Alfred Sohn-Rethel:
Intellectual and Manual Labour
A Critique of Epistemology
(Macmillan 1976)
Preface
This enquiry is concerned with the relationship between base
and superstructure in the Marxian sense. This, to a large extent.
leads into new territory. Marx and Engels have clarified the
general architecture of history consisting of productive
forces and production relations which together form the material basis
for consciousness as superstructure But they have not left us a
blueprint for the staircase that should lead from the base to the
superstructure. And it is this with which we are concerned, or at
least with its barest scaffolding of formal precision. To continue
with our metaphor, the staircase must be given a firm anchorage
in the basement, and this, for commodity-producing societies,
can only be found in the formal analysis of commodity itself. This
analysis, however, requires considerable enlargement and
deepening before it can carry the full weight I intend to place on it.
For Marx it served to carry the critique of political economy. For
us it must carry in addition the critique of the traditional theories
of science and cognition.
What is new and bewildering in the present undertaking is that
it must lay hand upon the commodity analysis as we have it from
Marx, and thus upon that part of his theory commonly regarded
as the untouchable foundation stone. It may therefor not be
amiss to preface the theoretical presentation with a short sketch of
'thought-biography' to show how the deviating offshoot originated
and has taken shape. Moreover it may also be necessary to
explain why the investigation has taken fifty years to mature
before reaching the light of day.
II began towards the end of the First World War- and in its
aftermath, at a time when the German proletarian revolution
should have occurred and tragically failed. This period led me
into personal contact with Ernst Bloch, Walter Benjamin, Max
Horkheimer, Siegfried Kracauer and Theodor W. Adorno and
the writings of Georg Lukacs and Herbert Marcuse. Strange
though it may sound I do not hesitate to say that the new
development of Marxist thought which these people represent
evolved as the theoretical and ideological superstructure of the
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�
*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 one form or
another is characteristic of the ages of` commodity production from
their beginnings in ancient Greece to the present day. It is
for this purpose that I deem it useful to interpret the Marxian
concept of 'social being' in accordance with my notion of the
'social synthesis'. This will depend, of course, on how it justifies
itself as a methodologically fruitful concept.
In societies based on commodity production the social syn-
thesis is centred on the functions of money as the 'universal
equivalent', to use Marx's expression. In this capacity money
must be vested with an abstractness of the highest level to enable
it to serve as the equivalent to every kind of commodity that may
appear on the market. This abstractness of money does not
appear as such and cannot be expected to 'appear' as it consists of
nothing but form. Pure abstract form arising from the disregard
of the use-value of the commodities operated by the act of
exchange equating the commodities as values. That which
constitutes the appearance of money is its material, its shape and
size, and the symbols stamped on it; in short, all that make
money into a thing that can be carried about, spent and received.
But that which makes this thing 'money' in the sense of value and
of equivalence is of a quality radically different from all the
properties that can be seen or felt or counted or otherwise
perceived. The human labour that has gone into the production
of the thing serving as money and into the commodities it serves
to exchange determines the magnitude of their value, the
proportion in which they are exchanged. But to be labour
products is not a property which accrues to the commodities and
to money in the relationship of exchange where the abstraction
arises. The abstraction does not spring from labour but from
exchange as a particular mode of social interrelationship, and it is
through exchange that the abstraction imparts itself to labour
making it 'abstract human labour'. The money abstraction can
be more 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: C a n t h e r e b e a b s t r a c t i o n
o t h e r t h a n b y T h o u g h t ?
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: T h e P h e n o m e n o n o f t h e
E x c h a n g e A b s t r a c t i o n
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.
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