The Oxford Handbook of German Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century

by Michael N Forster

  It cannot be said with certainty how far Marx’s critique of morality extends, since successful recognition implies evaluative-normative attitudes in non-estranged circumstances, so there must be adequate evaluative-normative attitudes (of altruism and love). The Marxian critique of morality is possibly only aimed at certain forms of morality (Wood 1981). At any rate, his critique of morality, law, and the state remains problematic: the utopia of the rationally transparent planning of all social cooperation and the demand of exclusively altruistically motivated interaction constitute an evaluative-normative standard that can be criticized with good reason from a philosophical standpoint in view of its overly demanding effects.

  8.6 THE PROGRAMME OF A CRITIQUE OF POLITICAL ECONOMY

  In what follows, I shall interpret the critique of political economy as a philosophical account. Marx sets about his critique of capitalist society with the analysis of commodity and the development of his account of value. As an external object, the commodity is a useful thing; Marx calls this usefulness the utility-value of the commodity. The utility-value is to be understood as a relation between the natural properties of things and human needs. In capitalism, commodities belong to private persons who produce independently of one another and satisfy their own needs by way of exchange. In this exchange, utility-values are ‘the material bearers’ (Capital, 126) of the exchange-value. With respect to the commodity, Marx distinguishes between the utility-value and the exchange-value, where the latter is value in a specific guise. Value as such must appear in different forms that depend on the respective structure of social organization. In contrast to the utility-value, the exchange-value is not a natural property of the commodity. It appears, unlike the utility-value that realizes itself in consummation, ‘as the quantitative relation, the proportion, in which use-values of one kind exchange for use-values of another kind’ (Capital, 126). Marx interprets the equation (e.g. m commodity x = n commodity y) in such a way that both exchange-values are reducible to a ‘third thing’ (Capital, 127) that is distinct from them. This is their value, and the exchange-value is its specific guise within capitalism. Marx introduces the exchange-value as an item that is constituted by social interaction. Since agents disregard the utility-values in the exchange, the only joint feature that remains is, according to Marx, that they are products of labour. And because in the equalization there is abstraction from the respective specific activity (e.g. of manufacturing a table or baking bread), this joint feature must be ‘abstract human labour’ (Capital, 129) that has objectified itself in the commodities. The core thesis of Marx’s theory of value is that labour is the substance of value. This value, and with it the objectified, abstract, socially necessary labour, manifests itself in exchange processes; it only appears in acts of exchange, but in being the identical behind the appearances it forms the substance to which the equals sign of the act of exchange implicitly refers. But the agents of exchanges do not consciously bring about the reduction of goods to their exchange-value and, together with this, of concrete labour to abstract, socially necessary average labour; rather, it is a philosophical theorem.

  Marx’s account entails two philosophical difficulties. On the one hand, he views the connection between abstract labour and exchange-value as a case of objectification. He understands the value of a commodity as a socially constituted fact and determines value and exchange-value, in contrast to natural properties, as a supernatural fact that is entirely constituted in and by society. This brings into play an aspect that cannot be accommodated adequately in the objectification model because this model relies on the social act of exchange. On the other hand, Marx’s account entails an ontologization of the contradiction that cannot be eliminated without at the same time renouncing a constitutive aspect of the entire account, that is, his claim about the primacy of production. The following statement is thus to be taken literally:

  The commodity is immediate unity of utility-value and exchange value, hence (it is the unity) of two opposites. It is thus an immediate contradiction. (Kapital, 51)

  This immediate contradiction provides the theory-immanent reason for the further development of Marx’s analysis, since it must ‘develop’ (Kapital, 51) into the exchange process. Instead of ignoring this finding, one can reconstruct these statements in terms of the intentions of the participants in the exchange, who refer to the commodities as utility- and exchange-values. In this sense, A must abstract from the use-value of his commodity x if he offers it to B in exchange (and B performs the same abstraction regarding his commodity y). The perspective of the two parties to the exchange thereby denotes the use-value as negated and the exchange-value as an abstract factor constituted precisely by this act of abstraction.

  Marx introduces money into his theory by way of a further development of the elementary exchange action that is interpreted as an exchange of equivalents. Since in principle every commodity can be exchanged for every other one, one can determine a universal form of value that serves to contrast a given quantum of a given commodity on one side of the equation with all other commodities, with which it is exchangeable, on the other. From this point it is no far stretch to the introduction of money, as in fact this signalized commodity already serves as a universal point of reference for expressing the value or exchange-value of all other commodities. Marx himself saw clearly that the crucial premises of his theory reside not in his definition of money, but in his analysis of commodity and the form of value. Nevertheless, with respect to the process of the societal adhesion of a commodity into the form of money, a decisive process can be illustrated which Marx describes as the fetish character of the commodity. Through ‘social custom’ (Capital, 162) a specific commodity, for example, gold, acquires the property of being the universal equivalent of all commodities. In contrast to the property of having use-value, this property is social or supernatural. At the same time, to the agents it seems like a natural property of gold. They do not realize that the property of functioning as money is not an intrinsic property of gold but a social fact.

  Since the specific nature of money can be traced back to the commodity-form, Marx transfers this state of affairs of fetishism back to the dual character of commodity and farther to the dual character of labour as concretely and abstractly socially necessary average labour that is objectified in the commodity. It is this last point that is referred to by Marx as ‘fetishism’: social relations between producers appear as relations between commodities, more generally: between things. Marx identifies this reification of the social as the specific character of commodity production, understood as the ‘labour of private individuals’ (Capital, 165), and thus of the capitalist formation of society. So this theorem also fits into his analysis of the estranged objectification of the species being in capitalist circumstances: in capitalism, the human species being is only realized in the market of commodity exchange. The production of the commodity itself is a private matter, the product is private property, the intention of producing is aimed at one’s own satisfaction of needs; the producers ‘must therefore recognize each other as owners of private property’ (Capital, 178).

  This is the same structure Marx had already elaborated in the Excerpts and the Manuscripts. The fetish character of the commodity and commodity exchange respectively consist in the facts that people ascribe natural properties to things and factual circumstances, such as processes of commodity exchange, where these are social properties. This reification is aligned with the Feuerbachian projection model and based on the theory of objectification and estrangement, since it is interpreted as the self-loss of the human species being in capitalism. Hence it comes as no surprise that Marx by way of illustration points to the ‘misty realm of religion’ (Capital, 165) and thereby to the critique of religion.

  For money to become capital, wage labour must exist as the third precondition beyond the division of labour and private property. For whereas in the basic commodity exchange money functions only as a way station between commodities, this relationsh
ip is reversed with respect to capital: a capitalist possesses a certain amount of money and utilizes it by buying a commodity or having it produced for wages, in order to then sell the commodity at a profit. Schematically, this circulation is structured as follows: money–commodity–money, with the amount of money increasing through the circulation. Commodities are not produced for the sake of their use-values or the satisfaction of needs, but for the sole purpose of selling them for more money, which is then used for further capital gain in the next round. Here again we encounter the figure of thought according to which estrangement consists in a means-end-perversion, to repeat: exchange-value becomes the purpose, use-value the means.

  Marx depicts this process as a systematic nexus in which capital functions as an ‘automatic subject’ (Capital, 255): capitalism as a system is responsible for the continued existence of its own framework conditions and thus for its own perpetuation. The features of being autonomous and an end-in-itself that actually pertain to the human being—and this is the core of Marx’s evaluative philosophical anthropology—are estranged and relinquished to capital (as a system), which realizes these features in estranged-estranging and mechanical-automatic ways (Quante 2013). The social structures of private property in means of production and wage labour are thus solidified and the societal formation that is necessary for capitalism, once it gets under way, is cemented by the system itself. In Marx’s words:

  …the self-exploiting value (is) the subject of a process in which it changes its own magnitude amid the continuous change of the forms of money and commodity, repels itself as surplus-value from itself as the original value, exploits itself. (Capital, 255, translation altered)

  Capital is the complete externalization of the human being as a social being that produces itself, freely determines itself, and has itself as an end. As an externalization of the actual species forces of the human being, capital has the quasi-subjective structures of an ‘autonomic subject’ and is characterized by the mean-end-inversion that is typical for estrangement. The capitalist does not produce for the sake of utility-values or needs; the wage labourer does not work for his own self-realization, the realization of the species, or satisfaction of others’ needs, but only to secure his own livelihood; the overall situation in society is not an expression of the free self-determination of the species being, but an anonymous constellation of reification to which individual existence and liberty as well as the autonomy of the species are subordinated.

  At the same time, this synchronic state of the development of the species being as universal existence is a historically necessary step on the diachronic path to the self-realization of the species being through the historical process of estrangement. Marx’s analysis thus combines the systemic analysis of capitalism with a historico-philosophical construction, whereby the latter provides the central resource for his efforts to point to the necessary self-destabilization of capitalism; this is evident, for instance, in Marx’s theory of crisis and in his theorem concerning the tendency of the falling rate of profit.

  If the aim of capitalist circulation is to multiply money by means of the production and circulation of commodities and if money is nothing but value’s form of appearance, then this surplus-value must come from somewhere. Given Marx’s labour theory of value, surplus-value can only be created as an objectification of abstract labour. According to Marx, the capitalist must, in order to produce surplus-value, employ human working power. For this to accrue to the capitalist as surplus-value, it must take the form of buyable commodities and become part of the circulation process. So Marx’s model of capitalism is not possible without wage labour.

  Labour power creates value by objectifying itself in commodities. Under conditions of capitalism, it has value for the worker himself and for the capitalist who is dependent on the existence of wage labour; the magnitude of this value is defined as the working time necessary for the worker’s self-preservation (Capital, 185). Thus the surplus-value emerges in such a way that the capitalist exploits a difference: the worker receives a specific quantum of exchange-value (money) for his labour, which is enough for him to secure his survival and the preservation of his working power. In fact, however, the worker must work more for this wage than would be required for the preservation of his working power. Thus the capitalist exchanges a specific exchange-value for the working power, but lets the commodity that is the labour power be active longer so that the labour produces a larger quantum of value. This is the surplus-value that is reflected in the capitalist’s profit if he succeeds in selling the commodities produced in his name.

  8.7 CONCLUSION: CRITIQUE OF POLITICAL ECONOMY AS THEORY OF JUSTICE?

  Whether or not Marx’s philosophy is to be understood as an evaluative-normative or as a purely descriptive theory also depends on whether one can understand his critique of political economy as a theory of justice. Such a theory might be a normative foundation of Marx’s theory that is not infected by the ambiguities concerning the metaphysics of species being that were delineated above. Let us start with the question of whether Marx defends an account of distributive justice in his labour theory of value. In his theory of value, Marx conceives the act of exchange as an exchange of equivalents. Since the capitalist system is designed for the creation of surplus-value, the question is where this surplus-value comes from. Under the Marxian premise that labour is the only factor that produces exchange-value, the rather obvious suspicion is that the capitalist’s profit materializes due to an infringement of the condition of liberty in the exchange of labour and wages. For this reason it has been seen as a central point of Marx’s critique of political economy that capitalism is held systematically to infringe the conditions of distributive justice, and of necessity to the workers’ disadvantage. It is undeniable that Marx sharply criticizes the injustice of the capitalist system, that he relentlessly bares the inhumanity of the living conditions of the proletariat and that he makes no secret of the fact that for the proletarians this societal formation means a maximal loss of opportunities to lead a good or successful life. They are reduced to merely animalistic functions and are defrauded of their humanity. But a closer look at Marx’s analysis of the circumstances of exchange reveals that within his theory he regards the capitalist’s profit in surplus-value as an exchange of equivalents and thus as just. The worker sells a specific amount of his labour power in the form of a quantitatively defined workday. The exchange-value of this externalized labour power consists in the worker’s ability to use his wages to regenerate himself and his labour power. If he earns enough to survive, he has received the exchange-value of his labour in the exchange of labour power for wages. Now the capitalist can legitimately make use of the labour power made available to him. As the externalized labour power is the only producer of exchange-value, the capitalist must see to it that within the working time available to him more exchange-value is produced than needs to be spent on wages. There is thus no reason to view the capitalist’s absorption of surplus-value as a violation of principle of equality that is effective in Marx’s analysis of the act of exchange.

  However, distributive justice does not exhaust the concept of justice; hence we have to see whether the Marxian analysis encompasses other aspects of justice. One possible objection to the reconstruction given here is that it is too closely oriented to the single act of exchange: the preconditions of a just exchange are not in place due to the systematically distorted position of capitalist and worker. Marx agreed with this assessment, but he did not infer from it that free exchange must be guaranteed as an entry condition. On the contrary, he calls for a change in the circumstances of production and not the set-up of distribution.

  Allen E. Buchanan (1982) has accused this discussion of assuming too narrow a concept of justice and looking merely at distribution. Instead, he presupposes that justified legal claims have lexical priority over mere aspects of welfare, no matter whether this concerns social welfare or the wellbeing of the right holder. Considering the fundamental
criticism of a deontological account of morality which Marx pursues following Hegel, Buchanan’s analysis is not convincing as an interpretation of Marx’s theory, as can be demonstrated in light of Marx’s critique of the Gotha programme of social democracy. Marx’s normative counter-image does not take rights and equality as a starting point, but follows the maxim ‘everyone according to his abilities to everyone according to his needs!’, which would ‘completely exceed the narrow horizon of civil law’ (Kritik, 21).

  Buchanan is justified in his objection that Marx here simply segues from the statement that law is valuable and meaningful for individuals in capitalism to the statement that law is only valuable and meaningful in this social formation. We had to learn in the twentieth century that abandoning the rule of law amounts to an extreme loss of freedom. But Marx’s statement proves unequivocally that in his philosophical anthropology he was aiming at a standpoint beyond the law. The argumentative gap Buchanan diagnoses in Marx must therefore be closed in a different way from incorporating a deontological account of rights, as this could not be done without major revisions in Marx’s overall theory. The critique of political economy does not rest on a deontological foundation. A more promising interpretative approach consists in explicating its ethical content in terms of a theory of recognition that is inscribed into the account of the objectual species being (Quante 2011 and 2013).