' is little clarified.
the 'logical' interpretation finds no plausible explanation for the emergence of Engels' theory of simple commodity production. It has preferred to pass over this problem in silence. Meanwhile, a representative of the structuralist-oriented Althusser school, which in its anti-historicist attitude agrees in some respects with the 'logical' interpretation, has been quite outspoken on this point. Just as for the 'logical' interpreters, there is no doubt at all for Jacques Ranciére that Marx clearly and unequivocally held an anti-historicist position: "As far as Marx is concerned, he leaves us absolutely in no doubt about his theory." With all desirable clarity, Ranciére states that the thesis of unambiguity entails a strange consequence: "The error of interpretation of Engels, who had fully stated the problem at the end of the preface to Volume II, can hardly be explained - at best by a 'realistic' reaction that owes itself to the circumstances."33 With this succinct statement, of course, this matter that 'cannot be explained' is then also shelved for Ranciére. On the other hand, the laconic brevity of the two theses testifies to a perplexity that can also be heard in certain statements of other non-historicist interpreters.
Marx is said to have left us "absolutely in no doubt" about his method, specifically about the non-historicist sense of his analysis of economic categories. He is said to have given no reason whatsoever to conceive of his method as 'logical-historical'. Such an assertion is not without a certain consequence. For if it should be true that Marx had at his disposal a clear and definite conception of a certain method, then he can have left us "absolutely in no doubt" about its basic features. This method has then been understood in its basic features as a whole, or else totally misunderstood. A third, i.e. a partial misunderstanding, is not conceivable. It follows from this, however, that Marx's closest collaborator must have totally misunderstood Marx's method. If one further assumes that Marx's formulations leave the reader "absolutely not in doubt", then such a misunderstanding can indeed "hardly be explained".
Ranciére has merely stated here what might be called the concealed basic assumption of 'logical' interpretation. But how is one to understand the strange phenomenon that this basic assumption has always been merely thought, but never put on paper and publicly discussed? Rancière's assertion that Marx left us "absolutely not in doubt" - for the 'logical' interpreters equivalent to the thesis that Marx developed the value-form analysis clearly and unambiguously in 'logical' manner lives from the fact that only his first strange consequence is thought along, but his further consequences are warded off and suppressed. For these cannot be thought and expressed to the end at all without immediately leading the initial thesis ad absurdum. The fact that the thesis of unambiguity and the thesis of dissent resulting from it are presented again and again and do not seem so absurd at first can probably be explained by the fact that one involuntarily transposes the relationship of Marx and Engels to the level of everyday scientific communication. One can then quite well imagine that the scientist Müller formulated his theories absolutely clearly and unambiguously, furthermore even explained them in oral discussions, and nevertheless was absolutely misunderstood by his friend and colleague Maier. This dissent would not have something 'hardly explainable' about it. The ambiguity of certain words and the complexity of a new theorem could explain why the two scientists often talked past each other.
In contrast to the misunderstanding of the scientists Müller and Maier, in our case, however, it is now a matter of a disagreement with, as it were, historical dimensions: it concerns the basic concepts of Marxian economics and the method of that doctrine which was characterized by Marx and Engels as "new science" or "scientific socialism". Althusser notes very clearly: "A reading that leads to a wrong understanding of the first chapter of Book I can already decide everything."34 Holzkamp titles his treatise The Historical Method of Scientific Socialism. He speaks of its "misrecognition" by other Marxist interpreters and points out that the form analysis of the first chapter "in a certain sense represents the central derivation-context of 'critique' in general. "35
It seems to me useful in the context of these discussions to make one aware of the consequences of the univocity thesis and the thesis of dissent, which are always repressed and in a certain sense tabooed, in all their absurdity.
One has to assume that Engels' "error of interpretation" has to be evaluated as a principled one, which must have arisen very early. The Engelsian works of 1894/95, i.e. the beginnings of a theory of simple commodity production, are therefore to be interpreted in such a way that here a decades-old error was expressed in writing for the first time. This error would have to have arisen in 1859 at the latest, when Engels had to deal with basic methodological problems in his review of Marx's Critique. Otherwise, one would be forced to the unconvincing assumption that he had forgotten his adequate understanding of the value-theoretical method gained in 1859 at a later point in time.
At this point, of course, the first outlandish consequence of the neo-orthodox basic assumptions suggests itself: because the review contains some formulations which already point very clearly to the beginnings of a theory of simple commodity production developed thirty-five years later, one must assume that Marx either did not read this 'review' at all or read it only superficially. The ideas of the older orthodoxy of a 'logical-historical' method refer, as is well known, precisely to some ominous formulations in this review, and the theory of simple commodity production can very well be understood as the value-theoretical concretization of this 'method'. The representatives of the neo-orthodox interpretation would therefore have to stiffen on the claim that the ambiguity of these formulations remained hidden from Marx.
The second consequence of the neo-orthodox basic assumptions moves the formation of 'scientific socialism' into the realm of the absurd and grotesque: at the latest from 1859 until Marx's death in 1883, i.e. for at least twenty-four years, Marx and Engels would have continuously argued past each other in their discussions about the value-theoretical and methodological foundations of the 'new science'. Such a disagreement could now indeed "hardly be explained." The two founders of 'scientific socialism' should never have noticed that in their discussions about the basic concepts of this system they used the same words, but thought in different categories? It is obvious that the expression of 'scientific socialism' cannot have a spark of meaning either, if one assumes a dissent between its founders in the way described.
The third consequence of the neo-orthodox basic assumptions even moves the spread of 'scientific socialism' into the space of the absurd and grotesque: at the latest from 1894, the year of publication of the third volume of Capital, provided with Engels' preface, until the middle of the sixties, i.e. for at least seventy years, the prominent representatives of 'scientific socialism' would have spread fundamentally false assertions about its method and basic concepts. Not only Marx and Engels, but also the prominent interpreters of Marxism are said to have never noticed the dissent about method and basic concepts in a 'hardly explicable' way.
The fourth consequence of the neo-orthodox basic assumptions is no less curious: if the rough draft had been lost due to unfortunate coincidences, even the 'logical' interpreters would be compelled to still spread fundamentally false assertions about the 'dialectical method of development' of Capital. However, they evade the question why Marx did not apply the 'development method' of the rough draft also in Capital. Merely because of a 'barely explicable' pedagogical misfortune? If Marx had published the Rough Draft instead of Capital, all these strange things would not have happened. In this respect, one would have to insist on chalking up the dubiousness of vulgar Marxism to Marx and not to Engels.
The contradictions of the neo-orthodox direction are as easy to see through as the historicist "fabulations" and inconsistencies of the older orthodoxy. Therefore, one has to wonder again and again about that thoughtless self-evidence with which yesterday the texts were read 'logically-historically' and with which today they are read in the opposite manner, namely 'logically'. In both cases, of course, it is a matter of the same faith in authority and uncritical readiness to appropriate the prevailing forms of reception. That with the 'logical' interpretation that has become fashionable, however, a break has been made with a more than seventy-year-old history of influence and doctrinal tradition of the workers' movement, and that with it, in a certain sense, some arguments of the older Marx critique have been confirmed, is hardly perceived today. The adherents of the 'logical' interpretation can seriously imagine that they have merely read Marx and nothing but Marx and have merely studied Capital more intensively and therefore understood it better than the members of past generations. For a hundred years, Capital had been read incorrectly, and now the time had come to be able to understand Capital successively better and finally correctly.36 This is also the point where the new orthodoxy has turned into a new, this time admittedly only curious, dogmatism.
That Marx's critique of economics was misread for a hundred years is, as is well known, also Althusser's view. In contrast to the neo-orthodox direction, however, Althusser knows that such a view can be meaningfully defended only if at the same time certain ambiguities and obscurities in Marx's texts are emphasized. Because he reflects very clearly on the genesis and consequences of his interpretation, Althusser can also no longer delude himself and others that with the destruction of traditional Marxism the return to the new ideal world of a 'scientific socialism' has remained open. He recognizes that a 'new' reading of Capital can only be realized as a critical and 'revisionist', no longer as an 'orthodox' one.
The uncritical overestimation of the rough draft by the younger orthodoxy correlates with the tendency of the older orthodoxy to downplay the significance of the rough draft and to leave it undetermined. It is true that the "necessarily probing, partly aphoristic character" has to be taken into account. Only sheer rage and the inability to counter argumentatively the detachment of traditional Marxism begun by the 'logical' interpretation speaks, of course, from the following quotation: "Whoever operates with Grundrisse-quotations by exploiting their linguistic power as with 'absolute' statements, produces confusion in himself and in others"37 As if it were not precisely the older orthodoxy that "operates with certain Marx quotations as with 'absolute' statements" and even in 1977, as it has always done, still calls a discussion of 'absolute' statements as an "anti-materialist offensive" in which "idealist bourgeois ideology appears covertly or openly counterrevolutionary in the mummery of inner-Marxist controversies."38
The need to relativize 'absolute' statements confronts Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy with the following problems, among others:
\1. certain 'confusing' statements of the rough draft, which have a central significance in the 'logical' interpretations, also recur in Capital, especially so at one point in the fourth chapter. The question therefore arises, according to which criteria the boundary between clear and 'confusing' terms is to be drawn. One will thus have to discuss whether such concepts as "overarching subject," "processing, self-moving substance," "mediating movement," "doubling" (23/169) are to be treated as relics of those propositions that have a merely 'protesting, partially wise aphoristic character' and must therefore be eliminated, or whether they can be specified and substantiated by means of the logical-historical "method" and by "employing philosophical categories"39 from the instrumentarium of Marxist-Leninist philosophy. The only question of interest here is whether dialectical materialism is able to function as a complementary philosophy to political economy, and certainly not the metaphysical 'basic question' of whether spirit can be derived from matter or vice versa; world views of all kinds cannot help here.
The representatives of the logical-historical method have obviously completely forgotten that not only the interpretational coherence of the theory of simple commodity production has to be decided, but above all its historical coherence. Some important ethnological studies point to the fact that this theory is nothing else than an accumulation of unfounded economic-historical speculations. The representatives of Marxist-Leninist theory should therefore be called upon to verify the logical-historical development of economic categories and formations at last on the basis of historical material. The 'historical' should not always be merely talked about, the 'historical' should finally be investigated; many disputes about the 'historical' and the 'logical' would then turn out to be purely scholastic. If the followers of the older orthodoxy do not want to operate with the relevant texts of Engels and Marx likewise as with 'absolute' statements, then they must make dependent on the result of this examination whether this 'method' can be defended further or must be revised, or rejected completely.
When, for example, Wolfgang Fritz Haug, who, measured by the standard of the older orthodoxy, strives for a quite differentiated commentary on the first chapter of Capital, interprets "the historical", he has consciously or unconsciously to create the impression that his interpretation is based on a profound logical-historical analysis of "real history." "The progression of the representation therefore proceeds via the analysis and development of the value form, because real history has also proceeded via the development of the value form. It was not directly a dynamic emanating from the labor process that drove history forward, (...) value entered history as a tremendous power unleashing energies, with all the consequences that it had that value doubled into commodity and money."40
Every ethnologist and economic historian must naturally wonder how Haug was able to gain his knowledge. From the fact that he does not even communicate the point in time at which value is supposed to have set in motion its "tremendous power to unleash energies" and to have generated money, one may conclude that Haug cannot be particularly interested in a verification of his hypothesis. Wilhelm Gerloff gives the following information on this: "the time of the emergence of money can (...) not possibly be determined more closely. If one nevertheless wants to give a time period, then it must be assumed that it was at the latest towards the end of the Neolithic period. (...) Excavations (...) have been interpreted in this sense."41
Gerloff now admittedly represents completely different ideas about the origin of money than Haug, but one will certainly also be able to contradict Gerloff's views, simply "because it would hardly ever be possible to determine the facts on the basis of which a safe judgment can be built up about how exchange and price really happened in their original form. About it only hypotheses can be formed, with the reference to historical, prehistoric, ethnological facts. Gottl-Ottlilienfeld's investigation on the origin of money therefore only claims to be "a pure 'working hypothesis' of the national economic theory!". A mere coloring thus, how the exchange, and how the economic dimension could have originated (...). It depends here at all only on the fact that this painting preserves itself as free as possible from internal contradictions, thus remains apart from poetic truth."42
Logically contradiction-free hypotheses with an attachment to ethnological facts are to be formed. Gottl-Ottlilienfeld can now provide evidence, which in my opinion is hardly contestable, that the traditional ideas about the origin of money are not free of internal contradictions and must be rejected for formal logical reasons alone. Wilhelm Gerloff and Marcel Mauss come independently and also completely unaware of Gottl-Ottlilienfeld's considerations on the basis of ethnological and archaeological facts to the same hypotheses about the origin of money. Measured against these and other works, for instance against the investigations of Max Weber and Richard Thurnwald, the results of Haug's 'logical-historical' method turn out to be neither logically free of contradictions nor historically sound. The "dynamic" he claims towards the end of the Neolithic period is not confirmed in any of the studies I know about the origin of money. But what is it then about the soundness of the 'logical-historical' method? Has Haug negligently entrusted himself merely to certain 'classical' quotations, with which he "operates as with 'absolute' statements," and does he thereby present an evaluation of Capital that is neither logically nor historically sound? Be that as it may, apodictic statements can in no case lead anywhere here. Some hypotheses can be formulated with a more or less high degree of plausibility, but that is all.
\3. it is not only about the problem that the representatives of the 'logical-historical' method have told so far only old wives' tales about the value forms of the older Stone Age, which one usually puts for the time from 7000 to 3000 B.C., and where "a certain trade is provable";43 it is above all about the question whether an economic-historically secured 'logical-historical' analysis is at all suitable to solve the self-imposed task to make certain 'money riddles' disappear. This question has not been asked even once. This omission has its reason not only in the naive textual faith of orthodox interpreters and the tendency, which Holzkamp quite rightly sees, "to substitute the 'text' for reality."44 The representatives of the "logical-historical' method regularly ignore - one would like to think: with systematic intention - those passages of the text which inform very precisely about the objective of the value-form analysis. Marx is not concerned, like his 'logical-historical' interpreters, with the solution of some "money riddle", but with very precisely determined aporias of the traditional theory of money. If one becomes familiar with these passages and thus at the same time with the objective of the analysis of the value form, the question whether the 'logical-historical' method is at all suitable to investigate the 'value form' and its aporias answers itself.
Since among the authors of the 'logical-historical' textbooks there are also expert economists, one will not, however, be able to attribute the principal errors of such commentaries to the lack of economic expertise of some 'logical-historical' oriented interpreters. Let us take as an example again the extensive study of Wolfgang Fritz Haug. He is concerned with "examining the difficulties of the analysis of the value-form exemplarily, (...) taking the bull by the horns, i.e. tackling precisely the most difficult questions."45 The analysis of the value-form is the genesis of the money-form. "Only through the genesis of the money-form, in turn, is the 'being' of money to be grasped. And only when one has grasped the essence of money",46 can one grasp the capital form.
If one sets oneself such a demanding task, all sorts of things would have to be reported - for example, that despite Marx's analysis of the essence of money, Marxist economists are unable to agree on the essence of money. For Marx, the question of the essence of "money" was, of course, the question of the relation of the various means of circulation to each other, all of which are called money. Thus, among other things, the question was whether a banknote or a check or some other order on a bank deposit is 'money'. The question about the 'being' of money is thus, among other things, the question about the relation between money and credit. The question about the 'being' of money is, for example, the question about the relation between international means of payment and price level. All these questions, in turn, have a great deal to do with the question of the relation between 'real' and 'monetary' causes of economic crises. When Marx deals with the analysis of the value form, he does not have any money riddles in mind, but material problems of the theory of money: "One therefore finds among economists, who quite agree on the measure of value by labor time, the most motley and contradictory conceptions of money (...). This becomes strikingly apparent, for example, in the treatment of banking, where the commonplace definitions of money are no longer sufficient." (23/95 fn.)
Those economists who agree on a premonetarily conceived and therefore money-theoretically indifferent theory of value are consistently Ricardians. However, they belong to different schools of monetary theory, the currency and the banking school, and thus combine the same theory of value with different, contradictory theories of money. The Marxian critique wants to 'explain' these contradictions by an analysis of the value form. The 'contradictory conceptions' of money within one and the same value-theoretical school are said to have arisen at all only because the founder of this school, D. Ricardo, "does not examine value according to form at all." (26.2/169) "He therefore does not grasp the connection of this labor with money (...). Hence his false theory of money." (26.2/161) "But this wrong conception of money is based in Ricardo on the fact that he has in mind only the quantitative determination of exchange value in the first place." (26.2/504)47
It should be thought-provoking that neither in these quotations nor in any other place in Marx's work is Ricardo, the Ricardians, or the subjectivist conceptions accused of not having investigated the historical genesis of money and therefore of having developed a false theory of money. It is also puzzling to me what insight into essence Haug actually wants to have gained by 'logical-historical' constructions. What he puts forward is in fact just that type of a premonetary theory of value which can be combined arbitrarily with the "most motley and contradictory conceptions of money". The indifference of his theory of value to monetary theory is not least expressed in the fact that he only needs to deal with the first chapter and can leave the third chapter, together with all problems relevant to monetary theory, to the economists. Between the theory of value of the first chapter together with its analysis of the essence of money, which has been purged of economic problems, and the theory of money of the third chapter, there can obviously be found no more than the rather external connection that both theories have been published in one and the same book, Capital, for more or less coincidental reasons. Although the "most difficult questions" were to be tackled and the "essence" of money was to be grasped, Haug can already sum up following his "logical-historical" analysis: "It was possible to develop the socialist and genetic theory of money. "48
As a socialist and philosopher, Marx obviously wrote the theory of money of the first chapter; as an economist, specifically as a theorist of money and credit, he wrote the theory of money of the third chapter and the theory of credit of the third volume - Haug therefore only needs to deal with the "socialist" and 'philosophical' theory of money of the first chapter.
It is true that the value-form analysis of the first chapter was not intended merely to suggest the solution of certain problems of monetary theory. Certain aspects of the value-form problem possess a different character and were controversially discussed in the national-economic and political literature decades before Marx. The peculiarity of Marx's value-form analysis is mainly due to the fact that Marx had to deal with these controversies and the found approaches of a form analysis. It is primarily the precursor of the subjective theory of value, Samuel Bailey, who had "occupied himself with the analysis of the value form" (23/64 fn.) and was able to probe "sore spots in the Ricardian" (23/77 fn.) theory of value, whereby the Ricardians were only able to answer "roughly, but not strikingly" (23/98 fn.). Not only the "logical-historical" interpreters, but also economic authors continue to ignore,49 that Marx had dealt very intensively with Bailey's Ricardo critique. The difference between the Marxian and the Ricardian theory of value is not seen, among other reasons, because the metacriticism of Bailey presented in Theories of Surplus Value has remained virtually unknown. It is therefore also invariably overlooked that the structure of even the first value-theoretic argument, i.e., the presentation and analysis of exchange value on the third page of the first chapter, is directly oriented to the problems first developed by Bailey. In popular parlance, one could say that Marx's theory of value is to be understood as a 'synthesis' of Ricardo and Bailey, as the metacritical 'suspension' of Bailey's value-theoretical 'antithesis'.
This problem background is in principle inaccessible to a 'logical-historical' understanding of value theory. It is therefore not surprising if Haug does not perceive this second aspect of the value-form analysis as well as the money-theoretical one. Like all other representatives of the older orthodoxy, he is only interested in the third aspect of value-form analysis: "To examine the form of value attentively means to understand it as a reflex of a historically (...) particular form of society. The forms of value (...) are understood as originating from special relations and developing in a certain way. With the form, the social form is historicized. The law of development of the form becomes that of the social form, whose transitory nature can thus be grasped. Critique here, then, also means showing the historical character of a form of society."50
Haug, as a consistent representative of the 'logical-historical' method, once again connects the value-form analysis with the economic study of "pre-Adamite times." (13/44) Marx had conceived of the premonetary value forms as having "sprung" from the "special conditions" of the older Stone Age and traced their further development to the younger Stone Age. Marx is even said to have understood these forms as a "reflex" of these Stone Age social forms - an assertion which, because of its epistemological problems, is certainly not likely to meet with the approval of other representatives of the 'logical-historical' method51. If these formulations were to say that Marx had recognized or asserted the 'transitory' character of the price and money form on the basis of 'logical-historical' studies, they would simply have to be characterized as nonsensical.
The Marxist-Leninist statements on the historicity of the value form are generally characterized by a high degree of imprecision and, in a certain sense, even by dishonesty or, in any case, ignorance. Unlike the Soviet works of the twenties and even of the postwar period, the more recent textbooks consistently conceal the economic and political meaning of Marx's postulate that through the value-form of the labor product the bourgeois mode of production "is characterized as a special kind of social production and thus at the same time historical." (23/95 fn.) Today's Marxist-Leninist treatises on the political economy of capitalism invariably conceal the fact that not merely surplus-value production but value production in general should be "historically characterized" - the concept of a 'socialist commodity production' is, seen from the position of Marx's value-form analysis, a non-concept. The 'historicization' of the value form consists for Marx just as little in the fact that in a communist society needs, instead of output, will decide the distribution of the social product. The doctrine of the 'transitory nature' of the value form also does not originate from Marx at all and therefore cannot be understood as the result of 'logical-historical' studies. This doctrine rather originates from the left Ricardians and contains first of all nothing else than the demand to calculate the social labor no longer in money units but in labor time units. The left Ricardians asked, "Since labor-time is the immanent measure of values, why next to it another external measure?" (13/67) Although the question is not yet asked "why this content takes that form, why therefore labor is represented in value (...)", the form is already more or less vaguely distinguished from the content. It is already no longer regarded as a "self-evident natural necessity" (23/95 f.), as an "eternal natural form of social production." (23/95 fn.) Thus, there can be no question of comparing capitalist with pre-capitalist modes of production in order to be able to assert the value-form as an abolishable and thus as a historical one. Marx merely wanted to show why, in a competitive society, labor must necessarily be expressed in this mysterious form. He further wanted to investigate above all the "form-content" or the "form-content" (II.5/32 fn.), which the left Ricardians knew how to distinguish merely negatively and tautologically from content. Now this investigation has very much to do with the problems discussed in the Bailey controversy and the money-theoretical controversies, but absolutely nothing to do with obscure considerations about the Stone Age formation of the money form.
A large number of critical reflections on English economic theory came from the camp of the left Ricardian 'hour tickets', which stimulated Engels in 1843/44 to sketch the Outlines of a critique of national economy. This writing, which Marx still characterized in 1859 as a "critique of economic categories" (13/10), also contains the idea that the value calculation can be replaced by a labor-time calculation. It results with logical necessity from the program of a critique of economic categories to be carried out by logical means, but not by means of a "logical-historical method". With the abolition of private property, the "unnatural separation" between labor and the product of labor, which under capitalist conditions stands opposite it as wage, also falls: "If we abolish private property, this unnatural separation also falls, labor is its own wage, and the true meaning of the previously alienated wage of labor comes to light: the meaning of labor for the determination of the production costs of a thing." (1/512)
In the Anti-Dühring, Engels again presents in detail the consequences of the critical reflection on the relation between the substance and the form of value: "As soon as society puts itself in possession of the means of production (...), the labor of everyone (...) becomes from the outset and directly social labor. The quantity of social labor contained in a product need not then be determined in a roundabout way (...). Society can simply calculate how many hours of labor are in a steam engine, a hectoliter of wheat (...). It cannot therefore occur to it to express the quanta of labor laid down in the products (...) in a third product and not in their natural, adequate, absolute measure, time. (...) Thus, under the above conditions, society does not ascribe values to the products either. It will not express the simple fact that the hundred square meters of cloth have required, for my sake, a thousand hours of labor for their production, in the squinting and senseless way that they are worth a thousand hours of labor. (...) The utility effects of the various commodities, weighed against each other and against the quantities of labor necessary for their production, will finally determine the plan. The people do everything very simply without the intermediary of the much-famous 'value'. (...) To want to abolish the capitalist form of production by producing the "true value' is therefore (...) to produce a society (...) by consequently carrying out an economic category which is the most comprehensive expression of the bondage of the producers by their own product." (20/288 f.)
In a marginal note Engels explicitly notes the continuity of his views and their relation to Marx's Capital: "That the above consideration of utility effect and labor input in deciding on production is all that remains in a communist society of the concept of value of political economy, I have already pronounced in 1844." And now follows the most remarkable statement: "The scientific substantiation of this proposition, however, as can be seen, became possible only through Marx's Capital." (20/288 f. Fn.)
This marginal note undoubtedly contains the most important commentary on a particular aspect of Marx's value-form analysis. Since this marginal note has remained virtually unknown, it seems to me appropriate to repeat its meaning clearly and intelligibly for everyone:
the historical character of the value-form is said to consist in the fact that in a "communist society" the quanta of labor are no longer expressed in a "third product," but in their "natural measure," time. The value calculation could be replaced by a labor-time calculation.
Contrary to a widespread prejudice, the statement of the transitory nature of the value account and thus of the historical form-determinacy of labor and the labor product does not originate from Marx.
This statement, however, had found its "scientific justification" in Marx's analysis of the value-form.
The substitution of the value calculation by a labor-time calculation is only the reverse side of a substitution of money by labor-certificates or 'hour tickets' In a cooperatively organized production, i.e. "in the intercourse between the commune and its members, money is no money at all (...). It serves as a pure certificate of labor, it states, to speak with Marx, 'only the individual share of the producer in the common labor and his individual claim (...)', and is in this function "just as little 'money' as, for instance, a theater token'. It can hereby be replaced by any sign (...). In short, it functions in the intercourse of the economic commune with its members simply as Owen's 'working hour money'". (20/282)
Similar considerations and similar formulations can also be traced in Marx's work. "Where labor is communal, the relations of men in their social production do not present themselves as 'values' of 'things'." (26.3/127) "Within the cooperative society founded on common property in the means of production, producers do not exchange their products; just as little does the labor applied to products appear here as the value of these products, as an objective quality possessed by them, since now, in contrast to capitalist society, individual labors no longer exist in a roundabout way, but directly as constituents of total labor." (19/19 f.) In 'communal' production, "what he has bought with his labor is not a certain special product, but a certain share in the common production. Therefore, he has no special product to exchange. His product is not an exchange value." (42/104) Conversely, "Labor on the basis of exchange values presupposes precisely that neither the labor of the individual nor his product is immediately general." (42/105)
Such statements are not based on the description of an existing "communal production". Nor are they based on a 'logical-historical' study of the laws of development of archaic forms of production. They are ideas about the future organization of labor, but they are formulated neither as economic policy recommendations nor as hypotheses. Rather, they have an apodictic character. It is therefore obvious that they could be obtained only as the result of a 'logical' analysis of the categories in force in bourgeois society. Now the logic or illogic of this argumentation, only partially presented here, is nothing else than the logic or illogic of the value-form analysis. In parenthesis it should be noted that its statements are largely identical with the doctrine of the "fetish character of the commodity".
It must, of course, give pause for thought that Marx considerably modified the form and content of his argumentation in the various revisions. The Rough Draft and Critique contain a "logical" justification of the doctrine of the transitory nature of the value form. They prove that Marx had attempted to justify logically, but not logico-historically, the doctrine of the labor-time account communicated to him by Engels. Now, it can hardly be denied that in the second edition of Capital the impression can arise that the doctrine of the historicity of the value-form was obtained by logical-historical means. A precise textual analysis, however, could show that the central statement of this doctrine - "Only products of independent and interdependent private labor confront each other as commodities." (23/57) - has been introduced as a dogmatic assurance. It is therefore probably no accident that this statement, which should be understood as a real definition, has often been understood as a mere nominal definition.
Whoever admits the "logical-historical" digressions inserted into this context as a justification of the Engels-Marxian thesis would, moreover, have to come to the conclusion that Marx did not present the doctrine of the historicity of the value-form as a dogmatic assurance in Capital, but he did present it in the Critique. There is not a trace of an attempt to argue "logico-historically" there. Marx presents a non-historicist, "logical" argument.
Marx judged this "logical" attempt to justify the critique in such a way "that immediately in the simplest form, that of the commodity, the specifically social, by no means absolute character of bourgeois production has been analyzed". It goes without saying that this thesis, insofar as it was developed as the result of a "logical" analysis, cannot be accepted from the position of a 'logical-historical' method. The transitory character of the value-form, after all, cannot be justified in opposite ways: once 'logically' and then a second time 'logically-historically'. It is obvious that the one justification excludes the other just as the 'logical' method excludes the 'logical-historical' and vice versa.
Incidentally, the question of the logical status of Marx's value-form analysis can be discussed in a reasonably meaningful way only if the economic-political problem of its statements is considered at the same time. Here the main question is whether the Marx-Engelsian ideas about the substitution of the value calculation by a labor-time calculation have been 'falsified' by the Soviet experience or nothing4 This problem, however, cannot be discussed here; we shall merely point out certain consequences which result from the Soviet Marxist assessment of the Marx-Engelsian ideas about the abolishability of the value form.
As is well known, the Marxian justification of Engels' theorem consists in nothing other than an attempt to explain not merely the existence but, above all, the essence of price and money from the opposition of private and social labor. In the Marxian sense, the abolition of this opposition can mean nothing else than the disappearance of the reason for the existence of price and money. Or: The continued existence of price and money is equivalent to the continued existence of the opposition of private and social labor.
Now the organization of the Soviet national economy, the planned coordination of individual labor, is generally interpreted in such a way that here the "private" character of individual labor has been abolished. If, however, the money account persists, then the question arises not only in what sense one can nevertheless speak of a historicity of the value form; in view of the constitutive importance for Marx's methodology in his value form analysis, not only Marx's theory of money is up for discussion, but far beyond that the Marxian procedure of concept formation and justification itself.
Soviet literature tries to downplay this problem in two ways. The Marx-Engelsian conceptions of a labor-time account are presented as time-conditioned errors that could easily be remedied by a corresponding correction of Marx's value-form analysis. This correction, called "modification of the law of value," reveals a complete lack of insight into the structure of Marx's basic concepts.51 Because the doctrine of the labor-time calculation is supposed to be of merely incidental importance, it is discussed only in the textbooks of planned economy. In the textbooks on the political economy of capitalism explaining Marx's development of value, on the other hand, one does not find a trace of a hint that Marx's theorems need certain corrections or "modifications." The study of "modifications" is left to the plan experts.
One gets the impression that especially the non-economists are not at all familiar with this problem. In any case, the grotesque situation has arisen that a methodologically highly important problem is found not worth mentioning in the extensive works on the method of capital written by philosophical authors. In West Germany even a discussion about 'logical' and 'historical' can be carried on, although the 'economic-political' importance of the 'historical' has obviously remained unknown to the participants. If the Soviet economists believe that they have to insist on a "disassembling"52 and revision of Marx's value-form analysis, then they are not only advised to carry out these revisions systematically and with the necessary prudence and exactness; above all, they should not do such things secretly, but loudly and audibly; Otherwise, it is to be feared that their colleagues from the "philosophical front", and especially the West Germans, will continue to be primarily occupied with exposing the "disassembling" and revising of Marx's theory by the Frankfurt "counterrevolution" and thus will neither find economic-theoretical enlightenment nor the opportunity to cooperate in the legitimate revisions of a "central derivation context of 'criticism' in general"53 , because they are conditioned by the requirements of "real socialism".
If Marx developed a reason for the existence of the institution of "money," the opposition of private and social labor, and if money continues to exist after the at least formal abolition of this reason, then certain corrections of Marx's theory are undoubtedly inevitable. It can only be argued about the extent and the consequences of these corrections. The following alternative is open to discussion: one can "take apart" and criticize Marx's value-form analysis with the Soviet economists in such a way that one distinguishes between necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of the value and money account: Marx had described only necessary, but not sufficient conditions. But one can also criticize with the Marxist opponents of Soviet Marxist economics the claim that in the East European countries the opposition of private and social labor has been abolished. But even then one will not be able to accept Marx's terms without criticism. The term "private labor" would rather have to be specified or modified in such a way that the individual labor of non-cooperatively organized planned economies can still be subsumed under it. One could argue that the mechanism of mediation between individual and social labor can only function under the condition of certain moral and political institutions. Labor would still remain "private" as long as, for reasons of social and political indifference or even passive political resistance, false or incomplete information about the magnitude and utility of individual labor is fed to the planning authorities.
Thus, certain political and moral implications of the concept of "social labor" would have to be determined: its cooperative structure - set apart from an authoritarian-planned organization of social labor. This requires only a critical specification of Marx's terms,54 not a principled revision of Marx's value-form analysis. Whatever one may decide, one can by no means want to lead a discussion about 'logical' and 'historical' in Marx's value-form analysis and at the same time trivialize or even conceal one of its central problems.
This also means that in the dispute of the two interpretations not only interpretative correctness, but at the same time the factual validity of the Marxian statements interpreted in this or another way must be debated. Thus, the mterpretative coherence of the "logical-historical" interpretation can, of course, not induce one to hold on to such constructions which can be justified neither 'logically' nor 'historically'. For factual reasons it might prove necessary to criticize and correct the development from the 'logically' structured critique to the 'logically-historically' interpretable second autlage of Capital as an erroneous development. From this point of view, however, it seems to me unavoidable to refer again and again to discussions and questions of a similar nature from the camp of academic theories, especially from the problem complex 'logical' and 'historical'.
Gerloff introduces his investigations into the history of money with a presentation of the problems of monetary theory. He starts from Carl Menger's statement that the "mysterious phenomenon of money" has not been satisfactorily explained up to the present day and that there is no "agreement on the fundamental questions of its nature and functions". His study of the origins of money "is at the same time intended to contribute to the understanding of the present reality. The well-known money theorist H. W. J. Wijnholds also pleads for a 'logical-historical' analysis of the nature of money: "In order to gain an accurate insight into the problems of the monetary system, it is necessary to show at least the main line of its history. The historical development often gives the possibility of a simple and logical explanation of otherwise seemingly inextricable problems."55 Just like the Marxist representatives of a 'logical-historical' explanation of the 'money riddles' or 'inextricable seeming problems' of money, Wijnholds is actually not so much concerned with 'historical' in the sense of serious historical investigations. He explicitly emphasizes that a 'deeper' consideration of historical processes is not necessarily needed: "For the present investigation, however, it is not necessary to go very deeply into history. We can leave it at that, to repeat some in all other respects well-known and generally recognized points. (...) Without claiming accuracy and completeness in the historical field, this much can be said. "56
Here as there it is only apparently about "generally accepted points", whereby almost the same historicist fabulations about the origin of money have to justify quite different solutions of the "money riddles". The 'logical-historical' direction of the two theories of value, of course, relies on the same "mental myth" of an "absolute economic hearing"57 in the theory of money, too, with the only controversy being whether the acts of estimation are directed to utility or labor.
It cannot be surprising if within subjective economics these timid attempts of a 'logical-historical' or 'inductive' solution of the 'money riddles' are opposed by almost the same arguments that have been formulated within Marxist economics by the representatives of a 'logical' interpretation. The contrast between the 'logical-historical' and the "logical" interpretation within Marxist economics could therefore be compared to the difference between "inductive" and "deductive" attempts at explanation within academic economics and economic history.
If Wijnholds is concerned with the "inductive" or "logical-historical" justification of a modified quantity theory, one could object with Walter Eucken that the investigation of historical events relevant to quantity theory always presupposes certain concepts of monetary theory, which can thus only be developed by "logical" means: the flow of gold and silver from the late Roman Empire could not be clarified "without the application of a suitable apparatus of monetary theory."58 But even Gerloff, who in contrast to Wijnholds is very much concerned with accuracy and completeness in the historical field, emphatically emphasizes the methodological problem of a "logical-historical" construction of developmental stages of money: one will "not be able to approach what one regards as facts of monetary history without a certain conception of the object of investigation". Obviously, the ethnological researchers also approached their material with such a conception. Their reports "lack even too much of a critical examination as to whether the objects which are called money actually have the role of money." "Every such view is taken from a certain point of view. (...) The choice of the right standpoint is significant for the 'insight' gained in the field of observation; but there is, of course, not only one such standpoint."59 Gerloff draws attention to the methodologically opposed positions of Jevons and Menger, with Jevons referring to the "inductive way," while Menger hoped to be able to answer "the question of the origin of money by deductive means in perceptive investigations that are taken up again and again."60 With great determination, Josef Dobretsberger pleads for a "deductive" investigation of all those "unsolved questions of monetary theory,"61 the number of which had even increased in the preceding decades. He justifies Seme's anti-inductionist stance as follows: Historians "take as money entities that are not yet so for the national economist. They speak of money exchange where there is only differentiated natural exchange. (...) In order to grasp the concept of money clearly, we have to work out clearly the fundamental cut between natural exchange and money exchange."62 On the "logical" way, the non-Marxist Dobretsberger gains some important determinations which would be quite suitable to specify the Marxian distinction between product exchange and circulation - a distinction which is mostly ignored by the Marxist authors operating on the "logical-historical" way. Two things now become apparent:
the facts of a historical nature relevant for a discussion of the relation between the "logical" and the "historical" are throughout unknown to the Marxist authors pleading for a "historical" or "logical-historical" solution of the "money riddles". It is mainly the problem of "caste money" and other phenomena originating in the realm of the sacred and magical and significant for the formation of money. One cannot help feeling that the construction of stages of the development of money, carried out in the manner of Capital, completely blocks the view of these phenomena. Otherwise, one can hardly explain why a history of the development of money oriented on Marx's theory of value and money does not exist.
Even a seriously elaborated "logical-historical" genesis of money could hardly help to clarify the "unsolved questions of monetary theory" discussed by Dobretsberger. At present, at any rate, it is impossible to see how the mental steps or "stages" of a "logical" genesis of money could be related to the problems of a historical genesis of money: the problems of the "logical" and the "historical" genesis of money have hardly anything in common.
By two examples it shall be made clear once more how strongly the real problems of both the historical and the logical genesis of money must elude the field of vision of a "logical-historical" interpreted theory of value forms. Thus, the "problem of the beginning" can actually only be adequately formulated from a "logical" position as the question whether the "commodity," understood as the unity of value and use-value, or money is to be set as logically first; whether, that is, money is to be derived from the "commodity" or the "commodity" from money. Bailey seems to have recognized this problem of the beginning for the first time:
' The concept of value is only formed - hence value is transformed from mere quantitative relation (...) into something independent of this relation (which, he thinks, transforms the value of commodities into something absolute [...]) - because money exists apart from commodities, and we are thus accustomed to consider the values of commodities not in their relation to each other, but as a relation to a third party (...). With Bailey, it is not the determination of the product as value that drives to the formation of money and expresses itself in money, but it is the existence of money that drives to the fiction of the concept of value. (26.3/143)
Here the close entanglement of the problems of the theory of value and the problems of the theory of money emerges clearly. For if it should turn out that the Marxian way of a "development" of money from the commodity is not viable, then one will have to accept the category of money as the logical first of economic theory, as its basic concept irreducible by the means of economic analysis. It is to be assumed that from this reversal of priority also value-theoretical consequences will result. For the objective theory of value becomes, as it were, irrelevant if it should succeed in deriving the objectivity of intersubjectively valid units from money.
Bailey should have recognized quite clearly that subjective economics cannot be content with explaining the exchange relations of a premonetary economy of natural exchange on the basis of the subjective theory of value. On the contrary, it has the no less important task to justify, from a concept of money set as the logical first, what subjective economics must regard as the mere appearance of an 'absolute' value. Even the representatives of the subjective theory of value will not seriously want to deny that the objective theory of value is able to refer to the existence of phenomena which cannot be derived directly from subjective valuations. These are those abstract, homogeneous volumes which, as addable quantities, form the object of macroeconomics. The objective character of these phenomena has been vividly circumscribed by Gottl-Ottlilienfeld as the "economic dimension". From a subjectivist position one will have to say that here subjective has turned into objective. Since the concepts of the subjective theory of value are not suitable to capture this transformation and its result, the intersubjective validity of economic units, only the theory of money could help. It would be up to the monetary theory to decide whether these phenomena are to be regarded as appearances or as manifestations of an 'absolute' value. This decision, in turn, depends on whether money can be conceived as a logical first.
The nominalist theory of money can now be interpreted as positing the category money as a logical first. Assuming its validity, it could, in connection with the subjective theory of value, establish the proposition that it is the "existence of money" that "drives to the fiction of the concept of value".
Insofar as Marx determines the "commodity" as a unity of ("absolute") value and use-value, one could also describe the task of subjective economics in such a way that it would have to derive the "commodity," or more precisely the objective appearance of what Marx wants to conceive as a "commodity," from money with the means of the subjective theory of value and the nominalist theory of money. In the terminology of the nominalist theory of money, the problem could be formulated in such a way that Marxian economics would have to show that the abstract unit of account can be derived from the "commodity", while the burden of proof is on the subjective economomy to show that the appearance of an existence of what Marx called "commodity" can be derived from the abstract unit of account.
Here is also the point where not only the theory of value and the theory of money intertwine, but the theory of value and money on the one hand and the theory of society on the other. The ultimate question is whether something like an "empirical principle" is required to establish the intersubjective validity of economic units. In fact, in certain variants of nominalist monetary theory, the "abstract unit of account" functions as an "empirical principle"63 just as the "commodity in general" does within Marxian economics. In one case as in the other, this principle points to the existence of supra-individual structures.
It hardly needs a detailed explanation that a "commodity in general" functioning as a quasi-transcendental constituent of economic objectivity can certainly not be developed "logico-historically".
In the context of these questions, certain structuralist efforts to interpret and, as it were, to justify the abstract unit of account from ethnological facts should be pointed out.
Already Marx had reason to deal with similar attempts. A representative of the early monetary nominalism, James Steuart, had referred to the "Angola money" of the African coast as proof of the existence of an "abstract unit of account" that could be interpreted nominalistically. In the Critique, Marx contented himself with a rather terse remark: "As far as the African idealists are concerned, however, we must leave them to their fate until critical travel writers report more details about them." (13/64)
How much this problem actually worried him is evident from the fact that he dealt with it in several places in the preliminary work for the Critique, that is, in the rough draft. There we also learn that not only Steuart, but also other authors had referred to certain facts that were highly significant for the correctness of a nominalist theory of money: "E. g., Urquhart cites the example of the "nominalist" theory of money. E. g. Urquhart gives the example of Barbary, where an ideal bar, iron bar, a mere imagined iron bar, is taken as a standard, which neither rises nor falls." (42/686, cf. 42/705 f. u. 736) Marx made a number of considerations as to how such phenomena could be explained non-nominalistically. Although he thought he had found such an explanation by purely intellectual means, he did not consider it advisable to communicate the solution he had devised at his desk to the public in the context of his critique of monetary nominalism, especially his critique of Steuart.
In the sense of a 'logical-historical' method, Marx would, of course, have had to interrupt his work on the Critique and conduct his own field research, or wait until "critical travelogues" had provided empirical material. Marx believed that he could do without this, because he obviously wanted the "abstract unit of account" to be understood as a "principle", which as such eludes empirical verification and can only be developed "logically". This is exactly the sense of his "method" to "derive" the unit of account from the "concept" of commodities. A "logical-historical" development of value forms could not have done without the desired critical travel descriptions. Marx, however, may have paid little attention to further research on those "ideal bars" even later, on the occasion of the "logical-historical" revision of the value-form analysis for the second edition of Capital.
Structuralist anthropologists, meanwhile, seem to attach a money-theoretical relevance to their research as well. The first basic problem of monetary theory, the question whether the "commodity" is to be derived nominalistically from the money or non-nominalistically the money from the "commodity", should then be answered "logically-historically". Her investigations, of course, do not come up to the Marxian, but merely to a nominalistic theory of money: "The "science of exchange" demanded by Lévi-Strauss places economics in a middle position between two extremes: between the material exchange of women and the immaterial exchange of words.
How? The goods exchanged in economic life are, on the one hand, material objects, they are "ultra-women". On the other hand, money, by means of which commodities come into circulation in more complex economic systems, has less material than symbolic value. Money belongs to signs, like words. Pieces of money or notes are "infra-words"". The social-theoretical consequences of this extreme money-theoretical nominalism emerge very clearly here: "One sees: economics is here placed in a completely different place than in Marx. It moves, almost blasphemously, into the same row as the phenomena of the superstructure. "64
It would require very precise analyses whether the ethnological facts have possibly been interpreted from the perspective of problematic prejudices of money theory and whether ethnological studies are generally suitable to bring the first basic problem of money theory closer to a solution. If this is answered in the negative, it is difficult to see how the definitions of the essence of money could be justified in any other way than in a 'logical' way.
The second basic problem of monetary theory is the question of the relation between money and credit. On the ground of money-theoretical nominalism this has the consequence that also the "problem of the beginning" of economic-theoretical concept formation gains a new aspect. The question of the priority of money or credit can now be formulated as the question whether money is to be derived from credit or credit from money. "At the (logical) beginning there is money."65 This is the standpoint of the older theory of credit, also advocated by Marx. The "new theory of credit," put forward above all by Schumpeter and Hawtrey, which basically merely thinks through to the end the quantity-theoretical positions of the currency school, places credit as the logical first: "Logically speaking, however, it is by no means certain that it is the most advantageous method to take coin as the starting point (...) in order to proceed to the credit transactions of economic reality. It could be more advantageous to start from these and to consider the capitalist money system as a clearing system, (...) so that "money payments appear only as a special case without fundamental importance. In other words, practically as well as analytically, a credit theory of money may be preferable to a money theory of credit. "66
Marx derives credit from circulation, the concept of circulation from capital, the concept of capital from money, and the concept of money from the "commodity." The impression is thus created that Marx did not even reach the standpoint of the older theory of credit, which in its nominalist variants set money as the logical beginning. The Marxist adherents of the "new theory of credit" would therefore be advised to undertake a thorough reconstruction of Capital and to set credit as the logical beginning in the sense of modern macroeconomic representations.67
The absolute incommensurability between the academic textbooks of theoretical economics and the textbooks of Marxist economics oriented to the structure of capital is based to a considerable extent on the fact that the "logical beginning" of the representation is set in both doctrinal systems in different ways, but in a methodologically more or less unreflected manner. It is true that the "problem of the beginning" has recently been discussed quite frequently by the "logical" interpreters of Capital, but characteristically never in the context of the problem of economic theory, but always only in connection with the Hegelian version of the question, with which the beginning must be made in the metaphysical "Wissenschaft".
The incommensurability of the two doctrinal systems becomes particularly obvious as soon as the money-theoretical controversies about the "problem of the beginning" are interpreted "logico-historically" under Marxian terms. Indeed, on the basis of the "new theory of credit," academic economics has had to commit itself clearly and unambiguously to a "logical" form of development of economic theorems. In his attempt at a credit-theoretic justification of monetary theory, Hawtrey assumes a capitalist society. He wants to know "to what extent such a society could have existed without the use of money just as it actually does. In other words, we have to find not the historical but the logical origin of money. "[^73]
The possibility of finding such a "logical origin of money" is, then, the presupposition of the academic theory of money and credit and of the monetary theories of the business cycle resulting from them, which is no longer questioned.
It goes without saying that from this point of view the study of the history of money must gain a completely different character. If it is only the logical origin of money that matters, investigations on the historical origin of money can actually only have the task of problematizing and, if possible, falsifying pseudo-historical constructions which claim to solve basic problems of monetary theory on the basis of archaeological or ethnological facts. A monetary-historical or 'logical-historical' substantiation of the basic assumptions of money and credit theory is considered an impossibility.
The historical facts are mostly mute if they are not interpreted with the help of a "logically" gained conceptual apparatus of money theory. And this interpretation will be problematized in certain cases, especially prehistoric ones, also only by "pure thinking". Thus Walter Eucken, likewise a representative of the "new credit theory", distinguishes three "pure monetary systems", "which are distinguished from each other by the fact that in them money arises or disappears in different ways."68 These ideal types applied to historical material could, of course, only be obtained in a purely "logical" way. And the ideas about the "essence" of money and the "laws" of its circulation underlying those ideal types were also obtained in a "logical" way. Now, can such "laws of essence" obtained "a priori" or "logically" be verified or falsified historically or "logico-historically"?
The law of essence underlying the first ideal type is: "Often money is created by the fact that some material good becomes money." The creation of money proceeds in monopolistic or oligopolistic market forms or on the basis of "complete competition." Thus, in the High Middle Ages, large landlords and cities "engaged in oligopolistic competition." "Complete competition" in this form of money production is said to have existed in the case of free minting rights: "For example, in the Frankish Empire of the 6th century, where privileged mintmasters were allowed to convert gold or silver into money, sometimes in itinerant operations (...)." "How much money circulates is determined here not by a body, not by a monopolist who observes the market and acts on it, but the amount of money circulating depends on how far it seems worthwhile to the leaders of the individual economies."69 It is clear that all these "descriptions" are preformed by certain money-theoretical prejudices, namely nominalist and quantity-theoretical ones. From a Marxian position, "descriptions" of this kind would have to be quite different.
The essential law underlying the second ideal type is: "Money comes into existence upon delivery of a commodity or upon performance of labor in return. This is the second monetary system." Again, from a Marxian position such an assertion would have to be judged as blatant nonsense, and even more so the following 'description' of prehistoric conditions: "Money of such creation existed already in very ancient times. So in the Babylonia of the 3rd and 2nd pre-Christian millennium. (!!) Temple or royal palace delivered to a private person e.g. grain, received a promissory bill and gave it in payment. The promissory bill was made out to the bearer, circulated as money." "And when today central banks buy gold and pay with banknotes, quite the same thing happens: Money is created in the purchase of a commodity. "70
As is well known, a part of the Marxist economists is also of the opinion that the central bank in the "purchase of gold at the same time creates money"; they would therefore have no reason to object in principle to Eucken's interpretation of certain archaeological findings. And it is also impossible to see how this money-theoretical "revisionism" of numerous Marxist economists could be convincingly criticized from a 'logical-historical' position. The money-theoretical 'revisionists' could plead with the representatives of the older orthodoxy that Marx was not able to solve the 'money riddle' and had to develop a wrong theory of money because he could not be familiar with certain events in the third pre-Christian millennium. The specific shape of his value-form analysis and the monetary theory resulting from it would thus have to be attributed to the backwardness of the archaeological research of his time. Other historical facts would also have had to lead to a different 'logical-historical' developed genesis of money and thus to a different solution of the 'money riddle'. Against such an argumentation hardly anything could be objected from the point of view of the older orthodoxy. An inductive 'justification' of money theorems must also put up with an inductive refutation. In fact, the 'logical-historical' method can ultimately only be understood as an inductive method. For nowhere has it been shown how the origin and validity of the deductive or 'logical element of this method could be explained. That, for instance, a "developmental logic" of monetary systems can be worked out is first of all no more than an assertion, at best a program, which, however, could hardly refer to Marx. The advocates of such a program would have nothing less than the task of developing a completely new theory of money.
The details of the second monetary system, which, according to Eucken, "has been found again and again as a formal element of currencies for millennia up to our own day,"71 and its influence on the "establishment of equilibrium," which differs from that of the first monetary system, are of no interest in the problematic context of "logical" and "historical" issues, any more than Eucken's third monetary system: "The lender creates money. (...) Money disappears when loans are repaid."72 It should only be noted that this third mode of money creation contradicts Marx's theory just as much as the first two modes.73 This is only emphasized because Marx's theory of credit is just as unfamiliar to many Marxist economists as the money-theoretical essence of Marx's analysis of the value form.
We discussed the "logical-historical" method of the older Marxist orthodoxy from three points of view:
we took it at its word and asked first of all about its historical foundation. It turned out that the interpreters consistently "put the "text" in place of reality (...)."74 This textual faith, which is difficult to comprehend and which one has to state in the problematic context of "logical" and "historical" even among anti-dogmatic and "revisionist" interpreters81 , will be brought up again later.
We asked whether this method is generally appropriate to the factual problems and could help as an interpretive approach to unlock the meaning of Marx's texts on value-form analysis. We came to the conclusion that although this "method" has some support in the Marxian texts, it is completely unsuitable for grasping the scope of Marx's value-form analysis, especially its relevance for economic theory. Rather, one will have to attribute to its influence that the third and fourth sections of the first chapter, but also the second chapter of the first volume, have remained a closed book for the vast majority of interpreters.
It was asked whether the method occasionally advocated also in the academic literature is in principle suitable to resolve 'money puzzles', i.e. money-theoretical aporias. Without wanting to anticipate the results of an ethnological research guided by money theory, one will have to meet this project with a certain skepticism.
However, even some representatives of the older orthodoxy are not merely concerned with interpretational coherence and with saving the traditional Marx reception. Indeed, their rejection of the 'logical' interpretation can invoke two factual problems that are repeatedly evaded by the representatives of the "logical" interpretation. These two problems are not merely invoked by these representatives of the older orthodoxy, but also by other opponents of the "logical" interpretation. Klaus Holzkamp, Jürgen Ritsert and Louis Althusser - adherents of politically and theoretically heterogeneous positions - agree on the one point that an interpretation of Capital on the basis of the rough draft must necessarily lead to a "pseudo-dialectic"75 and a "neo-idealism"76 . Instead of clear concepts, only the "false metaphor of the "germ cell""84 would be offered. The accusation of neo-idealism, which allegedly "wants to derive everything empirical from the presupposed abstract concept, such as that of the commodity," is combined with that of dogmatism - accusations that have been made by academic Marx criticism since time immemorial.
The serious objection is raised that the "logical" interpreters are no longer even able to identify the "justification of validity as a problem". The "question of the justification of the truth claim" has to be excluded "by dogmatic pro-truth-setting". Instead of an "epistemological-methodological justification of the procedure," one argues only on the level of "circular figures of thought" and "dogmatizing postulates."76 The renunciation of an epistemological and methodological reflection of Marx's theory by the neo-orthodox interpreters is tantamount to a "renunciation of a justification of the scientificity of scientific socialism. "77
It is certainly a remarkable process that within the Marxist orthodoxy there is a dispute about the "scientificity of scientific socialism" and thus an admission that this "scientificity" and the necessity of its justification contain a whole series of open questions. Leaving aside the fact that the accusation of dogmatism from the mouth of an advocate of Soviet Marxist orthodoxy looks rather strange and could very well prove to be a boomerang, the criticism levelled at the neo-orthodox authors is essentially correct.
While Althusser calls the real problem of interpretation by its name, Holzkamp's critique - with certain reservations even Ritsert's - is full of half-measures and inconsistencies. If not merely individual but quite numerous interpreters are mistaken, on the other hand, if the interpretation proposed by their critics turned out to be equally incapable of consensus, then obviously the condition lamented by Marx at that time still persists that "even good heads have not quite grasped the matter correctly" (31/534), a statement that was aimed at the reception of the critique. If the two subsequent attempts at representation in the first and second editions of Capital have evidently only produced a chain of unbroken new "misunderstandings," even opposing forms of reception, then it seems to me that the further conclusion is irrefutable that the reproducing and amplifying "deficiencies of representation" are in fact deficiencies of the content to be represented, namely the result of insufficiently precise concepts and ultimately of an insufficiently elaborated method.
Difficulties of understanding and disputes of interpreters are almost as old as Capital itself. And if it is possible to argue reasonably about the question whether Engels understood the matter quite correctly, one will probably not seriously want to claim that the texts of Capital are clear and unambiguous in themselves, but that the interpreters are only unable to recognize them as such. The difficulties, which have grown especially in recent years, to work out an intersubjectively binding interpretation of Capital can certainly not be blamed on those authors who are sworn to the rough draft. To do so would be to confuse cause and effect. It was precisely the "metaphoricity" of Capital that led to the study of the "metaphoricity" of the rough draft; it was the manifest inability of Soviet Marxist orthodoxy to elaborate a consensual theory of dialectical logic78 that compelled the study of the "germ cell metaphors" of the first edition of Capital and of that original form of "representation" of economic "categories" that Marx wanted to be understood as his "dialectical method of development" (31/313). Criticism of the "neo-idealism" of the "germ cell thesis" fails to recognize or trivializes the intent of the criticized interpretations "to decipher the sometimes enigmatic mode of expression" and "to specify basic concepts. "79
From Holzkamp and Ritsert one would expect the consequence of criticizing, beyond the "logical" interpretations, also the "ambiguity of the texts" of Capital and, in general, the "scientific terms80 still inadequate in Marx. Without realizing the thoroughly "revisionist" significance of their actions, both Ritsert's and Holzkamp's "Programmatik zur Begründung von Dialektik"81 are nothing other than an attempt to "understand Marx better than he understood himself."82
We must refrain here from presenting Holzkamp's and Ritsert's critique in more detail. A more detailed treatment would have to insist above all on the fact that this critique would also have to include the basic concepts of academic "conceptual national economy."83 The problems of "metaphor" and "derivation" of "basic concepts" are the same. Here as there, the question is how a non-falsifiable theory of money and capital as a science is possible.
Holzkamp criticizes the "logical" interpretation of the value-form analysis and the "development" of value-forms namely as follows: "What is not made explicit here is what "development" refers to, whether to the thing or to a mental operation. From the context of argumentation, in which, for instance, "development" and "derivation", likewise "form development" and "form analysis" are equated, we can gather that by development here essentially a mental development is meant. "Necessary logical development" therefore means "necessary logical thought development". Consequently, when "result" or "outcome" is spoken of, the result or outcome of a logical derivation (but not of the real process) is meant here!"84 With this criticism, some characteristic ambiguities of "logical" interpretations are now very aptly marked. It could be shown, however, that Marx himself leaves the term "development" in limbo at numerous points. The ambiguity of his method consists in nothing other than this very ambiguity of the central concept of "development": in a way that is completely unclarified epistemologically and in terms of the logic of science, he seeks to relate "logical" and "historical" development to one another.
Holzkamp further criticizes that it remains unclear "how the "logical" derivations and results that Marx here produces can be shown to be scientifically compelling contexts of justification, and what it is supposed to mean when one ascribes "necessity" to the logical developments of thought. (...) Why is money logically necessary to be derived from the determinations of the commodity, etc.? Formal-logical necessity in the sense of an analytic-logical deduction relation cannot be meant here. (...) There is no logical rule of transformation according to which money follows from the general equivalent form. But what then is meant here by 'logical and 'necessity'? "85
With this question Holzkamp touches not only a sensitive point of the "logical" interpretation, but of the entire Marxist secondary literature on the critique of political economy. Ritsert, too, sees a central problem of Marx research here. In the texts he examines, "the 'Übersichhinausweisen' of the categories" becomes clear only in "pseudo-dialectical veilings."86 Unlike Holzkamp, Ritsert emphasizes in this context, but also in the context of his critical discussion of certain receptions of Marx's use of the term "contradiction," the problematic nature of some Marxian turns of phrase: the simple form of value "passes over into more "complete" forms, there are "deficiencies of form."87 Marx himself had warned against the illusion that "value" could pass over into another form by itself, like a subject. "But what can it then meaningfully mean" that forms pass "by themselves" into more developed ones, "come apart"?88 Ritsert further acknowledges the necessity of quasi-transcendental questions: "What are the conditions of the possibility of statements such as "the order of economic categories" (...) at the same time constitutes forms of existence (...) of bourgeois society?"89 Haug, too, poses the question, "How can Marx actually work with the method of logical analyzing, logical postulating, without giving away his general claim to be a materialist (...), how can (...) the method of logical analysis open up access to real development?"90 Thus, similar to Ritsert, he poses the question of the possibility of a justification of this method. But can such a question still be formulated meaningfully on the basis of a materialistic First Philosophy?
With regard to Marx's economic theory, Oskar Negt has formulated these questions for the first time and denied the possibility of an orthodox solution. He states "that Marx's epistemological reflection does not go so far as to reflect on the condition of the possibility of the concept or of grasping the concept nor of its relation to social reality." One "cannot pretend that Marx brought the method to the most epistemologically conscious point. That is precisely what he did not do. Rather, a different approach is needed. "91
Recently, Hans Jörg Sandkühler, following Holzkamp and Haug, has again brought up the epistemological problem of political economy and thus meritoriously updated the now forgotten Negtian question. He admittedly makes the astonishing claim that dialectical materialism has formulated "categories guiding theory and method" "for the social sciences", thus obviously also for political economy. Its "liquidation" in the interpretations of recent orthodoxy prevented "the problem-solving of the epistemological-objectivity question" and meant the "transfer of epistemology into political economy or sociology. "92
How so? What epistemology is Sandkühler talking about? If I understand him correctly, he is thinking in this context above all of the "Engelsian characterization of the relation between the logical and the historical" in the 1859 review, which has "methodological consequences (...) for the use of philosophical categories in the social sciences. "93 Well, we will have to deal with this review in particular and then also take up the Negtsche question like that of whether or not there is a "need for a different approach."
If we take stock of this first and preliminary consideration of the alternative of "logical" or "logical-historical" interpretation, we can already say that neither direction is capable of fully describing either the propositional content or the problem content of Marx's theory of value. Both directions ignore or trivialize the fact, stated by Rosa Luxemburg, Otto Bauer, and Louis Althusser, that Marx uses a good dozen different metaphorical expressions on the "first 30 pages of Capital (...)."94 It is admittedly "very difficult to decide where metaphor begins with Marx and where he wants to be understood literally". Some basic concepts of his theory "remain in abeyance."95 The "metaphoricality" of Capital, however, entails that interpreters too often trust a quite subjective experience of evidence. Each of the many interpreters insists in a theological manner on a "correct understanding" of the texts, but no one is able to name a standard that would allow an intersubjectively binding decision on a "correct" understanding of Marx's texts. The claimed "correct understanding" thus acquires a thoroughly magical quality. The statement that Marx might have left a certain concept "in limbo" is something orthodox interpreters do not want to accept under any circumstances: the assertion even that Marx solved certain problems only inadequately is perceived as blasphemy. Luxemburg therefore thought it advisable to entrust her critique of Marx to a private correspondence. She appreciates the simplicity of expression, which is why, for example, "the much-praised first volume of Marx's Capital, with its overload of rococo ornaments in the Hegelian style, is now an abomination to her (for which, from the party point of view, five years in prison and ten years loss of honor are condemned)."96
The orthodox Roman Rosdolsky also criticizes that certain interpreters treat Marx's texts "in the manner of Holy Scripture" and believes he must remind us: "Marx and Engels were only human beings, and therefore also had the privilege of being wrong!"97 Since in the non-Marxist theory of money and capital the factual problems are essentially the same, pseudo-theological disputes occurred there as well: "For since not the determination of facts and factual problems, (...) but arbitrarily set definitions and word interpretations stand at the beginning, the commitment to such upstream definitions or essence findings or "theories" is made out of sympathy. (...) Sects are formed with prophets at the top and with single or numerous disciples. The one pushes this, the other that word in the foreground, and everyone gives his special interpretation. (...) Soon, however, they are again displaced by new sect leaders just as they displaced the old ones. (...) The battles of the sects among themselves are fought with the fierceness of battles of faith. Words and definitions become slogans, the atmosphere of science is polluted."98 Walter Eucken here wanted to characterize a certain direction of academic economic theory, what he called "conceptual national economics". But it hardly needs a special remark that the state of Marxist theory today could not be better characterized.
Even more sharply than Eucken, Friedrich v. Gottl-Ottlilienfeld has worked out the actual reason for these pseudo-theological disputes: the "metaphoric" of the traditional theory of money and capital results from the ambiguity of the basic concepts of national economics: "'exchange value' is a pronounced technical term of national economic theory, but precisely in the manner of these technical terms: the word is fixed, the meaning is there! (...) One considers these words to be virtually life rafts of unambiguity, after which one takes refuge from that frightening confusion to which the torrent of theories around the word "value" has led."[^108] In his opinion, "exchange value" is "in a quite incurable way an expression which, according to its spiritual core, consists of pure plasticine, which unawares shapes itself in one way or another, indeed according to the context into which it is squeezed."[^109] "Thus, however, one keeps stammering these words in a questioning form. Mere words represent the problems, bury them under themselves."99 "Where the problem does not move the cognitive thinking, (...) there the problem-representing, the 'ruling' word intrudes (...). Thereupon the problem rolls up only so far that the theorist immediately feels the intuition from the word, and over the word, as solution. The transverbal intuition, to call it so, then decides in the last place on the cognition; and it is what delivers the cognition to the logically irresponsible of the mind."100 Gottl demonstrates a "kaleidoscopic change" of certain basic words of national economics.101
If one follows Hans Albert, then not too much seems to have changed in the past fifty years in this "rule of the word" and "word-bound thinking" stated by Gottl. The theoretical-economic statements of neoclassical economics by no means formed a unified system: "What emerges on closer examination is the fact that they break down into different 'language games' with different questions, which are closely related to each other by their vocabulary and their situation of origin, but which otherwise belong to completely different areas of thought. The extensive commonality of the vocabulary is suitable to disguise the diversity of these language games and to create the impression of a unified and closed science. (...) There are certain key words, such as 'value', 'benefit' (...) etc., which by their change of function particularly facilitate the imperceptible transition from one to the other language game and whose definition often appears to be especially important and at the same time difficult. "102
'Sect formation', 'word-bound thinking', "transverbal intuition," 'problem-representing words," "kaleidoscopic change" of basic concepts, "diversity of language games" using a common vocabulary - who would deny that not only neoclassical economic theory but also Marxist political economy can be characterized with these observations?
Althusser's assertion that Marx "produced certain constructions as if in an epiphany" and was "no longer able to link and process them theoretically",103 amounts to the thesis that there can be no question of a Marxian method as a logically consistent whole. But a method elaborated only in vague outlines can now be characterized neither as "logical" nor as "logical-historical."
I believe that one can only discuss Althusser's thesis in a reasonably unbiased way if one at the same time considers the following: If Marx had really been able to develop his ideas about a "dialectical method of development" (31/313) into a logically closed whole of a theory of method, a logic and epistemology of the social sciences, he would not have allowed himself to be prevented by any external circumstances from also setting down in writing such a systematically elaborated method. A first draft, which admittedly raises more questions than it contains answers, is known to have been written by him already in 1857. At about the same time, he undertook "to make accessible to common sense, in 2 or 3 printed sheets, the rational aspects of the method discovered by Hegel (...)". (29/260) Marx never abandoned this plan, but presumably never carried it out either. Twenty-five years later, Engels searches in vain for a corresponding manuscript in Marx's estate: "Tomorrow I shall at last have time to devote a few hours to the perusal of all the manuscripts which the Moor has left us. It concerns above all an outline on dialectics, which he always wanted to carry out. However, he has always concealed from us the state of his work". (36/3)
It is a naive idea that Marx had the new method ready in his head, but never found the time in the course of twenty-five years to put down in writing "in 2 or 3 printed sheets" the "rational" in Hegel's method. If Engels did not manage it either and even "at present the connection between "formal and "dialectical logic" is still to some extent unenlightened",104 then one cannot be fobbed off with the assertion that it is actually "not surprising at all that Marx never wrote a "logic" or "epistemology" in the sense of school philosophy": his "logic" was "the logic of capital", "as Lenin rightly" remarked.105
Lenin hoped that by means of an appropriate interpretation of Capital this work could be made up for. If the representatives of Leninist philosophy and economics were not able to meet Lenin's desideratum, one cannot simply make the dialectical virtue out of such a need that nothing can be said about the method separately from the content.106 In any case, Lenin tacitly presupposed that Marx had the finished whole of a dialectical logic and epistemology in mind during the elaboration of Capital. This is how it reads in every Leninist textbook of philosophy; and from this conception also derives the task of working out the dialectical logic underlying Capital.
How far such work has progressed so far can be seen in the research report of the Central Institute for Philosophy at the Academy of Sciences of the GDR. It deals with the question of how the dialectical "basic laws interact with each other and what the systematic of the method founded by Marx consists of, which in no case can be used schematically." Under the condition that Marx actually worked out a "dialectical method of development", this task is quite reasonably posed. For if nothing at all could be said about the method in isolation from the content, it could not be identified as a method at all and thus could not be distinguished either from other methods or from the content. Moreover, the problem would merely shift to the content, because the "peculiar logic" is the logic of a "peculiar object": not every object is supposed to be able to be "developed" dialectically. Just if the "dialectical method of development" is not to be applied schematically, it would have to be possible to determine specific differences of the mode of development of the objects belonging to different realms of being. The representatives of a dialectical logic would have to be able to answer, for example, the question why, for example, economic objects can be "developed" in contrast to geometrical figures. One will also have to show why other economists have not already developed the basic concepts of their science "dialectically". If they are not familiar with this "method", it must be possible to convey it in a universally valid way that can be understood by everyone. As long as such minimal prerequisites of a meaningful talk about "dialectics" are not fulfilled, every Marxist can continue to reproach everyone else for not having "understood" "dialectics."107
The method, we are told, must not be applied schematically, but must be oriented to the "real movement and development of the object." This point of view is "extensively justified and presented in historical-theoretical terms in the History of Marxist Dialectics, published under the direction of M. M. Rosental. In this, among other things, the principles of the 'derivation' of the categories and the unity of the basic laws of dialectics from the objective-real development are in the foreground. "108
In this extensive and partly quite original work, a collective of authors of the Soviet Academy of Sciences has attempted to work out the basic methodological problem of Capital, the dialectical "derivation" of the economic categories; of course, there can be no question of a presentation of the 'objectively-real development' in this work any more than in other studies on Capital. The research report goes on to say: "Two problems interpenetrate each other in the conception of this 'derivation': first, the theoretical derivation as reflection of an objective dependence relation, second, the problem of the logical derivation in the conceptual system itself." The authors are obviously thinking of the Engelsian distinction between the "logical development" and the "historical mode of treatment". Should the Soviet Academy of Sciences have actually succeeded in deciphering the intricate problem of "logical derivation in the conceptual system" of economic categories?
One could be curious how this broad commentary on Marx's dialectics in Capital would be judged by the philosophical experts of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR. But instead of a clear statement, one finds only the laconic statement: "In our opinion, the more promising way at present is to deal thoroughly with the first problem before the second can be tackled on a larger scale."109 In other words, the first problem was treated rather superficially and the second completely unsatisfactorily. The difficulties of the second problem are estimated to be so high that it seems advisable to the Academy to postpone the 'processing' for the time being. Instead, it is suggested to first of all "thoroughly" work on that problem of which it is assumed that its difficulties can be overcome in the foreseeable future. After completion of this work, the main task, the second problem "of the logical derivation in the conceptual system itself", could then be tackled promisingly and "on a larger scale". "The reason for this assumption lies in the fact that "logical deduction" in this context is not to be equated with a formal deduction in the classics of Marxism-Leninism, but is to be understood as an intellectual, theoretical reproduction of an objective process of development, as it emerges from numerous statements of the classics themselves."110
Here one finds exceedingly strange assertions. The disjunction "formal deduction" and "intellectual reproduction of an objective process of development" cannot be justified so easily by referring to the "numerous utterances of the classics". It is true that according to Engels' review of 1859 the "logical development" or "logical mode of action" is supposed to be nothing else "than the mirror image, in abstract and theoretically consistent form, of the historical course". (13/475) It is also conceivable that on the basis of a materialistic theory of reflection the "logical development" or "logical derivation in the conceptual system itself" cannot be interpreted in any other way at all. But if this should be the case, then the academy has led its own research program ad absurdum: the first and the second problem definition would then coincide. The first was interpreted as "reflection of an objective dependency relationship", and of the second we now learn that it is to be understood only "as intellectual, theoretical reproduction of an objective development process". Unless a distinction can be made between ""reflection" and "mental reproduction", the academy will have to decide to give up either the theory of reflection or its own research program. The "logical development" could then perhaps be interpreted as a reflection of a historical "development logic", but not much would be gained by this either.
Such a "developmental logic" of value forms, by the way, also exists in Holzkamp for the time being only as a research program, and to a clarification of the "logical derivation in the conceptual system itself" this 'developmental logic' probably hardly contributes anything. Thus, the alternative seems to emerge more and more clearly, either to stick to the theory of reflection or to insist on the possibility of finally being able to specify and justify the "logical derivation in the conceptual system itself". It is quite unlikely that this task can be "tackled" on the basis of a materialistic First Philosophy. At this point, by the way, one will also have to raise considerable doubts as to whether Althusser's structuralist reconstruction efforts can continue.
Be that as it may, the Academy, on the basis of its assessment of the extraordinary interpretive difficulties of Marx's value-form analysis, should not fail to recommend that the textbooks of Marxist-Leninist political economy be provided with a large number of question marks and critical remarks.
With all this, it must not be overlooked that the problems of any orthodox interpretation have been raised here. I am not aware of any affirmative interpretation that does not immediately raise the question whether the conceptual instrument used by Marx is really adequate to the task of establishing an intersubjectively binding context of argumentation.
Haug, in contrast to other authors, does not want to excuse himself with the fact "that only some of the conceptual tools (...) could be derived, (...) that, however, no derivation could be carried out completely, but always only initiated." The idea that he had, of course, only broken open a piece of "a very complex problematic - though probably the hardest and most productive one at the same time",111 could only arise because he only operated with "problem-representing words" of a "transverbal intuition". Other interpreters think of other words, admittedly also quite rarely economic factual problems.
The elimination of economic factual problems may satisfy the need for faith of a small political community; the scientific reappraisal of Marx's theory is certainly done a disservice. To paraphrase a remark by Raymond Aron, one can only conclude: "In fact, if one reads Haug or the work of many a philological interpreter, one would hardly suspect that Capital is intended as an outline of political economy."112 Unsolved problems of 'logical' development are occasionally stated - albeit rather timidly and contradictorily - by representatives of the 'logical' interpretation. Thus, the study Crisis and Capitalism in Marx does contain a very extensive 85-page section Method of Political Economy. In fact, the authors' collective also comes to the conclusion that it is justified that Marx calls his method of treating political economy a dialectical one; however, in a marginal note appended to this sentence, of all things, the authors again m question their own assertion: "The differences resulting from the difference between conceptual development and formal-logical deduction from the usual method of the sciences, which can justify that designation in the sense of the distinction between "formal" and "dialectical logic, cannot be further developed by us here. In this the authors see an essential defect of their thesis-like attempt to characterize Marx's method."113
This self-criticism, quite unusual in the Marxist secondary literature, while extremely sympathetic, leaves completely uncertain whether it makes sense to characterize Marx's treatment of political economy as a sui generis method distinguishable from the "usual method of the sciences" or even as a dialectical method. This question is challenged by this presentation not least because the authors obviously could not decide to refer to the "logical development" of the value forms or even to present it as a prime example of the "dialectical method". They "sketch" the transition from money to capital only in "short form, without going into detail about the theoretical difficulties connected with this transition. (...) In order to clarify the structure of this "transition", which is of decisive importance for the inner construction of the concept of capital, it would be necessary, among other things, to explain in what precise sense it can be said that capital is contained in money and to elaborate the character of the transition of being logical and real transition in one."114
With this reference, the problems of a "dialectical" or "logical" development of economic categories are aptly marked; at the same time, doubts intensify as to whether this program can be realized al le alone with the conceptual means of Marx's instrumentarium. Apparently, it can no longer be tacitly assumed that a "transition" can be constructed at all, whose peculiarity is supposed to consist in "being more logical and more real in one".
The authors enumerate some other problems of Marx's method, of which, however, they know just as little to say whether and how their clarification could be "tackled": "That conception of the 'self-development of substance' or of the "substance as subject" would have to be distinguished from the traditional "principle of the fixed substance", of the developmentless fixed general, and the conception of the "conceptual development" from the formal-logical deduction or subsumption. Cf. on this, e.g., Zeleny."[^126] In short, according to the authors, one must not actually speak of a "method" at all, but only of the "conception" of a method. The self-appeasing reference "e.g. Zeleny" cannot hide the fact that nowhere has a serious attempt been made to systematically work out the dialectical logic allegedly underlying Capital. The "example" Zeleny can only strengthen the suspicion that materialist philosophers have gone in search of a phantom. For it could easily be shown that Zeleny, too, in his search for a materialistic and at the same time dialectical method, got entangled in a tangle of contradictions. How else could one understand the research program of the Academy of the GDR to "tackle" the conception of a materialistic "self-development" once again - in a roundabout way and at a later time?
The elaboration of the method will have to be postponed to the day of never-never-ending, if one continues in the manner of the authors quoted here merely as examples to study Marx's texts shaking one's head in the quiet closet, devoting oneself full of discomfort to the sour work of "understanding" the "logical development" and discussing breaking points of Marx's argumentations at best in the small circle of the "initiated", because one does not want to continue to rob the community of the faith in the great method. The "essence of dialectics that remained unthought between Hegel and Marx" (K.-O. Apel) remains unthought if one continues to treat Capital entirely "after the manner of the Holy Scriptures."
If Marx did not write the planned "Abriß über Dialektik", Engels, despite his close collaboration with Marx, was not able to write it, and the many academies of Marxist-Leninist philosophy also do not know how to interpret the "logical derivation in the conceptual system" of Capital, then Althusser's thesis gains immense plausibility -- that Marx, on the basis of a materialist theory of images, was not at all able to develop his ideas of a method into a systematic theory of the method. Althusser by no means wants to claim that Marx's Capital is not based on a certain material logic; in this respect he could well agree with Lenin's thesis that Marx left behind the 'logic' of Capital. However, it is unlikely that the 'logic' of Capital is to be identified with Marx's ideas about 'logic' and 'theory of knowledge'. According to Althusser, working out the method underlying Capital is much more difficult than Lenin imagined and orthodox Marxism continues to imagine. Indeed, the scientific reading of Capital has to break a "circle," and this circle is: "A philosophical reading of Capital is only possible by applying the criteria for which we are still searching, and which only Marx's philosophy can supply."115 "Without the help of Marx's philosophy, which we have to read out of Capital at the same time, a real reading of this work is not possible."116
One need not necessarily adopt the structuralist form of a "symptomatic reading" to argue for such a reading of Marx. At almost the same time as Althusser, Alfred Schmidt pointed out: "As important as Marx's self-understanding is, it often enough falls far short of what Marx offers theoretically in his material analyses."117 In this context, Schmidt quotes a letter from Marx to Lasalle: "Even in the case of philosophers who gave their work a systematic form, e.g. Spinoza, the real inner construction of his system is quite different from the form in which it was consciously presented by him." (29/561) Schmidt's thesis can hardly be taken to mean that a correct or incorrect philosophical self-understanding could not also affect the logical stringency of the material analysis, the conciseness and coherence of its basic concepts, and the relationship between partial and total analysis. Strict separation of philosophical self-understanding and single-scientific analysis certainly applies only to certain empirical sciences. Contrary to a still widespread prejudice, the theoretical analysis of money and capital by Marx and other representatives of traditional economics cannot be attributed to the philosophically indifferent empirical sciences. Certain ambiguities in the material analysis of Marx's economics could thus well be related to the fact that Marx was not able to develop a complementary philosophy demanded by the "real inner construction of his system".
In this point, the Marx critique of the Frankfurt School converges with that of the Althusser School. Their views could be reduced to the common denominator that the "real inner construction" of Marx's system only partially coincides with the "consciously represented form" of Marx. From the philosophical positions of both schools, the assumption is obvious that Marx did not produce an "outline on dialectics" adequate to the material problems of the social sciences by chance, but for principled factual reasons: ideological prejudices prevented Marx from systematically elaborating a "peculiar logic" or method adequate to the "peculiar objects" of the theory of money and capital, which would have made possible a specification and substantiation of the categories he used. If the "reading out" of dialectical determinations from the economic categories can be reconstructed in a generally valid way, i.e. if it should not turn out to be a "reading in", i.e. if the "retrieval" of the figures of thought familiar to him from idealistic philosophy should really have a reason in the 'thing', then these discoveries could certainly not be mastered with the means of thought of post-Hegelian philosophy including the materialistic approaches. The epistemologically quite vague ideas about "reflection" had to drive here on a wrong track. The problem of the genesis and validity of quasi-transcendental determinations in the field of economy could only be thought through quite inadequately from these conceptions. Only in this way one will be able to explain the attempt, which today only evokes head shaking and shrugging, to construct a "historical" one from the "logical development" and then to want to justify the "logical" one backwards. If some esoteric constructions should really turn out to be significant discoveries, then the attempt to establish a relation between "logical" and "real", "logical" and "real" "development" by means of a postulate of reflection must inevitably lead to making these discoveries completely unrecognizable again and thus to distorting the "material" analysis again. One need only imagine that the rough draft would have been lost: the representatives of Marx's theory would then still today be compelled to pass off the historicist fables about the Stone Age and simple commodity production as the great method of scientific socialism.
At this point it becomes clear that the Frankfurt School and the Althusser School can only agree on negatives. Beyond the criticism of the Marxist orthodoxy, not too many similarities can be found. The Marxian question of the "rational core" of dialectics, which is reproduced in a new form and is now to be applied above all to Capital, is answered quite differently by the two schools, as is well known. From an inner-philosophical point of view, it is hardly possible to find a standard that would allow a consensual decision where the "rational" determinations of dialectics end and the "mode of representation of "Capital" is confused with the speculative development of the concept "118. What is to be regarded in Capital and in the rough draft as a factual problem or as an illusory problem, as a real discovery or as a "metaphysical" relic, as "scientific" dialectics or idealistic metaphorics, can probably only be clarified when the problem of money theory is comprehensively addressed at the same time as certain philosophical problems.
In the preceding sections, only some important features of the two orthodox directions have been described. A detailed description would show that within these two major groupings there are again quite considerable differences between the individual interpretations. For example, Holzkamp understands a "logical-historical" analysis, derivation or development in a completely different way than Zeleny. The latter does not understand the "logical-historical" analysis as an independent procedure at all; it rather needs to be supplemented by a complementary procedure: the "dialectical-logical" derivation. But Holzkamp seems to think very little of this "derivation"; he does not find it worth mentioning, but this does not prevent him from rejecting the quite accurate Zeleny criticism119 of his neo-orthodox opponent.
Also within the neo-orthodox directions serious differences between the individual "logically" autgebauten interpretations could be proved. Thus, there is a great dispute about the meaning of the second chapter of Capital between the representatives of precisely that grouping of the "logical" interpretation,120 who practice a kind of philological-theological reading of Capital and insist, in good Lutheran fashion: "The word they shall let stand." Of course, it is not surprising that even the Marxist "Lutherans" do not take the "word" very seriously.
In general, one must reproach the "logical" direction for being quite inconsistent in the discussion of a very important problem: as far as I can see, its representatives refer positively to the Engelsian determination of the relationship between the "logical" and the "historical". This is astonishing above all because it is almost palpable that in the Engelsian recension of 1859 the basic idea of a theory of simple commodity production has already been formulated. In a certain sense, this inconsistency is again no accident. For there can be no question of the "logical" interpreters having exhaustively presented those problematics and approaches demonstrable in the "logically" conceived writings which point to a "logical development" of the categories. The construction or reconstruction of an ideal type of "logical development" is still pending. Whether this will ever succeed is therefore quite an open question; however, it should at least be possible to present the problems and elements formulated by Marx in a reasonably complete way. Only then will it be possible to see more clearly whether Marx's methodological ideas can be developed into a systematically built theory of method.
It has already been pointed out that today the Soviet and Soviet Marxist interpretations can no longer be attributed en bloc to one or the other direction. The official textbooks still valiantly advocate historicist "interpretations": the "primal hunters" and "primal fishers" from "pre-Adamite times" consciously or "half-consciously" perform ominous acts of "equating" game and fish as a quasi-transcendental condition of their exchange. However, it must be repeatedly emphasized that one of the authoritative commentators on Marxist-Leninist theory, M. M. Rosental, implicitly rejects the interpretation of the first three chapters as a theory of primordial exchange and simple commodity production;121 the other authors of the aforementioned History of Marxist Dialectics have also departed from the traditional account. While the textbook of the Party College at the CC of the CPSU wants to clarify the "simple or accidental value form" by showing that a "sack of grain (...) was accidentally exchanged for a sheep, just as accidentally a stone axe was exchanged for a necklace," and here an "equation of grain and sheep" takes place,122 the Academy of Sciences of the USSR no longer wants to accept such stone-age interpretations of Marx's value form analysis. In the history of Marxist dialectics published by it, it at least risks the sentence: "Commodity and money must not be regarded as pre-capitalist categories, but specifically as phenomena of capitalist relations."123
It would now have to be shown how the narrowing of this central problem area led Rosental and the other members of the academy to become entangled in all sorts of contradictions. This proof and a detailed discussion of the secondary literature on the theory of value, however, is reserved for a special investigation.124 A few basic observations as well as a brief summary of the previous considerations on the Marxist secondary literature should lead over to the actual textual analysis. In doing so, it seems expedient to me to highlight very briefly the core problem of Marx's methodological conception underlying the interpretational contrasts of the two orthodoxies.
All interpreters agree on one fundamental, but only negatively describable fact: Marx's context of argumentation can neither be described as an axiomatic deductive procedure nor as a sequence of historical ideal types. Thus, for Holzkamp there is no doubt "that merely logical-analytical, formal-logical figures of thought cannot be meant when one calls Marx's derivations in Capital "logical"."125 More and other than formal logic in the common sense is "addressed". This "more and other" is of particular concern to Zeleny: "Marx builds up his scientific system of political economy not at all by means of the axiomatic method, but by using the new dialectical derivation."126 "Marx gives the development of the forms of value as the expression of a certain necessity. What character does this necessity bear? That we are not dealing here with Kantian analytic necessity is visible at first glance. That it is also not a question here of the Hegelian dialectical necessity of the immanent development of concepts and forms of thought" is just as clearly evident.127 Nevertheless, in "his new and specific conception of the logical, as it emerges in the dialectical-logical derivation," Marx ties in with Hegel's "new idea of substance as self-development."128 It is "a new explanation of the necessary logical consequential relation, which Kant did not know, (...) it is (...) not an axiomatic-mathematical necessary consequential relation."129
Ritsert, too, emphasizes that Marx's method does not "merge into what today is called nomological-deductive (...) or analytically explicative thinking."130 2 It is a method that "is not congruent with logical formalization (...)."131 He would hardly follow Zeleny's argumentation. For: "Marx (...) of course cannot help claiming (...) a logic that is formalized and further developed today, e.g., in the propositional and predicate calculus."132
Ritsert agrees with Holzkamp insofar as for him, too, Marx's determinations are "neither unfolded from a 'germ cell' nor deduced or theorems derived from an interpreted axiomatic propositional configuration."133 This poses the problem all the more sharply: "Marx does not deduce from a principle and yet distinguishes the elementary form 'Ware' as the initial moment of representation. "134
The cited authors thus state a certain order and necessity in the succession of arguments and categorial determinations, which, however, is supposed to derive neither from a formal-logical nor from a causal-nomological necessity. It can hardly be denied that a certain directionality and structuring is peculiar to the Marxian context of argumentation and that something like a quasi-logical necessity belongs to it. Marx does not deduce from a principle, but nevertheless conceives the order of arguments and determinations as a "logical development".
The methodological core problem of Marxist theory can be reduced to the formula that it has not yet been possible to specify this "more and other" in relation to a formal-logically developed sequence of thoughts in a form capable of consensus:
the structure of the "logical development" is disputed. Here, the question is whether it makes sense to understand the argumentative context of Capital as a tracing of the "self-development" of an unfolding "germ cell" or to reject this procedure as "neo-idealism".
The object of the "logical development" is disputed: are we dealing with pre-capitalist or capitalist categories?
the conditions of the possibility of this quasi-logical "development" are disputed: how are the genesis and the validity of dialectical categories to be understood? This raises at the same time the question of the relation between empirical, especially historical facts and the quasi-transcendental dialectical figures of thought. In the discussion of these questions, the opponents of the 'logical' interpretation, which is feared as "neo-idealism", cannot get past the fact: the origin of the quasi-logical consequential relation commodity - money - capital is the "logical development" of the rough draft, i.e. an "idealistic manner of representation". In fact, not a single fundamental law of the theory of money and capital can be found in Capital that Marx had not already found in the rough draft or in the critique with the means of "logical development". One will no longer be able to escape the observation that the essence implicit in the categories of Capital were derived "logically", but not at all "logico-historically". Thus, the representatives of the historicist interpretation have not been able to prove that Marx obtained these laws and real definitions in a procedure in which the "real stages of material social development (...) were reproduced in abstract thought "135. Nowhere in the rough draft is there historical material, not even empirical material gained from the investigation of capitalist relations, which could have been the basis for the construction of laws and real definitions.
This is also true for the construction of value forms. Two things should be noted here. First, it must be pointed out that where Marx first presented these forms, namely in the first edition of Capital, there is no evidence of any "real-historical material of the kind" that he would have had to work through in a "research process for the abstracting extraction of the logical-historical stages "136. At most, there can be talk of "logical-historical stages" in the revised version of the first chapter for the second edition of Capital, but in no case in the original version. Secondly, it has to be pointed out that Marx had worked out his solution to the aporia of monetary theory at a time when the idea of a development of value-forms must still have been completely foreign to him. The "extraction of the logical-historical stages" and the alleged processing of "real-historical material" was thus absolutely irrelevant for the formation of what actually had to be important to Marx, namely a system of money- and capital-theoretical laws.
However one may take it, it cannot be doubted that the laws and real definitions implicit in the development series: commodity - money - capital owe their origin to the "neo-idealism" of the "germ cell metaphor". But if now the 'context of development' of this series of development is a 'logical' one and Marx only inserted some historical facts ex post, does not the conjecture suggest itself that Marx postponed 'logical-historical' constructions as it were as a 'context of justification' ?
Notes
Footnotes
In the meantime, the important essay by C. Luporini has appeared, whose considerations converge in some points with the interpretation intended here: "Die eigentümliche Logik des eigentümlichen Gegenstandes", 4 6 3 f. ↩
K.-O. Apcl, Reflection and Material Practice, 13. ↩
As a prime example of such a pseudo-discussion, reference should be made here to the controversy between K. Holzkamp and the 'Projcktgruppc Klasscnanalysc', inspired by J. Bischoff, about the relation between 'logicalcm' and "historical* in Capital, which is of particular interest in the context of this work. It now becomes clear, of course, that the irrational aspects of inner-Marxist controversies over the rcchtc understanding of the texts are rooted to a certain extent in tangible political conflicts. In his essay Die historische Methode des wissenschaftlichen Sozialismus und ihre Verkennung durch J. Bischoff, Holzkamp does not deal with the 'logischcn' interpretation in general, but only with a certain variant of it, the one represented by J. Bischoff and the project group. Already this restriction is politically motivated. The members of the project group see themselves as critical supporters of the DKP, to whom they would like to offer a version of Marxian theory that has been purified of alleged or actual misinterpretations of Engcls-Lcninian provenance and in this way modernized, so to speak. Since the group around Bischoff has "gained strong and still increasing influence in certain areas of the left within the Federal Republic" with its "conception," DKP member Holzkamp sees himself challenged above all politically: "The present critique therefore wants to intervene in the Tagcsauscinandcrsctzung between Marxists in the Federal Republic about the correct scientific foundation of the struggle." (Ibid., 8 f.) /// After the older orthodoxy had preferred for years to ignore the heresies of the ncoorthodox direction, here for the first time one of its representatives deals with the annoying assertion that some classics of Marxism-Leninism, Engels and Lenin, had misunderstood capital and thus the "method of wisscnschattüchcn socialism" in serious points. Since since then a similar discussion on this delicate subject has not come up again, this controversy deserves special attention. Some of the arguments of this debate, some of which have been developed quite clearly and sharply, will occupy us later in the text. /// For the evaluation of the subject matter of the controversy as well as the chances of being able to clarify disputes of this kind in an inner-Marxist way, however, it seems to me that not only the factual arguments presented are informative, but above all the form of the discussion. And here the following seems remarkable to me: a. Although not only philological-intcrprctational questions were discussed, but also the problem of the validity of Marx's statements, there was no mention of a historical in the sense of an epitome of verifiable historical facts in the debate about 'logical' and "historical*. Certain quotations from the works of the "classics represented the "historical" and possessed absolute probative force. There seemed to be a tacit agreement not to raise the question of the information content and validity of the "historical explanations" of that controversial value-form analysis. In this strange debate about "historical" as suchcs and its function in the Marxian process of proof, both parties did not at all want to deal with the idea that some of the "historical remarks" might turn out to be either trivialities or pure a priori constructions. Here it became apparent how certain forms of Marx philology can turn into an authority-believing dogmatism, quite comparable to the Aristotelian-oriented nature speculations of late scholasticism. b. Both parties showed themselves neither able nor willing to appreciate the motives of the other side, to comprehend their problem statements and to examine sine ira et studio rationally developed argumentations of the discussion partner. In particular, some of the convincingly presented arguments were simply not acknowledged. c. The controversy was resultados aborted, and no attempt was ever made later, either by the participants or by other sprcchcrn of those antagonistic wings of Marx orthodoxic, to continue the debate and to bring about an intersubjectively binding interpretation of the canonized texts. One will have to conclude that the two hopelessly divided directions of orthodoxy are simply counting on the fact that the readers of these writings will make up their minds anyway on the basis of preconceived political decisions. Both parties have essentially exhausted the potential for argumentation and, in fact, have little to say to each other. /// The highly irrational character of this discussion is explained by the paradoxical situation, seen from an orthodox point of view, that in a certain way both orthodox positions are in the right. Thus Flolzkamp believes himself justified in characterizing the argumentation of the Bischoff-Gruppc as a "stringing together of contradictory propositions in the garb of a train of thought." In some questions of fundamental importance for the understanding of Capital, even "the borderline from citation cannibalization to falsification of meaning to citation falsification is here completely vcrwisched." (Ibid., 6 u, 9) The opposing side thinks that it must emphasize the difference of social status or group membership and thus glcichsam pose the familiar class question: Petty-bourgeois or scientific socialism? - is the title of their pamphlet. A clear social dividing line is to be drawn between the members of the project group, some of whom are forced to "sell their labor power as scientific employees at the university," and "Professor Holzkamp. As sellers of their labor power, the scientific collaborators feel legitimized to expose "Professor Holzkamp" and "Dr. Haug" as "petty-bourgeois converts" who want to "gain influence on the leadership of the party." A few quotations from the works of the "classics are supposed to prove that those "converts" want to "orientate the communist party to petty-bourgeois racial prejudices" through "confused half-, but in any case know-it-allism". They want to prevent the DKP from "degenerating completely into a sect". Therefore, a "radical intensification of criticism" of "these people" is recommended. With a Marx quote, the party leadership receives the hint: "Thus, under certain circumstances (...) there may be a reason not to immediately expel unteachable intellectuals, etc., from the party and its theoretical organs, but to wait until the movement of the class struggle itself dictates the moment when separation is due." (Ibid., 62 f.) /// Academics masquerading as members of the working class who themselves "want to gain influence on the leadership of the party" and therefore denounce their more successful colleagues as "converts" and "unteachable intellectuals" and seek to "deport" them from the "theoretical organs" - the image is all too familiar. If one thinks of the disputes over Capital and, more generally, over certain writings of Marx, Engels, and Lenin, one is reminded that certain historical "facts and persons occur, as it were, twice, (...) one time as tragedy, the other time as farce." (8/115) Is it permissible to evaluate that ominous debate as a symptom that the controversies within the Marxist orthodoxy at present can only be repeated as "farce"? That they will not be repeated as a tragedy, one may hope. ↩
G. Rittig, Capitalism, Marxism and oeconontia pura, 118. ↩
See the controversy between I. S. Narski on the one hand and the school around M. M. Rosental and F.. W Ilycnkov on the other hand about the concept of dialectical contradiction. About Ilycnkov's well-known work The Dialectics of the Abstract and the Concrete in Marx's 'Capital', Narski judges, "It would probably be difficult to find a more erroneous interpretation of Marx's methodology." (Dialectical Contradiction and the Logic of Knowledge, 63) Parts of a sammclbandc of "Materials on the Theoretical Conference 'The Problem of Contradiction in Dialectical Logic" are described simply as "confused" (ibid., 218). It seems that the authors oriented to an orthodox conception of dialectics and those oriented to mathematical logic accuse each other of justifying the conception of the logical positivistcn according to which "the "dialectical contradiction" is only a fuzzy and abortive name for the formal logical contradictions." (Ibid., 96) Because these are not accidental but substantial problems of a dialectical logic, it is not surprising if "some polemicists exclude their opponents from the dialectical materialist worldview." (Ibid., 82) In the textbook History of Marxist Dialectics, published by the Academy of Sciences under the direction of M. M. Rosental, a "hostile attitude towards dialectics" is attested to the theorists oriented towards mathematical logic, with a barely veiled jibe against Narski: "It would be a great illusion to pass off mathematical calculations (...) as the only exhaustive characteristic of knowledge. This illusion corresponds to the ideology of tcchnocratic utilitarianism, which (...) means an intellectual impoverishment of thought (...)." (Ibid., 174 ff.) ↩
This is at least the more or less openly expressed conviction of a presumably large number of Soviet and East German economists and philosophers. The quantitative problems of the theory of value are in the center of the economic considerations: the labor theory of value is "by no means such a simple and plausible thing. (...) It includes extremely complex questions, which still give the economist many a hard nut to crack. (...) The difficulties encountered in determining the social labor input as a value quantity have led some economists (mathematicians) in the Soviet Union to leave aside the labor value and to look for another criterion for optimizing the social reproduction process. Sic believe to have found it in social utility." (F. Oelßner, Die Arbeitswerttheorie als die wissenschaftliche Grundlage der Manschen politischen Ökonomie, 6 u. 17) In his essay Brauchen wir eine sozialistische Theorie vom 'natürlichen Zinsi? F. Behrens opposes the accusation raised by a GDR author that Marx failed to analyze the general basis of interest. The proposed "supplement* to Marx's theory was "tantamount to a liquidation of the Mehrwerttheorie." (Ibid, 1649) - A recent philosophical work speaks of "tendencies in recent philosophical literature" that "negate the philosophical heritage and especially the scientific achievement of the classics," (in: G. Klimaszcwsky (ed. ), Weltanschauliche und methodologische Probleme der materialistischen Dialektik, 37) The authors of this volume oppose these tendencies with the demand: "The "traditional* categories of materialist dialectics (...) must (...) not be put down as no longer viable philosophical concepts, as obsolete, and consequently discarded." (Ibid., 35) /// It is a completely open question whether real innovations are to be expected from those revisionist authors instead of a more or less uncritical reception of structuralist, ncopositivist, neo-Ricardian and other dcnkmodcllc, which could hardly be reconciled with attempts to work out the "rational core" of Marxian dialectics. ↩
In this publication, Axel Honneth, co-editor of the anthology Theorien des Historischen Materialismus, conveys quite inaccurate ideas about the formation of the new Marx-Lektüre. On the contrary, as early as 1964, a working group at the Frankfurt Institute for Political Science, to which several editors of the Society belonged, was concerned with the attempt to develop a new form of reading Marx's writings, especially Capital, on the basis of some new problems. Already in the following year, some reflections on the concept of the state, the value form and certain dialectical determinations of Marx's critique of economic categories were put up for discussion in Theodor W Adorno's sociological seminar. Thus, there can be no question that the reappraisal of these facts took place in the wake of the student movement and following some of Hans-Jürgen Krahl's works. (A. Honncth, Geschichte und Interaktionsverhältnisse, 449) Krahl dealt intensively with the problems of the concept of nature developed by Alfred Schmidt in Marx, but like every other philosophy student of those years only quite superficially with Marx's economic analyses. Even at the Frankfurt Philosophical Seminar, Capital was little known at that time, the rough draft as good as not at all. Only Alfred Schmidt was concerned with the philosophical problems of this work. It was therefore not surprising that Krahl, too, dealt with the receptions presented in a one-sided way. As it still happens today, Krahl also eliminated the unsolved economic problems that had always been discussed, in particular the money theory and the historicity of the value form, and picked out only one particular, philosophically mcthodologically interesting aspect, the structure of doubling. The works that followed the publication - under the title Constitution and Class Struggle - of his notes found in the estate are characterized by the same disdain for matcrialcr problems of money theorie. The elimination of those problems, which Marx was ultimately interested in solving, naturally has the consequence that such works are also of no help scientifically and epistemologically. The analysis of the value-form remains a word gcklingcl, if it is not understood in its function to abolish certain antinomies of economic theory. This proof is, of course, still pending. ↩
See on this: Projektgruppe Entwicklung des Marxschcn Systems, Das Kapitel vom Geld. Further: Rote Zellen/AK Münchcn, DerAufbau des 'Kapital' (I). In all desirable openness, it is stated there that the intcrpretational efforts "should not now be taken as if the correctness of the capital grip still needed confirmation". (Ibid., 13) Under this dogmatic presupposition, methodological investigations of Capital, for example, can of course only be regarded "as an outlandish search for justification of what Marx does in each case." It is true: "If Capital is science, the determinations of science can also be recognized from it - but precisely from it: on the other hand, nothing is more unscientific than to want to explain the steps of argumentation in Capital from somewhere else than from it itself." (Ibid., 52) The authors, of course, did not have this more or less tautological "if - then' statement in mind, they rather wanted to suggest: because it establishes a priori that Capital is science, "additional, external reflections of the reader" are superfluous, indeed basically misleading and harmful. /// These dogmatic tendencies in the Marx literature of recent years, especially the formation of politically and intellectually monadologically self-contained group Marxisms, will have to be countered above all because they must sooner or later lead to a discrediting of scientific Marx reading and, above all, to a complete disinterest in theoretical work in general. /// The identification with the texts of the classics can only be broken up, however, if the trivial fact is repeatedly called to mind that in reading Capital one is first of all dealing with sentences, with statements about reality and not directly with reality itself. Because there is no consensual criterion for the correspondence of social-scientific statements with social reality and therefore the validity of the statements, especially of a non-falsifiable science, must remain controversial for reasons of science (and by no means on the basis of class-political prejudices), at present only certain conjectures about the truth of Marxian theory can be formulated, but by no means apodictic judgments. Other attitudes toward Marxian theory lead to what the AK-Broschiirc characterizes as an "almost religious relationship to persons from the revolutionary tradition" that "substitutes its own scientific work as a prerequisite for political practice." (Ibid., 45) ↩
Thus, in M. M. Rosental's extensive work The Dialectical Method of Political Economy by Karl Marx, there is only the terse statement, "Thus the commodity is analyzed from the beginning as the abstract and undeveloped form of capital."n(Ibid., 476) Although Rosental adopts a 'logicalc' interpretation with this statement, he nevertheless affirmatively refers to the "logical-historicalc" interpretation of the Engclsschcn review of 1859. See further note 135. ↩
On this, see the sammclband Marxistische Wissenschaftstheorie edited by H. J. Sandkühicr. The authors of this volume show themselves to be very much impressed by the results of analytic Wisscnschaftstheorie, but hardly by the wisscnschaftsthcorctischn peculiarity of Kapital. Significantly, none of the ten contributions is devoted to its epistemological problems. ↩
This "suppressed theoretical problem" has been pointed out particularly emphatically by S. Neugebauer: "The differences between the rough draft of 1857/58 and Capital of 1867 have rarely been considered ah fundamental problem in the discussion of Marx in the Federal Republic." (Kapitalismustheorie und Imperialismus, 210) As a follower of the Althusser school, Neugebauer argues that it is "not justifiable" to "use the 'Grundrisse' without further ado to illustrate 'Kapital'." (Ibid., 215) ↩
On this, see my early work Zur Dialektik der Wertform. (In this volume) ↩
An astonishing misrecognition of the money-theoretic quintessence of Marxian value-form analysis can be found in B. Fritsch, Die Geldund Kredittheorie von Karl Marx. There one reads about the doctrine of the three peculiarities of the equivalent form: "This unusual version of the problem, however, has no gcldthcorctischc meaning. It would be wrong, however, to conclude from this that it is merely a matter of dcfinitory gimmicks. Rather, it corresponds to Marx's basic conception of deriving economic categories from mutually contradictory moments." (Ibid., 48) Insofar as no gcldtheoretical consequences are evident from this "basic conception" for Fritsch, he will probably have to attribute that "unusual version of the problem" to "dcfinitorischcn gimmicks" after all. ↩
L. Althusser/E. Balibar, Das Kapital lesen, vol. 1, 97. ↩
F. v. Gottl-Ottlilicnfeld, The Economic Dimension, 41. ↩
In contrast to the modcllplatonistcn representational wcisc of ncomarxist theory and likewise of academic Marx criticism, the Soviet Marxistcn representations of Marx's "Economy" refer not merely to the value and capital theorie, but regularly also to the money theory. However, this is done only for the sake of completeness. The fact that the connection between value and Geldtheorie is also understood as merely an external one is clear from two facts: 1. the monetary nominalism within soviet economics has always been criticized by the representatives of "orthodoxy" only superficially, namely as a gcldtheoretic and not as a simultaneously value theoretic revisionism, a symptom of the fact that "orthodoxy" negates the connection between the first two sections of the first chapter of Capital and the third, and therefore is also unable to establish a connection between the "substance" and the "form" of value, i.e., money, 2. In their arguments with the wcrtthcoretic argumentation of academic Marx criticism, the Soviet Marxist defenders of Marxian theory consistently accept the separation of value and money-theoretic problems made by their opponents. Theyt thereby place themselves on the ground of a non-dialogical or "bourgeois" theory of value. /// This could be demonstrated very well by an extensive meta-critique of academic treatises on value and capital theorie written by W. Jahn. In his 439-page work Die Marxsche Wert- und Mehnuertlehre im Zerrspiegel bür gerlicher Ökonomen (Marx's Theory of Value and Capital in the Mirror of Bourgeois Economists), Jahn does not say a single word about Marx's money theory and the money-theoretic character of Marx's value form analysis. Jahn thus refers to the Marxian theory of value "in the distorting mirror" of a pre-dialectical interpretation, which even the extensive use of a dialectical vocabulary cannot disguise. It goes without saying that for Jahn also the Wertformanalysc had to remain an enigmatic entity and he was not able to see through the difference between Marx and Ricardo. In this respect, the "orthodox" W )ahn does not differ at all from other Soviet authors, but just as little from the "revisionist! oriented W Hofmann, who in his annotated, extensive collection of texts on the theory of value and price is likewise unable to see any inner connection between value and Geldtheorie. Hofmann was quite consistent in this respect when he passed over the third section of the first chapter without comment. /// Only the opponents of the value theory, i.e. v. Gottl-Ottlilienfeld and G. Cassel, developed a certain sense for the connection between value and money: "A value theory which (...) is based on any value unit (...) would ipso facto have already presupposed a money unit." W Kromphardt stated in this regard: "the glcichsetzung of primitive economic systcmc with economicstheoretically simple problcmlagcrung is what Cassel combats with the sharpness of a polemic." (Cassels Gründe zur Ablehnung der Wertlehre, 103 u. 107) The only question is whether Cassel is able to establish the objectivity of such a monetary unit. We will come back to this point below. ↩
"In the form of exchange all value etc. is only nominal; real it is in the form of rate." (42/251) "Production of exchange value is in general only production of greater exchange value." (II.2/78) It is to be made clear that "the value which is independent and preserves itself in the form of exchange value (first of all money) is at the same time the proccss of its increase; that its preservation as value is at the same time its progress beyond its quantitative limit (...). The preservation of exchange-value as such by means of circulation appears at the same time as its Sichvcrmchrcn and this is its Sclbstvcrwcrthung, its active Sichsctzcn as Werthschaffcndcr Werth, (...) but at the same time setting itself as Werth, i.e. as Mehrwerth." (II.2/80) "The active Werth is only Mchrwcrthsctzcndcr Werth." (II.2/81) "In capital only is exchange value posited as exchange value." (42/185) ↩
On the problem of transformation, see especially the thorough study by M. Cogoy, Value Structure and Price Structure. Cogoy analyzes the "paradoxes of co-production" and, continuing B. Schefold's investigations, comes to the conclusion "that, in some circumstances, the socialization of labor can no longer be grasped in the conceptual pair (concrete and abstract labor and on the basis of socially necessary labor time." (Ibid., 54) The "linkage of value and price structure turns out to be so loose that it seems questionable whether significant relations between the two structures can be developed at all." (Ibid., 7) ↩
See Ch. Helbcrgcr, Marxismus als Methode, 18. However, Christof Helberger's criticism of Alfred Schmidt does not seem justified to me in this form, since Schmidt recognizes very clearly that Marxschc Bcgriffsbildung can actually only be understood from the intention of overcoming wisscnschaftstheorctisch dichotomies. In this respect it is quite justified to characterize Marx's theory as a work "sui gcncris". Whether Marx really succeeded in precisely developing concepts "sui gcncris" beyond these dichotomies and in consistently holding out his epistemological program is another matter altogether. Helbcrgcr, of course, is completely on the side of analytical science, so that for him antinomial dichotomies do not exist at all. From this attitude, I think, he must miss the intentions of a program that starts from the existence of such dichotomies in order to be able to overcome them with a new method of handle formation. Helbcrgcr's criticism of Schmidt is, of course, justified insofar as he limited himself to determining the peculiarity of Marxian concepts only negatively, instead of demonstrating their legitimacy from the point of view of mathematical problems. ↩
Such a naive concept of reconstruction was the basis of the first two parts of the materials. It was already used in the essay cited above. There it is said that it remains an urgent desideratum of Marx research "to reconstruct the whole of the theory of value from the more or less fragmentary representations and the numerous individual bcmcrkungcn scattered in other works." (In this volume, 42) ↩
K. Holzkamp , The Historical Method of Scientific Socialism, 8. ↩
J. Rancicre, The Concept of Critique and the Critique of Political Economy, 93. ↩
L. Althusser/E. Balibar, Reading Capital, vol. 1, 167. ↩
K. Holzkamp , The Historical Method of Scientific Socialism, 40. ↩
The dogmatic character of the writings mentioned in note 11 is also expressed in the fact that their authors obviously succumb to the naive self-deception of having gained the adequate understanding claimed merely through an "intensive study" of Capital. It could be shown very easily that the supposed immediacy of its door contains numerous mediations. Thus, the genesis of that 'logicalcn' interpretation received by these authors is not even conceivable without those "external reflections." ↩
K. Holzkamp , Die historische Methode des wissenschaftlichen Sozialismus, 22. ↩
Thus H. J. Sandkühicr, Plädoyerfür den Historischen Materialismus als Philosophie, 66. ↩
See further 19/358: "Herr Wagner [could have] become acquainted with the difference between me and Ricardo, who in fact dealt with labor only as a measure of the magnitude of value and therefore found no connection between his theory of value and the essence of money." ↩
W F Haug, Vorlesungen zur Einführung ins 'Kapital', 121. ↩
For example, G. Myrdal (Das politische Element in der nationalökonomischen Doktrinbildung, 62) completely missed the fact that Bailcy's argument, which he accepted as a "masterly critique of Ricardianischcn Wertlchrc," was refuted by Marx at least equally "masterly" point by point. But even the Marxist economist M. Dobb, who in his history of the theories of value and distribution since Adam Smith presents Bailcy's Ricardo critique in detail (113 ff), is obviously not familiar with the Marxian metacriticism. ↩
W F. Haug, Vorlesungen zur Einführung ins iKapitah, 190. ↩
The Soviet Marxist doctrine of the modification of the law of value is based on the, in my opinion, quite untenable premise that there is merely an external, accidental connection between the peculiarities of the second and third equivalent forms. This assertion reveals a complete lack of insight into the essential features of the concept of "abstract-general labor". The proof that a whole series of further ambiguities and formal-logical contradictions result from this lack of clarity about the basic concept of Marxian economics, especially in the doctrine of Wertmodification, must be reserved for a special investigation. ↩↩2
Hans Jörg Sandkühlcr's polemic against the Frankfurt School, noted in note 40, was ignited by Jürgen Flabcrma's intention to "take apart" Marxian theory and "put it back together" in a new form. (J. H., On the Reconstruction of Historical Materialism, 9) It therefore remains somewhat schcicr as to what the "counterrevolutionary" character of such a program of "reconstruction" of Marxian theory is supposed to consist of and against which "revolution" it is supposed to be directed. Sandkühicr generally opposes any attempt at reconstruction; he surveys, however, that this term has meanwhile become "fashionable" even in Soviet Marxist literature. W Segeth, for example, sets himself the task of reconstructing the method used in the "works of the classics." The urgency of such a reconstruction receives with him a quite remarkable justification: "Since more detailed representations of the dialectical-materialistic method are relatively rare"; but above all: "Statements of contemporary authors about essential features, (...) functions of this method (...) bear the character of assertions. To assess the merits of such statements is generally difficult." (Materialist Dialectics as Method, 45 u. 8) s7 ↩
K. Holzkamp , Die Iiistorische Methode des wissenschaftlichen Soziallsmus, 40 ↩
It goes without saying that the problems raised here about the possibility of a practical abolishability of the value form as a condition of the validity of its "logical" analysis would require a much more detailed discussion. ↩
W J. Wijnholds, Money Supply, Umlaujsgesclnviudigkeit, and Price Level, 584. Wijnhold's "logical-historical" considerations are intended to help solve a problem described as follows: "Geldtheorie has recently lost prestige because one has been unable to use it to identify certain present and past phenomena." Decades later, as is well known, many connoisseurs of contemporary Geldtheorie doubt that it has gained prognostic power, despite a refined quantitative logic. ↩
It is only to be noted here that the great majority of ncomarxist economists uncritically adopt the Krcditschöpfungslchrc rejected by Marx. 71 R. G. Hawtrcy, Currency and Credit, 2. ↩
W. Eucken, Die Grundlagen der Nationalökonomie,, 117. ↩
I.. Althusser/E. Balibar, Reading Capital, vol. 2, 254. Otto Bauer already criticized: "Marx has (...) developed a whole system of vivid images and comparisons, of metaphors, tropes, symbols, in which he clothes his concepts and laws. We younger people often forget that we speak in images when we say, for example, (...) value finds its "expression" in price, the law of value "appears" in the movement of prices. (...) Now the tendency to develop the representation of science from the colorful picture to the abstract concept goes through the whole science of our time. (...) Marx's pictorial language,f which developed under the influence of Hegel's pictorial language," according to Bauer's conviction, "prepares the way for the victorious progress of the Marxian system. (Cited in R. Rosdolsky, Zur Entstehungsgeschichte des Marxschen 'Kapital', vol. 3, 674). ↩
A. Schmidt, Zum Erkenntnisbegriff der Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, 51. ↩
Cited in R. Rosdolsky, Zur Entstehungsgeschichte des Marxschen 'Kapital', vol. 3, 663. ↩
H. Albert, The Sociology of Markets and the Logic of Decision Making, 248. ↩
L. Althusser/E. Balibar, Reading Capital, vol. 2, 258. ↩
P. Ruben, Von der 'Wissenschaft der Logik' und dem Verhältnis der Dialektik zur Logik, 64. See also H.J. Sandkühier, Praxis und Geschichtsbewußtsein. The author refers to "opposing views" (ibid., 288) and "main tasks" of research. He further recites the well-known "kernthesen," but little is heard of positive results of the research. The central problem of dialectics, namely the clarification of the terms "opposition and contradiction," has apparently not found a satisfactory solution even after Sandkühicr. He is only able to refer to an approach of L. Erdci, which "can, however, only be consistently thought through at the price of a restriction of the Widcrspicgclungsthcorie" (ibid., 303). The position of G. Klaus is rejected as "a vcrcinscitization and impoverishment of materialist dialectics" (ibid., 304). See the essay, by L. Erdci, The Contradiction and the Contradiction in Hegelian Logic. Erdci assumes that the "fundamental difference in the nature of formal and dialectical logic (...) manifests itself most succinctly in the different or in the different seeming behavior towards the theorem of contradiction". The material so far, however, shows "unequivocally" that the discussions following from it have "so far been on the wrong track": they "mostly led only to misunderstandings". (Ibid., 18) /// The logician Wolfgang Segeth preferred to be completely silent in his step Materialistische Dialektik als Methode about the relation between formal-logicalcm and dialectical contradiction. For this we owe him a remarkable example of the "law of the conversion of quantitative changes into qualitative ones": In the development of a thing "a higher quality is not necessarily bound to an increase of the quantity. Lenin expected (...) from the increase of the number of the CC members an increase of the quality of the activity of the CC of the party. (...) Quantitative changes, which lead to a progressive (...) change, are to be supported in the sense of the Marxist-Leninist conception of development. In contrast, quantitative changes that can lead to a regression must be prevented. A convincing example of this is the securing of the GDR border on August 13, 1961, (...) which prevented further quantitative changes organized by the imperialist side with the aim of undoing socialism in the GDR, in the form of the drain of labor (...)." (Ibid., 97 f.) ↩
G. Kadc, Political Economy-Today, 163. Alfred Schmidt and Oskar Negt, representatives of "bourgeois Marx research," wanted to cast "doubt on the unity of Marxschcn doctrine" by discussing crkcnntnistheoretical questions, thus appropriating Marx for "bourgeois wisscnschaftsbctricb." This strange assertion will, of course, have to be seen in connection with the fact that Kadc interprets Lenin's sentence in a way that distorts its meaning. ↩
The refusal to work out precise statements about the dialectical contradiction and the concept of a dialectical method by invoking the "untrcnnbarkcit of form and content" (H. Röttgcs, Der Begriff der Methode in der Philosophie Hegels, 3) is an "immunisicrungsstratcgic" used only too readily in "FIcgclapologic", whereby the danger of "irrationalism" and that of "dogmatism lie very close". (Ibid., 8) Especially in the circles of the 'logicalcn' interpreters of Capital, similar "immunisicrungsstratcgicn" are applied, whereby it is then likewise left to the subjective discretion to associate a certain thank with certain dialectical terms. ↩
Thus Holzkamp can present the quite accurate criticism: "Bischoff pretends on the one hand to have written a book on scientific dialectics, talks incessantly about 'dialectics' (...), but on the other hand does not really know what to do with dialectics rccht". Only if one recognizes the dialectical method and the dialectical basic laws "as methodical regulative of ever present scientific work, one escapes the Bischoffschcn mistake of putting (dialectics") so high on a pedestal that no one can hcranrcichcn anymore." However, "More precise explanations of the basic dialectical laws (...) are not possible here." (The Historical Method of Scientific Socialism, 6 0 ) ↩
In; G. Klimaszcwsky (ed.), Weltanschauliche und methodologische Probleme der materialistischen Dialektik. ↩
W f. Haug, Lectures on the Introduction to iKapitah, 7. ↩
R. Aron, The Holy Families of Marxism, 170. Aron's remark refers to Althusser, Sartre, and the Jesuit Father Bigo. Althusser, of course, deals Icgitimcrwcisc with mctaökonomischcn problems (Das Kapital lesen, vol. 1, 216 u. vol. 2, 243 ff), and insofar Aron's criticism exists only partially to Rccht. ↩
V.-M. Bader et al, Krise und Kapitalismus bei Marx, vol. 1, 70 fn. ↩
A. Schmidt , On the Concept of Knowledge in the Critique of Political ↩
L. Althusser/E. Balibar, Reading Capital, vol. 1, 166. ↩
On this, see the work Das Kapitel vom Geld, written by the 'Projcktgruppc'. In their critique of Zeleny, the authors indicate that even the adherents of Soviet Marxist theory "have not (been able to) understand scientific socialism." (Ibid., 168) What Zeleny understood by theory was "no different from (...) bourgeois traditional theory." (Ibid., 181) It is rccht well shown that in his unsuccessful attempt to explicate the notion of a "logico-dialectical" analysis and to distinguish it from a "logico-historical" analysis, Zeleny "is left in the end only with historical analysis." (Ibid., 178) Zeleny's central problem: "What character does this necessity bear?" namely that of "logical" development, is admittedly passed over in silence by his critics. ↩
Striking differences exist above all in the assessment of the second chapter of Capital. See here the polemic of the authors of the AK brochure against the 'Project Group", whose interpretation "throws principle considerations of Marx to the wind". (Rote Zellen/AK Münchcn, Der Aufbau des iKapitah (I), 78) The traditional interpretation, originating from Engels, is hardly found worth mentioning because of its "absurdity". ↩
Party School at the CC of the CPSU, Political Economy, vol. 1, 194. ↩
M. M. Rosental et al, History of Marxist Dialectics, vol. 1, 320. ↩
Flolzkamp's assertion - "The concept of the "logical-historical" has been discussed in many ways in the history of Marxism since Engels" (Die historische Methode des wissenschaftlichen Sozialismus, 35) - will probably have to be taken as an indication of his lack of knowledge that even in the USSR 'logical' interpretations are held and consequently the "historical method of scientific socialism" has been misunderstood there as well. ↩
Materials for the Reconstruction of Marx's Theory of Value: IV
§1
It is obvious that the Grundrisse, the rough draft of Capital, are located in the vicinity of the >logical< and Engels' supplement and preface to the third volume of Capital in the immediate vicinity of the extreme historicist, ethnological interpretation of the value-form analysis. If one grasps the latter as the right pole and the former as the left pole, one will place the first edition of Capital on the left center, the second, however, on the right center. Depending on whether the >logical< or the >historical< component dominates, one can speak of a "logical-historical" or "historical-logical" construction or interpretation.
Now it is obvious that the orthodox literature cannot accept the adequate relation of "logical" and "historical" as such of correct combination or mixture, but wants to be understood as a relation of "dialectical identity", as that of a "contradictory unity" of "logical" and "historical". And there should be no doubt that with this thesis she would be able to refer to numerous statements of Marx and Engels. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that the Marxist interpretations, but above all the existence of different versions of the theory of value, prove that Marx and Engels themselves combined "logical" and "historical" in different ways.
In my opinion, one thing will have to be conceded to the orthodox interpreters: that Marx's presentation differs from model-theoretical, i.e. economic constructions by a whole series of unmistakable methodological peculiarities. The question is merely whether these actually combine to form the unity of a method that must be characterized by unambiguous definiteness. In other words, it is the question whether the two extremes are to be determined as poles of a dialectical relation or as heterogeneous elements, so that the attempt to construct a dialectical identity always had to produce highly unsatisfactory, bad syntheses of heterogeneous things, mixtures of logically dissimilar things. It is quite possible that Marx actually found certain structures in the economic categories that were familiar to him from Hegean logic and did not project them into them, read them out and did not read them in. And there is much to suggest that these are indeed discoveries which may claim constitutive significance for a theory of money and capital, and beyond that for the theory of society. But this is not to say that Marx's attempt at a "materialistic" catching up of this discovery, the attempt at a historicist justification of these concepts, is convincing. On the contrary, there are good reasons for assuming that a dialectical categorial analysis and historicist theorems are mutually exclusive: indeed, it is easy to see that the essential contents of Marx's rough draft and Engels's addendum are by no means the poles of a continuum, but are separated by an unbridgeable gulf. The "simple circulation" and its determinations are either in the sense of the rough draft and the Critique merely "abstract spheres of (...) presupposed capital" (II.2/83; author's emphasis), "the surface of bourgeois society" (29/317), or else identical with the "simple commodity production" of the late Engels. A third is probably hardly conceivable.
Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that at least certain formulations and constructions in the first chapter of the second edition of Capital of 1872 suggest a historicist interpretation in terms of Engels' theory of simple commodity production. It is precisely this that constitutes the characteristic difference with the first chapter of the first edition of Capital of 1867. The revision of this text, which is completely unsuitable for a historicist interpretation, for the second edition of 1872 could indeed be interpreted as a historicization of the >logical< method of development, which is similar to the conceptual development of money in the first edition and even more clearly in the critique of 1859.
On the other hand, it is equally undeniable that other parts of the first chapter of 1872 are by no means willing to submit to a historicist interpretation. For instance, the doctrine of the three peculiarities of the equivalent form. In Ernest Mandel's ethnological theory of value, the most consistent elaboration of Engels' ideas about a theory of simple commodity production, it is negated.1 One could thus interpret the text of the second edition as a station on the way from a dialectical to a historicist position, from the rough draft to Engels' addendum. Thus, the question arises whether the revision of the first chapter should be interpreted as an indication that Marx was about to undergo a thorough revision of his methodological conception as well. The answer to this question will have to determine whether it is legitimate, in the manner of the neo-orthodox reception of political economy, to refer to the dialectical figures of thought of the rough draft and to interpret Capital from them, or whether certain orthodox authors are to be agreed with, who attach greater importance to Marx's effort to "correct the idealistic manner of representation" (42/85), by which they understand, not entirely unjustifiably, its historicization and, in one with it, the progressive repression of the dialectical, Hegelian-inspired modes of construction of the rough draft. If Marx wanted "simple circulation" to be understood only as "simple commodity production," then the first three chapters of Capital can no longer be interpreted as a theory of "abstract spheres" of "presupposed capital," as a theory of "abstract determinations" of the circulation of capital; conversely, it would be a gross misunderstanding to understand "simple circulation" and "simple commodity production" as merely synonymous terms.
This much, however, can already be stated: both directions of orthodoxy ignore certain quotations. They should therefore come to the conclusion that the last version of the theory of value, the exposition in the second edition of Capital, is to be characterized as a highly misleading text; the representatives of a >logical< interpretation would have to go one step further and characterize this text as they have in fact long treated it: as a misleading text.
If Marx seeks to develop the relation between the "logical" and the "historical" four times in his theory of "simple circulation" in quite considerably divergent attempts, that is, in ever new attempts, then the relation itself seems to lack definiteness. Marx's effort to construct such a relation should therefore be characterized for what it is: as an ineffectual attempt on an ineffectual object, which in the more than hundred-year reception history of Capital brought nothing but confusion. This seems to me the correct core of Athusser's critique.
§2
Significantly, the strange expositions of the late Engels on simple commodity production are no longer even taken quite seriously in the treatises and controversies on "Logical" and "Historical": they are hardly ever quoted. It therefore seems to me all the more important to visualize their wording very precisely.
Here it must be pointed out again and again that the theory of simple commodity production implies a theory of premonetary barter:
The peasant of the Middle Ages was thus quite precisely aware of the labor time required for the production of the objects he exchanged. The blacksmith, the wainwright of the village worked under his eyes; (...) how, then, could they exchange these products with those of other working producers other than in proportion to the labor expended on them? Not only was the labor time spent on these products the only suitable measure for the quantitative determination of the quantities to be exchanged; no other was possible at all. Or does one believe that the farmer and the craftsman were so stupid as to exchange the product of ten hours of labor of one for that of a single hour of labor of the other? For the whole period of the peasant economy in kind, no other exchange is possible than that in which the exchanged quanta of commodities have the tendency to measure themselves more and more according to the quantities of labor embodied in them. From the moment when money enters this mode of economy, the tendency of adjustment to the law of value (in Marx's formulation, nota bene!) becomes, on the one hand, more pronounced, but, on the other hand, it is already broken through by the interventions of usurious capital and fiscal extraction; the periods for which prices on the average approach values to a negligible amount are already becoming longer. The same is true of the exchange between peasant products and those of urban artisans. (25/907)
The most important and most drastic progress was the transition to metal money, which also had the consequence that now the determination of value by labor time no longer appeared visibly on the surface of the exchange of goods. (...) The exchange of goods, however, dates from a time which lies before all written history, which (...) leads back in Babylonia to four thousand, perhaps six thousand years before our era; the law of value has therefore prevailed during a period of five to seven millennia. (25/909)
One looks for empirical proofs here in vain. Plausibility arguments and a kind of thought experiment take their place: the exchange partners are supposed to orientate themselves by the working time as the "only suitable yardstick". Why? Because "there was no other possible". Of particular interest is the assertion that in the period of the premonetary barter trade, labor time as a determinant of the value quantity "appeared visibly on the surface of commodity exchange"; apparently only in this period, while in the period of simple commodity production, labor time as a regulator of the exchange relationship asserted itself on the basis of conditions that no longer "come directly to the consciousness (...) of the participants" but "can only be abstracted from everyday practice through laborious theoretical investigation". (25/908)
The preceding sentence now speaks of the "various sides of the law of value (...) as they are set forth in the first section of the first book of Capital." (25/908) And in the following section of Engels' text it finally says: "the Marxian law of value applies generally (...) to the whole period of simple commodity production." (25/909)
The relation of these ominous passages to the first chapter of Capital cannot be determined beyond doubt. It is difficult to believe that Engels wanted his historical conjectures to be understood as an interpretation of the first chapter. Marx was there concerned with the "derivation of value by analysis of equations." (23/18) Should Engels' considerations of plausibility somehow explain this "derivation" or should further reasons of proof be added here? Then Engels must have felt the Marxian reasoning to be incomplete and basically also superfluous: what is the use of the extremely complicated derivation, if some elementary considerations must lead to the same result? Whatever Engels may have thought, his expositions contain a value proof of their own, which implies a critique of Marx's and can only be understood as its correction. One could now appeal to the fact that Engels nowhere clearly referred to the first chapter in the supplement, but only to a historically significant passage of the tenth chapter of the third volume. He was convinced that Marx "would undoubtedly have elaborated this passage significantly further" if he had still "had time to work through the third book again." (25/906) Does this not suggest that Engels correctly understood the "simple circulation" of the first chapter as the "abstract sphere" of the circulation of capital, as the "surface of bourgeois society," and that he merely sought to supplement this theory of the "abstract determinations" of "simple circulation" related to capitalism with a theory of "simple commodity production" related to pre-capitalist periods? This interpretation is, of course, contradicted by a passage in the preface to the third volume, where it is clearly stated that Marx "at the beginning of the first book (...) starts from simple commodity production (...)". (25/20)
Because of its fundamental importance - it inaugurated the more than
more than seventy years dominant historicist interpretation of the older orthodoxy - this passage shall be reproduced in full. Engels comments here on the problem of definition and then goes on to say that it will now
probably be clear why Marx, at the beginning of the first book, where he starts from simple commodity production as his historical presupposition, in order to then continue to arrive at capital from this basis - why he starts there precisely from the simple commodity and not from a conceptually and historically secondary form, from the already capitalistically modified commodity." (25/20)
It is certainly quite remarkable that Engels considers a justification of his historicist understanding of the first chapter superfluous. He believes he may imply that any unbiased reading must eo ipso understand this chapter as a theory of "simple commodity production." Engels does not want to make clear that Marx, but "why (...) he starts from simple commodity production (...)." He is only concerned with an explanation and probably also confirmation of his thesis that concepts have to be "developed in their historical resp. logical process of formation" (25/20). The legitimacy of a historicist reading, on the other hand, needs no explanation and no proof; it apparently goes without saying.
In view of this certainty with which Engels presents his understanding of the first chapter as a theory of simple commodity production, the question arises all the more urgently whether the late Marx might have decided to revise his previous methodological conception. Engels reports in his preface to the third edition of the first volume that Marx intended to "largely rework the text of the first volume." (23/33) Can that passage of the third volume, in which Engels shows such lively interest in the supplement, be interpreted as an indication that in the wake of this revision, and possibly as its most important task, Marx wanted to take the historicization of the "logical" begun in the second edition one step further? In this passage of the tenth chapter, for Marx "it is quite proper to consider the values of the goods not only theoretically, but historically as the prius of the prices of production. This applies to conditions where the means of production belong to the worker, and this condition is found, in the ancient as well as in the modern world, in the self-working landowning peasant and in the craftsman. This also agrees with our earlier expressed view that the development of products into commodities arises from the exchange between different communities (...). In order for prices (...) to correspond approximately to their values, nothing is necessary except that" - Marx lists two conditions here and the following one as the third - "no natural or artificial monopoly" exists. (25/186 f.)
In contradiction to Engels' commentary, even today one will prefer Marx's cautious commentary that in this passage merely an "opinion," a historical hypothesis is put forward and by no means a "fact hardly disputed anywhere." (25/187 fn.) Above all, it should not be overlooked that these statements come from a rough draft and are relativized and in a certain sense negated by other "views" of the same draft. Thus by the thesis that "the city everywhere and without exception exploits the country economically by its monopoly prices, its tax system, its guild system, its direct commercial fraud and its usury" (25/809), but above all by the presumption, meanwhile also verified, that in certain pre-capitalist modes of production "the sale of products at their value is of subordinate importance." (25/343)
Now, of course, the problem of whether Marx arrived at unified and definitive "views" about certain economic-historical processes is of less interest here, and the question of whether these economic-historical hypotheses found their adequate expression in Engels' theory of simple commodity production does not arise at all. It is mainly a philological problem, namely the fact that the passage Engels uses can at best justify his theory of simple commodity production as an economic-historical hypothesis, but by no means as a scheme of interpretation of the first chapter of the first volume.
Indeed, it is quite conceivable that Marx sought to develop and justify >logically< a theory of value in the form of a theory of simple circulation on the level of investigation of capital, but independently of this, on the level of economic history, a value theory similar to Engels' theory of simple commodity production.
Insofar as one is able to assign any evidential value to that passage from the tenth chapter at all - it not only contradicts other passages of the raw manuscript of the third volume, but also contains rather unclear formulations - it does not at all speak for a >historical< interpretation oriented to the theory of simple commodity production, but rather for a "logical" interpretation of the tenth chapter of the first volume. If Marx had indeed developed there a theory of simple commodity production and thus considered "values (...) historically as the prius of prices of production," thus not merely "theoretically," his call in the third volume to consider them "not merely theoretically, but historically as the prius" would be superfluous and quite meaningless. If it is not quite possible to see what the "correspondence" might have been for Marx between his thesis of the historical priority of values over prices of production and his "view" of the development of the commodity expressed in the first volume, even this formulation argues against Engels's "simple commodity production" as an adequate interpretative model of the first chapter; as the author of a historicist theory of value, Marx would have had to refer to theorems logically and empirically substantiated in the first volume, instead of wanting to state any kind of "agreement" with a mere "view."
It is thus quite unlikely that that strange passage of the tenth chapter could have led Engels to conceive the theory of simple circulation as one of simple commodity production. Rather, Engels seems to have projected preconceived historicist views into the Marxian text.
This raises the question of the origin of Engels' historicism. It seems obvious to establish a connection in a straight line with that Engelsian work which is treated by Marxist orthodoxy, especially by Marxism-Leninism, as it were, as the birth certificate of the "dialectic of the logical and the historical," as its "classical" exposition: the 1859 review of Marx's Zur Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie. The differences seem to be only of degree, which is why interpreters of that dialectic tend to mention certain theses from the 1859 review and the 1894/95 work in the same breath. As far as I can see, it remained hidden to both the older and the younger orthodoxy, oriented towards the rough draft, that apart from this straight line there exists another Engels.
§3
Fixated on the historicist Engels - praised by those who accentuate the >historical<, rebuked by the others who rather emphasize the >logical< - both orthodoxies overlook certain passages of well-known texts which prove unequivocally that Engels understood "simple circulation" decidedly in the >logical< sense for more than ten years. These are some works on the first volume of Capital of 1867 and on the Anti-Dühring, which appeared as a series of articles in 1877/78.
As far as the works on the first volume are concerned, it must suffice for the time being to point out that in his "Conspectus" of Capital the commodity of the first chapter is concisely determined as a "commodity in itself" (16/245) in the sense of a "logical development" of the categories. This term is even used by Engels as the title of the first part of the first chapter, with which Engels characterizes its content even more aptly than Marx, who merely uses the expression "The Commodity" as a heading. Also with some other turns of phrase the >logical< - if one so wants >hegelian< - content of the "development" of value-theoretical determinations is determined more sharply, just more >hegelian< than even on the part of the representatives of the neo-orthodox interpretation oriented to the rough draft and the Hegelian logic. Consequently, Engels avoids here, as in the various reviews of Capital written at the same time, any reference to historical facts.
Ten years later, in his argument with Dühring, he even rejects historicist interpretations of Capital with a certain polemical exaggeration. Similar to Holzkamp, Haug, and other representatives of the older orthodoxy relying on the late Engels, Dühring also believed that he had to understand Capital in a historicist way. Instead of Holzkamp's term >logical-historical< one finds in Dühring the formulation "dialectical-historical". He is now, of course, concerned with criticizing "dialectical-historical constructions that enter into the metamorphosis game of concepts and history" as "desolate conceptions," since in his view they are supposed to be "half-historical and half-logical, but are in fact only bastards of historical and logical fantasy."1
Engels astutely replies that Marx is concerned with an "analysis of the economic forms" within which "the process of commodity circulation moves" (20/188); he thus very clearly distinguishes form and process analysis, forms and real relations - a distinction that is again lost in his theory of simple commodity production.
The following rejoinder, which deserves special attention because of its pronouncedly anti-historicist character, is probably also directed against Dühring's objection of a confusion of the >logical< and the >historical<: he insists "that in the whole section of Capital on value there is not even the slightest hint as to whether or to what extent Marx considers this theory of commodity value applicable to other forms of society as well". (20/184)
It is a question in itself whether Engels at that time - after all, the historicized second edition of Capital had already appeared - was actually still legitimized to ostentatiously, even downright indignantly reject a historicist understanding of the first four chapters. But it should already be obvious that only from such a position the Dühringian contamination reproach could be convincingly rejected.
The restriction of the claim to validity of the "theory of commodity value", i.e. Marx's labor theory of value, to capitalist commodity production - in this point, too, it differs from the classical one - is undoubtedly only the reverse side of Engels' thesis of 1867 that Marx "at the beginning of the first book (.... ) does not start from the simple commodity, but from the already capitalistically modified commodity", the analysis of which then leads him to the concept of a "commodity in itself"; it is thus the implicit rejection of the thesis that Marx "at the beginning of the first book (... ) starts from the simple production of commodities, (...) from the simple commodity" (25/20) - that is, the contradictory thesis that Engels advocated in 1894 and that will henceforth shape the reception of value theory and, moreover, the methodological understanding of the older orthodoxy. This answers the question almost by itself whether Dühring had not after all - similar to Bailey vis-à-vis Ricardo - "probed sore spots" of Marx's theory "despite his own bigotry." (23/77 fn.)
But not this problem shall occupy us for the time being, but only the question how it can be understood that Engels could have developed historicist ideas in 1894 from an antithetical position contradicting the theses of the years 1867 and 1877 and could have projected them into that passage of the third volume.
It might be useful for the problem orientation to arrange the antithetical positions on the scale sketched in § 1: on the right pole the theory of simple commodity production, on the left the contradictory opposing interpretations of Capital from the years 1867 and 1877.
With reference to the historicized version of the second edition of Capital, the question was raised whether a middle position can be established between the extremes of >logical< and >historical<; whether the poles can be conceived as extremes and "mediated" to the dialectical synthesis of a logical-historical, or historical-logical theory of value. The conjecture suggests itself that Engels' 1859 review is to be understood as an attempt to explicate the methodological ideas underlying such a middle position. And one will further be allowed to suppose that the development of Engels' value-theoretical conceptions is not to be described as a path from one place to the opposite, but better as a spiral: it leads from the middle to the left pole and from this to the right pole. The image of the spiral makes it clear that the formation of his historicist conceptions can also be understood as a negation of a position, but in a certain sense also as a turning back to earlier positions.
As we will see shortly, this consideration is only valid for the development of the value-theoretical patterns of interpretation. In methodological terms, a direct path leads from the historicist topoi of the 1859 review to those of the 1895 supplement.
§3
One may be prepared for considerable difficulties in reading Marx's 1859 Critique when even its author points out that the content of the reviewed writing, "the analysis of the simple forms of money," namely, "is the most difficult, because the most abstract, part of political economy." (29/573) In fact, to this day it has not been possible to decipher Marx's strategy of argumentation. In the textbooks of political economy one searches in vain for an explanation. Those who have turned to the Engels review in the hope of finding a reading guide, possibly a commentary on obscure passages, would put this work aside again quite disappointed. In terms of economic theory, Engels' review is irrelevant.
On the other hand, it is considered a document of the very first rank, especially by Marxist-Leninist philosophers. Indeed, the review contains some elementary statements about the "dialectical method" and has therefore been elevated to the rank of a canonized text. It functions as a dogma. Questions about the context of origin and justification are taboo. Possibly because this text is staring at problems.
Its central passage reads:
The critique of economy (...) could still be laid out in two ways: historically or logically. (...) The logical way of treatment was therefore alone in place. But this is in fact nothing else than the historical one, only stripped of the historical form and the disturbing coincidences. With what this history begins, the train of thought must also begin, and its further progress will be nothing but the reflection (...) of the historical course (...), but corrected according to laws which the real historical course itself gives to hand, in that every moment can be considered at the point of development of its full maturity (...). (13/474 f.)
In the text reproduced here in abbreviated form one finds again the most important of those keywords and theses whose meaning proves to be so hopelessly controversial in the dispute of the two orthodoxies. Here is the origin of the phrase of a "logical development" of the categories and a "logical mode of treatment" of political economy, whereby it is supposed to depend above all on the opposition and the relation of >logical< and >historical< mode of treatment. The systematic "train of thought", the "logical development", is defined as a "corrected reflection" of the "historical course".
It is these methodological theses that recur unchanged in the last theoretical work, the supplement of 1895 - characteristically again in a value-theoretical problem context: "In Sombart as well as in Schmidt (...) it is not sufficiently taken into account that we are not dealing here with a purely logical process, but with a historical process and its explanatory reflection back in thought, the logical tracing of its inner connections." (25/905)
In 1859, as in 1895, Engels believes he can understand the "logical development" (the "logical process") of the value- and money-theoretical determinations as a "reflection" ("Rückspiegelung") of the "historical course": the >logical< mode of treatment "is" for Engels "nothing other than the historical one." (13/475) This is understood by him in the review as well as in the supplement in such a way that the historical process is to be "stripped of its disturbing coincidences" or - as the supplement expresses it - is to be considered in its "inner context".
Now, in Engels' opinion, this is by no means merely a methodological program. Rather, he believes he has described the method actually practiced by Marx. Such an assertion has the advantage that it can be verified. What "development" is Engels actually talking about? He reviews Marx's Critique, and here a quite specific section in the >logical< as well as >historical< development of the economic categories is thematized: Marx is concerned with the "analysis of money" and its "main difficulty" is "overcome as soon as its origin from the
commodity itself is comprehended". (13/49)
The "logical development" of money in the Marxian critique is thus, according to
According to Engels, therefore, the "corrected mirror image" of the historical development of money. Marx is said to have studied this process, to have "stripped it of its disturbing contingencies" in the process, and thus to have worked out the "logical development" of money. A fantastic assertion.
Which period of the "historical course" is Marx supposed to have studied? There is nothing to be learned about this, neither from Engels nor from Marx. In the meantime, an extensive literature has been written about the origin of money. Wilhelm Gerloff, for example, gives the following information: "the time of the emergence of money can (...) not possibly be determined more closely. If one wants to indicate nevertheless a period, then it must be assumed that it was at the latest toward the end of the neolithic. (...) Excavations (...) have been interpreted in this sense. "3
The Stone Age is usually set for the period from 7000 to 3000 BC, according to which money was created more than 5000 years ago. It is thus obvious that Engels could not possibly have adequately described the methodological peculiarities of Marx's text. One may further assume that his pseudo-dialectic of the logical and the historical in the review as well as in the supplement must have led him to all kinds of untenable assertions.
Although the method is supposed to be the same, its application to problems of value and money theory yields different results in the supplement than in the review. There Engels arrives at a contestable, but in itself non-contradictory theory of value: the historicist theory of simple commodity production. In the review, on the other hand, he has not yet committed himself to a historicist position in terms of value and money theory. In a sense, he remains open. This is the positive aspect of the fact that his pseudo-dialectic of the logical and the historical entangles him in a distorted, even contradictory account of Marx's approach, thereby, as it were, dementing itself.
In contradiction to the >logical< beginning of the critique, Engels sets the
"historical mode of treatment" as primary:
In this method we start from the first and simplest relation that is historically, factually before us (...). Political economy begins with the commodity, with the moment when products - whether of individuals or of natural communities - are exchanged for one another. (13/475)
It is not difficult to identify this sentence as the germ of the theory of simple commodity production put forward thirty-six years later: the commodity of the first chapter is characterized as a premonetary one, namely as a prehistoric or ethnologically traceable fact, as a >historic<. The historicist interpreters could refer to this.
Engels seems to be primarily interested in the ideological, in the materialistic. It is about the dialectical method "stripped of its idealistic wrappings". (13/474) Therefore, he insists twice on the last three pages of the review that in Marx's critique "we are not looking at an abstract thought process that takes place in our minds alone" (13/475), that "logical development is by no means compelled to remain in the purely abstract realm" (13/477); rather, we are looking at "a real process that has really taken place at some time" (13/475); the "logical development (...) requires historical illustration, continuous contact with reality." (13/477)
It seems to me instructive to take a closer look at these sentences. It is easy to hear an almost imploring tone: one should not believe that the "logical development" of Marx cannot be distinguished from the "logical development" of Hegel - it is very much about something else, even if it must be admitted that the positive determination does not really want to succeed. Engels might have already sensed that he had gotten involved in a rather dark matter, the explication of which exceeds his power of representation and argumentation. He resorts not merely to vague and contradictory formulations, but to decidedly cranky, monstrous ones.
What is supposed to be a "real process that really happened" - admittedly at "some", i.e., unknown time? Engels speaks of the emergence of money, of that "process", therefore, which took place more than 5000 years ago.
In spite of a much richer archaeological and ethnological material, Gottl-Ottlilienfeld, for example, will resignedly state sixty-four years later that
it would hardly ever be possible even to establish the facts on the basis of which a safe judgment can be built up about how it really happened with exchange and price in primitive times. Only hypotheses can be formed about this, based on historical, prehistoric and ethnological facts. His investigation about the origin of money therefore only claims to be "a pure >working hypothesis< of the national-economic theory!". A mere coloring thus, how the exchange, and how the economic dimension could have originated (...). It depends here at all only on the fact that this painting preserves itself as free as possible from internal contradictions, thus remains of poetic truth.2
But Engels does not like to hear about the hypothetical character of all such statements about "primeval" economic processes. He is concerned in the review only with justifying the materialistic character of the new dialectic, with warding off the suspicion that it is merely a new edition of the Hegelian one. Such a justification demands apodictic propositions - hence his helpless formulations: if the "logical development (...) is not compelled" to "keep itself in the purely abstract realm", then this formulation implies that it can also refrain from transgressing the abstract realm; it is, so to speak, at its discretion. And certainly it does not "need" a "historical illustration". It is at most the reader, and that is the reader who is not familiar with the "peculiar logic" of that "logical development", who "needs" such an illustration - the >logical< development would otherwise not be what it is or is supposed to be. If it needs "contact" with "reality," Engels would also have to inform us of the reasons for this need. The formulation implies that it is primarily something other than "reality" qua "logical development": if, according to the Engelsian formulation, it nevertheless "needs" this, one wonders in vain, however, what Engels might have understood by that primary "contact" as distinct from the secondary one called "illustration".
Marx's constructions are placed in the field of tension between the >logical< and the >historical<, his value-theoretical statements somewhere between the a priori and the aposteriori; this results in their methodological status, which is still unresolved today.
In the 1859 review, this tension is first resolved in such a way that Engels allows >historical< and >logical< constructions to coexist, but reverses their rank relation and distorts the proportions in a grotesque way. Allegedly, in a first step of the analysis, we start "from the first (...) relation, which is historically, factually present to us". Only in a second step we arrive at the "logical development":
If we now look at the commodity from its different sides, namely the commodity as it has completely developed, not as it first laboriously develops in the natural exchange trade of two original communities, then it presents itself to us under the two aspects of use value and exchange value. (13/476)
Rarely might the focus and outline of a book have been so fundamentally misrepresented as Marx's critique by its reviewer Engels. If we take the text of the popular edition as a basis, we find that Marx presents his own analysis of the commodity in 28 pages in the first chapter and adds to it a dogmatic-historical excursus of another 13 pages. The analysis of money in the second chapter including the two dogmatic-historical digressions takes up 136 pages.
Engels' review is just under 12 pages and consists of two parts; a third part, in which he wanted to "go into the economic content of the book itself," was to follow. The first is devoted to Marx's famous preface, the second apparently more to the "dialectical method." Nevertheless, it is quite unlikely that he wanted to deal with the first chapter again in the third part. With the "economic content of the book" he might have meant the analysis of money, i.e. the three and a half times longer second chapter.
Be that as it may, the primary presentation of the "historical mode of treatment" in the review must give the impression that the reviewed text is also primarily concerned with gaining a "corrected reflection (...) of the historical course" of that primordial process of money formation. This would quite fit into the addendum
of 1895, but the Marxian critique of 1859 is diametrically opposed to such a conception: of the 28 pages of the commodity analysis, 25 "keep" themselves "in the purely abstract domain". It is also impossible to see that the "logical development" of money presented here could have anything to do with "a real process" which "really took place at some time". Contrary to Engels' account, it is in fact an "abstract thought process (...) which takes place in our heads alone". At the end of this process is money. Marx avoids any "contact with reality" in this "logical development".
On the last three pages of the analysis - actually only on the penultimate and the one preceding it, consequently only on two pages - there is finally also something >historical<. One may call it "illustration"; in any case, the either trivial or very controversial, archaeologically or ethnologically unproven facts do not deserve the demanding title "historical mode of treatment" or even only "historical development".
Engels, however, claims the opposite: empirical "proofs" are
inserted in great variety, namely both references to the real historical course at various stages of social development and to economic literature, in which the clear elaboration of the determinations of economic relations is pursued from the beginning. (13/477)
One might seriously wonder whether Engels may have been dreaming here. A scientific literature which, supported by archaeological and ethnological facts, could have "traced the formation of money from the beginning" did not exist at all at that time. The economic literature used to quote mostly only ancient writers, especially Aristotle, who was by no means able to present a hypothesis about the emergence of money supported by empirical "evidence"; after all, money was already more than 3000 years old in his time. As we will see, Marx also adopted Aristotle's hypothesis of the origin of money, based on a pure thought experiment, according to which money had to be conceived from the necessity to overcome certain "difficulties" of the immediate barter trade. From the fact that Marx, in that appendix on the "historical development" of money, but also in Capital, one may conclude that he distrusted Aristotle's rationalist construction. In fact, there are some indications that he might have considered other possibilities of the origin of money.
Now, in the economic literature, Marx repeatedly found references to primitive money. Already James Steuart, a representative of early monetary nominalism, had referred to the "Angola money" of the African coast as evidence for the existence of an "abstract unit of account" that could be interpreted nominalistically. Although "logical development" and "reality" even seem to collide here, Marx confines himself to the terse comment: "But as far as the African idealists are concerned, we must leave them to their fate until critical travel writers report more details about them." (13/64)3
It is not possible here to pursue the question of whether and how the treatment of empirical material, which is at least at first glance quite lax, can actually be justified methodologically. What is of interest here at first is merely the conclusion drawn from Marx's text that the sparse and, on top of that, unreliable facts did not permit a "contact" of the "logical development" of money with "reality". Both from the text design and from the way of treating the matter, it can finally be proved that this "development" does not "need" such a "contact" at all, since in the criticism the >logical< has a clear preponderance over the "historical". Even more, strictly speaking, one cannot speak of a "historical" at all: contrary to Engels' assertion, nowhere is there a representation of the "real historical course".
In the supplement of 1895, Engels projects his historicist ideas into Marxian texts; and already in the review of 1859, Engels undertakes to inflate some "historical" ornaments, which on closer inspection turn out to be trivialities or desk constructions, into a "historical development" and to superimpose them on the actual content of the Critique, the "logical development" of money, and to place them in front of it. In 1859 there is still talk of this "logical," but in 1895 it is completely absorbed by the pseudo-historical. The so-called historical thus displaces the "logical" and takes its place.
The question that actually interests us naturally goes to whether and to what extent Marx himself laid a hand on his work and contributed to its mutilation by the late Engels. For there should be no doubt about this either: neither in 1859 nor in 1895 did Engels have the ambition to develop his own method and his own theory of value and money, or to push Marx in the direction of his own ideas about the commodity-money relation and the adequate method of its analysis - he always saw himself only as an interpreter of Marx's economics, whose methodological peculiarities he merely sought to interpret to the best of his knowledge and belief, to put it more simply: to clarify. Engels' misunderstandings and distortions should therefore be understood and used for what they are: a kind of magnifying glass or distorting mirror by means of which certain fractures of Marx's conception can be located.
As we will have to discuss in more detail, those strange ideas about
worthy ideas about a relationship of reflection between >logical< and "historical" development of the economic categories not only return unchanged in the late Engels, they can be traced even in Marx's rough draft.
But not only this. One cannot escape the fact that Marx could not decide, following the "logical development", which remains exclusively "in the purely abstract area", to renounce the reproduction of those facts and fabulations, which at least created the appearance of what Engels and the Marxist orthodoxy will then call "historical development". And one can further not ignore the fact that these desk constructions, passed off as "historical," will be extended by Marx himself, namely, to fill almost the entire second chapter in the first edition of Capital, and finally to penetrate the first chapter, the "logical development," in the second edition. The construction of value-forms, their "development" - what is it but a certain attempt at a solution to the old project of conceiving the "logical development" as a "corrected reflection" of the "historical course"?
This basic idea of Marx-Engels' historicism was certainly already discussed orally at the time of the writing of the rough draft and possibly the result of common discussions. Thus, it is this basic methodological idea that persists in the development of the value-theoretical constructions, thus connecting the 1859 Critique with the 1895 Addendum.
The methodological peculiarities of Marx's form analysis, and precisely the groundbreaking discoveries, can admittedly not now be reduced to this one basic idea, this helpless attempt at a historicist justification of categorial analysis. On the contrary, the dialectical categorial analysis and the attempt of its historicist, >materialist< justification contradict each other.
And in this respect it is certainly no coincidence that Marx did not put down on paper anywhere the common considerations about the relation of reflection of >logical< and >historical development<: not even in the planned introduction to the Grundrisse. Compare the remarks there on the "method" (42/34 ff), especially on the relation of>logical< and >historical<, with Engels' in the recension written only a little later: the difference is striking. However, it is equally obvious that the discussion of the problem of justification is also evaded by the bracketing of the reflection thesis. The introduction avoids a clear statement.
This omission is certainly not accidental. Marx must have felt that the relationship between "logical development" and those irrelevant historicist fables cannot possibly be understood as one of reflection; otherwise, the fact that he labors over this relationship in three further attempts cannot be understood. Engels obviously took these problems more lightly. One will be able to explain his review to a considerable extent in such a way that he read Marx's text through the glasses of the reflection thesis and therefore perceived the proportions of the >logical< and the >historical< in such a grotesque distortion.
As will be shown, the historicist reading of Engels had the good of unintentionally bringing to light a Marxian category error that would probably have eluded a methodologically unbiased reading. Some hints, however, seem to me to be in place already now. Let us consider the following quotation:
Political economy begins with the commodity, with the moment when products - be it of individuals, be it of natural communities - are exchanged against each other. The product that enters into exchange is commodity. (13/475)
A few lines later follows the already quoted sentence:
If we now look at the commodity (...) as it has completely developed, not as it first laboriously develops in natural exchange (...), it presents itself to us under the two aspects of use value and exchange value. (13/476)
Only the "developed commodity" is to present itself under these "points of view". But according to Engels, it is not in a second step that the commodity is analyzed under those "points of view", but from the beginning. Marx's economy thus does not begin with the primitive commodity, but with the "developed" commodity. If one takes Engels at his word, the primitive commodity is also not analyzable at all, insofar as it obviously does not present itself under this "point of view". Thus, a completely different analysis is required if it is not a question of the investigation of a commodity which is to be understood as a unity of value and use value. In the Critique, of course, one looks for it in vain.
But this objection still belongs to the already discussed problematic that the review misses the content of the reviewed text. Here, for the first time, a question is to be raised which, through the historicist reception of Engels, aims directly at Marx: does it actually make sense to subsume historically quite disparate things - the product of natural communities and that of industrial societies organized by the division of labor - under one and the same generic term "commodity"? Certainly, if I abstract from the existence of money, as is consistently done in value-theoretical analysis, then the modern commodity also presents itself as a commodity that is merely determined by exchange value, as a premonetary commodity. But is the model of a natural exchange economy organized on the basis of the division of labor and the modeled premonetary commodity-commodity relation identical in essence with an archaic natural exchange economy and an archaic commodity-commodity relation? In both cases I am dealing with exchange-value-determined, premonetary products dedicated to exchange. If I stick to the definition according to which the product entering into exchange is a commodity, then I gain eo ipso the generic term of an "exchange-value-determined" or "premonetary commodity". If, on the other hand, I adhere to the other definition, according to which the commodity is to be determined as a unity of value and use-value, "i.e. of two opposites," thus as an "immediate contradiction" (II.5/51), then I must reserve the term "commodity" for the product of that mode of production organized on the division of labor, which is characterized by the opposition of private and social labor. The consequence is to speak of "product exchange" instead of "commodity exchange" of archaic societies. The formation of a generic term "commodity of exchange value" or "premonetary commodity" is then no longer permissible, since this would now have to subsume not only historically but also conceptually disparate things.
We will have to examine in more detail whether Marx's rather irregular use of these terms is to be judged merely as a terminological inconsistency or as an expression of his intention to construct a mirror relationship of logical and historical "development". The seemingly mere terminological inconsistency could possibly be criticized as an attempt to level essential differences or to subsume logically disparate things to the same basic concepts.
The inconsistencies of Engels' review cannot be understood solely from these factual problems. Much becomes understandable only when one has become familiar with the genesis of this text.
§5
About sixteen months before the publication of the Critique, Engels found his first opportunity to familiarize himself with its train of thought. Marx had sent him a brief summary, and Engels commented on it as follows on April 4, 1858:
The study of your abstract of the first half of the booklet has kept me very busy, (...) I often have to search with difficulty for the dialectical transitions, since all abstract reasoning has become very strange to me. (...) The development of the history of money is also very fine; here, too, I am not yet in the clear with some details, since I often have to gather the historical basis first. (29/319)
Engels could hardly have thought at the time that he would suddenly be confronted with the task of writing an expert introduction within a very short time. The correspondence does not give any indication that he intensively dealt with the literature presented and criticized by Marx in the following months. Not once does Engels return to these problems. On the other hand, there is reason to assume that he turned to completely different things soon thereafter. Already on 14 July, he reports on discoveries that relate to other disciplines:
Send me the promised Hegelian "Natural Philosophy". I am now doing some physiology and will tie comparative anatomy to it. There are highly speculative things in it (...). Decisive for physiology have been 1. the huge development of organic chemistry (...). Another result, which would have pleased the old Hegel, is in physics (...) that (...) mechanical force is transformed into heat, heat into light [etc]. (29/337 f.). (29/337 f.)
Engels, however, will have to interrupt his studies of natural dialectics only a few months later. Already in February 1858, Marx reckons with the emergence of a new revolutionary movement because of the outbreak of the economic crisis: "After all, it is foreboding to me that now (...) stormy movements from outside will probably interfere." Marx feared that he would "finish too late to find the world still attentive to such things." (29/551) In the fall of 1858, it now seems that the time has come. He believes "that the revolution has begun in Russia (...). Likewise, things are worse in Prussia than they were in 1847." (29/360) Some weeks later Engels is still "not clear about the course of history (...)" (29/362), but he also sees in Prussia, but also in France, "precursors of a new revolutionary movement". (12/630) Marx and Engels finally come to the conclusion at the end of the year: "Only a European war offers a prospect of postponing the revolution in France." (12/662) Europe vacillates between the two possibilities of French revolution and European war. They pinned their hopes on this war ultimately unleashing the "revolutionary tide" (12/658).
This is now the reason that Engels intensified his war studies at the beginning of 1859. In articles and a pamphlet, he dealt with strategic problems and the prospects of success in the upcoming war between France and Piedmont on the one hand and Austria on the other. When war broke out at the end of May, he commented in fifteen articles on the military situation and the course of the two decisive battles.
Marx did not limit himself to commenting on the political significance of the war, but also seems to have taken an active part in the military assessment. In a review written on July 22, 1859, he takes issue with Bonapartist assessments of the military balance of power. His commitment also in military terms is expressed in the fact that he reports in the plural about the past commentary on the battles:
we count it to our credit to have extracted the real situation of things from the most contradictory reports of "our own correspondents", from French lies and Austrian exaggerations, and with the few and imprecise sources of help that were available to us, to have determined the balance of power of the fighting parties in our critical observations about the individual battles from Montebello to Solferino. (13/441 f.)
Napoleon III and Francis Joseph fully confirm after the war what we said before and during the war both about the military resources of the two countries and about the characteristics of the campaign. We quote these two witnesses as involuntary defenders of common sense and historical truth against that tide of stupid exaggeration and foolish delusion. (13/443)
However great his own contribution may have been, this passage undoubtedly bears witness to the fact that Marx had taken a lively interest in Engels' war-scientific works and that during the summer of 1859 the attention not only of Engels but also of Marx had been completely absorbed by the events of the Italian war and its conceivable political consequences.
For even several weeks after the unexpectedly rapid conclusion of peace on July 11, they were still preoccupied with the military and political significance of this war. Even now, they still saw in the conflict between the two great powers, which in their opinion would soon flare up again, the harbinger of revolutionary events. Thus Marx considers it "quite possible that an Italian revolution will intervene" (13/427), and Engels believes "that no one will win, except the Russians and the revolutionaries, what Jüdel Braun would call a "pure revolutionary situation." (29/454)
On July 18, Marx suggests that Engels do something "militarily conclusive" (29/454) about the campaign, and the very next day he asked him to review the Critique that had just appeared. (29/460) Having been occupied for months exclusively with questions of war science and revolutionary politics, Engels was to switch to political economy, as it were overnight, and within a few days write a treatise on its "most abstract, because most difficult part." He must have found Marx's request an imposition. In any case, on July 22, Marx felt compelled to admonish his answer. In order to lend emphasis to his request, he now also communicates why a review written by Engels is important to him:
You forgot to write to me whether you want to make a note of my writing. The jubilation among the guys is very great here. They think the thing has fallen through (...). Herr Liebknecht has explained to Biskamp that "never before has a book disappointed him so much," and Biskamp himself has told me that he does not see >à quoi bon< [the benefit]. (29/463)
Engels now realizes that he must step into the breach and gives positive notice. On June 25, 1859, he writes:
this is a work, and for that I should have had some notice sooner. (...) I undertake to do the article next week. (...) the article about your book takes a lot of my time. (...) It is cheerful that you also reach such a nice verdict with Mr. Liebknecht. (...) The gentlemen are so used to us thinking for them that they always and everywhere want to have things not only on the plate, but also ready cooked and dried, and on the smallest scale not only the quintessence, but also the detailed execution. (...) What does such an ass actually demand? (...) Of course, the solutions of the ticklish money questions etc. are pure dirt for Liebknecht, since these questions do not exist for him at all. But one should at least demand that such a bovine animal at least remembers those punch lines that fit into his little box. But what does the cow know about Sunday? (29/464 f.)
Engels' rudeness is not entirely unjustified. Liebknecht was already at that time the potential leader of a party that claimed a scientific justification for its political objectives. Marx and Engels therefore had every right to expect Liebknecht to make the effort to deal intensively with Marx's attempt to lay the foundations of "scientific socialism." This was all the more true since he was a member of the Marx family and Marx was always available to explain more subtle problems of political economy orally.
On the other hand, it cannot be overlooked that "the solutions of the ticklish questions of money, etc. remained pure dirt" not only for Liebknecht, but even for the prominent interpreters of Marx's theory. And the lack of interest has hardly changed until today. Not only Liebknecht and Biskamp, but all Marxists interested in a direct political application of Marx's economic critique must have been disappointed by the book.
If now even the Soviet Marxist academies, which see themselves as custodians of the theoretical "heritage," have little in mind with those "ticklish money-bearers" and their Marxian "solutions," if these have remained "pure dirt" especially for a large part of Leninist economists and also philosophers, but thus "the most difficult, because most abstract part of political economy" - then one will have to look for the reasons for this in Marx and Engels themselves.
Already a few days after his attacks on Liebknecht's lack of understanding, Engels now seems rather meek and embarrassed. Clearly unsettled, he sends the first part of the review with the unusual request:
Look through it carefully, and if you don't like it in toto, tear it up and write me your opinion. I am so out of this kind of writing through lack of practice that your wife will laugh very much at my awkwardness. If you can put it to rights, do so. (29/468)
Although it was not foreseeable that this work, which Engels perceived as extremely questionable and in need of correction, would one day be canonized "in the manner of Holy Scripture,"4 it was foreseeable that it would be considered a genuine, authorized interpretation of Marx's method. Marx might have expected this as well. His reaction to Engels' review will therefore be of particular interest.
Curiously, Marx does not comment with a word on Engels's scruples, does not even acknowledge receipt of the work so urgently requested. He is admittedly "as dull as a fly and can therefore only write a few lines." (29/470) Thus, for health reasons, he may have confined himself to merely reporting on the newspaper's troubling financial situation and asking Engels to "raise some money for the >Volk<." (Ibid.) But even in the next letter, written five days later, there is almost only talk about the precarious situation of the newspaper; with regard to the review, there is only the laconic request: "Couldn't you arrange for your article (...) to be here as early as Wednesday?" (29/474) The following letter, written only thirteen days later, reports exclusively on the collapse of the newspaper that had occurred in the meantime.
If the correspondence of those days has been preserved in its entirety, one comes to the conclusion that Engels did not learn anything about this text, which was so extraordinarily important in the history of Marxism, at least during and immediately after his elaboration of Marx's "opinion," which must have interested him after all.
Marx expresses himself for the last time about two months later, on October 5, 1859: "Your articles on history have been printed from Neww York to California by the German papers" (29/491); again, one misses a statement, even if only brief, on the content. He still mentions that he has lectured "among a select circle of knots" on Heft I: "It seems to interest people very much." (Ibid.) As can be seen, Marx has become quite skeptical about the reception of his Critique. He speaks only to a "select" circle of "knots" whom it "seems" to interest. The experience with "history", on which he had placed very high hopes, must have been depressing.
The disturbed communication between Marx and Engels about the basic concepts of political economy and the peculiarity of the "dialectical method" leads eight years later to an equally strange dialogue.
§6
When the author of the first volume of Capital, which is just about to be printed, sends Engels the proof sheets, the latter suggests that Marx should supplement the logical development of the value form with a historical one in the supplement:
At the most, what we have gained here dialectically would have to be proved somewhat more extensively historically, the test of it would have to be made, so to speak, from history, although the most necessary things have already been said for this; but you have so much material about it that you can certainly still make a quite good excursus about it, which proves to the philistine by historical means the necessity of the formation of money and the process that takes place in it. You have made the big mistake not to make the train of thought of these more abstract developments clear by more small subsections and separate headings. (...) The thing would have looked somewhat schoolmasterly, but the understanding of a very large class of readers would have been greatly facilitated. (31/303)
This suggestion provides the impetus for Marx to write the vulgarized appendix "The Value Form" (II.5/626 ff.) for the first edition of in 1867, which then serves as a model for his new version of the first chapter for the second edition of Capital. The quoted letter thus deserves special attention if only because it stands at the beginning of a development which, via the vulgarized and historicized text of the second edition, was to lead in the last analysis to the theory of simple commodity production and thus to the abandonment of the concept of a dialectical theory of value and money.
We already saw that Engels must have understood the "dialectically gained," i.e., the >logical< development of money, far better on the basis of the text of the first edition of Capital than during the elaboration of his review of 1859. As will be shown, in 1867 he even gives an exquisite characterization of the >logical< development of the transition from commodity to money. All the more must the reasons be of interest that he again wants to bring >historical< into play in apparent reference to his earlier considerations.
Again, it cannot be overlooked that with respect to what is "dialectically gained" he feels scruples similar to Marx's. Both are repeatedly preoccupied with the problem, central to their conceptualization, of how what is "dialectically won" can be justified on the basis of a non-idealistic, "scientific" theory. One could also formulate the question as follows: according to which criteria can one judge whether "dialectically won" has empirical validity or is merely the result of an "idealistic manner of presentation"?
If Marx now did not "tear up" or "put to rights" the methodological passages of the review, then eight years later Engels might well have interpreted Marx's silence in such a way that the author of the Critique tacitly accepted this presentation of the reflection relation of >logical< and >historical development< as an adequate formulation of the common methodological program. If there the "logical development" was determined merely as a "corrected reflection" of the "historical course", the latter then conversely as a mere "illustration" of the "logical development", here we arrive at similar inconsistencies. The old thesis that the "logical development" "requires" a continuous "contact" with reality does seemingly gain a more concrete version: the "history" not only functions as an "illustration" of what is "dialectically gained", but is even regarded as its "rehearsal". But again, a similar dilemma arises: the "story" is supposed to be significant once as a "rehearsal" of the "dialectically won", but the latter then merely as a "corrected reflection" of the "history".
Whether the role of "illustration" or also of "rehearsal" is intended for "history" - for the "logical development" of the categories, in both cases a peculiar structure of "development" and a peculiar ground of validity are assumed; the sense of these terms implies that that which is to be "illustrated" and on which the "rehearsal" is to be taken is something other than a "corrected mirror image" of that with which "illustration" and with which the "rehearsal" is taken.
We already saw that the "logical development" as such does not "need" any illustration. Also the "sample" seems to be superfluous. If the "logical development" of economic categories really has a "logic" of a peculiar kind, adequate to the "peculiar object", it does not "need" a "test" by "history". On the contrary, the historical material itself first needs an interpretation by "dialectically won", presupposes it and is unsuitable as "rehearsal" for this reason alone. The "rehearsal" seems therefore just as little suitable as the "illustration" to establish a "contact" between the "abstract thought process" and the "reality".
If there is something like a peculiar factual logic, then an empirical verification of whatever kind would be quite out of place. But if it does not exist, then one should better call the "dialectically gained" hypothesis. In this case, however, it is not quite understandable why the empirical material should be used only for the "test", for the substantiation of the hypothesis, instead of already for its obtaining.
The Engelsian attempt to somehow couple >logical< and "historical development" in a different way than in the Critique only entangles him in new difficulties. That which apparently establishes a conceptual connection between the >logical< and the "historical" turns out more and more to be a merely ambiguous word: "development". If one takes the historical "development" of money seriously, then the "peculiar logic" of its conceptual "development" disappears - so, if the latter is declared as a "corrected mirror image" of the historical one. But if one takes the logical "development" of money seriously, namely the attempt to gain a definition of the essence of money, then the theoretical relevance of the historical "development" disappears - so, if the latter is merely to serve as an "illustration" or a "rehearsal".
Engels seems to have sensed these contradictions himself in his advice; in the following sentence, he again assigns a merely didactic role to the "historical": the "necessity of the formation of money" and the process that takes place in this process can also be made clear to the "philistine" who is not accustomed to abstract thinking in a "historical way".
Here it is revealed for the first time with all desirable clarity that Engels cannot have grasped the economic intention of the "logical development", the money-theoretical sense of the form analysis. Engels, and with him not only the entire secondary literature, but also the main stream of academic economics, actually only ever asks the question about the mere existence of money, its being-there. In monetary economics, one primarily asks: why does money actually exist? Marx, and only a few other authors besides him, such as Simmel, differ from the school economics of Marxist, neoclassical or also neo-Ricardian provenance in that they put the question of existence before the question of essence. For them it is a quite senseless procedure to want to find out why a thing exists, if nobody really knows to say what it actually is whose existence is to be problematized. Engels and the prevailing theory tacitly presuppose that they know what they are asking for when they want to trace the causes for the emergence of that abstract something which they call "money". The question about the what-being precedes the question about the that-being, because otherwise it is impossible to decide whether a certain historical phenomenon is already money, a money-surrogate or still a pre-form of money.
However, only the >logical< development can give an answer to the question about the essence of money, not at all the >historical< one. If the relation of these two forms of "development" has been discussed quite unsatisfactorily by Marx, he was nevertheless completely clear about the fact that a definition of the essence of money cannot be won on the way of its "historical development".
Engels is different. His advice to prove "by historical means the necessity of the formation of money" amounts to deleting the >logical development< and replacing it by a >historical< one. In the second section of his advice, therefore, >history< gains an excellent function: it no longer serves as a "rehearsal" of the "dialectically gained", but takes its place. If it is only a matter of proving the "necessity of the formation of money" and if this proof can also be furnished by "historical means", then it is no longer quite clear, at least from the point of view of monetary theory, why the dialectical finesses of that "logical development" are still needed.
If in the first part of his advice Engels only wants the "dialectically gained" to be completed by a historical "test", in the second part he unintentionally expresses his conviction that the "gained" can also be proved in another way than "dialectically". As we will see, Engels recognizes quite sharply the dialectical contours of Marx's construction; however, since he cannot have understood its money-theoretical function quite well, he must have gained the impression already then that there is no need at all for a >logical development<. Engels would have proceeded more consistently if he had suggested as early as 1867 that Marx, as he was himself to do in 1894/95, replace the theory of simple circulation by a theory of simple commodity production.
Marx's reaction to Engels' advice is exceedingly strange: he more hints at the differences instead of discussing them clearly and unmistakably; then, after a few days, he denies them, although he nevertheless sticks to his >logical development<.
The first answer is:
As far as the development of the value form is concerned, I have followed and not followed your advice (...). That is, I have 1. written an appendix in which I present the same thing as simply as possible and as schoolmasterly as possible, and 2. according to your advice, divided each progression sentence into §§ etc., with appropriate headings. In the preface I then tell the >non-dialectical< reader to skip page x-y and read the appendix instead. It is not only about philistines here, but about the knowledge-loving youth, etc. Besides, the matter is too crucial for the whole book. (31/306)
Marx thus clearly recognizes that Engels' advice amounts to rigorously deleting the "logical development," namely, the "development of the value-form." In this respect, he has "not followed" him; for it is "the same thing," namely, the development of the value form, which he presents again in an appendix for didactic reasons; and it is only in the external mode of presentation of the "logical development" that he follows Engels' advice.
Five days later, he informs Engels in more detail about this appendix, but does not want to remember that in one respect he "did not follow" Engels' advice:
So that you can see how exactly I followed your advice in treating the appendix, I copy for you here the division, §, title, etc., of the same appendix. (31/314)
Historical "material" is searched for in vain in this appendix; in no way is "from history the test" made of what has been "dialectically won"; and there can be no question at all of an attempt to prove by "historical means the necessity of the formation of money." Marx thus rejects the substantive proposals for change, thus what Engels must have been primarily concerned with, accepts only the secondary, but nevertheless wants to convince Engels and probably also himself that he has followed Engels' advice "exactly".
The few sentences of Engels should have abruptly made Marx realize that Engels could not have recognized the importance of the analysis of form. Consider: In the preface to Capital, Marx declares his analysis of the "value-form, whose finished shape is the money-form" (23/11), to be an epoch-making discovery; for only in this way can the statement be understood that "the human mind has sought to fathom it in vain for more than 2000 years" (23/12); he sees in this analysis the decisive step beyond "political economy," beyond Smith and Ricardo, who had not even posed the "question" of this form, but had rather treated it "as something quite indifferent." (23/95 and Fn.) And suddenly Engels comes up with the unbelievable proposal to supplement it with a "digression" "which is to make clear to the philistine by historical means the necessity of the formation of money."
Marx also understands that Engels basically does not have a supplement but a substitution in mind; after all, he emphasizes that he intends to treat "the same thing" in the appendix. It is also impossible not to hear that Marx reacts quite indignantly: it is "not just a matter of philistines here". Engels is finally about to misjudge the importance of a "thing" that for Marx is "too decisive for the whole book".
Is this not a similar repetition of what Marx had already experienced in 1859, namely that the closest collaborators do not see "à quoi bon" (29/463) what the "thing" is actually useful for? Why else would it be necessary to point out energetically that the understanding of this "thing" is finally "too decisive" for the understanding of the "whole" of Capital? And is it not again a question of "the solutions of the ticklish questions of money", which apparently remained "pure dirt" not only for Liebknecht? If it is correct that the analysis of the value form aims at a definition of the essence of money, then one will have to answer these questions in the affirmative. The historicism expressed in Engels' proposals - clearly enough, the course is set here for his theory of simple commodity production - becomes comprehensible at all only under the assumption that not only for Liebknecht, but also for Engels and thus also for the older orthodoxy, "these questions do not exist at all".
Marx's reaction is also comparable to that of 1859. True, he reacts somewhat gruffly at first, but by no means in a way that would be appropriate to that matter so "decisive" for "the whole book." He insists on the decisive importance of the "matter," but he is silent about the reasons for this. He leaves Engels in the dark as to why his proposal to make a "rehearsal" of what has been "dialectically won" and to prove "by historical means the necessity of the formation of money" does not do justice to the methodological peculiarity of the analysis of form. More than that, Engels sees his proposals rejected and yet is supposed to believe that Marx "followed exactly" his "advice in treating the appendix." Engels may have perceived Marx's behavior as a misunderstanding. And it can be assumed that certain misunderstandings were indeed at play; but this is not likely to be what this peculiar communication can be reduced to. Marx had felt more or less clearly that Engels could not have understood the "matter" quite correctly. His silence of 1859, which now turns out to be
ex post proves to be by no means accidental, together with his contradictory reaction of 1867, betray a certain uncertainty about the adequate "treatment" of the material. Marx had no reason whatsoever not to give Engels his opinion openly and honestly. His second letter may give the impression of wanting to appease Engels somewhat; it seems more appropriate with to suspect a certain self-appeasement on Marx's part.
§7
With his insistence on proving the "necessity of the formation of money," Engels may also have had in mind what Marx once called the "polemical purpose" of his critique: it was to
destroy the Proudhonian (...) socialism, which (...) wants the commodity but does not want money, in its foundation. (29/573)
This criticism of the "hourly workers" deserves only historical interest today. Thus, another "polemical purpose" of the form analysis came to the fore. The attention of the orthodox interpreters is concentrated almost exclusively on the sentence of the fetish chapter, according to which the
bourgeois mode of production (...) is characterized by the analysis of form as a special kind of social production and thus at the same time as historical.(23/95 fn.)5
The Engelsian statement that his thesis on the historicity of the value-form received its "scientific justification" (20/289 fn.) in Capital can also be formulated in a Marxian turn: the analysis of form is able to answer the question "why this content assumes that form, why, therefore, labor represents itself in value (...)."(23/95) Marx gains the concept of "social labor" and states an opposition between this form of labor and "real" labor, which has a "private" character. It is this opposition which is considered by Marx as the cause of the fact that "labor presents itself in value", in other words, that money exists. The abolition of this opposition is therefore ex definitionem identical with the abolition of money and, conversely, the continued existence of money is ex definitionem identical with the continued existence of the opposition of private and social labor.
As can be seen, in an investigation of the methodological status of Marx's analysis of form, the economic-political problematic of its statements must also be taken into account. Here, the main question is whether the Marx-Engelsian ideas about the substitution of the value calculation by a labor-time calculation have been >falsified< by the Soviet experience or not. This problem, however, will not be discussed here. In the context of our discussion of the analysis of form, the only problem of interest is whether the "justification" of the Engelsian or left Ricardian "timesheet" doctrine constitutes the essential content of the analysis of form or is to be understood only as its consequence. It is related to the question whether Marx primarily asks for the historical reason of existence or for the essence of money.
That the question of the causes of money or of the conditions of the possibility of its abolition does not constitute the actual object of the analysis of form, but is to be understood only as one of its consequences, as its "polemical purpose", is already evident from the structure of the material. Only in the dogmatic-historical appendix to the first section of the second chapter, that is, in the doctrine of the measure of values, and only in the last, theoretically most undemanding part of this appendix, does Marx deal with these questions. "A few occasional blows at the Proudhonists" (29/315) - this is how he characterizes the content of this passage in the spring of 1858. He reckons "that, apart from all practical purposes, the chapter on money will be interesting for connoisseurs of facts." (29/383) Only when Liebknecht declared that "never before had a book disappointed him so much" (29/463) does he recommend Engels to point out the "practical" or "polemical" purpose:
\1. that Proudhonism is destroyed in the root, 2. that right in the simplest form, that of the commodity, the specifically social, by no means absolute character of bourgeois production is analyzed.(29/463)
The reference to these two related theses, the first of which has been formulated only in passing, the second not even explicitly, should make the book interesting for a wider audience. But there can be no question that they were the real purpose of the investigation.
§8
In the sentence that characterizes the destruction of Proudhonism as a "po-
lemical" purpose of the critique, Marx contrasts this task with another: "the analysis of the simple forms of money." He distinguishes it from the former by singling it out as "the most difficult, because most abstract, part of political economy" (29/573).
The historicist trivialization of Marx's economics probably has its most important reason in the lack of insight that, as the quoted statement indicates, for Marx the simplest thing presents itself as the most difficult, the analysis of the "simple," most self-evident form as the "most difficult part" of his economics.
That the analysis of form aims at a definition of the essence of money is clear enough also from the well-known passage of the Fetish chapter on the "fundamental defects of classical political economy." The secondary literature on Capital, including the Marxist literature, does not seem to take any notice of this. If it shows any interest at all in the difference between classical and Marxian economics, it almost without exception reduces Marx's critique to the sentence that the bourgeois mode of production is regarded "as the eternal natural form of social production." But it is only in the following sentence, which is no longer found worth quoting or even commenting on in the relevant literature, that Marx formulates the actual problem of the analysis of form:
One therefore finds among economists, who are in complete agreement about the measure of the value of labor time, the most motley and contradictory ideas about money (...). This becomes strikingly apparent, for example, in the treatment of banking, where the commonplace definitions of money are no longer sufficient. (23/95 fn.)
The economic theory of value, both in its classical, Marxist or neoclassical variant, can be characterized by the fact that it seeks "no connection with the essence of money". In order to distinguish it from Marx's, which asserts such an "inner connection" between the theory of value and the theory of money, I have therefore labeled it as premonetary.
Before dealing with these questions in more detail, another aspect of the analysis of form must be addressed, which the literature - critical as well as Marxist - has been equally stubborn in ignoring; in contrast to Marx's critique of Ricardo, it has the merit that it can also be related to modern economics. Marx does not only criticize the representatives of the classical labor theory of value, i.e. those who only analyze the "content", i.e. the "substance" of value, but treat the "form" "as something quite indifferent" - as their counterpart, Marx also criticizes that direction which "is in the form of the form of value".
that direction is criticized which "sees in value only the social form or rather only its insubstantial appearance." (23/95 fn.)
What this is actually supposed to mean is by no means self-evident; it is only immediately plausible that this critique is inversely related to the first one and is therefore to be understood as its correlate. One will also not want to claim that the following explanations would be suitable to explain this second aspect: if I see correctly, the famous formulations about the difference between "classical political economy", which explores the "inner context", and "vulgar economy", which only hangs around in the "apparent context" (23/95), have nowhere been referred to the different treatment of the relation of "form" and "substance" of value claimed in the preceding sentences.
It is also impossible to see how such a reference could be established. The concept of "internal relation" as distinguished from the "apparent" is used here to characterize classical economics. We saw, however, that Ricardo is criticized because he failed to establish a "connection" of "labor with money," the "theory of value and the essence of money." Here, too, it is an "inner" one, in the sense of a hidden "connection" based on the distinction between "essence" and "appearance". Thus, there is also explicit talk of investigating the "inner connection" of the categories; the "most abstract part of political economy," namely, the development of the three categories commodity, money and capital, is supposed to do this - "economics as a science in the German sense." (29/567) If there were not such a thing as the "inner connection" of the categories, what else would there be need for what Marx called the "dialectical method of development" (31/313).
If it should now turn out to be correct that an "inner connection" exists between commodity and money, value and money theory, then no difference in principle between the "classical" and the "vulgar economic" analysis of value and money can be established from a methodological point of view. Both theories ignore their "inner connection" and are then equally to be classified as "vulgar economics". Both directions differed methodologically from Marx's in that they are unable to mediate the form and content of value. If one treats "form as something quite indifferent," the other characterizes it as seeing "only social form." Both directions complement, even demand, each other.
In this respect, the distinction between "classical" economics and "vulgar economics" in the sphere of simple circulation was quite misleading. According to Marx's own standards, the essential difference between the theories is to be determined by whether the mediation of form and substance of value has succeeded or not. Then "classical" and "vulgar" economics on the one hand, Marx's analysis of the form of value on the other, are opposed to each other. Only in the sphere of capital circulation does the distinction between "classical" and "vulgar" economics gain relevance.
The misplaced opposition in the sphere of simple circulation has certainly contributed to the identification of "classical" and Marxian value theory and thus to the ignoring of the peculiarity of Marxian form analysis; the lack of attention in the literature to the constitutive features of "vulgar" economics in the sphere of simple circulation - its being caught in "insubstantial appearances" - is also at least partly due to this.
This second aspect of the form analysis, i.e., the critique of those theories which see "only the social form" of value and thus conjure away the substance, ranks as its primary aspect in the form analysis proper, i.e., in the third part of the first chapter. It even appears as its only meaning: "Our analysis proved that the value-form or value-expression of the commodity springs from the nature of commodity-value, not conversely value and value-size from its expression as exchange-value." (23/75)
In the first edition of Capital, Marx concludes the analysis of the value-form with the same summing-up statement:
The decisively important thing, however, was to discover the inner necessary connection between value-form, value-substance and value-size, i.e. (...) to prove that the value/bmz arises from the concept of value.(II.5/43)
A footnote appended to this sentence coincides word for word with that just discussed from the second edition of Capital, which there followed the critical statement that "political economy (...) has never even posed the question" of "why labor (...) presents itself in value (...)." (23/94 f.)
One should now see quite clearly what constitutes the formal meaning of the value-form analysis. It is about the elaboration of an "inner necessary connection" between the "form" and the "substance" of value; the critique immanent to it is a double one: it is directed against both "classical" and "vulgar" economics. It is therefore not justified to interpret the above quotation in such a way, as the text of the second edition (23/75) suggests, that the form analysis primarily or even exclusively criticizes vulgar economics; this would be just as one-sided if one wanted to see its purpose exclusively in wanting to prove to Ricardianism an "inner connection" between labor and money, the "theory of value and the essence of money." Rather, they are only two aspects of the same thing, whereby "classical" economics is apparently defined in such a way that it sees only the substance and ignores the form, while the constitutive characteristic of "vulgar economics" is apparently supposed to be that it sees only the form and ignores the substance.
This, of course, merely indicates the formal meaning. The "inner connection" should only become clearer as we proceed. What is intended by the proof of this connection has already been indicated: it is positively about the elaboration of a definition of the essence of money and negatively about the criticism of certain theories of money and the theories of value corresponding to them. This will be concretized below in a first attempt.
The form-analytical critique of vulgar economics can, of course, not be understood from this purpose. The above quotation (23/75) and the sentences following it, however, are not able to convey a clear idea of what Marx actually intends with this form-analytical critique. It is therefore not surprising that - as far as I can see - not even the literature dealing with the commentary on the form analysis has ever taken note of these sentences. If they were taken literally, Engels and, in his succession, the Marxist doctrinal tradition of more than eighty years would have failed to make use of the most important weapon forged by Marx in their argument with "vulgar economics."
But what could it mean that "vulgar economics" sees in value "only the social form"? - What should it mean that it should even see only the "insubstantial appearance" of this form? This characterization of a certain part of the "vulgar economy", which is quite unfamiliar to literature, is so unusual not least because it cannot be derived directly from the characterization of this economy made in the second edition of Capital (23/75). But even then, if its connection with the first characterization could be better understood, we would not have made much progress. The first characterization of the different directions of the "vulgar economy" has just turned out to be rather dark, too. This passage and the one corresponding to it from the first edition (II.5/43) characterizes "vulgar economics" - and that means modern economic science - in two ways:
it ignores the "inner necessary connection" between the "form" and the "substance" of value; this connects it with "classical" economics.
it ignores the "form" and the "substance" of value. It makes the assertion, refuted by the analysis of form, that value and the magnitude of value, commodity value, arise from its expression as exchange value, from the form of value; this again distinguishes it from "classical" economics.
First of all, it is clear that in the second half-sentence, which is supposed to characterize the "vulgar economy", it would make sense to speak only of the appearance of "value". "Value", here clearly distinguished from "exchange value", is value in the sense of the labor theory of value - in Ricardo's terminology: "absolute value". The "vulgar economy" negates this "absolute value" and knows only the "relative value" or "exchange value". It could therefore only be characterized in such a way that the "appearance of absolute value" arises from the "value form". Otherwise one would have to impute to it the proposition that exchange value springs from exchange value. If I impute to it the only meaningful formulation, that the "appearance of absolute value springs from the value-form", then it only remains to clarify how the term "value-form" is to be used here.
Marx, as is well known, understands money as the "finished" form of the value-form. But can one say: modern economic science lets the appearance of absolute value spring from the existence of money? It does not say it, but it would have to say it. It would have to say: certainly, in the theory of capital we are continually compelled to speak of a "value" in the sense of an "absolute value"; but this is a linguistic paradox; not the "absolute value," but only the appearance of such a value exists; this appearance is set with the existence of money. In truth, value exists only in the subjective sense, whereby exchange, or what might be called the "realized" exchange value, reveals the magnitude of this subjective value.
Thus, the phrase: "the appearance of absolute value springs from the value-form" actually characterizes the subjective theory of value - but thus one component of what Marx called "vulgar economics." To its other component or sub-theory leads the question which follows here, what it can possibly mean that the value-form or money is a primary or original thing, i.e. the opposite of a derived thing, "springing from" the "nature" or substance of commodity value. It is easy to see that with such a concept of the value-form or money the other component or sub-theory of "vulgar economics" is addressed: monetary nominalism. This doctrine can be aptly characterized in the way that it wants to conceive money as something original, self-sufficient, not originating from the "nature of commodity value". The nominalist theory of money negates Marx's non-nominalist one, which can be characterized by the following sentence:
The main difficulty in the analysis of money is overcome as soon as its origin is comprehended from the commodity itself.(13/49)
For nominalist theory, money is an original, but for Marx's analysis of form, it is the "commodity."
The question of whether the value-form springs from the nature of the commodity-value or, conversely, the semblance of absolute value from the value-form -- whether, in other words, money or the commodity is to be conceived as an originary thing -- gains more vivid meaning in the formulation of whether money makes commodities commensurable or, conversely, the commensurability of commodities gives money the semblance of making commodities commensurable:
Commodities do not become commensurable through money. Conversely.(23/109)
It is a
mere appearance of the circulation process, as if money makes commodities commensurable. It is rather only the commensurability of commodities (...) that makes gold money. (13/52)
The nominalist claim that money as an "abstract unit of account" or "general denominator" makes the heterogeneous use-values commensurable is contrasted with Marx's non-nominalist claim that commodities as values "are commensurable in and of themselves." (23/109)
Here one thing should not be overlooked: the "semblance of the circulation process" is an objective one. Underlying money-theoretical nominalism is not a fixed idea, but the objective semblance that use-values, incommensurable in and of themselves, are made commensurable, somehow "equal" by money. With certain restrictions, one can also grant money-theoretical nominalism the right to characterize as objective appearance what it, in turn, has to declare as appearance, namely the existence of an "absolute value". From its position, then, the formulation could be justified to a certain extent: with the existence of money, the objective appearance is set that commodities possess an "immanent" or "absolute" value. The persuasiveness of each of the two positions would have to be measured by whether it succeeds in deriving the respective opposite one from an objective semblance.
If I define the "commodity" as a "unity of value and use-value", the term "value" - and this distinguishes it from "exchange-value" or "relative value" - is used in the sense of "absolute", "immanent" value or value "par excellence". Accordingly, a commodity defined in this way exists only for the labor theory of value. The subjective theory of value consequently avoids the term "commodity" and prefers the more general term "good" which, apart from labor products, includes all those objects of trade which possess an exchange value in the sense of a non-absolute or relative value.
If I assume that with the concept of "commodity" as a unity of value and use-value, value is set as "absolute" or "immanent" and thus in the sense of the labor theory of value, then, in summary, the task of Marx's analysis of form can also be characterized as follows: it was to prove that the concept of money "arose" from the commodity and not, conversely, that the illusory concept of commodity could be derived from money. For Marx, value and money theory are so intertwined that the "essence of money" can only be adequately recognized under the condition of an adequately, i.e. form-analytically developed labor theory of value: this had to be proven against Ricardianism. The entanglement, the "inner necessary connection" of substance and form of value, of the theory of value and the theory of money, on the other hand, expresses itself in the fact that a false theory of value, the subjective one, can be constructed without contradiction only under the presupposition of a false theory of money, the nominalist one: this was to be demonstrated to vulgar economics. There is a certain affinity between the nominalist theory of money and the subjective theory of value, which can be compared to the "inner necessary connection" which Marx asserts for the relation between the non-nominalist, "metallistic" theory of money and the objective theory of value."6
§9
The thesis that the "vulgar economy" criticized by the form analysis is understood by Marx as a peculiar amalgam of subjective value theory and nominalist money theory can be substantiated firstly from the fetish section and secondly from the value-form section of the first chapter. In the fetish section it is said that the "restored mercantile system (Ganilh etc.)" sees "in value only the social form (...) or rather only its insubstantial appearance." (23/95 fn.) If Marx, in his discussion with Ganilh in the first part of Theories of Surplus Value, criticizes only the subjective character of this neo-mercantilist theory -- the formulation that Ganilh sees only the "insubstantial semblance" of the social form, i.e., of money -- shows that he also understands it as nominalist. It is this formulation that is then followed by his well-known characterization of "vulgar economics."
In the value-form section, he also seems to criticize only the subjective character of "vulgar economy" (23/75); but it has already been pointed out that the criticized thesis, that the appearance of value springs from the value-form, is distinguished not only by its anti-classical, subjective character, but above all by its nominalistic one - the value-form, i.e. money, is here set as something primary. One can also express this in such a way that "vulgar economics" sets money as a logical first.
Thus, it is ultimately about the problem of logical priority in the ranking of economic categories - if you will: about the problem of the beginning. Marx sets the commodity as a logical first, whereas vulgar economics sets money. And only from this disjunction will one be able to understand the problem of the analysis of form: whether money is to be derived from the commodity or, conversely, whether the appearance of the commodity is to be derived from money.
If one has decided the question whether money is to be derived from the commodity -- the latter understood as a unity of value and use value -- or, conversely, whether the appearance of a commodity thus conceived is to be derived from money, in the sense of monetary nominalism, then the problem of the beginning arises once again. It is repeated when the relation of money and credit is problematized on the ground of modern credit theory - founded by the representative of "vulgar economics" Macleod mentioned in Capital (e.g. 23/75); this happens in such a way that the question of the priority of money and credit is raised. One can thus ask whether credit is to be derived from money or, conversely, money from credit.
The point here is not to discuss the content of these theses, but to ask whether Marx's theory of money and credit needs a thorough revision in the view of these economists. In the context of the question whether the "beginning" of Capital is to be interpreted "historically" or "logically," the only question of interest here is whether the historicist-oriented older orthodoxy is capable of countering money- and credit-theoretical "revisionism" with arguments that can be taken seriously.
§10
A brief remark by Marx at the beginning of the second section, or the fourth chapter of the first volume, characterizes the procedure used in the previous chapters:
If we look away from the material content of the circulation of commodities, from the exchange of the various use-values, and consider only the economic forms that this process produces, we find money as its final product(23/161).
It should be noticeable that "exchange" and "commodity circulation" are distinguished in an unspecified way. Here, however, we shall first be concerned with how Marx characterizes the methodological peculiarity of his theory of the commodity and of money. One learns: in the first three chapters "we consider only the economic forms." If a detailed examination of Marx's analysis of forms must be postponed, at least two essential features should be pointed out. At first glance, it differs from the procedure of academic economic science, the construction of models, firstly in that categories, hence "forms of existence, determinations of existence" (42/40) or "objective thought-forms" (23/90) are examined; secondly, in that it does not develop "the real relations within which the real production process proceeds" (26.2/493) - not even in an extremely simplified form. It can be assumed that such a procedure must meet with pure incomprehension among the representatives of academic economics, since paradoxically something real is to be analyzed and yet no real relations are to be examined, within which the real exchange and the real production take place.
The question of what considerations motivated Marx to develop such a categorial analysis, and whether this attempt can be carried out more convincingly, cannot concern us further here. In this context, it is only important to note that for such a form or categorial analysis the dispositions of the acting economic subjects are quite irrelevant.
The analysis, which is objective in the strict sense, has been carried out consistently, however, only in criticism: Here it becomes obvious that in Marx's categorial analysis no "ideal-typical model situations" are constructed, "faked"; certainly at all -- none "in which use-values are measurement quantities and units of measurement for the valuation of other use-values".7 Contrary to all common conceptions about the essence of Marx's theory of value, here there can be no talk of a subject that is able to "abstract", "compare" and thus to "evaluate". Here it becomes palpable that Werner Becker, with his thesis that "every theory of labor value (...) contains at the same time a theory of >negative utility<", according to which the "exchange goods are supposed to contain the value of the labor applied to them as >deprived< or >negative utility<",8 turns the original meaning of Marx's form analysis into its opposite. In the strictly anti-mythodological and anti-historicist9 analysis of Marx's critique, it is neither about modeled, ideal-typically constructed, nor about real acts of exchange of economic subjects acting in precapitalist societies; in the chapters on commodity and money explicitly subsumed to the investigation on "Capital in General," it is rather exclusively about the analysis of the structure, the form of the commodity-money relation. The representatives of a mythodological or historicist interpretation would look in vain here for terms whose meaning refers to intentional acts, to economic dispositions and the consciousness and unconsciousness of individuals acting with or against each other.
A strictly >logical< analysis, which is essentially concerned with the qualitative content of "form", naturally also arrives at quantitatively significant statements or "laws". But since contexts of action cannot form the object of an analysis of form, for this reason alone it was quite out of the question to describe within the first two chapters also the mechanism of realization of these laws, the "real relations", that is, within which the real processes of circulation proceed. This concerns each of the three laws developed in the first two chapters of the Critique:
a. The problem "of how, on the basis of exchange value, a market price different from it develops, or more correctly, how the law of exchange value is realized only in its own opposite, (...) is solved in the doctrine of competition." (13/48) Consideration of the relation of market price and value "is foreign to simple circulation and belongs to a quite different sphere to be considered later." (13/73 fn.) These statements are quite incompatible with a historicist, but equally with a mythodological interpretation of the Marxian theory of value. As is explicitly stated that in the chapter devoted to "simple circulation" it is not shown by means of which mechanisms, for example, "the law of exchange value (...) is realized". It becomes obvious that in the Critique "simple circulation" represents a certain way of looking at things, a "point of view", a stage of investigation whose object is the circulation of capitalistically produced commodities.
b. The process of how the changes in value of that commodity which constitutes the measure of values are transmitted to the world price level "cannot be discussed in the sphere of simple circulation." (13/51) "The development of this process belongs here just as little as the manner in which, in general, within the fluctuations of market prices, the exchange value of commodities asserts itself." (13/136)12
c. Also the mechanisms of realization of the law of the circulation of money cannot be discussed within simple circulation: "The superficial and formal character of simple money circulation shows itself precisely in the fact that all the moments (...) determining the number of means of circulation depend (...) on circumstances which all lie outside simple money circulation and are only reflected in it." (13/85 f.) As is well known, it follows from the law of circulation that "gold must soon enter the process as a means of circulation, soon it must leave it again. How the circulation process itself realizes these conditions, we shall see later." (13/87)13
Marx, of course, also "later" omitted to investigate the conditions of realization of the law of circulation, with the result that both supporters and opponents of Marx's theory knew how to connect quite abstruse ideas with his law of circulation.10 Strangely enough, the Marxist theorists apparently never really became aware of this omission; in any case, they made no effort to develop the conditions of realization of the law of circulation.
The findings of the critique that in "simple circulation" it cannot be shown how the laws developed from this "standpoint" gain their empirical effectiveness will probably be allowed to refer also to the modified presentation of the same laws in Capital inclusive of its historicized second version. If Marx had indeed seriously considered the idea of transforming the theory of "simple circulation" into a theory of "simple commodity production," he could not have confined himself to considering "only the economic forms"; he could not have evaded the task of analyzing, in addition to the study of the "economic forms," above all the "real relations" of pre-monetary exchange and simple commodity production, i.e. to present the analogue to the sphere of competition and the reality of the many capitals in the theory of capitalist commodity production also for the sphere of "simple commodity production". Marx would thus have had to construct certain mechanisms of action and show how, by means of them, the law of exchange value is realized.
That even the late Marx never lost sight of this task, for example
to investigate the causal connection of, say, the second law, is proved by the repetition of his criticism of Hume already expressed in 1859:11 "But the real scientific question: whether and how an increased supply of the noble metals, with the value of the same remaining the same, has an effect on the prices of commodities - this question he does not ask himself and throws every >increase of the noble metals< together with their depreciating." (20/223)
It is true that Marx, too, did not treat the "actually scientific question" anywhere; but this can hardly be reproached to him because the investigation of this question was reserved for a separate treatise on "real relations." If, however, he had carried himself with the intention of transforming the theory of simple circulation into a theory of simple commodity production, he could hardly have failed to present the solution of this "actually scientific question" already in the third chapter.
The following observations and quotations can be brought into the field as evidence that Marx still held to the >logical< conception of the first edition in the second edition of Capital and, in a certain sense, even to the >idealistic< manner of presentation of the rough draft.
a. A certain circumstantial character can be attributed to the fact that Marx nowhere uses the term "simple commodity production". He uses the expression >simple commodity producers< only once; characteristically in the context of his ideology-critical account of Adam Smith's "paradise lost of the bourgeoisie," where people faced each other "only as simple commodity producers" (13/44 f.). In the relevant chapters of Capital, that is, in the 22nd and 24th chapters of the first volume, as well as in the 20th, 36th, 37th, and 47th chapters of the third volume, Marx avoids the expression "simple commodity producer"; instead, on the one hand, he speaks of the "small" (25/608), "immediate" (25/802), "non-capitalist producer" (25/614), of the "individual producer" (25/816) and "self-producing peasant" (25/814), on the other hand, of "petty peasant and petty bourgeois production" (25/610) as well as of "pre-capitalist modes of production" (ibid.). If one considers that this term was not even used in those chapters of Capital in which "simple commodity production" is supposedly directly thematized, i.e., the first three chapters, the assumption cannot be dismissed that Marx even consciously omitted its use; perhaps he was consciously concerned to prevent confusion between "simple circulation" and "simple commodity production."
b. It has already been pointed out at the beginning that Marx still uses the terms "standpoint" and "sphere" related to "simple circulation" in Capital - terms that originate in the rough draft and characterize "simple circulation" as a term belonging to "logical development".12
c. It is true that Marx constructed the "transition" from the third determination of money to capital in an incomparably simpler way than in the rough draft; that he in no way abandoned the "dialectical method of development" of the rough draft in the writing of Capital, but still held on to this conception in principle in the second edition of Capital, is clear from the following quotation:
Qualitatively, or according to its form, money is boundless (...). But at the same time every real sum of money is quantitatively limited (...). This contradiction between the quantitative limit and the qualitative boundlessness of money drives the hoarder (...) to accumulation.(23/147)
Provided that "contradiction" is not meant merely metaphorically, this construction can only be explicated from the rough draft as a dialectical transition.
d. Marx reproaches Condillac for "truly childishly imputing to a society with developed commodity production a condition in which the producer produces his means of subsistence himself and only throws into circulation the surplus over his own needs, the surplus". (23/174) It goes without saying that Marx could not have criticized this "truly childish" construction, which also serves modern subjective economics as the basis of its theorizing, if he had similarly based his theory of value on "petty peasant and petty bourgeois production," that is, on so-called "simple commodity production."
It is a question, in the first two sections of the first chapter, of some fundamental concepts and theses that can be usefully applied only to that society "whose products generally assume the form of the commodity." (23/57) An essential characteristic of the >commodities< examined in the first chapters is indeed seen by Marx in the fact that they have to be regarded as "non-commodities for their owners, commodities for their non-owners" (23/100). Now "commodity production generalizes" only from the moment when "labor power is freely sold as a commodity by the worker himself"; and "only from then on is every product produced from the outset for sale" (23/613), does it no longer possess a use value for its owner. If a commodity defined in this way forms the object of investigation of the first chapter, then it can only be the commodity of capitalist, by no means that of "simple" commodity production.
e. In the second chapter of Capital, there is the important statement: "The immediate exchange of products has, on the one hand, the form of the simple expression of value and, on the other hand, it does not yet have. That form was x commodity A = y commodity B. The form of immediate product exchange is: x object of use A = y object of use B." (23/102)
It is easy to see why this sentence had to be completely ignored in the Marxist doctrinal tradition, especially in the historicist and mythodological one: after all, it literally points into the void, namely to the >logical< constructions of the first chapter of the first edition of 1867, eliminated by Marx, whose meaning - and until a few years ago also their existence - remained unknown to the interpreters of Marx's economics.
The historicist interpreters could at best interpret this passage in such a way that the historical sequence of forms presented in the first chapter was supplemented, and in a certain sense also modified, by the second chapter: in the second chapter, Marx placed an even more original >form< of exchange before the archaic exchange of commodities with the equation "x commodity A = y commodity B", the immediate exchange of products; however, Marx reserved the analysis of the equation assigned to it for another work.
The authors of historicist interpretations would have to comment the first equation like this: the equation "x necklace = y stone axes" "has" the form of the simple value expression "and on the other hand does not have it yet". Gradually the >product< develops to the >commodity< and only from this point on the >commodity< necklace is equated to the commodity< stone axe in the sense of the simple value expression.
Such an interpretation is not very plausible for two reasons. First, even the "product exchange" once again possesses a historical "vestibule" (23/102 fn.), thus already presupposing a certain regularity and rationality in the development of exchange; second, with respect to the early stages of exchange, Marx never strictly distinguished between >product< and commodity<.
Thus, just a few sentences later, he says: "Commodity exchange begins where commonwealths end." (23/102) "In immediate product exchange, every commodity is immediately a means of exchange." (23/103) >Product< and premonetary >Commodity< are used synonymously throughout, which certainly had to lead to fatal misunderstandings; as will be shown shortly, it is here only a question of the relation of premonetary and the price-determined >Commodity<. For the sake of terminological clarity, the >product< or the >commodity< of the archaic societies will henceforth be called >prevalent< commodity for reasons to be explained.
But if now the >product< or the prevalent commodity of archaic societies possesses the "form of simple value expression" only in certain respects, then the question arises, which can no longer be answered from a historicist position, how that equation "x commodity A = y commodity B" is to be understood; this equation is not supposed to be about prevalent commodities, but just as little about price-determined ones. But what then is the reality of the equation and of the "simple expression of value", if we are to understand it not as a model, but as a determination of existence, as an objective form of thought? However one may answer this question, a historicist solution is ruled out not least because this strange passage of the second chapter must be understood as it was originally, namely in the context of the >logically< conceptualized value theory of the first edition.
f. Historicist interpreters are unlikely to want to dispute the >logical< sense of the quotations from the second edition of Capital drawn upon here. Instead, one will have to limit oneself to the assertion that the concepts and constructions of the following chapters referring to the >logically< conceived first chapter of the first edition are to be understood as residues of a conception long since overcome, which Marx would undoubtedly have eradicated in the contemplated second revision of the text for the third edition.
If Marx had been seriously concerned with the idea of a historicist transformation and had taken in the second edition only the first steps on a path that Engels had consistently followed to its conclusion, then it is impossible to see why he should have reworked only this and that passage, instead of the entire first and second sections of Capital. It is obvious that these two sections would no longer have a place in a theory of simple commodity production oriented to Engels' ideas. A glance at the textbooks on Marx's theory of value and capital, which have a historicist or mythodological structure, can quickly teach us how a consistent transformation would have turned out: Marx would have had to confine himself to telling some stories and defining some axioms and concepts.
As has already been indicated, however, clear evidence now exists that even the late Marx could never have seriously thought of developing the concepts of commodity and money in a historicist way. It is to be recalled here once more his last economic work, the marginal glosses on Adolph Wagner, where it is succinctly said: "What I start from is the simplest social form, in which the labor product presents itself in the present society, and this is the >commodity<". (19/369) Further: "Mr. Wagner could (...) have become acquainted with the difference between me and Ricardo, who in fact dealt with labor only as a measure of the quantity of value and therefore found no connection between his theory of value and the essence of money." (19/358)
The commodity of the "present society" is, of course, that of capitalist and not that of>simple< commodity production. Since it is quite unlikely that Marx started from the commodity produced capitalistically and then proceeded to that produced by archaic societies, a >logical< reconstruction may well be based on Marx's self-understanding of what he thought he had presented in the first chapter.
§ 11
It has been pointed out that both the historicist and mythodological modes of reception are oriented to the traditional concept of value theory, which is to be characterized as a premonetary theory of value. However, the >logical< development of the categories - in a way equivalent to the conception of a critique of political economy - implies a critique of the premonetary theories of value and the monetary theories corresponding to it. The critical presentation of this traditional type of theory, he argues, is only the reverse side of a dialectical development of certain definitions of the nature of money. It is easy to see that this can only be a matter of proving the "inner connection" between the "theory of value and the essence of money".
A detailed discussion of this "esoteric part" of Marx's "theory of value" is reserved for a more comprehensive work. Since only the problem of the relation of the >logical< and the >historical< is of interest here, it is sufficient to prove that even in the second, historicized version of the theory of value the >logical< constitutes the actual meaning of the value-form analysis: its hidden or esoteric content. This would prove that the "germ cell metaphor" has a rational core.
Marx's critique of premonetary theories of value has three considerably divergent variants, whose relationship has not been satisfactorily clarified by Marx. Since this problem must also be postponed, only the simplest variant of the critique can be outlined.
Its basic idea can already be derived from the first determinations of the value-form analysis. One remembers: the commodity figuring as equivalent "cannot be in relative value form at the same time," just as, conversely, the commodity in relative value form cannot figure as equivalent at the same time. From this results the statement: "The same commodity can therefore not appear in the same value expression in both forms at the same time. Rather, these polarly exclude each other." (23/63) From this elementary determination it follows immediately that only one commodity, on the other hand not a multiplicity of commodities, can be in the "total or unfolded value form", in form II. Because in the model of a premonetary and at the same time labor-divided economy of natural exchange a multiplicity of commodities must be conceivable, which are all to be in the premonetary form II, such a model is an impossibility of thought: every commodity would otherwise have to be able to "appear simultaneously in both forms".
In this model, each commodity is supposed to have an "exchange value" conceived as a premonetary form. The exchange values then seem to be able to oscillate somehow around the value. From this conception of a premonetary economy of natural exchange, money can then be understood merely as an "instrument brought into the exchange externally for technical convenience" (13/42), as a "cleverly devised means of information" (13/36) for overcoming certain "difficulties" of direct exchange.
It will not be further examined here whether the critique of the model of a premonetary natural exchange economy resulting from a form analysis of the concept of "exchange value" also destroys the natural exchange economy models elaborated on the basis of the subjective theory of value, and thus the latter itself. In the context of our questions, initially only the observation is of interest that the construction of natural exchange economy models, which is also common among Marxist economists, turns out to be an impossibility of thought in the light of Marx's value form analysis. This can also be expressed as follows: only the "immediate exchange" of products or prevalent commodities is a meaningful concept - the construction of an "exchange process" of premonetary commodities, on the other hand, must fail.
The consequences derived here from some elementary determinations of the simple value form might cause a certain surprise; after all, they are in obvious contradiction to that passage taken from the section on the unfolded value form, in which Marx lets a "man exchange his linen with many other commodities" (23/79); they further contradict the statement that the unfolded value form "actually occurs as soon as a labor product (...) is already exchanged habitually" (23/80).
Nevertheless, these are consequences that have been recognized and also explicated by Marx himself, admittedly in a rather strange and difficult to understand way. Marx develops them in the form of a paradox: the "exchange process" of premonetary commodities described in the second chapter is one that does not and cannot take place.
For the "owners of commodities" described there, their "commodity" is suddenly transformed into a "product":
every owner of commodities regards every foreign commodity as a special equivalent of his commodity, his commodity therefore as the general equivalent of all other commodities. But since all owners of commodities do the same, no commodity is a general equivalent and therefore the commodities do not possess a general relative value form in which they equate themselves as values and compare themselves as value magnitudes. They are therefore not opposed to each other at all as commodities, but only as products or use values.(23/101)
It is easy to see that here we are not talking about the real original fisherman and the real original hunter, but of the labor-value-theoretical construction of the original fisherman and original hunter. And certainly there is no talk here of the owners of price-determined commodities, since these presuppose the existence of money, which has not yet been introduced at this stage of the "logical development" of the categories.
The aporia just described is preceded by another one, which is far more difficult to grasp and therefore cannot be discussed in more detail in this context:
Commodities must therefore realize themselves as values before they can realize themselves as use-values. On the other hand, they must prove themselves as use-values before they can realize themselves as values. (23/100)
These two antithetical statements, which have been permanently ignored in both orthodox and critical secondary literature, form the content of a rather extensive but nonetheless exceedingly obscure section in the 1859 Critique, where they are characterized as "a whole of contradictory demands, in that the fulfillment of one condition is directly tied to the fulfillment of its opposite." (13/30) Engels now aptly characterized this problematic with a certain keyword in his 1859 review: he speaks there of "impossibilities" of the "immediate exchange relation." (13/476) If we specify this term as that of impossibilities of thought, then by means of it the basic idea of the second chapter of Capital can also be characterized in a keyword-like but apt way: the chapter "Exchange Process" deals with the impossibilities of thought of the exchange process of premonetary commodities.
This is also formulated there in a simpler way: "They can only relate their commodities to each other as values and therefore only as commodities, by relating them oppositely to some other commodity as a general equivalent. This is the result of the analysis of the commodity." (23/101) "A traffic in which commodity owners exchange and compare their own articles with various other articles never takes place without different commodities being exchanged by different commodity owners (...) with one and the same third kind of commodity and being compared as values." (23/101)
If "commodities can only (...) be related to each other as commodities" insofar as they are related to a money commodity, and if they can only be "exchanged and compared" with other commodities under the condition that they are exchanged and compared with the money commodity, then the real commodity is always only the price-determined or else the money commodity. This thesis, which often contradicts Marx's terminology - Marx does not at all consistently use the expression "product exchange" or "exchange of products" - is supposed to have astonishingly emerged from the "analysis of the commodity".
As far as I can see, not even the interpreters oriented to a "logical development" have so far been prompted by the "analysis of the commodity" - as it is in the first chapter of the second edition - to characterize the object of exchange of the primitive hunters and primitive fishermen in principle as a product in conscious opposition to the concept of the commodity. If one looks a little more closely at the text of the first chapter, one actually finds two sentences which say something similar in meaning. In the section on the general form of value, one reads: "Only this form, therefore, really relates commodities to one another as values or makes them appear to one another as exchange values." (23/80) "In form II, only one kind of commodity at a time can totally unfold its relative value, or it itself possesses only unfolded relative value form, because and insofar as all other commodities are in the equivalent form vis-à-vis it." (23/82).
No longer explanations are needed to prove that these quotations exclude a historicist and even a mythodological understanding of value forms. It should also be immediately obvious that they are in full agreement with the consequences resulting from the elementary determinations of the value-form and explicated in the second chapter. On the other hand, it is apparently no accident that both orthodox and critical interpreters have ignored these two propositions of the first chapter, just as they have ignored analogous formulations in the second chapter. How, then, is the sentence to be understood, "This is what the analysis of the commodity revealed"?
The riddle is solved as soon as the text of the first chapter is exchanged, i.e. the revised version of the second edition is replaced again by the original version of the first edition of 1867. Here, the "analysis of the commodity" is indeed of such a nature that the impossibility of thinking of an exchange process of premonetary commodities follows directly from it.
The very heading of the third section of the analysis of form makes it clear that the second and third forms are by no means to be conceived as separable from each other or even as temporally successive forms: "III. Third, Reversed or Back-Related Second Form of Relative Value." (II.5/36) The third form is thus nothing else at all than the second - this, of course, in a back-related form.
The text of the first edition now contains a fourth section of the form analysis, as does the historicized version of the second edition. At first glance, the heading does not reveal any difference in content. In the second edition it reads "D) Money form" (23/84) and in the first "Form IV" (II.5/43). However, the titles, which are quite similar from a systematic point of view, deal with quite disparate things in terms of content.
The fourth "form" results in the first edition from the statement: "What applies to the canvas, applies to every commodity. (...) We therefore finally obtain: Form IV". (II.5/42 f.) Now follows not the money form, but a construction completely unknown to the traditional interpretation:
20 cubits of linen = 1 skirt or - u coffee or = v thee or - x iron or = y wheat or = u. s. w.
1 skirt = 20 cubits of canvas or = u coffee or = v thee or = x iron or = y wheat or = u. s. w.
u coffee = 20 cubits of canvas or = 1 skirt or = v tea or = x iron or = y wheat or = u. s. w.
v tea = u. s. w." (II.5/43)
The third is only the back-related second form, and from the be-
From the determination of the forms as commodity forms, it must be permissible to predicate these forms of a multiplicity of commodities. Now, however, each of these equations results in back-referenced skirt, coffee, tea, etc. as a general equivalent. From this arises the contradiction which had to be extrapolated from the elementary determinations of the value form on the basis of the text of the second edition, but which was formulated expressis verbis in the first edition:
The general equivalent form is always assigned to only one commodity in contrast to all other commodities; but it is assigned to every commodity in contrast to all others. But if every commodity sets its own natural form against all other commodities as the general equivalent form, then all commodities exclude all from the general equivalent form and therefore exclude themselves from the socially valid representation of their value quantities. (II.5/43)
These considerations find their logical conclusion in that thought which is known to us from the second chapter: the commodities "therefore do not face each other at all as commodities, but only as products or use values." (23/101)
It is now easy to see that and why the "development" of the forms of value has been and had to be conceived as a "logical" one: the commodity of the first chapter is real only as money.
Now, paradoxically, this quintessence of the analysis of forms has been recognized not by advocates of a >logical< interpretation of Marx's critique of economics, but by Friedrich Engels. In his reviews and his conspectus on the first edition of Capital of 1867, Engels gives some exceedingly apt characterizations of the "logical development" of the value-theoretical categories, which have nevertheless remained permanently ignored or unknown in the more than hundred years of reception history of Capital: he emphasizes the "dialectical arrangement of the whole," namely "the way in which in the concept of the commodity money is already represented as existing in itself (...)." (16/208) Instead of the questionable Marxian labeling of the object of the initial investigation as "commodity" - a heading that was bound to provoke misunderstandings - Engels chooses the far more appropriate title "commodity in itself." (16/245) Those who are inclined to trivialize such terms as "dialectical language games "13 might arrive at a more thoughtful assessment if they had to deal with Engels' perceptive résumé of the development of the form: "a particular commodity must assume the role [of the general equivalent; author's note] (...), and only through this does the commodity become completely commodity. This particular commodity (...) is money." (16/246)
That this statement referring to the >logically< conceived development of forms of the first edition is in complete agreement with the esoteric parts of the second edition is attested by the quotations already referred to, according to which only the third form "really refers the commodities to each other as values" (23/80) and the commodity owners "refer their commodities to each other only as values and therefore only as commodities" (23/101), if they refer them in opposition to a third commodity.
If the "commodity in itself" is not a real commodity at all, it now goes without saying that the "process of exchange" constructed in connection with such a commodity that merely exists in itself does not represent anything real either; it should therefore by no means be confused with the real process of exchange.
Now, of course, the question arises where Marx could have treated the real exchange process, if it did not happen in the second chapter, which is headed "Exchange Process", and how the relation of this chapter to the real exchange process is to be thought. Marx has always defined the concept of the exchange process only implicitly. The second section of the third chapter begins abruptly with an assertion which, while confirming the interpretation of the second chapter given here, was, because of its terse form, quite unsuitable to convey the meaning of this chapter to a reader attuned to an exoteric reading: "It was seen that the exchange process of commodities involves contradictory and mutually exclusive relations. The development of the commodity does not abolish these contradictions, but creates the form in which they can move." (23/118)
Let us first of all disregard the fact that the highlighting or better: assertion of "contradictory relations" can only refer to a construction, but not to a real process, but the concept of "development" used in this context pretends to be factual, possibly even prehistoric, so much becomes clear in the following sentences that it is "circulation" which represents the real exchange process. Money and price form, these "opposite forms of commodities," are "the real forms of movement of their exchange process." (23/119)
In the parallel section of the Critique, it is stated even more clearly: it will be "the circulation that simultaneously represents and resolves the contradictions that the exchange process of commodities included. The real exchange of commodities, i.e. the social metabolism, proceeds in a change of form (...). The representation of this change of form is the representation of circulation." (13/69)
If one recalls the following quotation: "If we disregard the material content of commodity circulation, the exchange of the various use values, and consider only the economic forms" (23/161), then it should hardly be doubtful that the suprahistorical social metabolism is meant by the concept of the "exchange process". Only the inconsistent use of the term "commodity" may be attributed to the formulation from the second rough draft of 1861-1863, which deviates somewhat from this definition: "exchange of commodities or, further determined, the circulation of commodities". (II.3.1/241) If one understands the "commodity" of the term "exchange of commodities" in the same way as it was used in the second chapter, namely as "commodity in general", then it would be permissible to understand the term "circulation" as a "further determination" of the term "exchange process" in the same way as it was used in the second chapter.
Insofar as it refers to the suprahistorical metabolism, the term "exchange process" can also be used as a generic term: "the immediate exchange, the natural form of the exchange process" (13/35); furthermore: the economists held "to the exchange as an adequate form of the exchange process of commodities". (13/36) Considering that Marx conceives "circulation" as its "adequate form", one can also define the concept of "exchange process" as the generic concept of "barter" or "product exchange" and "circulation". This is admittedly unsatisfactory, or at least in great need of explanation, in that one would then have to describe the second chapter as the discussion of the generic concept and the third as the discussion of the species concept. It could easily be overlooked that in the second chapter, after all, it is not the "exchange process in general" that is discussed, but the paradox of the exchange process of "commodities" that have no real forms.
Thus, the "process of exchange" takes place only in certain historical "forms", it takes place only as "immediate exchange" or as "circulation". One can also express it in this way: the "process of exchange" - isolated from its "real forms of movement" - is a mere abstraction, an ens rationis and therefore just as "in itself" as its object, the "commodity in itself". And as the merely in itself existing commodity of the first chapter is "real" only as price-determined commodity and as money commodity, so the merely in itself existing exchange process of the second chapter is "real" only as circulation. The determinations of the first two chapters, consequently the determinations of the theory of value, thus gain real sense only in the third chapter, consequently only as money-theoretical ones.
This is the "connection between the theory of value and the theory of money" sought by Marx - a connection which, of course, is only transparent from the text of the first edition of Capital and has been distorted beyond recognition by the fatal revision of the value-form analysis of the first edition; it is now easy to see that the vulgarization of his theory of value brought about by Marx himself, its regression to Ricardianism, has been caused above all by the replacement of the section "Form IV" of the first edition by the section "D) Money Form".
As it seems to me, all the problems of Marx's theory of value now present themselves in a new light. The details of a dialectical reconstruction, of course, do not belong here. Only on the ground of the "germ cell metaphor" should it be possible to find a way to overcome the subjectivist inversion and trivialization of the concept of form, the trivialization of the concept of "abstract labor" not yet shown here, and the trivialization of the concept of the "fetish character of the commodity."
The elimination of the first chapter in the vulgarized version of the second edition must now, of course, not be interpreted as a return to an ideal value-theoretical world of the first edition of Capital or the Critique. The pseudo-dialectic of the "logical" and the "historical" has led to some fatal contaminations there as well. With respect to the terms "commodity" and "doubling" this has already been pointed out. The conflation of what is entirely heterogeneous can be demonstrated particularly drastically in the example of the term "exchange process" and the aporetic constructions set with it.
In the second edition of Capital, of course, the freighting of this concept with historicist content becomes particularly blatant: "The money crystal is a necessary product of the exchange process, in which different kinds of labor products are actually equated with one another and therefore actually transformed into commodities. The historical extension and deepening of exchange" etc. (23/101 f.)
If Marx in the first edition, in contrast to the above text of the second edition, still refrained from ascribing a historicist content even to the concept of equation, there is nevertheless already here a historicist reinterpretation of the concept "process of exchange" and likewise of the concept "doubling": "The money crystal is a necessary product of the process of exchange of commodities. The immanent contradiction of the commodity (...) does not rest and does not rest until it has shaped itself into the doubling of the commodity into commodity and money." (II.5/54)
The contamination of heterogeneous finally extends in the first edition to the concept of the "general equivalent form", which in the first chapter could not be fixed as an independent form vis-à-vis the merely >logical< earlier forms and certainly not vis-à-vis the money form. In blatant contradiction to the moment character of the "general equivalent form" in the >logically< developed form analysis of the first chapter, a historical content is assigned to this term quite abruptly in the second chapter, so that with the same term on the one hand the "moment" of this form existing merely in the "logical second" and on the other hand an independent historical stage is designated. In this respect, it cannot be dismissed out of hand that this contradiction between the "logical", esoteric character of the first chapter and the historicist, exoteric passages of the second chapter might have caused Marx to hypostatize the "general equivalent form" of the first chapter by the insertion of the money form and thereby to ensure, in the historicist sense, a uniform use of this term in the first and in the second chapter.
But it is not only in Capital, and indeed already in its first version, that the pseudo-dialectic of "logical" and "historical" leads to a contamination of heterogeneous constructions, but already in the Critique. One remembers in this context that already in the rough draft Marx tried to connect the "logically" developed "becoming" of money in a most disconcerting way with certain "a priori conceptions"14 about its historical "becoming". It should also be noted again that Marx adds to a very detailed "logical" development of the aporetic "exchange process" of the commodity and of money a section containing some trivial and historically unverifiable assertions about the "historical" development of the "exchange process" and of money. That Marx must have been preoccupied not only in the rough draft but also still in the Critique with the idea of relating the "logical" and the "historical" development of the "exchange process" to each other for epistemological reasons, namely, of constructing a relation of reflection, is expressed by a very remarkable passage of Engels' review of 1859, which he accepted:
Now that use-value and exchange-value have been developed, the commodity is presented as the immediate unity of both, as it enters into the exchange process. What contradictions arise here may be read (13/29 f.). We only note that these contradictions are not merely of theoretical, abstract interest, but at the same time reflect the difficulties arising from the nature of the immediate exchange relation, of simple barter, the impossibilities to which this first crude form of exchange necessarily leads. The solution of these impossibilities is found in the fact that the property of representing the exchange value of all other commodities is transferred to a special commodity - money. (13/476)
All the absurdities in which the pseudo-dialectic of the "logical" and the "historical" had to entangle Marx come to light here. Let us begin with the question of what it actually means that there exists a property of commodities which represents the exchange value of all other commodities, in order to be finally transferred to a certain commodity. The commodity as a premonetary commodity is characterized by the fact that it possesses as "property" only the use value and the exchange value and not, in addition, any third property, which - one does not know how this is supposed to happen - is transferred to a certain commodity. The "property" of representing the exchange value of the other commodities, as is well known, belongs exclusively to money, but not to the commodities, and is therefore not to be transferred first to that third commodity. Engels' proposition amounts to the contradictory formulation: the property of the commodity to function as money is transferred to money.
This inconsistency, however, is merely a symptom of deeper problems, which are nowhere more openly revealed than in the preceding propositions: heterogeneous things are contaminated in the combination of the two terms "difficulties" and "impossibilities", which pretends to be convertible, but is in fact contradictory. The concept of "difficulties" can obviously only be related to a factual process, namely the archaic "simple barter". It belongs to the concept of "difficulties" that they are in principle surmountable. If the simple barter trade is a "difficult" one, it is therefore not an "impossible" one. The term "impossibility", on the other hand, cannot be referred to a factual thing in this context, but only to a logical construction. It means an impossibility of thinking. While a "difficult" process fails under certain conditions, but gains reality under others, this is excluded by definition for an "impossible", i.e. thought-impossible process. The "difficult" process is therefore per se a principally possible one, to which the contradictory opposite predicate "impossible" cannot be ascribed at the same time.
It is not difficult to see that the absurdity of Engels' propositions is rooted in a very elementary contamination: to want to analyze the "exchange process" both as a >logical< and as a >historical< genesis of money. It must therefore be developed on the one hand as an aporetic construction - as a "defective circle of problems" and as "a whole of contradictory demands" (13/30) on the other hand as a prehistoric fact. This contamination is again an expression of the attempt to "correct" the "idealistic manner of representation" materialistically, as it were: the "contradictions" of the >logical< genesis, which manifest themselves in the impossibility of thinking of an exchange process of premonetary commodities, are supposed to "not have merely theoretical, abstract interest", but to "reflect" real contradictions, namely the supposed "contradictions" or more precisely "difficulties" of the "immediate exchange relation" unquestioningly equated with the "simple barter", the "first crude form of exchange". It comes to the grotesque assertion that in the "development" of the contradictions gained by the analysis of a capitalistically produced commodity the supposed contradictions of the prehistoric development of the barter trade of the primeval fishermen and primeval hunters are supposed to be "reflected".
Marx certainly did not formulate all this as naively as Engels. It seems to me, however, that it was precisely this naive commentary that brought to light the unresolved problem of Marx's value-theoretical constructions. The various presentations of the theory of value can therefore be interpreted as ever new attempts to construct a somehow procuring correspondence or even reflection relation of the >logical< and the >historical<.
What Adam Smith was reproached with by Marx, that in his theory of value an "esoteric" and an "exoteric part" are to be distinguished, is repeated in a different way in Marx's theory of value: just as in Smith's case, the two modes of representation "run not only unabashedly side by side, but through each other and continually contradict each other." (26.2/162) From this arises the necessity of a critical reconstruction. It can only mean taking Marx's theory "apart and putting it together again in a new form in order to better achieve the goal it has set for itself. "15
It should be recalled here that Marx did not want to title the first chapter "The Commodity"
but with "exchange value in general" (42/240) or simply "value" (29/315). ↩
Quite aberrant ideas about Marx's law of circulation are put forward by: K. Wicksell, Vorlesungen über Nationalökonomie, vol. 2, 170 f.; H. Block, Die Marxsche Geldtheorie, 81. One will also have to attribute to a rather superficial reading of Marx's theory of money the quite inaccurate presentation of Marx's doctrine of the measure of values by J. Schumpcter (Geschichte der ökonomischen Analyse, vol. 2, 1340). ↩
See Marx's detailed exposition of this problem in the Critique: 13/135 f. ↩
See on this 23/128, 171 u. 176, 25/366, 42/146 f. ↩
J. Ritsert, Probleme politisch-ökonomischer Theoriebildung, 98. ↩
