Alfred Sohn-Rethel
Intellectual and Manual Labour A Critique of Epistemology (London,
Macmillan, 1976)
Preface
This enquiry is concerned with the relationship between base and
superstructure in the Marxian sense. This, to a large extent, is the story
of a revolution that never happened. In it re-echo the thunder of the gun
battle for the Marstall in Berlin at Christmas 1918, and the shooting of`
the Spartacus rising in the following winter. The paradoxical condition of
this ideological movement may help to explain its almost exclusive
preoccupation with superstructural questions, and the conspicuous lack of
concern for the material and economic base that should have been underlying
it. As far as I was concerned, though not a member of the Spartacus
movement, I was stirred by the political events, partaking in discussions at
street-corners and public meeting-halls, lying under window-sills while
bullets pierced the windows - experiences which are traced in the pages to
follow. My political awakening started in 1916, at the age of I7 and still
at school, when I began reading August Bebel and Marx. I was thrown out of
home and was part of the beginning of the anti- war rebellion of students in
my first university year at Heidelberg in 1917 with Ernst Toller as a
leading figure. For us the world could have fallen to pieces if only Marx
remained intact. But then everything went wrong. The Revolution moved
forward and backward and finally ebbed away. Lenin's Russia receded further
and further into the distance. At university we learned that even in Marx
there were theoretical flaws, that marginal utility economics had rather
more in its favour and that Max Weber had successfully contrived
sociological antidotes against the giant adversary Marx. But this teaching
only made itself felt within the academic walls. Outside there were livelier
spirits about, among them my unforgettable friend Alfred Seidel, who in 1924
committed suicide. Here, outside the university, the end of the truth had
not yet come. I glued myself to Marx and began in earnest to read Capital
with a relentless determination not to let go. It must have taken some two
years when in the background of my university studies I scribbled mountains
of paper, seizing upon every one of the vital terms occurring in the first
sixty pages of Capital, turning them round and round for definitions, and
above all for metaphorical significance, taking them to, pieces and putting
them together again. And what resulted from this exercise was the
unshakeable certainty of the penetrating truth of Marxist thinking, combined
with an equally unshakeable doubt about the theoretical consistency of the
commodity analysis as it stood. There were more and other things in it than
Marx had succeeded in reaching! And finally, with an effort of concentration
bordering on madness, it came upon me that in the innermost core of
commodity structure there was to be found the 'transcendental subject'.
Without need to say so, it was obvious to everybody that this was sheer
lunacy, and no one was squeamish about telling me so! But I knew that I had
grasped the beginning of a thread whose end was not yet in sight. But the
secret identity of commodity form and thought form which I had glimpsed was
so hidden within the bourgeois world that my first naive attempt to make
others see it only had the result that I was given up as a hopeless case.
'Sohn-Rethel is crazy!' was the regretful and final verdict of my tutor
Alfred Weber (brother of Max), who had had a high opinion of me. In these
circumstances there was of course no hope of an academic career either, with
the consequence that I remained outsider all my life with my idee fixe. Only
a few isolated spirits outsiders like myself, had kindred ideas in their
minds, and none more sympathetically so than Adorno, who in his own manner
was on the same track. We checked up on this together in 1936. He in his
whole mental make-up was occupied with completely different matters rather
than the analysis of commodity economics. Therefore even my contact with him
was only partial and I was thrown back on my own resources for unravelling
my thread of truth. That this process was full of deadlocks and long periods
of interruptions, both for reasons of money-earning and because of other
difficulties, goes without saying. The interruptions, periods of complete
recession, add up to even longer durations than the periods of theoretical
work. The time between 1924 and 1927 was spent in Italy, mainly in Capri
where Benjamin and Bloch were staying; then to Davos for an international
university course, where I met Heidegger, Ernst Cassirer, Alexander Koyre
and others, but had to remain for two and a half years for a cure for
tuberculosis. When I returned to Germany to face the slump, with absolutely
no financial resources, I was lucky to find work in an office of big
business in Berlin. There I was also engaged in illegal anti-Nazi
activities, escaping from arrest by the Gestapo to reach England in 1937. In
Birmingham I met Professor George Thomson, the only other man I have known
who had also recognised the interconnection of philosophy and money,
although in a completely different field from my own - in ancient Greece. I
finally finished a long manuscript, 'Intellectual and Manual Labour', in
1951, which despite strenuous efforts by Thomson and Bernal, was turned down
by the publishers Lawrence Wishart as being too unorthodox for them, and by
bourgeois publishers as being too militantly Marxist! Until 1970 only three
small texts of mine were published Since 1970 several of my books have
appeared in Germany (see p. 213) as a result of which I was appointed Guest
Professor at the University of Bremen from 1972 to 1976�
For the present English version of this book I am particularly: indebted to
Dr Wifried van der Will for reading my script : for his unstinting advice
and critical comment; also to my son Martin for his work as translator, and
to the late Sigurd Zienau for stimulating discussions during many years of
friendship. My inextinguishable gratitude is due to Joan, my wife, for her
untiring effort and unflagging devotion to my work, which has become ours in
common.
*I n t r o d u c t i on*
Our epoch is widely regarded as 'the Age of Science'. Indeed science, and
especially scientific technology, exerts an influence upon production and
through production upon the economic and the class relations of society.
The effects of this have thrown into disarray the historical expectations
and conceptions o people convinced of the need for socialism. We are no
longer sure of our most trusted ideas of 'scientific socialism' or of our
theoretical image of capitalism. How is the progressive de- struction of
money through inflation in accord with the labour law of value? Are the
profits of multinational corporations in keeping with the mechanics of
surplus-value? What are the social implications and economics of a
technology which tends to absorb the work of human labour? Does this
technology widen or narrow the gulf between mental and manual labour? Does
it help or hinder a socialist revolution? How does the profit and loss
account on the balance sheets of capital relate to the balance between man
and nature? Is modern technology class-neutral? Is modern science
class-biased? Has Marxist analysis kept up with the changes of society we
have witnessed since the two World Wars? Our insights must reach
sufficiently deep to enable us to understand our modern world in Marxist
terms and guide our revolutionary practice. Historical materialism was
conceived by Marx as the method of the scientific understanding of history.
No other position can offer an alternative. The present study has been
undertaken in the belief that an extension to Marxist theory is needed for a
fuller understanding of our own epoch. Far from moving away from Marxism
this should lead deeper into it. The reason why many essential questions of
today cause such difficulties is that our thinking is not Marxist enough -
it leaves important areas unexplored. We understand 'our epoch' as that in
which the transition from capitalism to socialism and the building of a
socialist society are the order of the day. In contrast, Marx's epoch was
engaged in the capitalist process of development; its theoretical
perspective was limited to the trends pushing this development to its
limits It is clear that this change of historical scenery shifts the
Marxist field of vision in a significant way. The transition from
capitalism to socialism means, according to Marx, 'the ending of
pre-history' - the transition from the uncontrolled to the fully conscious
development of mankind. To understand society in its final capitalist phase
one needs a precise insight into the causality and interrelationships
between the growth of the material productive forces and the social
relations of production. Marx's Capital certainly contains countless
references to the mental superstructure determined by the social basis and
also to the indispensable intellectual foundations of production, but the
problem of the formation of consciousness is not the primary concern of
Marx's main work. In our epoch, however, it has assumed crucial importance.
We speak of these intellectual foundations because a historical materialist
insight into present-day technology and its scientific basis is essential
for the possibility of a consciously organised society. In fact Marx did
not focus his attention on a historical- materialist understanding of
natural science. In the famous methodological guide-lines of 1859 science
is not mentioned as part of the mental superstructure, but it should indeed
provide the guide-line for a standpoint of thinking which is itself
scientific. Marx saw his own viewpoint as historically conditioned and as
anchored in the labour theory of value; it is scientific because it
corresponds to the standpoint of the proletariat. But natural science was
not given a place as either belonging to the ideological superstructure or
the social base. The references to science in Capital appear to take their
intrinsic methodological possibilities for granted. The
historical-materialist omission of the enquiry into the conceptual
foundation of science has lead to a schism of thought within the
contemporary Marxist camp. On the one hand, all phenomena contained in the
world of consciousness, whether past, present or future, are understood
historically as time-bound and dialectic. On the other hand, questions of
logic, mathematics and science are seen as ruled by timeless standards. Is
a Marxist thus a materialist as far as historical truth is concerned but an
idealist when confronted by the truth of nature? Is his thought split
between two concepts of truth: the one dialectical and time-bound, the other
undialectical, consigning any awareness of historical time to oblivion?
That Marx's own thinking was not rent by any such incom- patibilitics goes
without saying. Extensive proof is found in his early writings, and in the
Communist Manifesto. Particularly illuminating are the references to the
sciences in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (p.111)' which
prove that in his historical-materialist conception the sciences were
originally included. The relevant evidence and arguments are contained in
Alfred Schmidt's outstanding study, 'The Concept Of Nature In The Theory Of
Marx'. Even in the Foreword of the first edition of Capital Marx calls the
'evolution of the economic formation . . a process of natural history' and
he explains that his own method of approach is calculated to bring out the
truth of this statement. But he did not clarify the issue sufficiently to
prevent the thought of his successors and followers splitting into two
contradictory concepts of truth. Whether the split is overcome or not is
vital for the modern theory and practice of socialism. The creation of
socialism demands that society makes modern developments in science and
technology subservient to its needs. If on the other hand, science and
technology elude historical-materialist under- standing, mankind might go,
not the way of socialism, but that of technocracy; society would not rule
over technology but technology over society, and this not only applies to
the western world where technocratic thought is based on positivism; it is
no less true of some socialist countries which revere technocracy in the
name of 'dialectical materialism'. Thus a historical- materialist
explanation of the origins of scientific thought and its development is one
of the areas by which Marxist theory should be extended. There is
furthermore a lack of a theory of intellectual and manual labour, of their
historical division and the conditions for their possible reunification. In
the 'Critique of the Gotha Programme' Marx makes reference to the
antithesis that a higher phase of communist society becomes possible only
'after the enslaving subordination of individuals under division of labour,
and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labour, has
vanished'. But before understanding how this antithesis can be removed it
is necessary to understand why it arose in the first place. Clearly the
division between the labour of head and hand stretches in one form or
another throughout the whole history of class society and economic
exploitation. It is one of the phenomena of alienation on which
exploitation feeds. Neverthe- less, it is by no means self-apparent how a
ruling class invariably has at its command the specific form of mental
labour which it requires. And although by its roots it is obviously bound
up with the conditions underlying the class rule the mental labour of a
particular epoch does require a certain independence to be of use to the
ruling class. Nor are the bearers of the mental labour be they priests,
philosophers or scientists, the main beneficiaries of the rule to which
they contribute; they remain its servants. The objective value of their
function, and even the standard of truth itself, emerge in history in the
course of the division of head and hand which in its turn is part of the
class rule. Thus: objective truth and its class function are connected at
their very roots and it is only if they can be seen thus linked, logically
and historically, that they can be explained. But what implications does
this have for the possibility of a modern, classless and yet highly-
technologi- cal society? This question leads on to the need for a further
extension of Marxist theory which did not arise at an earlier epoch; what
is in fact the effective line of differentiation between a class society
and a classless one. They are both forms of social production relations
but this general concept does not convey the difference on which depends
the transition from capitalism to socialism, and the varying shades of
socialism. What is needed is a specific and unambiguous criterion of social
structure, not of ideology, by which a classless society should be
recognisable as essentially different from all class societies. The three
groups of questions raised here stand in an inner relationship to each
other. The link connecting them is the social synthesis: the network of
relations by which society forms a coherent whole. It is around this notion
that the major arguments of this book will revolve. As social forms develop
and change, so also does the synthesis which holds together the
multiplicity of links operating between men according to the division of
labour. Every society made up of a plurality of individuals is a network
coming into effect through their actions. How they act is of primary
importance for the social network; what they think is of secondary
importance. Their activities must interrelate in order to fit into a
society, and must contain at least a minimum of uniformity if the society is
to function as a whole. This coherence can be conscious or unconscious but
exist it must - otherwise society would cease to be viable and the
individuals would come to grief as a result of their multiple dependencies
upon one another. Expressed in very general terms this is a precondition
for the survival of every kind of society; it formulates what I term
'social synthesis'. This notion is thus nothing other than a constituent
part of the Marxian concept of 'social formation', a part which, in the
course of my long preoccupation with historical forms of` thinking, has
become indispensable to my understanding of man's social condition. From
this observation I derive the general epistemological proposition that the
socially necessary forms of thinking of an epoch are those in conformity
with the socially synthetic functions of that epoch. It will, I think, help
the reader's comprehension of the somewhat intricate investigation contained
in this book if I give a broad outline of the underlying conception.
'It is not the consciousness of men that determine their being, but, on the
contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.' This
statement of Marx is not meant as the pronouncement of an intrinsic truth,
but is part of the precis of general methodological tenets characteristic of
the materialistic conception of history given in the Preface of 1859. This
precis indicates how the determination of men's consciousness by their
social being can be established in any particular instance. My investigation
is in strict keeping with the Marxian outline. But, while in that outline
the reference is to 'the legal, political, religious, aesthetic or
philosophical - in short, ideological forms' in which men become conscious
of their social conflicts and fight them out, my preoccupation is with the
conceptual foundations of the cognitive faculty vis-�-vis nature which in
ore properly termed 'the exchange abstraction'. The peculiar thesis, then,
argued on the following pages is to the effect that (1) commodity exchange
owes its socially syn- thetic function to an abstraction which it
originates, (2) that the abstraction is not of one piece but is a composite
of several elements, (3) that these elementary parts of the abstraction can
be separately defined, and (4) that, if this is done in sufficient detail,
these constituent elements of the exchange abstraction unmistakably resemble
the conceptual elements of the cognitive faculty emerging with the growth of
commodity production. As conceptual elements these forms are principles of
thought basic to Greek philosophy us well as modern natural science. In this
intellectual capacity they can be labelled by the convenient Kantian term of
categories a priori, especially as this can all the more drastically
contrast our materialist account of` the cat- egories with the idealistic
one of Kant. Additional argument- tation will attempt to show that not only
analogy but true identity exists between the formal elements of the social
synthesis and the formal constituents of cognition. We should then be
entitled to state that the conceptual basis of cognition is logically and
historically conditioned by the basic formation of the social synthesis of
its epoch. Our explanation thus argues that the categories are historical by
origin and social by nature. For they themselves effect the social synthesis
on the basis of commodity production in such a way that the cognitive
faculty they articulate is an a priori social capacity of the mind; although
it bears the exactly contrary appearance, that of obeying the principle of
ego cogito. Kant was right in his belief that the basic constituents of our
form of cognition are performed and issue from a prior origin, but he was
wrong in attributing this preformation to the mind itself engaged in the
phantasmagorical performance of 'transcendental syn- thesis a priori',
locatable neither in time nor in place. In a purely formal way Kant's
transcendental subject shows features of striking likeness to the exchange
abstraction in its distillation as money: first of all in its 'originally
synthetic' character but also in its unique oneness, for the multiplicity of
existing currencies cannot undo the essential oneness of their monetary
function. There can be little doubt, then, that the historical-materialist
explanation adopted here satisfies the formal exigencies of a theory of`
cognition. It accounts for the historical emergence the clear-cut division
of intellectual and manual labour associated with commodity production. And
by accounting for its genesis it should also help us in perceiving the
preconditions of its historical disappearance and hence of socialism as the
road to a classless society. As for Kant's idealistic construction, and that
his followers, it becomes clear that they serve to present the division of
head and hand as a transcendental necessity. If this thesis can be argued
convincingly it would dispose of the age-old idea that abstraction is the
exclusive privilege of thought; the mind would no longer be enshrined in its
own immanence. It would give room for a completely different appreciation of
science and of mental labour generally laying all intellectual activity open
for an understanding of it in terms of the social formation of its epoch
and critically evaluating its conceptual structure as well as its functional
application in the light of the pertinent social conspectus. It is clear,
on the other hand, that a thesis of this nature cannot draw on factual
evidence for its verification but must rely primarily on arguments of
reason. So also does the Marxian theory of value and of surplus-value. The
facts of history tell in its favour only when viewed in the light of the
categories established by the Marxian analysis of the conditions that endow
them with the historical reality of valid facts. Our theory is directly
concerned only with questions of form, form of consciousness and form of
social being, attempting to find their inner connection, a connection which,
in turn, affects our understanding of human history. The pivot of the
argument lies with the structural form of social being, or, more precisely,
with the formal characteristics attaching to commodity production and to the
social synthesis arising from it. Thus the Marxian critique of political
economy and our critique of bourgeois epistemology are linked by sharing the
same methodological foundation: the analysis of the com- modity in the
opening chapters of Capital and, prior to it, in the 'Contribution to the
Critique of Political Economy' of 1859. And the salient point of the
argument is that this link is one of formal identity. Nevertheless, the
difference in scope implies differences in the procedure of the analysis
which amount to more than mere shifts of emphasis. Marx was the first to
discover the 'commodity abstraction' at the root of the economic category of
value and he analysed it from the twofold viewpoint of form and of
magnitude. 'The exchange process gives to the commodity, which it transforms
to money, not its value, but its specific form of value', he states in the
chapter on 'Exchange'. The form and the magnitude of value spring from
different sources, the one from exchange, the other from labour. The
critique of political economy hinges upon the understanding of how they
combine to become the 'abstract human labour' constituting at once the form
and the substance of value. Thus the commodity abstraction or, as we would
say, the exchange abstraction is interpreted by Marx foremost as being the
'value abstraction- without involving the need to explore in any detail the
source from which the abstraction springs. This is in perfect keeping with
Marx's purpose of a critique of political economy. For our purpose, however,
we must concentrate in the first place on the formal aspect of value, not
only in preference to, but even in separation from its economic content of
labour. Or, to put it differently, we have to proceed from the commodity
abstraction to the source from where the abstraction emanates and must carry
through a painstakingly accurate and detailed analysis of the formal
structure of exchange as the basis of its socially synthetic function.
Thus, notwithstanding their common methodological foun- dation, the critique
of political economy and the critique of philosophical epistemology have to
pursue their tasks in complete independence of each other, in strict
accordance, that is, with the diverse systematic nature of their
subject-matters. The fields economics and of natural science have not a term
in common, and it would be a hopeless endeavour to try to cope with the
critique of epistemology by grafting it on to the Marxian critique of
political economy. It must be undertaken as an investigation standing on its
own ground to be judged by its own standards. This does not prevent both
those critical pursuits from being inseparably bound up with each other in
the results they yield for our understanding of history. The class
antagonisms which commodity production engenders in all its stages - in
Marx's terms 'the ancient classical, the feudal, and the modern bourgeois
modes of production' are intrinsically connected with closely corresponding
forms of division of head and hand; but how this connection operates will
become recognisable only when the form analysis of the exchange abstraction
has been accomplished.
Part One
Critique of Philosophical Epistemology
One: T h e F e t i s h i s m o f I n t e l l e c t u a l L a b o u r
A critique needs a well-defined object at which it is directed: we choose
philosophical epistemology. What is the salient feature which marks it as
our particular object' Which philosophy most significantly represents it and
is most rewarding to criticise? From the introduction it is clear that our
choice has fallen upon the Kantian theory of cognition. This does not,
however, mean that he reader must be a specialist in this particularly
daunting philosophy - far from it. Marx clarifies the object of his critique
as follows: 'let me point out once and for all that by classical political
economy I mean all the economists who, since the time of W. Petty, have
investigated the real internal framework of bourgeois relations of
production, as opposed to the vulgar economists . . .'' Classical political
economy in the sense of` this definition culminated in the work of` Adam
Smith (1723-90) and David Ricardo (1772-1823) and accordingly the discussion
of their theories bulks largest in Marx's critical studies for instance
those collected as Theories of Surplus Value. This does not, however, oblige
anyone to embark upon a study of Smith and Ricardo before reading Marx, even
though, conversely, it is essential to have read Marx before looking at
Smith and Ricardo. Marx's work in economics starts where the peak of
bourgeois economics reaches its limits. Can we draw any parallel to this
framework of the Marxian critique to elucidate our own undertaking in the
field of philosophical epistemology? I understand by this name the
epistemology which since the time of Descartes (I596--I650) seized upon the
newly founded natural science of the math- ematical and experimental method
established by Galileo (1564 1642). Thus we describe philosophical
epistemology as the theory of scientific knowledge undertaken with the aim
of elaborating a coherent, all-embracing ideology to suit the production
relations of bourgeois society. This endeavour culmi- nated in the main
works of Kant (I724 I804�), especially his Critique of Pure Reason. I
therefore confine my main attention to Kant's philosophy of science which I
consider to be the classical manifestation of the bourgeois fetishism of
intellectual labour. Smith and Kant have in common that each is the first to
have placed his respective discipline on a systematic foundation. Kant might
at his time have been introduced to an English public as the Adam Smith of
epistemology, and at the same period Smith could have been recommended to a
German audience as the Immanuel Kant of political economy. However, in the
light of Engels's Ludwig Feuerbach and the Outcome of Classical German
Philosophy and his survey of 'the whole movement since Kant' one might feel
inclined to rank Hegel (I770 - 1831) above Kant, especially since Ricardo is
frequently placed on a level with his contemporary, Hegel, in comparison
with Smith and Kant. While both the latter, in their own fields, evolved the
postulates which a fully fledged bourgeois society should be expected to
realise, Ricardo and Hegel, independently of each other, faced up to the
inherent contradictions revealed by that society upon the achievement of
this realisation, brought about by the advent of the French Revolution of
1789-94 and its Napoleonic aftermath. But there is one important difference
which sets Hegel on a plane apart from Ricardo. He discarded the
epistemological approach altogether and outstripped the limitations of the
critical standards of thinking observed by Kant and adhered to by Ricardo in
order to lift himself to the height of 'speculative and absolute idealism'.
This gave him free rein to carry philosophy to its consummation, but it
makes him unsuited as the object for my own critique. Many a good Marxist
will want to join issue with me on this apparently disparaging treatment of
Hegel. For was not Hegel, after all, the discoverer of dialectics and does
not Marx accept him as such? 'The mystification which dialectic suffers in
Hegel's hands, by no means prevents him from being the first to present its
general form of working in a comprehensive and conscious manner. With him it
is standing on its head. It must be inverted, in order to discover the
rational kernel within the mystical shell.' True, this is what Marx says of
Hegel in regard to the dialectic, but some Marxists have joined issue with
Marx himself for leaving this vital subject so incompletely elucidated. I
must say that I have never felt quite convinced that to advance from the
critical idealism of Kant to the critical materialism of Marx the road
should necessarily lead via the absolute idealism of Hegel. There should be
the possibility of connecting Kant and Marx by a direct route at least
systematically which would also yield an understanding of dialectics as the
critical, and self-critical, approach without first presenting it in the
misleading guise of a system of logic. Nevertheless 1 admit that the
dialectic as evolved by Hegel affords a way of thinking which is infinitely
superior to the fixed dualism of Kant. But the complaint about its dualism
can affect the Kantian mode of thought only as bourgeois philosophy. And
there it does it a service. For the unyielding dualism of this philosophy is
surely a more faithful reflection of the realities of capitalism than can be
found in the efforts of the illustrious post-Kantians striving to rid
themselves of it by drawing all and everything into the redeeming 'immanency
of the mind'. How can the truth of the bourgeois world present ;;self other
than as dualism? Hegel realised that the ideal of the truth could not
acquiesce with it as the ultimate state of affairs and he engaged on
dialectics as a road transcending the bourgeois limitations. Therein lies
his greatness and the importance of` the impulse that emanated from the
dynamic of this conception. Bur he could not himself step out of the
bourgeois world at his epoch, and so he attained the unity outreaching Kant
only by dispensing with the epistemological critique, and hence by way of
hypostasis. He did not make 'thinking' and 'being" one, and did not enquire
how they could be one. He simply argued that the idea of the truth *demands*
them to be one, and if logic is to be the logic of the truth it has to start
with that unity as its presupposition. But what is the kind of 'being" with
which 'thinking' could be hypostatised as one, and their unity be a system
of logic? It was nothing more, and nothing more real, than the 'being'
implied when I say 'I am I', since after all, 'am' is the first person
singular of the verb 'to be' in its present tense. And so Hegel starts his
dialectics by a process of. the mind within the mind. The Hegelian
dissolution of the Kantian antitheses is not achieved by dissolving them,
but by making them perform as a process. The Hegelian dialectics has no
other legitimacy than that it is a process occurring. Questioned as to its
possibility it would prove impossible. Adorno was perfectly right saying:
'If the Hegelian synthesis did work out, it would only be the wrong one.'
When Marx in the last of his Theses on Feuerbach wrote: 'The philosophers
have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point however is to
change it', Hegel must have been foremost in his thoughts, because in his
philosophy the very dialectics of the real change is wasted on merely
ontologising 'the Idea'. What else could this Idea be as an outcome of the
dialectic as Logic, but the idealisation of the bourgeois world rising to
the height of 'thinking' and 'being' embracing each other in the perfection
of the bourgeois State as the Prussian paragon of the constitutional
monarchy. A similar treatment is meted out to all the spheres to which Hegel
extended his speculation, that of the law, the mind, aesthetics, religion,
history and even nature. To them all the same pattern of Logic could be made
applicable by modifying the kind of 'being' that entered into unity with
'thinking' in each particular field. I am well aware that stressing only
its negative side distorts Hegel's philosophy out of recognition by
suppressing the immense wealth and depth of content it owes to the
revolutionary impulse of the dialectic. Hegel's is a philosophy which might
be said to be wrapped in twilight from beginning to end, and I do not want
my few remarks to be misunderstood as being a general condem- nation of this
outstanding work. My concern is narrowly confined to one question only: the
treatment of the Kantian epistemology by Hegel on the one hand and Marx on
the other. Thus it is easy to see what Hegel's interest was in dispensing
with the epistemological enquiry of Kant, but it was surely not the Marxian
interest to do likewise. The Hegelian motivation was rooted in the
mystification of the dialectic which aroused Marx's criticism. Marx's
elimination of the Kantian kind of enquiry should not be understood simply
as an imitation of Hegel's. Marx must have had his own independent reasons
for it ,grounded in his materialistic conception of the dialectic, not in
the idealistic one of Hegel. The Kantian enquiry was aimed at all
explanation of the phenomenon of the human intellect such as it manifested
itself in the mathematical science founded by Galileo and perfected by
Newton. What was wrong with Kant's enquiry was that he looked into the
nature of the human mind for an answer. Marx could only be satisfied with an
answer drawn from natural history and the human departure from it in social
and economic developments arising from man's producing his own means of
livelihood. This kind answer could not possibly be gained from Hegel's
philosophy. But it is this answer that we have in mind when we suggest a
direct cut-through from Kant to Marx by way of a critical liquidation of
Kant's enquiry, rather than by purely discarding it.
Two: Can there be abstraction other than by Thought ?
Forms of thought and forms of society have one thing in common. They are
both 'forms'. The Marxian mode of thought is characterised by a conception
of form which distinguishes it from all other schools of thinking. It
derives from Hegel, but this only so as to deviate from him again. For Marx,
form is time-bound. It originates, dies and changes within time. To conceive
of form in this way is characteristic of dialectical though, but with Hegel,
its originator, the genesis and mutation of form is only within the power of
the mind. It constitutes the 'science of logic'; for-m processes in any
other field, say nature or history, Hegel conceived only in the pattern of
logic. The Hegelian concept of dialectic finally entitles the mind not only
to primacy over manual work but endows it with omnipotence. Marx, on the
other hand, understands the time governing th genesis and the mutation of
forms as being, from the very first, historical time -- the time of natural
and of human history. ; That is why the form processes cannot be made out
anticipation. No prima philosophia under any guise has a place in Marxism.
What is to be asserted must first be established by investigation;
historical materialism is merely the name for a methodological postulate and
even this only became clear to Marx 'as a result of my studies'. Thus one
must not ignore the processes of abstraction at work in the emergence of
historical forms of consciousness. Abstraction can be likened to the
workshop of conceptual thought and its process must be a materialistic one
if the assertion that conscious- ness is determined by social being is to
hold true. A derivation of consciousness from social being presupposes a
process of abstrac- tion which is part of this being. Only so can we
validate the statement that 'the social being of man determines his
conscious- ness'. But with this point of view the historical materialist
stands in irreconcilable opposition to all traditional, theoretical philo-
soppy. For this entire tradition it is an established fact that abstraction
is the inherent activity and the exclusive privilege of thought; to speak of
abstraction in any other sense is regarded as irresponsible, unless of
course one uses the word merely meta- phorically. But to acquiesce in this
philosophical tradition would preclude the realisation of the postulate of
historical materialism. If the formation of the consciousness, by the
procedure of abstraction, is exclusively a matter for the con- sciousness
itself, then a chasm opens up between the forms of consciousness on the one
side and its alleged determination in being on the other. The historical
materialist would deny In theory the existence of this chasm, but in
practice has no solution to offer, none at any rate chat would bridge the
chasm. Admittedly it must be taken into consideration that the philosophical
tradition is itself a product of the division between mental and manual
labour, and since its beginning with Pythagoras, Heraclitus and Parmenides
has been a preserve of intellectuals for intellectuals, inaccessible to
manual workers. Little has changed here, even today. For this reason the
testimony of this tradition, even if unanimous, does not carry the weight of
authority for those who take their stand with the manual worker. The view
that abstraction was not the exclusive property of the mind, but arises in
commodity exchange was first expressed by Marx in. the beginning of Capital
and earlier in the Critique of Political Economy of I859, where he speaks of
an abstraction other than that of thought.
Three: T h e C o m m o d i t y A b s t r ac t i on
The form of commodity is abstract and abstractness governs its whole orbit.
To begin with, exchange-value is itself abstract value in contrast to the
use-value of commodities. The exchange- value is subject only to
quantitative differentiation, and this quantification is again abstract
compared with the quantity which measures use-values. Marx points out with
particular emphasis that even labour-, when determining the magnitude land
substance of value, becomes 'abstract human labour', human labour purely as
such. The form in which commodity- value takes on its concrete appearance as
money -- be it as coinage or bank-notes is an abstract thing which, strictly
speaking, is a contradiction in terms. In the form of money riches become
abstract riches and, as owner of such riches, man himself becomes an
abstract man, a private property-owner. Lastly a society in which commodity
exchange forms the nexus rerum is a purely abstract set of relations where
everything concrete is in private hands. The essence of commodity
abstraction, however, is that it is not thought-induced; it does not
originate in men's minds but in their actions. And yet this does not give
'abstraction' a merely metaphorical meaning. It is abstraction in its
precise, literal sense. The economic concept of value resulting from it i
characterised by a complete absence of quality, a differentiation purely by
quantity and by applicability to every kind n commodity and service which
can occur on the market. These qualities of the economic value abstraction
indeed display a striking similarity with fundamental categories of
quantifying natural science without, admittedly, the slightest inner re-
lationship between these heterogeneous spheres being as ye recognisable.
While the concepts of natural science are thought abstractions, the economic
concept of value is a real one. It exists nowhere other than in the human
mind but it does not spring from it. Rather it is purely social in
character, arising in the spatio-temporal sphere of human interrelations. It
is not people who originate these abstractions but their actions. 'They do
this without being aware of it.' In order to do justice to Marx's Critique
of Political Economy the commodity or value abstraction revealed in his
analysis must be viewed as a real abstraction resulting from spatio-temporal
activity. Understood in this way, Marx)s discovery stands in irreconcilable
contradiction to the entire tradition of theoretical philosophy and this
contradiction must be brought into the open by critical confrontation of the
two conflicting standpoints. But such a confrontation does not form part of`
the Marxian analysis. I agree with Louis Althusser that in the theoretical
foundations of Capital more fundamental issues are at stake than those
showing in the purely economic argument. Althusser believes that Capital is
the answer to a question implied but not formulated by Marx. Althusser
defeats the purpose of his search for this question by insisting 'que la
production de la connaissance ... constitue un processus qui se passe tout
entier dans la pensee'. He understands Marx on the commodity abstrac- tion
metaphorically, whereas it should be taken literally and its epistemological
implications pursued so as to grasp how Marx's method turns Hegel's
dialectic 'right side up'. The unproclaimed theme of Capital and of the
commodity analysis is in fact the real abstraction uncovered there. Its
scope reaches further than economics - indeed it concerns the heritage of
philosophy far more directly than it concerns political economy. Some
people go further and accuse Marx of having ignored the epistemological
implications of his own mode of thinking. Here I agree that, if one takes
up these implications and pursues them consistently, epistemology itself
undergoes a radical transfor- mation and indeed merges into a theory of
society. However I believe that the fallacies of the epistemological and
idealistic tradition are more effectively eliminated if one does not talk
of 'the theory of knowledge' but the division of mental and manual labour
instead. For then the practical significance of the whole enquiry becomes
apparent. If the contradiction between the real abstraction in Marx and
the thought abstraction in the theory of knowledge is not brought to any
critical confrontation, one must acquiesce with the total lack of
connection between the scientific form of thought and the historical social
process. Mental and manual labour must remain divided. This means, however,
that one must also acquiesce with the persistence of social class division,
even if this assumes the form of socialist bureaucratic rule. Marx's
omission of the theory of knowledge results in the lack of a theory of
mental and manual labour; it is, in other words, the theoretical omission
of a precondition of a classless society which was seen by Marx himself to
be fundamental. The political implication heightens its theoretical
importance. For not only must the conception of history be broadened to
include science, but also its method must be a consistently critical one.
For Marx arrives at the correct understanding of things only by critically
tracing the causes that give rise to the false consciousness operating in
class society. Thus, to the conditions of a classless society we must add,
in agreement with Marx, the unity of mental and manual labour, or as he puts
it, the disappearance of their division. And the present study maintains
that an adequate insight can only be gained into the conditions of a
classless society by investigating the origin of the division of head and
hand. This involves a critique of philosophical epistemology which is the
false consciousness arising from this division. The Marxian concept of
critique owes its parentage to Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason. We now
apply in full circle the principle of critique in this sense to the Kantian
epistemology. This is the classic manifestation of the bourgeois fetishism
embodied in the mental labour of science. We must trace the division of
mental an manual labour back to its earliest occurrence in history. Th
origin we date from the beginnings of Greek philosophy because its
antecedents in Egypt and Mesopotamia are prescientific. Our task, now,
amounts to the critical demonstration of th commodity abstraction. 'This is
only a reformulation of what was previously referred to as 'critical
confrontation'. We have to prove that the exchange abstraction is, first, a
real historical occurrence in time and space, and, second, that it is a
abstraction in the strict sense acknowledged in epistemology. This enquiry
must be preceded by a description of the phenom- enon under investigation.
Four: The Phenomenon of the Exchange Abstraction
The Marxist concept of commodity abstraction refers to the labour which is
embodied in the commodities and which: determines the magnitude of their
value. The value-creating labour is termed 'abstract human labour' to
differentiate it from concrete labour which creates use-values. Our main
concern is to clarify this 'commodity abstraction" and to trace its origin
to its roots. It must be stated from the outset that our analysis of
exchange and value differs in certain respects from that of Marx in the
opening of volume I of Capital without, for that matter, contradicting his
analysis. Marx was concerned with the 'critique of political economy',
while our subject is the theory of scientific knowledge and its
historical-materialist critique. However. Marx himself has defined the
aspect of exchange as it concerns our purpose:
"...However long a series of periodical reproductions and preced- ing
accumulations the capital functioning today may have passed through, it
always preserves its original virginity. So long as the laws of exchange are
observed in every single act of exchange taken in isolation - the mode of
appropriation [of. the surplus - S.-R.] can be completely revolutionised
without in any way affecting the property rights which correspond to
commodity production. The same rights remain in force both at the outset,
when the product belongs to its producer, who, exchanging equivalent for
equivalent, can enrich himself only by his own labour, and in the period of
capitalism, when social wealth becomes to an ever-increasing degree the
property of those who are in a position to appropriate the unpaid labour of
others over and over again..."
Hence the formal structure of commodity exchange, in every single act,
remains the same throughout the various stages of commodity production. I am
concerned exclusively with this formal structure, which takes no account of
the relationship of value to labour. Indeed where labour is taken into
consideration we are in the field of economics. Our interest is confined to
the abstraction contained in exchange which we shall find de- termines the
conceptual mode of thinking peculiar to societies based on commodity
production. In order to pursue our particular purpose of tracing to its
origin the abstraction permeating commodity exchange we slightly modify the
starting base of the analysis. Marx begins by distinguishing use-value and
exchange-value as the major con- trasting aspects of every commodity. We
trace these aspects to the different human activities to which they
correspond, the actions of use and the action of exchange. The relationship
between these two contrasting kinds of activity, use and exchange, is the
basis of the contrast and relationship between use-value and exchange-
value. The explanation of the abstraction of exchange is contained in this
relationship. The point is that use and exchange are not only different and
contrasting by description, but are mutually exclusive in time. They must
take place separately at different times. This is because exchange serves
only a change of ownership, a change that is, in terms of a purely social
status of the commodities a! owned property. In order to make this change
possible on a basis of negotiated agreement the physical condition of the
com- modities, their material status, must remain unchanged, or at any fate
must he assumed to remain unchanged. Commodity exchange cannot take place as
a recognised social institution -unless this separation of exchange from use
is stringently observed. This is a truth which need only be uttered to be
convincing, and I regard it as a firm basis on which to build far- reaching
conclusions. First, therefore, let us be clear as to the specific nature of
this particular restriction of` use. For there are, of course, countless
situations apart from exchange where the use of things is stopped, hindered,
interrupted or otherwise disputed. None of these have the same significance
as exchange. Things may be stored for later use, others put on one side for
the children, wine may be kept in the cellar to mature, injured bodies be
ordered a rest, and so on. These are stoppages or delays of use decided upon
by the users themselves and done in the service of their use. Whether they
happen in a private household or on the wider basis of production carried on
in common with other people, cases of this kind are nor on a level
comparable with exchange, because use here is not forbidden by social
command or necessity. But social interference occurs wherever there is
exploitation without for that reason alone being necessarily similar to
exchange. Long before there was commodity production exploitation assumed
one of the many forms of what Marx has termed 'direct lordship and bondage'.
This is exploitation based on unilateral appropriation as opposed to the
reciprocity of exchange. In ancient Bronze Age Egypt, for instance, priests
and scribes and other servants of the Pharaoh were engaged co collect
surplus produce from the Nilotic peasants and put it into storage. Once the
produce was collected neither the peasant producers nor the collectors had
access to these goods for their own use, for the power and authority for the
collection emanated from the Pharaoh. There was a transference of property,
but a public, not a private, one, and there was the same immutability of the
material status of the products held in store for disposal by the ruling
authorities which applies in the case of commodities in exchange. There were
significant formal similarities between Bronze Age Egypt or Babylonia and
Iron Age Greece, and we shall find in the second part of this study that the
proto-science which emerged in the ancient oriental civilisations can be
accounted for on these grounds. But the great difference is that the social
power imposing this control over the use of things was in the nature of the
personal authority of the Pharaoh obeyed by every member of the ruling
set-up. In an exchange society based on commodity production, however, the
social power has lost this personal character and in its place is an
anonymous necessity which forces itself upon every individual commodity
owner. The whole of the hierarchical superstructure of the Egyptian society
has disap- peared, and the control over the use and disposal of things is
now exercised anarchically by the mechanism of the market in accordance with
the laws of private property, which are in fact the laws of the separation
of exchange and use. Thus the salient feature of the act of exchange is
that its separation from use has assumed the compelling necessity of an
objective social law. Wherever commodity exchange takes place, it does so in
effective 'abstraction' from use. This is an abstraction not in mind, but in
fact. It is a state of affairs prevailing at a definite place and lasting a
definite time. It is the state of affairs which reigns on the market.
There, in the market-place and in shop windows, things stand still. They are
under the spell of one activity only; to change owners. They stand there
waiting to be sold. While they are there for exchange they are there not for
use. A commodity marked out at a definite price, for instance, is looked
upon as being frozen to absolute immutability throughout the time during
which its price remains unaltered. And the spell does not only bind the
doings of` man. Even Nature herself is supposed to abstain from any ravages
in the body of` this commodity and to hold her breath, as it were, for the
sake of this social business of man. Evidently, even the aspect of non-human
nature is affected by the banishment of use from the sphere of exchange.
The abstraction from use in no way implies, however, that the use-value of
the commodities is of no concern in the marker. Quite the contrary. While
exchange banishes use from the actions of marketing people, it does not
banish it from their minds. However, it must remain confined to their
minds, occupying them in their imagination and thoughts only. This is
not to say that their thoughts need lack reality. Customers have the right
to ascertain the use-value of the commodities on offer. They may examine
them at close quarters, touch them, try them out, or try them on, ask to
have them demonstrated if the case arises. And the demonstration should be
identically like the use for which the commodity is (or is not) acquired.
On standards empiricism no difference should prevail between the use on
show and the use in practice. This, however, is the difference that
matters on the business standards which rule in the market. 0f a commodity
;n the market the empirical data come under reservations like those argued
in subjective idealism; material reality accrues to them when the object
is out of the market and passes, by virtue of the money paid, into the
private sphere of the acquiring customer. It is certain that the
customers think of commodities as objects of use, or nobody would bother to
exchange them (and confidence tricksters would be out of business) . The
banishment of use during exchange is entirely independent of what the
specific use may be and can be kept ;II the private minds of the exchanging
agents (buyers and sellers of sodium chlorate might have gardening in mind
or bomb-making). Thus, in speaking of the abstractness of exchange we must
be careful not to apply the term to the consciousness of the exchanging
agents. They are supposed to be occupied with the use of the commodities
they see, but occupied in their imagin- ation only. It is the action of
exchange, and the action alone that is abstract. The consciousness and the
action of the people part company in exchange and go different ways. We have
to trace their ways separately, and also their interconnection. As
commodity production develops and becomes the typical form of production,
man's imagination grows more and more separate from his actions and becomes
increasingly individualised, eventually assuming the dimensions of a private
consciousness. This is a phenomenon deriving its origin, not from the
private sphere of use, but precisely from the public one of the market. The
individualised consciousness also is beset by ab- stractness, but this is
not the abstractness of the act of exchange at its source. For the
abstractness of that action cannot be noted when it happens, since it only
happens because the consciousness of its agents is taken up with their
business and with the empirical appearance of things which pertains to
their use. One could say that the abstractness of their action is beyond
realisation by the actors because their very consciousness stands in the
way. Were the abstractness to catch their minds their action would cease to
be exchange and the abstraction would not arise. Nevertheless the
abstractness of exchange *does* enter their minds, but only after the
event, when they are faced with the completed result of the circulation of
the commodities. The chief result is money in which the abstractness
assumes a separate embodiment. Then, however, 'the movement through which
the process has been mediated vanishes in its own result, leaving no trace
behind'. This will occupy us more fully later on. Here we want to return
once more to the separation of exchange from use and to its basic nature.
When looking at use and exchange as kinds of human practice it becomes
plain to see in what manner they exclude each other. Either can take place
only while the other does not. The practice of 'use' covers a well-nigh
unlimited field of human activities; in fact it embraces all the material
processes by which we live as bodily beings on the bosom of mother earth,
so to speak, comprising the entirety of what Marx terms 'man's interchange
with nature' in his labour of` production and his enjoyment of consumption.
This material practice of man is at a standstill, or assumed to be at a
standstill, while the other practice, that of exchange, holds sway. This
practice has no meaning in terms of nature: it is purely social by its
constitution and scope. 'Not an atom of matter enters into the objectivity
of commodities as values; in this it is the direct opposite of the coarsely
sensuous objectivity of commodities as physical bodies.'" The point is that
notwithstanding the negation that exchange implies of the physical
realities of use and use-value, the transfer of possession negotiated under
property laws in no way lacks physical reality itself. Exchange involves
the movement of the commodities in time and space from owner to owner and
constitutes events of no less physical reality than the activities of use
which it rules out. It is indeed precisely because their physical reality
is on a par that both kinds of practice, exchange and use, are mutually
exclusive in time. It is in its capacity of a real event in time and space
that the abstraction applies to exchange, it is in its precise meaning
real abstraction and the 'use' from which the abstraction is made
encompasses the entire range of sense reality. Thus we have, on the basis
of commodity production, two spheres of spatio-temporal reality side by
side, yet mutually exclusive and of sharply contrasting description. It
would help us to have names by which we could designate them. In German the
world of 'use' is often called 'the first or primary nature', material in
substance, while the sphere of exchange is termed a 'second, purely social
nature' entirely abstract in make-up. They are both called 'nature' to
point to the fact that they constitute worlds equally spatio-temporal by
reality and inextricably interwoven in our social life. The ancient legend
of King Midas, who wished for everything he touched to turn to gold and died
upon having his wish fulfilled, vividly illustrates how contrasting in
reality and yet how closely associated in our minds both these natures are.
This, in the briefest way, is the foundation on which I shall base my
historical and logical explanation of the birth of philosophy in Greek
society of slave-labour, and of the birth of modern science in European
society based on wage-labour. To substantiate my views three points have to
be established: (a) that commodity exchange is an original source of
abstrac- tion; (b) that this abstraction contains the formal elements
essential for the cognitive faculty of conceptual thinking; (c) that the
real abstraction operating in exchange engenders the ideal abstraction basic
to Greek philosophy and to modern science. On the first point, it is
necessary to recapitulate the points made so far: commodity exchange is
abstract because it excludes use; that is to say, the action of exchange
excludes the action of use. But while exchange banishes use from the
actions of people it does not banish it from their minds. The minds of the
exchanging agents must be occupied with the purposes which prompt them to
perform their deal of exchange. Therefore while it is necessary that their
action of exchange should be abstract from use, there is also necessity
that their minds should not be. The action alone is abstract. The
abstractness of their action will, as a consequence, escape the minds of
the people performing it. In exchange, the action is social, the minds are
private. Thus, the action and the thinking of people part company in
exchange and go different ways. In pursuing point (b) of our theses we
shall take the way of the action of exchange, and this will occupy the next
two chapters. For point (c) we shall turn to the thinking of the commodity
owners and of their philosophical spokesmen, in Part II of the book.
_______________________________________________
Crashlist resources: http://website.lineone.net/~resource_base
To change your options or unsubscribe go to:
http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/crashlist
