Reichelt, H., Marx’s Critique of Economic Categories: Reflections on the Problem of Validity in...

8/13/2019 Reichelt, H., Marxs Critique of Economic Categories: Reflections on the Problem of Validity in the Dialectical Meth

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4 H. Reichelt / Historical Materialism 15 (2007) 352

One could, Jrgen Ritsert argues, almost describe the principle of exchangeas the central theme of Adornos critical theory.2It is true that the expression

real abstraction, used for the first time by Georg Simmel,3is nowhere to befound in Adorno, but, in essence, the issue is the same. Adorno talks about anobjective abstraction in the process of exchange itself, which is the same asthe objectivity of the conceptual moment, irrespective of whether peoplereflect on this or not.4A distinction is therefore expressly made between thereality of this abstraction, which is objectively conceptual, and the conceptualityof the subjects themselves who carry out this process.

Te person who attributes the conceptual to social reality need not fear the

accusation of being idealistic. What is implied here is not merely the constitutiveconceptuality of the knowing subject but also a conceptuality which holds swayin reality [Sache] itself.5

Tat Adorno was not convinced by Alfred Sohn-Rethels solution to thisproblem can be indirectly seen from the notes that Adorno made after adiscussion with Sohn-Rethel.6It can, however, also be seen that he ascribedprogrammatic status to his own formulations: what is required is a systematiccomprehensive analysis of the exchange abstraction, was Adornos concludingsummary.

Adorno himself did not provide such an analysis, and surely not just becauseof lack of time. Ritsert is right to say: Economics was . . . not his concern.7Inprivate conversation, Adorno made no secret of his aversion to dealing withthe economy. All the more astonishing then are his sometimes brilliantlyintuitive insights into the nature of the capitalist economy. Although Adorno

2. Ritsert 1998, p. 324.

3. Cf. Simmel 1978, p. 80: It is not as strange as it may seem at first glance that not only thestudy of the economy but the economy itself is constituted by a real abstraction from thecomprehensive reality of values.

4. aken from notes by Hans-Georg Backhaus on an Adorno seminar in the summer semesterof 1962. See the appendix to Backhaus 1997, p. 503.

5. Adorno et al. 1976, p. 80.6. Adorno 1989, pp. 221ff. Tis contrasts with his earlier euphoric comments in a letter

dated the 17th November 1936: Dear Alfred, I dont think I am exaggerating if I tell you thatyour letter was responsible for the greatest intellectual shock I have experienced in philosophysince I first encountered Benjamins work and that was in 1923! Tis shock reflects themagnitude and power of your idea but also the depth of an agreement which goes immeasurablyfurther than you could have suspected or even I myself could have foreseen. Adorno and Sohn-Rethel 1991, p. 32. My thanks to Hans-Joachim Blank for this reference.

7. Ritsert 1998, p. 331.


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H. Reichelt / Historical Materialism 15 (2007) 352 5

repeatedly spoke about the exchange society, he should not be described ashe so often wrongly is as a theorist of an exchange society in the economic

sense. Te essence of Adornos critical theory lies in the very fact that heunderstands the capitalist economy as an inverted reality in which individualsno longer interact with one another on the market as rationally actingsubjects, as the idea of the exchange economy suggests. Adorno criticised sucha concept as social nominalism.8Rather, they act as executors of constraintsgenerated and reproduced by themselves, which are implemented in andthrough their conscious actions without, however, these being consciouslyaccessible to them. Tis is what the strong concept of totality means, whichshould not to be confused with the mechanistic idea in which everything is

linked with everything else (Albert), or with the hermeneutic one that operatesby anticipating the interpretation of a connection of meaning (Habermas).otality is not a methodological postulate, but rather the concept of a realbecoming autonomous [Verselbstndigung].

otality . . . is pre-established for all individual subjects since they obey itsconstraints even in themselves and even in their monadological constitution andhere in particular, conceptualise totality. o this extent, totality is what is mostreal.9

Adorno is therefore vehemently against any levelling down of society to anintelligible coherence. He insists that society is both intelligible andunintelligible.10Hermeneutics, however, must not merely be supplementedby dialectics; rather, the unintelligible becomes primary and hermeneutics isthe method which is directed towards dimensions of meaning that have beenstructured by the very dynamics of an inversion process.

Yet the objective rationality of society, namely that of exchange, continues todistance itself through its dynamics, from the model of logical reason.

Consequently, society become autonomous is, in turn, no longer intelligible,only the law of its autonomisation is intelligible.11

Tis law of autonomisation reconstructs a movement executed by means ofthe conscious actions of individuals, but which, at the same time, eludesconscious understanding they do not know it, but they do it, in Marxs

8. Backhaus 1997, p. 502.

9. Adorno et al. 1976, p. 12.10. Adorno et al. 1976, p. 15.11. Ibid.


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concise formulation. Terefore, the constitutive moment of unconsciousness,which determines the social reproduction process, is the actual object of

dialectical criticism. Staying close to Hegels crucial dictum that reality [Sache]and method are not to be separated, Adorno too postulates that dialectics,when it wishes to conceptualise the object as possessing motion in itself, doesnot have at its disposal a method independent of the object, but has to followthe structure of the object.12

What kind of an object becomes autonomous, inverts itself, takes over theprimary position although itself a creation , spreads to become a systemicMoloch and reduces the living individuals who, after all, create it in their ownlife-world [Lebenswelt], to mere appendages? Adorno refers to Marxs critique

of economics, which traces this process:

In a grand manner, the unity of the critique of scientific and meta-scientific senseis revealed in the work of Marx. It is called the critique of political economy sinceit attempts to derive the whole that is to be criticised in terms of its right toexistence from exchange, commodity form and its immanent logicalcontradictory nature. Te assertion of the equivalence of what is exchanged, thebasis of all exchange, is repudiated by its consequences. As the principle ofexchange, by virtue of its immanent dynamics, extends to the living labours ofhuman beings it changes compulsively into objective inequality, namely thatof social classes. Forcibly stated, the contradiction is that exchange takes placejustly and unjustly.13

Adorno therefore assumes that the whole economy is to be developed out of aprinciple the exchange principle although this is not an inherently coherent,purely theoretical construct. As a presentation of the totality, the theory is alsoa method, which follows the object and thereby reconstructs the irrationalsystematicity of the real system itself. How this process of autonomisation isto be conceptualised in detail is not explained by Adorno: the central concepts objective abstraction, inversion, autonomisation, totality, power of theuniversal over the particular remain postulates with regard to theirconcretisation as far as the critique of economics is concerned.

Associated with this programme is an outrageous claim: the whole of thecritical theory depends on the convincing explication of this objectiveabstraction. If it is impossible to concretise this objective concept, all otherconcepts of the critical theory which are to be derived from this conceptuality

12. Adorno et al. 1976, p. 48.13. Adorno et al. 1976, p. 25.


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which holds sway in reality [Sache] itself are exposed to the accusation ofsocial-theoretical speculation.

Whether Adornos conjecture that Marx, the dialectician, did not claim topossess a completely developed notion of dialectics. He imagined that he wassimply flirting with it,14 is actually correct, is difficult to decide. What iscertain, however, is that Marx did not make it easy for his readers. If weconsider only what Marx explicitly said about his dialectical method,15 wehave to agree with Adornos thesis. Adorno, however, was not aware that Marxwrote to Engels on 9 December 1861, while working on a version of the textwhich was to become Capital, Volume 1, that the thing is assuming a muchmore popular form, and the method is much less in evidence than in Part I.16

Marx therefore evidently had a clear awareness of his method even if he impliesthat he concealed this method for whatever reason.

Where should economic science begin?

It seems therefore relatively easy to elaborate Adornos programmatic statementsfor economic theory. We should turn to the works in which Marxs method isstill explicit, those in which it was developed and tested: the Grundrisse, as thefirst draft of Capital, or the Urtext, the original draft ofA Contribution to theCritique of Political Economy? Had it been as easy as this, Marxs method wouldhave been deciphered long ago. Still, of inestimable value is the fact that Marxtook Hegels philosophy as a starting point.17Te choice of words in almostevery sentence in the Grundrissereminds us of this. However, even a thoroughknowledge of Hegel has not proved completely helpful (as became clear fromthe fleeting interventions of Hegel scholars in economics during the 1960s

14. Adorno et al. 1976, p. 24.15. For example in the Afterword to the 2nd edition of the first volume of Capital: My

dialectic method is, in its foundations, not only different from the Hegelian, but directly oppositeto it. For Hegel, the process of thinking, which he even transforms into an independent subject,under the name of the Idea, is the creator of the real world, and the real world is only theexternal, phenomenal form of the Idea. With me the reverse is true: the ideal is nothing elsethan the material world reflected in the mind of man, and translated into forms of thought(Marx 1976b, p. 102).

16. Marx and Engels 1985 p. 333. By Part 1 Marx meansA Contribution to the Critique ofPolitical Economywhich he had published in 1859.

17. What was of great use to me as regards methodof treatment was Hegels Logicat which

I had taken another look by mere accident, Freiligrath having found and made me a present ofseveral volumes of Hegel, originally the property of Bakunin. Letter to Engels, 16 January 1858,in Marx and Engels 1983, p. 249.


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and early 1970s). Te method is therefore not evident in the Grundrisseeither.Its reconstruction remains, as before, to be achieved.

Te fact that the Grundrisse does not address the question of exchangeabstraction at all poses another problem. Although Marx characterises hisscientific work as a Critique of Economic Categories, or, if you like, a criticalexpos of the system of the bourgeois economy,18the Grundrisseneither offersa more detailed explanation of what is meant by economic categories, nor arethese discussed in connection with the exchange abstraction.

It is only in Capital that we find explicit references to what is to beunderstood by categories and to the fact that these must be developed inconnection with value as an abstraction carried out by those performing the

exchange themselves. Here, categories are defined, in all the clarity that couldbe wished for, as objective forms of thought,19 and characterised as beingsubjective-objective. And value is characterised as a product of abstraction,which exists in the head:

Here, equivalent only means similarity of magnitude, after both objects havefirst been reduced tacitly in our head to the abstraction of value.20

However, these are no more than hints and in turn raise another problem.

Given this determination of value as a mental abstraction, the question ishow the connection between labour and value is to be conceived. In Capital,Marx repeats his criticism of Feuerbach in relation to economics. In 1845, hehad characterised Feuerbachs thinking as a half truth,21 and stated thatthe detachment of the secular basis from itself, namely the duplication, hadlikewise to be theoretically substantiated. In Capitalhe wrote:

Political economy has indeed analysed, however incompletely, value and itsmagnitude, and has discovered what lies beneath these forms. But it has neveronce asked the question why labour is represented by the value of its product and

labour-time by the magnitude of that value.22

18. Letter to Lassalle, 22 February 1858, in Marx and Engels 1983, p. 270.19. Marx 1976b, p. 169.20. Marx 1978, p. 138.21. See his fourth thesis on Feuerbach: Feuerbach starts out from the fact of religious self-

alienation, of the duplication of the world into a religious world and a secular one. His workconsists in resolving the religious world into its secular basis. But that the secular basis detaches

itself from itself and establishes itself as an independent realm in the clouds can only be explainedby the cleavages and self-contradictions within this secular base (Marx 1975, p. 422).22. Marx 1976b, p. 174.


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But how does this abstract human labour which is determined as expenditureof human brain, nerves, muscles etc23 become transformed into the

abstractness of value? How can this expenditure assume the form of value?While it is already difficult to comprehend this determination of abstractlabour a highly controversial topic of discussion among Marxist scholars the connection between value-abstraction and labour as the substance of valueis virtually incomprehensible.

My argument runs as follows. Te Grundrisse is based on a differentconception of presentation from that of Marxs published versions of his critiqueof political economy. In the latter, Marx starts from the assumption of a fullydeveloped capitalism. Tus, in Capital, although he starts by dealing with

commodities, these are already the products of capitalist production, that is,the embodiment of abstract labour. In theGrundrisse, however, he distinguishesbetween:

(i) exchange-value-positing [auschwertsetzende] buying and selling and,(ii) exchange-value-positing labour.

Te former is also described as simple circulation, an expression which isalready hardly used inA Contributionand which is not found in Capitalat all.

Te concept of exchange-value-positing labour can be read as an earlierdetermination of the two-fold character of labour, an expression which is alsoused more frequently in A Contribution.Exchange-value-positing labour isalso characterised as the abstraction of the category labour, labour as such,labour pure and simple, [which] becomes true in practice,24 although thecounter-term is not expressly described as the theoretical truth of abstractlabour. However, in the way of presenting the argument which structures theGrundrisse, abstract labour is treated as labour as such, as a category whichstill lies more in our subjective reflection.25

When Marx moves to the different concept of presentation which structuresCapitalthere is a change in the way value is initially introduced. In Capital,he has to presuppose that value is something which is already produced bycapital, and this considerably affects his account of the initial determinationof value: he begins and must begin with real value, as produced, and fromthere he has to determine the two-fold character of labour. Marx finds it

23. Marx 1976b, p. 134.24. Marx 1973, p. 105.25. Marx 1973, p. 297.


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impossible to integrate this latter conception of value with value as a productof abstraction effected by those carrying out the exchange also dealt with in

the first chapter of Capital.As we will see, Marx tried to do this in the firstedition of Capital.In the Grundrisse, however, he had begun with value as isdeveloped through simple circulation; value is consequently not conceivedin relation to labour:

o develop the concept of capital it is necessary to begin not with labour but withvalue, and, precisely, with exchange value in an already developed movement ofcirculation.26

Terefore, wholly within the terms of the conceptualisation outlined above, inthe Grundrisse value could considered as a product of abstraction, and thecategory of money as objective form of thought. However, in the Grundrisse,Marx had not yet developed the concepts required to clarify this (it wasnot one of the themes in the Grundrissefor which Marx proved supportingmaterial); and where such concepts are found, namely in Capital, they areintegrated into a way of presenting the argument which is based on theassumption of a presupposed, actual value therefore, as the Grundrissephrasesit, of a labour which has become true in practice.

Tis is not the end of the puzzle, however. Te development of the decisivecategory, namely that of money, turns out to be completely inadequate in theGrundrisse.Marx himself points this out when he says

It will be necessary later . . . to correct the idealist manner of the presentation, whichmakes it seem as if it were merely a matter of conceptual determinations and of thedialectic of these concepts. Above all in the formulation: product (or activity)becomes commodity; commodity, exchange value; exchange value, money.27

Marx leaves no room for doubt that the money-form arises out of necessity

from the process of exchange.

Money does not arise by convention, any more than the state does. It arises outof exchange, and arises naturally out of exchange; it is product of the same.28

And also,

26. Marx 1973, p. 259.27. Marx 1973, p. 151.28. Marx 1973, p. 165.


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Te necessity for a value-formfirst develops with the increase in the number andvariety of the commodities entering into the process of exchange. Te problemand the means for its solution arise simultaneously.29

But Marx provides no methodologically satisfactory development of themoney-form.

In order therefore to elaborate Adornos programme, it would be necessaryto combine:

(i) the way in which the argument is presented in the Grundrisse one inwhich Marx sees a closer connection being gradually established in

circulation between an autonomously determined exchange-value andabstract labour conceived as becoming true in practice;(ii) the concepts which Marx develops in Capital, and which are introduced

within the framework of a way of presenting the overall argumentwhich differs from that of the Grundrisse.

What exactly are the new concepts in Capitalwhich must be considered? InCapital, Marx operates with a concept of validity [Geltung] which, as far asterminology is concerned, cannot be overlooked. Just in the appendix, Te

Value Form, published in the first edition, he refers to validitymore thanthirty times in various word combinations; however, he explains this conceptonly indirectly by means of references and examples. As early as the firstedition, Marx also attempted to relate the two-fold character of labour to thisconcept of validity:

What follows from the above is that there are not two different types of labourhidden inside the commodity; rather the same labour is determined in differentand opposing ways, after it has been appliedto the use value of the commodity asits product or to the commodity-value as its mere opposing expression,

respectively. Just as the commodity must, above all, be an object of use in orderto have value, so must labour, above all . . . be useful labour in order to countasexpenditure of human labour-power and therefore as human labour as such.30

Marx deleted this passage in the second edition and thereby basicallysubstantialised abstract human labour as the substance of value, elevating suchlabour to a quasi-ontological category.

29. Marx 1976b, p. 182 (my emphasis, H.R.).30. Marx 1976a, p. 16, (my emphasis, H.R.).


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On the one hand, all labour is, speaking psychologically, an expenditure ofhuman labour-power, and in its character of identical abstract human labour, itcreates and forms the value of commodities. On the other hand, all labour is theexpenditure of human labour-power in a special form and with a definite aim,and in this, its character of concrete useful labour, it produces use-values.31

Money and validity can Simmel offer further help?

Adorno indicated on more than one occasion that the central question aboutsociety should be an imitation of the ontological proof of the existence of God(at least in its Hegelian version): the most perfect being cannot be conceived

without including its existence. Formulated in this speculative way, this raisesthe problem of the objectivity of abstraction: for objectivity should not onlybe understood as inter-subjective validity, but should be understood preciselyin terms of the philosophical discussion of the universale in re, i.e. the realexistence of a universal. Tis may be the reason why Adorno never used theterm real abstraction he realised that there was more concealed behind thisformulation, too readily used by the social scientist, than the latter would liketo admit.

Let us turn to a formulation by Hegel, a philosopher who was not yet

plagued by inhibitions and who probably had no need to comply with scientificstandards for fear of being excluded from the scientific community: Moneyisthis material, existing concept, the form of the unity or the possibility of allthings is the way it was put by the young Hegel.32Tis did not remain as nomore than one of Hegels early speculative flourishes, since he repeated thesethoughts much later in his lectures on the philosophy of law. As an existingconcept, money is at the same time characterised as an existing universal.33Hegel stated it even more precisely when he said: here value exists as such.Furthermore,

[I]n this way, money is the real existence of the universal. Tis universal is notonly an external, objective universal, but also a subjective universal, a completelydifferent type of universal.34

Tis completely different type of universal is therefore simultaneously totalityand abstraction; just like the I [das Ich] as existing concept: a unity of

31. Marx 1976b, p. 137.

32. Hegel 1974a, p. 334 (my emphasis, H.R.).33. Hegel 1974b, p. 229.34. Hegel 1974b, p. 230.


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unrestricted infinity of absolute abstraction or universality and the transitionfrom undifferentiated indeterminacy to the differentiation, determination and

positing of determinacy as a content and object.35However, precisely not asI, but as thing.

Is it only the philosopher who is permitted to discover this universal asreally present [in re] in the economy since, as an expert on the universal, hehas in any case a licence to engage in speculative flights of thought? Or canthe social scientist also use such a concept? Te young Marx uses identicalformulations: money as the existing and active concept of value . . . of allthings,36he writes in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, a phrasewhich could just as easily have come from Hegel. Money is also defined as an

existing universal in the Grundrisse:

Tis totality exists in money itself as the comprehensive presentation of commodities.Tus, wealth (exchange value as totality as well as abstraction) exists, individualisedas such, to the exclusion of all other commodities, as a singular, tangible object,in gold and silver. Money is therefore the god among commodities.37

Money as the individualof general wealth38 is not only a form, but, at thesame time, the content itself.

Te concept of wealth, so to speak, is realised, individualised. . . in money theprice is realised; and its substance is wealth itself considered in its totality inabstraction from its particular modes of existence.39

Even the first edition of the first volume of Capital, in which the dialecticalmethod was already much less in evidence, contains a passage (deleted in thesecond edition) which deals with the development of the universal form ofequivalence, and which could not have been any clearer:

In form III, which includes the converse second form, the linen, however, appearsas the generic form of the equivalent for all other commodities. It is as if inaddition to lions, tigers, hares and all other real animals, which, formed intogroups, build up the various sexes, species, subspecies, families etc. of the animalkingdom, the animalalso existed, the individual incarnation of the entire animal

35. Hegel 1952, 5 and 6, pp. 212.36. Marx 1975, p. 379.

37. Marx 1973, p. 221.38. Marx 1973, p. 222.39. Marx 1973, p. 218 and 221.


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kingdom. Such an individual, which in itself includes all real species of the sameobject, is the universal, such as animal, godetc.40

Marxs formulations from the earliest critiques of political economy all theway through to Capital also refer to this actually existing universal by usingalmost exactly the same expressions as are employed by Hegel. However, howis such abstraction, as a practical operation carried out by those doing theexchange, to be conceived and justified? I have suggested above that Marx usesa concept of validity in Capitalwhich he does not clarify, but which could giveus access to a solution.

However, let us first of all look at the possible solution offered by a

philosophical text which explicitly discusses the connection between moneyand validity, namely Georg Simmels Te Philosophy of Money.Simmel is theonly neo-Kantian philosopher of value who has taken the trouble to investigatethe problem of value in the economy according to Adorno the actual locusof the entire philosophy of value. Simmel characterises this value which existsin our consciousness as an objective value and, at the same time, expressly asa metaphysical category41since, as something objective, it belongs betweenthe subject and the objects:

[I]n fact, it is a third category, which cannot be derived from either subject orobject, but which stands, so to speak, between us and the objects.42

However, where is this third category actually to be found? Te neo-Kantianobviously has the appropriate answer ready:

I have observed that the value of things belongs among those mental contentsthat, while we conceive them, we experience them at the same time as somethingindependent within our representation.43

Here Simmel repeats the consciousness proposition, namely that we have some-thing in our consciousness but which is perceived within our consciousness asbeing outside it. According to Simmel, an objective value gains its objectivitysimply through

40. Marx 1976a, p. 27, emphases by Marx.

41. Simmel 1989, p. 38.42. Simmel 1989, p. 37.43. Ibid.


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the basic capacity of the mind . . . to separate itself from the ideas that it conceivesand to represent these ideas as if they were independent of its ownrepresentation.44

Te concept of validity as conceived by Simmel therefore refers to the contentof a representation which does not coincide with the representation ofcontents;45the contents are therefore not annulled, regardless of whether ornot they are represented and, for this reason, they are valid.46How then doesit happen that the value which, according to the follower of the subjectivedoctrine, is something that is felt [ein Empfundenes], sets itself at such adistance within the subject that it gains an objective quality? What shouldsurely be developed is precisely this remarkable ability of the mind (firstelevated to philosophical consciousness with the more precise stating of theconcept of validity)

to think of contents as being independent of the act of thinking; this is one of itsprimary qualities, which cannot be reduced any further.47

Tis remarkable ability is not, for its part, to be determined independently ofthe more precisely stated phenomenology of the validity of value. Becauseobjective value, its being [Sein] (like that of any other value in the philosophy

of value) should only exist in being valid [im Gelten], its supra-subjectivecharacter contains a primary phenomenon,48 the existence of which isinextricably connected with an a prioriillusion. Value exists in our consciousnessas a fact that can no more be altered than can reality itself.49As soon as thisvalue exists as a fact, it is perceived as an economic value,50which attaches51to an object. Simmel stresses that value in this specific objectivity originatesonly in exchange, simultaneously with the exchange process itself:

Exchange, i.e. the economy, is the source of economic values, because exchange

is the representative of the distance between subject and object which transformssubjective feelings into objective valuation.52

44. Simmel 1989, p. 36.45. Simmel 1989, p. 32.46. Ibid.47. Ibid.48. Simmel 1989, p. 27.49. Simmel 1989, p. 29.

50. Ibid.51. Simmel 1989, p. 37.52. Simmel 1989, p. 73.


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Value, originally a confused feeling, suddenly represents itself, through exchange,as an objective quantity without any quality; it attaches to the object, but is,

at the same time, a thought, which, however, appears independently of the actof being conceived.

What exactly is this remarkable appearance of value, this something of themind that attaches to objects? And how does the a prioriillusion arise that isconnected with this metaphysical category? How does it arise in this form ofsupra-subjective validity existing within our consciousness, and yet appearingwithin our consciousness as being outside consciousness and simultaneouslyconnected to objects to which it attaches?

Naturally, Simmels explanation has given rise to much criticism, which will

not be discussed here. What we will consider, however, is whether this accountof valid value-abstraction is identical to Marxs conception of value when thelatter states that equivalence only means equal magnitude after both objectshave first been reduced tacitly in our head to the abstraction value .53A moreprecise formulation would have been desirable, but note that Marx does notrefer to an abstraction in our consciousness, although also stressing that ittakes place tacitly. Abstraction can, therefore, be seen as an action that takesplace in the mind, although we are not conscious of this; it is therefore alogically unconscious process, a lack of awareness within awareness itself.

Marx draws our attention to this in Capitalwhen he says:

[B]y equating their different products to each other in exchange as values, menequate their different kinds of labour as human labour. Tey do this withoutbeing aware of it.54

What does Marx refer to when he states that humans equate their differentkinds of labour as human labour, that they equate their different products asvalues, and that they do this without an adequate consciousness of doing so?Does this lack of awareness refer to the equating of labour or rather to the

53. Marx 1978, p. 138.54. Marx 1976b, p. 166. Tis is the basis of an experience which sociology also is trying to

work through theoretically in relation to phenomenological and functionalist conceptions.Habermas, for example, says explicitly that hermeneutical sociology is idealist if it is notsupplemented by a concept of the systematic integration of the unplanned consequences ofsocial actions which result from the use of a monetary medium. It must be pointed out here thatthe theoretical consideration of this problem cannot be restricted to this initial abstractionprocess. Rather, a theory of these unplanned additional consequences, which can be formulated

on the basis of Marxs critique, is only possible and meaningful when this secondary abstractionprocess is dealt with, together with the question of what are the actual values, produced byabstract-universal labour.


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equating of products as values? Or to the connection between value andlabour? Or that therefore the equating of products as values is done consciously,

but the reduction to equal labour is done unconsciously?

Money as unity of objective positing and universal acceptance

Let us try to clarify how in Marxs texts this act of abstraction is conceived inthe practice of exchange. In this regard, I will refer to the conception of simplecirculation found in the Grundrisseand its two-fold meaning, which becomesevident only in the course of this long and hastily written manuscript. On theone hand, this exchange-value-positing interaction is to be understood from ahistorical perspective but not in the sense of mundane historical description(canonised in Marxist orthodoxy as the relation between logic and history,following some unfortunate formulations by Engels). It is much rather to beunderstood as the interlinking of a development logic and a developmentdynamic, which was, however, not explicitly worked out by Marx. On theother hand, Marx links the idea of simple circulation with the conception of asurface of the total reproduction process of capitalism an approach whichis clearly modelled on Hegelian logic. Many formulations even suggest thatMarx adopted Hegels exact words, for example, in his discussion of thetransition to capital which is modelled on Hegels account of the transitionfrom the logic of Beingto the logic of Essence.55

In both accounts, Marx proceeds on the assumption that commoditiesenter the exchange process as available products or commodities. In the first,

55. Money in its final, completed character now appearsfrom every aspect as a contradiction,a contradiction which dissolves itself, drives towards its own dissolution (Marx 1973, p. 233).And in the ransition to Essence, Hegel states: But we are already familiar with this self-

sublating of the determination of indifference; in the development of its positedness, thisdetermination has shown itself to be from every aspect a contradiction. It is in itselfthe totalityin which every determination of being is sublimated and contained (Hegel 1969, p. 384). WhenMarx later describes his relationship with Hegel to which Adorno refers as flirting withHegelian language, this is not only an understatement, but also very misleading, because thecorrespondence of the conceptual construct goes far beyond mere flirting. Just as everydetermination of the logic of Beingis sublimated in the logic of Essence, so Marx also wants toshow that the sphere of simple circulation proves, over time, to be an abstraction: Considered initself, circulation is the mediation of preposited extremes.But it does not posit these extremes. Ititself must be mediated as the totality of mediation, as total process. Tat is why its immediatebeing is pure appearance. It is the phenomenon of a process running behind its back. It is now

negated in each of its moments: as commodity, as money, and as the relation of the two, as thesimple exchange of the two, circulation (Marx and Engels 1987, p. 479). See also Marx andEngels 1980, p. 64 (emphasis by Marx).


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as products which become commodities and, in the second (surface of thecapitalist reproduction process), as commodities which look like products. In

what follows, I will refer to the former.On a number of occasions, Marx repeats the following idea:

Te product becomes a commodity; the commodity becomes exchange value; theexchange value of the commodity is its immanent money-property; this, itsmoney-property, separates itself from it in the form of money, and achieves ageneral social existence.56

Further traces of this argument can be found in Capital:

In the direct exchange of products, each commodity is a direct means of exchangeto its owner, and an equivalent to those who do not possess it. . . . At this stage,therefore, the articles exchanged do not acquire a value-form independent oftheir own use value, or of the individual needs of the exchangers. Te necessityfor this value-form first develops with the increase in the number and variety ofthe commodities entering into the process of exchange. Te problem and themeans for its solution arise simultaneously.

Commercial intercourse, in which the owners of commodities exchangeand compare their articles with various other articles, never takes place unlessdifferent kinds of commodities belonging to different owners are exchanged for,

and equated as values with, one single further kind of commodity.Tis furthercommodity, by becoming the equivalent of variousother commodities, directlyacquires the form of a universal or social equivalent, if only within narrow limits.Te universal equivalent comes and goes with the momentary social contactswhich call it into existence. It is transiently attached to this or that commodityin alternation. But with the development of exchange it fixes itself firmly andexclusively onto particularkinds of commodity, i.e. it crystallises out into themoney-form.57

At the same time, Marx points out that the proportions in which they are

exchangeableare first quite a matter of chance and, that the objects, which areexchangeable through the mutual desire of their owners to alienate them,therefore and this sentence is found only in the first edition [obtain] theform of something exchangeable before they are developed as values.58Onlylater are they fixed as magnitudes of value.

56. Marx 1973, pp. 1467.

57. Marx, 1976b, p. 182; Marx and Engels 1983b, p. 55. Marxs emphasis is only found inthe first edition of Capital.58. Marx and Engels 1983b, p. 54.


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We also find in Marx a discussion of the usual ways in which economistsattempt to derive the origin of money from the exchange process. Marx is

of course aware of these and reflects with bitter ridicule on the prevailingdoctrine:

Economists usually reason that the emergence of money is due to externaldifficulties which the expansion of barter encounters, but they forget that thesedifficulties arise from the evolution of exchange-value and hence from that ofsocial labour as universal labour. For example commodities as use-values are notdivisible at will, a property which as exchange-values they should possess. Or itmay happen that the commodity belonging to A may be use-value required by B;whereas Bs commodity may not have any use-value for A. Or the commodity-

owners may need each others commodities but these cannot be divided and theirrelative exchange-values are different. In other words, on the plea of examiningsimple barter, these economists display certain aspects of the contradictioninherent in the commodity as being the direct unity of use-value and exchange-value. On the other hand, they then persistently regard barter as a formwell adapted to commodity exchange, suffering merely from certain technicalinconveniences, to overcome which money has been cunningly devised.Proceeding from this quite superficial point of view, an ingenious Britisheconomist has rightly maintained that money is merely a material instrument,like a ship or a steam engine, and not an expression of a social relation ofproduction, and hence is not an economic category. It is therefore simply a

malpractice to deal with this subject in political economy, which in fact hasnothing in common with technology.59

What must be borne in mind is that this critique by Marx stems from 1859,before he evolved the new way of presenting his argument in Capital.But howis the formation of money to be conceived if only surplus products are throwninto the fire of circulation from outside, as Marx stated in the Grundrisse? Ashas been pointed out above, Marx also proceeds on the assumption of anexchange of products by their producers which gradually changes into exchange

of commodities,60

and this development corresponds to a change of themoney-form, namely the use-value which assumes the money-function.

Money does not arise by convention, any more than the state does. It arises outof exchange, and arises naturally out of exchange; it is a product of the same. Atthe beginning, that commodity will serve as money i.e. it will be exchanged not

59. Marx and Engels 1987a, p. 291. An analogous critique of economic technicism is foundin Amonns analysis of Schumpeters methodological individualism, cf. Amonn, 1911, p. 330 ff.

60. [H]ence my product becomes dependent on the state of general commerce and is tornout of its local, natural and individual boundaries. For exactly that reason it can cease to be aproduct, (Marx 1973, p. 150, my emphasis, H.R.).


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for the purpose of satisfying a need, not for consumption, but in order to be re-exchanged for other commodities which is most frequently exchanged andcirculated as an object of consumption, and which is therefore most certain to beexchangeable again for other commodities, i.e. which represents within the givensocial organisation wealthpar excellence, which is the object of the most generaldemand and supply, and which possesses a particular use value. Tus, salt, hides,cattle, slaves. In practice such a commodity corresponds more closely to itself asexchange value than do other commodities (a pity that the difference betweendenre and marchandise cannot be neatly reproduced in German). It is theparticular usefulness of the commodity, whether as a particular object ofconsumption (hides), or as a direct instrument of production (slaves), whichstamps it as money in these cases. In the course of further development preciselythe opposite will occur, i.e. that commodity which has the least utility as an

object of consumption or instrument of production will best serve the needs ofexchange as such.61

Here Marx shares the common opinion, according to which the mostmarketable commodities (A. Menger) acquire the function of acting as money,at least in the original stages of the development of money.

How must Marxs argument proceed in order to avoid falling prey to theaccusation of monetary technicism which he levels at the economists? Only byconnecting the idea of this original product exchange with the concept ofvalidity in Capital.

If value is supposed to be a product of abstraction, which arises in theminds of people but is nevertheless not abstracted consciously, this processof equating need not be conceived according to the model of nominalist ideas.Value is not a generic term that includes the specific, nor is abstractiontherefore a process that abstracts out the universal. Value is, as will be discussedlater, a universal, but it is constituted unconsciously: the act of equating takesplace in a manner which remains obscure to the participants themselves. Teysimultaneously constitute and discover value in a process which is to beconceived, in terms of Hegels logic of Essence, as a unity of positing andexternal reflection.

Marx expressly refers to the nature of the categories of reflection and, fromhis presentation, it follows directly that he, like Hegel, understands the processof positing reflection as an objective one in the sense of logical unconsciousness.Te external reflection, then, is a conscious reflection on that which is positedas something that is discovered [Vorgefundenes]. Marx explains this by meansof an example:

61. Marx 1973, p. 166 (emphasis by Marx).


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Determinations of reflection of this kind are altogether very curious. For instance,one man is king only because other men stand in the relation of subjects to him.Tey, on the other hand, imagine that they are subjects because he is king.62

Te process, which Marx gives as an example, would be interpreted differentlytoday, but the nature of his explanation vividly depicts what matters: theconstituting act, the positing, remains unconscious, and is rather itself theprerequisite for a conscious reflection which then, as external reflection,incorporates the prerequisite only as that which is discovered. Te way inwhich Marx introduces this example within the context of his presentation,shows clearly that he does not understand this reflection process as beingspecific to exchange, but, on the contrary, as a universal process which is alsoan element in the exchange process.

How is this reflection process depicted in the exchange process? Marxstresses that:

One forgets that the magnitudes of various objects can only be comparedquantitatively once they have been reduced to the same unit. It is only asexpressions of the same unit that they are magnitudes of the same name, thereforecommensurable magnitudes.63

Tis unit is not there to start off with (as is assumed correctly in the presentationin Capital, since here Marx begins with values produced by a presupposedabstract-universal labour), but is produced in a natural operation of the mind.Although in somewhat crude formulations, Marx points out that people donot construct this unit consciously, but produce it in a manner appropriate tothe nature of their thought processes. If we therefore have categories ofreflection that are also part of the exchange process and that prove theirvalidity, this must involve a double movement of thought in which thesecategories are posited separately and, at the same time, as a unit: a non-

changing change in which difference and unity are constructed simultaneouslyin the same process.In Capital, Marx operates with both opposing and at the same time

mutually dependent forms, the relative value-form and the equivalent form,

62. Marx 1976b, p. 149, footnote 22. In Supplements and amendments to the first volumeof Capital it is noted that Marx replaced the word king with witch. An old womans witch-likecharacter exists only in her relationship to superstitious peasants, but the old woman is only valid

as witch for the peasants because she appears to have the character of a witch without their help,(Marx and Engels 1987b, p. 18, my emphasis, H.R.).63. Marx 1978, p. 136.


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but already within a context in which value is presupposed, so that theequivalent form is determinable as a value expression. If we assume, as Marx

does in some remarks in the first edition (which were deleted in the latereditions), that the products [obtain] the form of something exchangeable,before they are developed as values, the persons doing the exchange first of allconstruct the form itself the form of equal validity [Form der Gleichgeltung]64a form of equal validity [Form gleicher Geltung],65 they construct equalvalidity [gleiche Gltigkeit]66Marx also describes this form of equal validity asa form of direct exchangeability the form of equal validity, therefore also ofexchangeability67 a form in which they are non-differentiated, equivalent.However, since this does not concern just any equating, but equating

specifically in the exchange process, this relation of equality must be a valuerelation at the same time. Tis is exactly what Marx says: this relation ofequality is . . . [a] value relation68 and this means that the value as a unityconceived in the mind is immediately posited as a two-fold one. It is only non-equivalent within an ongoing thought process within which equivalence isestablished:

In that it equates itself as value with the other commodities, it refers to itself asvalue. In that it refers to itself as value, it simultaneously distinguishes itself fromitself as use value.69

Contrary to the neo-Kantian characterisation of the validity of value assomething demanding recognition [Anerkennungheischendes]70which is alwaysalready in our consciousness, Marxs concept of validity refers exclusively tothe process of creative value-positing, to the constitution of a form which, assuch, cannot enter our consciousness, cannot be perceived. Te logical,unconscious process of unity-positing is not accessible to the naturalconsciousness. Here, some subtle nuances must be observed. In the case ofunity-positing, the product, against which the exchange is made the opposingexchange-value is, in its material form, directly regarded as value; thecommodity in the form of direct exchangeability

64. Marx and Engels 1987b, p. 21.65. Marx and Engels 1987c, p. 915.66. Marx and Engels 1987b, p. 17.67. Marx and Engels 1987c, p. 915.

68. Marx 1978, p. 136.69. Marx 1976a, p. 19 (emphasis by Marx).70. Lask 1923, p. 57 ff.


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does not first of all need to assume a form which is different from its directnatural form in order to appear as value in respect of other commodities, to bevalid as value and to act on these as value.71

Marx tries to explain this process by means of an example:

In a certain sense, a man is in the same situation as a commodity. As he neitherenters into the world in possession of a mirror, nor as a Fichtean philosopher whocan say I am I, a man first sees and recognises himself as a man through hisrelation to another man. Peter only relates to himself as a man through hisrelation to another man, Paul, in whom he recognises his likeness. With this,however, Paul also becomes from head to toe, in his physical form as Paul, theform of appearance of the species man for Peter.72

In considering this footnote, the question arises as to whether Marxs argument,detached from its explanatory character, is convincing. However, what this isactually about, what this comment shows exactly in its very contestability,what Marx is trying to explain here, is the direct unity of the specific and theuniversal, between use-value and value.

Te comment referred to in the above example (the curious thing . . . aboutthe reflection categories, namely that being equivalent. . . is, so to speak, onlya reflection categoryof the linen, but that it actually appears in reverse) is anexplanation of the external reflection: that which is posited is discovered; theequivalent form appears to belong to the object by virtue of its very nature the king appears to be the natural person to be the king.

Is the equivalent form perceived at all, however?

Because they considered that in the equation of value the equivalent always hasthe form of a simple quantity of some article, of a use-value, Bailey and many ofhis predecessors and followers were misled into seeing the expression of value asmerely a quantitative relation; whereas in fact the equivalent form of a commodity

contains no quantitative determination of value.73

Te equivalent form as such is the form of direct exchangeability, which in our consciousness coincides directly with the use-value; the object isvalid exclusively as objectivity, as direct objectivity of the value. What isperceived, however, is only the object. Te form of equal validity or also theform of direct validity of value is, therefore, the object as value-objectivity

71. Marx 1978, p. 138 (emphasis by Marx).72. Marx 1976b, p. 144.73. Marx 1976b, p. 148 (my emphasis, H.R.).


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[Wertgegenstndlichkeit], but this is not in our intentional consciousness. Tevalue-objectivity as such is not perceived, it nevertheless is registered but

registered in the form of a sensory object, precisely because the real object isvalid as objectivity. As an external reflection, consciousness takes over categoriesof the object (conventional dimensions) and treats them as categories ofobjectivity.

Te people doing the exchange are therefore not aware of what they aredoing, that is, of what their thoughts are doing: as people acting intentionally,their consciousness is concentrated on the objects in front of their eyes thecommodities of the economists. Within this structural situation, they are,however, obliged to engage in a process of equating, which is at the same time

a value-positing act, of which they themselves are unaware. Here, what wehave is exchange-value-positing interaction in contrast to exchange-value-positing labour.

Although the micro-structure of the abstraction process in the comparisonof two exchange products will be developed as the nucleus of money, we stillhave not yet arrived at the money-form itself. How is this process to beconceived in order to understand this act of positing as constitutive of themoney-form itself as well? Te first chapter of the first edition of Capitalconcludes with the comment that commodities have up to this point been

viewed analytically sometimes from the point of view of use value, sometimesfrom the point of view of exchange value. Marx adds, however, that thesubject of further examination will be the real relationship of the commoditiesto one another, and this is their exchange process.74Te aim of the analyticalcontemplation of commodities, from the point of view of exchange-value,was to prove the development of an equivalent form which, in its universality,corresponds to the universality of the concept of value.75In the presentation ofthe actual relationship, that is, the presentation of the reality of the formationof money, the relationship between exchange-value and use-value must be

discussed. Te formation of a universal equivalent form must simultaneouslytake place by selecting a corresponding use-value. A comment made in thesecond chapter of Capital, Volume 1 is important in this context, although itstheoretical significance has not been recognised in the literature on Marx. Heemphasises that only the action of society can turn a particular commodity

74. Marx 1976a, p. 51. Tis last paragraph (a similar point was made in Marx 1987), whichis important from a methodological point of view, was deleted by Marx in the second edition of

Capital, Volume 1.75. It is only through its universal character that the value form corresponds to the valueconcept (Marx 1978, p. 146).


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into the universal equivalent.76 Tis refers to the use-value of the money-commodity, and the social action refers to the conscious selection of an object

which is suitable for the money-function.Such an argument would have to be rejected if it implied that money was

consciously devised as a means to reduce the complexity of the exchangeprocess. Money would then be a technical medium based on the universalacceptance of a specific useful object. However, universal acceptance is notidentical with universal validity. Universal validity, for its part, is bound touniversal acceptance. Te specific usefulness which stamps the object asmoney, simultaneously universalises and standardises the movement ofthought about the equating process which is present in the minds of all people

carrying out an exchange. Te form of direct exchangeability becomes auniversal equivalent form, the unity of all commodities exists as a specificalongside the multiple. Money is a sensory-supersensory phenomenon: assomething with validity, it is, and it isonly because it is valid; the material isvalid as value-objectivity, and the value-objectivity exists as object.

Marx characterises this process of the formation of the universal equivalentform in the Appendix to the first edition of Capitalas follows:

Tis exclusioncan be apurely subjective process, for example, a process by which

the linen owner assesses the value of his own commodity in terms of many othercommodities. In contrast to this, a commodity is in general equivalent-form(form III) only because and insofar as it itself is excluded as equivalent by all othercommodities. Te exclusionis here an objective processwhich is independent of theexcluded commodity. Hence in the historical development of the value form, thegeneral equivalent-form may pertain now to this and now to that commodity.But a commodity never functions in fact[wirklich] as general equivalent, exceptinsofar as its exclusion and therefore its equivalent-form is a result of an objectivesocial process.77

Te definition of the economic categories given at the beginning, namely thatthey are subjective-objective and an objective form of thought, must be readbefore this passage from the Appendix. Te subjective process of equating,taking place in the head of the linen owner when he equates his linen withall other products (a process through which all other products becomeequivalent forms, although these forms obviously only exist, that is, are valid,in his thoughts) does not become an objective process in the sense that it walksout of his head and materialises in a mystical manner. Te objectivity of the

76. Marx 1976b, p. 181.77. Marx 1978, pp. 1489 (emphasis by Marx).


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process exists in the reversal by which a commodity becomes a universalequivalent form. Tis, however, is still a thought process; the form of thought

becomes objective. ypically enough, Marx later speaks of an objective socialprocess (my emphasis, H.R.), by means of which both aspects are conceivedtogether, the objectivity of the reversal and the selection of the specific use-value which is suitable as the money form. Te unity of both processes, namelythe constitution of universal validity and the establishment of universalacceptance, is summarised by Marx in the phrase general social validity.78

We see that the actual money-form proper offers in itself no difficulty at all. Oncewe have understood the general equivalent-form we do not need to rack ourbrains to understand that this equivalent-form attaches itself to a specific type ofcommodity such as gold, and still less insofar as the general equivalent form in itsvery nature requires the social exclusion of a definite commodity by all othercommodities. It is now only a matter of this exclusion winning an objectivelysocial consistency and general validity, and hence does not concern differentcommodities in turnnor possess a merely local reach[ragweite] in only particularareas of the world of commodities.79

Te general equivalent form as a form of exchangeability existing in a specificuse form, in other words, a generally valid direct form, shows signs of thatreversal which Marx understood in the first edition of

Capital, Volume 1 as a

characteristic of a universal, and which he more precisely designates with theHegelian term inclusion [Einbegreifens]. An individual object which in itselfincludesall real existing types of the same object is a universal, for exampleanimal, god etc. Te specific is not subsumed under an abstract universal, butis included and, with that, it is simultaneously abstraction and totality.

Te conditions which I referred to at the beginning of this article havetherefore been fulfilled: the so-called real abstraction is an objective conceptwhich, as the direct unity of validity and being [Sein], goes beyond thecommon idea of objectivity as inter-subjective validity, and which satisfies thedemanding philosophical requirement of simultaneously existing as auniversal.

If, therefore, we abandon the Baedecker version of Marx,80it becomes clearthat, in Capital, Marx has the conceptual means at his disposal, for the firsttime, to realise his early theoretical characterisation of money as in words

78. Marx 1978, p. 149.

79. Marx 1978, p. 150.80. A phrase which Adorno liked to use in lectures to point out that authors should alwaysbe read differently to whatever way is customary.


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identical to those of Hegel the existing concept of the value of all things.What is also realised or stated more precisely is what Adorno called objective

abstraction, namely a conceptuality which holds sway in reality [Sache] itself ,and which provides a necessary starting point for further explication of thedynamics of the exchange principle.

Existing universal versus real abstraction

What exactly is the difference between Marxs objective concept and Simmelsreal abstraction? Simmel explicates the phenomenon of the validity of valuein the first few pages of his Philosophy of Money, but then explains that itdevelops in this abstract form only with money. His point of departure is thesame as Marxs: a direct exchange of products which is gradually expanded.But he has no account which corresponds to Marxs discussion of the changefrom subjective to objective form of thought. It is, however, through thischange and the inversion which accompanies it, that value is constructed as anexisting universal.

Simmels real abstraction, however, contents itself with the point that thedirect unity of an object with the subjectively interpreted value is a valueexperience.

In the primitive stages of the economy, use-values appear as money: cattle, salt,slaves, hides etc. Whatever the way in which money has evolved, in the beginningit must have been a value directly experiencedas such.81

Te point of departure for the development is always the unity of the valueexperience with the object which serves as money.

Money could not have developed as a means of exchange or as a measure of value

unless its material substancehad been experienced as immediately valuable.82

However, is this also the point of departure for the development of theobjective value? Simmel emphasises that it would be a serious misunderstandingto interpret this unity in the sense of the independent value of each; it wouldonly be the error of this substantialist interpretation, which is, as far asmethod is concerned, the same

81. Simmel 1978, p. 142 (my emphasis, H.R.).82. Simmel 1978, p. 143 (emphasis by Simmel).


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as that which asserts a direct connection between an individual and the contentof any right. . . . Te individualistic conception of the rights of men provides anexample.83

For in the further development of the exchange process, it becomes clear thatthis substance gives way to function, that the object experienced as beingvaluable was only a carrier, in the end a symbol.

It may appear self-evident today that symbols should be created by segregatingthe quantitative aspects of things; but this is in fact an achievement of the humanmind which has remarkable consequences. Te institution of money dependsupon it in as much as money represents pure quantity in a numerical form,

regardless of all the specific qualities of a valued object. An account from ancientRussia illustrates a very characteristic transition from the qualitative to thequantitative symbolic representation. Originally, marten furs served as a means ofexchange. As trade developed, the size and quality of individual pelts lost allsignificance for their exchange value; each pelt simply equalled any other, andonly the number of pelts mattered. Eventually only the tips of the pelts were usedas money, and finally pieces of leather, probably stamped by the government,circulated as a means of exchange. Tis clearly illustrates how the reduction to aquantitative viewpoint supports the symbolisation of values, which is the basisfor the genuine realisation of money.84

Te substantialism at the beginning is therefore an unavoidable, but neverthelesserroneous interpretation (since it is no different at the beginning than with anobject experienced as being valuable); the object itself is, in so far as it assumes amoney-function, always already a symbol, which then also develops over time.

Te preceding argument has not yet touched upon the question as to whether inreality money has value or not. It was only meant to show that the function ofmoney in measuring values does not impose upon it the character of being itselfa valuable object.85

But what does money symbolise? It symbolises relations: just as it is

irrelevant whether a scale to measure space consists of iron, wood or glass, sinceonly the relation of its parts to each other or to another measure concerns us, sothe scale that money provides for the determination of values has nothing to dowith the nature of its substance.86

83. Simmel 1978, p. 126.

84. Simmel 1978, p. 150.85. Simmel 1978, p. 142.86. Simmel 1978, p. 147.


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And in this connection, Simmel quietly smuggles in another concept of value.Suddenly, it becomes a value that objects acquire by their exchangeability,87

and the significance of money is only to express the value relationsbetween other objects . . . independent of any intrinsic value.88Tis distilledexchangeability of objects89is therefore, to begin with, conceived as quantitativeequivalence, which is likewise sublimated over time into progressively moreabstract relations.

It is indeed correct that the quantities of different objects can be compared onlyif they are of the same quality; wherever measurement is done by directcomparisonof two quantities it presupposes identical qualities. But wherever a change, adifference or the relation between two quantities is to be measured, it is sufficientfor their determination that the proportions of the measuring objects are reflectedby the proportions of those measured; and there need be no qualitative identityof the objects. wo objectswith different qualities cannot be equalised, but twoproportionsbetween qualitatively different things may be.90

Tis is the origin of Simmels idealism. He emphasises the direct unity of valueand substance.

Tus the ancient Irish, when they entered into relations with the Romans, madetheir own value-unit, the cow, equivalent to an ounce of silver.91

However, Simmel is unable to distinguish between the most marketablecommodity as an object in the objectively posited form of universal, immediateexchangeability, and this same object as the object of value experience. Tecow is indeed a direct value-unit but, since its nominal and real value later partcompany in subsequent development, the idea of the unity of value and objectcan only have been the error of a substantialist interpretation. Te relation istherefore inverted: an objectively posited, direct unity of value objectivity andobject is not the condition for the possibility of the establishment of relations;but the valid, abstract relations which have already been conceived as beingdifferentiated, must become embodied.92Money derives its content from itsvalue; it is value turned into a substance.93

87. Simmel 1978, p. 130.88. Simmel 1978, p. 147.89. Simmel 1978, p. 124.90. Simmel 1978, p. 132.

91. Simmel 1978, p. 134.92. Simmel 1989, p. 212.93. Simmel 1978, p. 121.


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If Adornos assumption is correct that economic value is to be conceived asthe actual starting point of the neo-Kantian philosophy of value initiated by

Lotze, then the key to the foundation of Adornos thesis should be found inSimmels Philosophy of Money. I have mentioned above that the neo-Kantianconcept of validity as the remarkable ability elevated to philosophicalconsciousness, as the primary quality of our mind, which cannot be reducedany further, to think of contents as being independent of the act of thinking,94is not to be determined, for its part, independently of the precise phenomenologyof the validity of value. Objective value, which like every other value in thephilosophy of value should exist only as validity, is in its supra-subjectivecharacter a primary phenomenon.95Its existence is inseparably linked with

an a priorimanifestation. Terefore, for neo-Kantianism, the separation offactuality and validity is the last word. Tis chorismos [separation] itself,however, is something posited in the sense of the Hegelian objective reflection.Simmel (rightly) assumes that this metaphysical category of value which isdiscovered as a fact in our consciousness as an objective value96 whichattaches97 to objects, appears as a concept which seems to be independentfrom the act of thinking, and which should, as something objective, insertitself between subject and object. In other words, something which

in fact, . . . is a third category, which cannot be derived from either subject orobject, but which stands, so to speak, between us and the objects . . .98

in this specific form of validity only within the context of the economy(exchange process). Simmel shares this unreflective concept of reality with theeconomists, a concept which only knows objects, goods which are exchanged a technological process. He therefore has in mind similar to Hegels naturalconsciousness an objective reality of objects, which he compares with theconsciously perceiving subject.

But how do we get to the value concept as a fact which seems to beindependent in our consciousness from the act of thinking and to the form ofan objective, abstract value portrayed so precisely by Simmel? Te latterassumes that the development starts with the unity of the object and the valueexperience (the substantiality of which should turn out to be an error): in the

94. Simmel 1989, p. 32.95. Simmel 1989, p. 27.

96. Simmel 1989, p. 36.97. Simmel 1989, p. 37.98. Ibid.


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case of metal currency, this is then the gold quantity, which directly coincideswith a value quantity, with a value amount: the money amount is the gold

amount. With the process of symbolisation, however, this substantial unitydisintegrates; money becomes the sign. But where does this leave the goldquantity as the measure of value? Te value amount, which previously existedas direct value-objectivity, as objective appearance, survives as objectiveappearance in the concept, as an abstract objective value, which seems to existindependently of the act of being conceived. Still, Simmel changes thisappearance into something primary, which is discovered in consciousness as afact, a valid objectivity which only exists in our consciousness, but which isconceived in our consciousness as having value-existence outside it. Simmels

neo-Kantianism, the complete separation of being and validity, is in itself(as Hegel would have said) only a way of formulating appearances which areinvolved in the circulation of money.

What is decisive for economic theory is how the concept of validity isunderstood: only as the validity of value in our consciousness, as in the case ofSimmel, or in the sense of the objective positing of the validity of value, asoutlined above, and which constitutes the object as value-objectivity.

Dialectical development as presentation of the autonomisation of value

Te structural presentation of the argument of Capitalwas established longbefore Marx conceived this concept of validity of value. Contrary to theconception of simple circulation and its two-fold meaning as outlined in theGrundrisse, in Capitalonly one aspect is still relevant for the presentation: nolonger simple circulation as historical prerequisite for capital,99but how withinthe bourgeois mode of production simple circulation itself exists only asdetermined by capital, and as determining it.100Tis implies that Marx alwaysalready proceeds on the basis that commodities are the product of capital, in

99. Te simple circulation, merely the exchange of commodity and money (the exchangeof commodities in mediated form) precisely because it is only mediating movement betweenpresupposed points of departure, can (up to the formation of hoards) historically exist withoutexchange value taking hold of the production of a people, whether on the whole surface or in itsdepths. At the same time, however, historical development shows how circulation itself leads tobourgeois, i.e. exchange-value-positing, production and creates for itself a basis other than thatfrom which it directly sprang. Te exchange of surpluses is commerce creating exchange and

exchange value. However, it extends only to the act of exchange itself and runs alongsideproduction itself (Marx and Engels 1978a, p. 480). See Marx and Engels 1980, p. 67.100. Marx and Engels 1987a, p. 505; Marx and Engels 1980, p. 91.


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other words that value is the objectification of the abstract-universal labour ofthe labourer. Te concept of value derived from this conception is a

precondition for the structural organisation of the argument and cannot beintroduced as a concept of validity. Validity can only be isolated as a centraltheme within the context of the process of circulation, as the starting pointand prerequisite for the development of a labour value theory in whichabstract-universal labour and labour-time can likewise still be developed fromthe validity conception of value (and do not, as in the Ricardian version ofMarxs critique of the economy, generally accepted until now, remaindisconnected from one another). Te conception of the Grundrisse, however,which establishes a connection between labour as such (a form of universal

direct exchangeability)101

and the practical truth of abstract labour as exchange-value-positing labour, provides access to a version which fits in with bothmeanings of the concept of simple circulation and which can link the theo-retical and practical truth of abstract labour with the concept of validity.

For this is the true meaning of the dialectical development which is to beunderstood as the methodologically reflected presentation of the increasingautonomy of exchange-value, and which, for Marx when he wrote theGrundrisse, was identical to the depiction of the emergence of capitalistsociety.102Tis dialectical presentation of the autonomisation of value could

101. If we develop value as abstraction, the universal equivalent form as existing universal,then specific labour as the presentation of universal labour can also be decoded as the implicationof the existing validity of value. For objects, as surplus products, are obviously also labourproducts; and the commodities, since they have a price, present themselves by dint of theuniversal equivalent form as the specifics of a unity. What is the substance of this unity? Sincethe use-value, which assumes the function of the universal equivalent form, is also a labourproduct, this specific labour directly functions as universal labour and the specific labours as thespecifics of the one, universal labour. Marxs formulations, and not only those of the first edition,clearly show that he understood the concept of universal labour as an implication of the concept

of validity: Just like the linen therefore became the individual equivalentas a result of anothercommodity referring to it as the appearance form of value, so it becomes, as the appearance formof the value common to all commodities, the universal equivalent, universal value body, universalmaterial of abstract human labour(Marx and Engels 1983b emphasis by Marx). Marx went onto say: Te specificlabour materialised in it is therefore now valid(my emphasis, H.R.) as theuniversal realisation form of human labour, as universal labour. It must be pointed out howeverthat this concept of universal labour is not identical to the labour as such in the Grundrisse.Cf. footnote 118.

102. Te transition from capital to landed property is also historical, since landed propertyin its modern form is a product of the action of capital on feudal etc., landed property. In thesame way, the transition from landed property to wage labour is not only dialectical but historical,

since the last product of modern landed property is the general introduction of wage labour,which then appears as the basis of the whole business. Letter to Engels, 2 April 1858, in Marxand Engels 1983, p. 298 (my emphasis, H.R.).


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also concretise Adornos thesis: it is not society that is intelligible, but onlythe law of autonomisation. Contrary to sociology, which at best uses the

words becoming autonomous to characterise the mode of operation ofbureaucratic organisations from the point of view of their conduct, that is,simply to formulate an everyday experience,103Adorno defines society itself asthat which has become autonomous.

It is this concept of society which Marx first formulated in the Economicand Philosophical Manuscripts, although in language that encouragedmisinterpretation. Using a chiasmus,104Marx tries to understand capitalism asa structurally unsurpassable apex of a topsy-turvy world in which thelabourer(i.e. every labourer) simultaneously and directly through his labour produces

the very opposite of that which he, as a sensory-aware being, observes andintends as he interacts with the material and living world of his fellow humanbeings. Tis reversal is the result of an autonomisation which Marx characterisesgenerally as estrangement. In Te German Ideology, scarcely two years later, heexpresses the same thoughts in a different way:

Te reality, which communism is creating, is precisely the true basis for renderingit impossible that anything should exist independently of individuals, insofar asreality is only a product of the preceding intercourse of individuals themselves.105

Marx already points out in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts thatthis entire topsy-turvy world is to be developed out of money.106However,how this is to take place remains completely open. Instead, using the conceptof the division of labour and Adam Smiths idea of accumulation, a materialisttheory of history is sketched in which all past social history is conceived fromthe perspective of this culmination point, as the gradual result of embryonicand simplistic versions of this inverted form of sociality.107

103. In the corresponding theoretical language, this is: the intensification of systemcomplexity as the institutionalisation of new levels of system differentiation as perceived fromthe internal perspectives of the life-worlds in question. See Habermas 1987, p. 172.

104. Chiasmus is a rhetorical figure in which a given order of words is first stated, and thenreversed. For instance, Marx (1976b, p.166) says that in capitalism producers relate to each otherthrough their products, and thus commodity fetishism involves material relations betweenpersons and social relations between things.

105. Marx and Engels 1976, p. 81.106. We now have to grasp the essential connection between private property, greed, the

separation of labour, capital and landed property, exchange and competition, value and the

devaluation of man, monopoly, and competition, etc. the connection between this entiresystem of estrangement and the moneysystem (Marx 1975, p. 323, emphasis by Marx).107. Cf. my introduction to Reichelt 1975, p. 9 ff.


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Te Grundrissecan be seen as the first attempt to implement in detail thisinsight of the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, an attempt continued

in Capitalwhere estranged labour is presented as the structural apex of thistheoretical development.

An interpretation of this dialectical presentation must try to maintainclarity about the interconnections between that which is conscious-intentionaland that which detaches itself from consciousness. Te aim is to avoidobjectivism in all its varieties and, at the same time, to maintain Adornoscharacterisation of society as that which is unintelligible or, to put hisformula more precisely, to reconstruct the law of the autonomisation ofsociety as the only rationally understandable aspect of a social process of

irrationalisation. Adorno, however, never clarified this idea: what can under-stand mean when what is involved is the reconstruction of the unintelligible?Tat Adornos dialectical concept of meaning itself has been dialecticallyconceived, that is meaning has been restricted to that which appears, hasbeen indicated above. However, how is this societal essence which shapesappearances, appears in them and conceals itself in them to be comprehendedin its dynamics? Te accusation of essentialism cannot be made to stick if onesucceeds in proving the development of an objective conceptual that blocksitself off from hermeneutic access but which simultaneously unfolds its own

logicality [Logizitt] in and through the actions of individual subjects.Te development of Marxs categories and his criticism of the economistsmust be seen against this background. In his accusation that they graspthe categories only in an external way, Marx repeats Hegels criticism of thephilosophy of understanding. In contrast to reason, understanding analysespatterns of action in an external way as fixed and absolute: individual subjectsare presupposed as completely formed, and are presumed to confront fullydeveloped categorial forms. But the truth is, however, that new categoriesemerge historically and are associated with the emergence of new forms of

subjectivity. If, however, the categories are grasped in only a fixed and externalway, then the general context, within which forms of subjectivity aredetermined, must also be treated as fixed: rather than subjects who pursuetheir goals with truly rational strategies, we have instead the narrow economicsof rational choice.

Marxs language in the Grundrisse is in keeping with this intention. Werepeatedly find terms such as the following: undeveloped value, in the furtherdevelopment of exchange value,108 exchange value in its movement,109

108. Marx 1973, p. 238.109. Ibid.


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exchange value becoming independent in money,110 completed exchangevalue.111Tese formulations certainly provoke the accusation of objectivism

but, nevertheless, we should understand these expressions as an adequatelinguistic portrayal of an objective dynamic. Te objectivity involved is basedprecisely on the logical unconsciousness of the subjects who, by means oftheir conscious actions, drive this process forward. Programmatically, thefollowing can be observed: if we understand exchange-value as having becomeindependent as a really existing universal, then Marxs concept of capital isbased exclusively on the movement of this value, which represents the startingpoint and central impulse of the social dynamic and which can then inAdornos words be characterised as the societal essence which shapes

appearances, appears in them and conceals itself in them wholly in agreementwith Marxs intentions. For Marx, the concept of capital and the associatedmethod for developing categories, were linked simultaneously to the idea thatthe concept of capital adequately accounts for the dynamics of the realautonomisation of value. Starting from an existing principle of exchange-value becoming autonomous in the processes of circulation,112Marx traced itsprocess of development, and its self-generated legitimacy, to the point wherehe was able to anticipate its endogenously generated collapse:

We are present at the process of its [capitals] becoming. Tis dialectical processof its becoming is only

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