Leinwandwert als Rockgleiches

In his last derivation before proceeding to the foundation of the money-form argument, Marx abandons purely mathematical manipulations tied to the canvas / relation's quantitative equivalencies, and really lets fly with a tangled, crucial clustered metaphor:

Im Wertverhältnis, worin der Rock das Äquivalent der Leinwand bildet, gilt also die Rockform als Wertform. Der Wert der Ware Leinwand wird daher ausgedrückt im Körper der Ware Rock, der Wert einer Ware im Gebrauchswert der andren. [65]

In the value relation in which the coat constitutes the equivalent of the Canvas, the form-of-the-Coat [functions as]/[is said to be]/[shall be considered] the form-of-value. The value of the ware Canvas is therefore articulated in the body of the commodity coat, the value of a commodity in the use-value of another.

Value [Wert] is a complexly doubled figure. Beyond acknowledging its parsing as exchange-value [Tauschwert, which has slipped into disuse as his vocabulary evolved] and use-value [Gebrauchswert, still truckin’ at this point], it’s instructive to look at the way Marx is using Wert to play with standard idealist pairs, as well. Let’s push on this shorthand a bit: articulation or expression [Ausdruck] is the procedure by which the conceptual [Wert, formally defined] sees embodiment in the objective-discrete [the Körper]. So far, so good; this is canon Cartesian s/o dualism.

But wait: Wert is only relationally embodied; that is, the character of either commodity’s exchange-value only emerges from an objective discontinuity of the form Leinwand/Rock, which when considered in its turn unfolds a rematerialization [a return of use-value as body-articulated quantum against which one judges]. This discontinuity persists, despite Marx’ emphasis on the abstractibility of all value to a common quality, unspecified human labor. It’s thus false to suggest either of the following:

a) That the equivalence formula for value emerges from "pure" [i.e. conceptual -or- material] relationality between terms or properties of terms
[rather, the arrangement of the being-in-respect-of that characterizes the exchange proportion oscillates according to deseridatum but necessarily adhere to the complex holism of Marx' argument, in all respects: while its elements play musical chairs, the worth-against-which-and-only-against-which-value
-is-thrown-into-relief {the incorporated use-value understood as coat-form} anchors any conceptual consideration of the formula's first term]
b) That societal [Gesellschaft] structures of value are inessentializable, i.e. immaterial
[This is merely to point out that regardless of the procedure by which he approaches it, or his insistence upon the abstractable/general/comparative property "human work" {"menschlicher Arbeit"}, Marx' eventual establishment of communal, i.e. mobile/portable structures for appraising value, and the complication {and opacity} this notion brings with it will not and cannot successfully throw off the anchor-chain of materiality. In a separate post, at some point, I will address the exchange relation's materiality as an anchor for considerations of society generally {and not in the strict metaphorical sense Marx is relying on here}.]

The brilliance of this procession from first principles is its care. There are components central to the judgement of value [e.g. the pervasion of "average" productivity, and the commonly abstractable unspecial work] which one can elevate to a conceptual level allowing for the qualitative comparison to emerge before being [quantitatively] balanced. But there is never an entirely disembodied, amaterial Gleichung [equation].

Te de fabula narratur!

Before I write my full-length contribution to "Chapter One: the Commodity" I'd like to offer comment on a set of considerations on method offered by Marx himself, in the introduction attached to Kapital's 1867 publication, and in his preface to "Critique of Political Economy" [1859]. I find Ben's question on "literature" gets right at the heart of something we need to deal with as we descend into Kapital's vortex; while we may not end up playing by those interpretative rules toward the end which we'd drafted in the beginning, it's definitely of the essence to at least initiate an internal conversation as to what, precisely, Marx is doing -- and what, precisely, we're going to have to do in order to read it.

Without further ado, then, I quote from the 1867 introduction:

Der Physiker beobachtet Naturprozesse entweder dort, wo sie in der prägnantesten Form und von störenden Einflüssen mindest getrübt erscheinen, oder, wo möglich, macht er Experimente unter Bedingungen, welche den reinen Vorgang des Prozesses sichern. Was ich in diesem Werk zu erforschen habe, ist die kapitalistische Produktionsweise und die ihr entsprechenden Produktions- und Verkehrsverhältnisse. Ihre klassische Stätte ist bis jetzt England. Dies der Grund, warum es zur Hauptillustration meiner theoretischen Entwicklung dient. [35]

The physicist observes natural processes either there, where they appear in the most incisive form and least diluted by disruptive influences, or, where possible, he conducts experiments under conditions which secure the purity of the procedure. What I have set before me to investigate in this work, is the capitalist mode of production and its concomitant productive and intercursive-circulatory-communicative relations. [This mode's] classical case is, to this point, England. This is the reason why it will serve as the primary illustration of my theoretical argumentation.

While what follows may be a bit Hegel-dented, please bear with me. The first word is the best. It is Marx, of course, whom we presume to be the physicist on "our" side of the analogy: the physicist as the investigative personality, the one who conducts the experiments. Beyond this, though, in his next sentence, he establishes two options for the physical sciences: either observation under apparently uncontaminated conditions [erscheinen, to appear, is operative] -or- the establishment of a controlled environment where imposed "conditions" guarantee processional "purity" [the adjective rein]. When Marx pulls the Physiker's card, then, what's seemed at first to look like a bid for ensconcement among the positive sciences [Smith, Newton?] has turned into a subtle troubling of these science's models for inquiry: the questionable appearance of an ideal condition, and the false imposition of ideal conditions. He knows it himself, though he returns to the rather prosaic epistemological dualism [theoretical approach vindicated by "illustration" that emerges from its application to the already-there test case] one might well know and love from [among other things] Hegel's style in the History of Philosophy, by which the "cunning of reason" is vindicated and embodied by Alexander the Great. But in Marx the dialectical turn, the laying-bare under analysis of an irresolvable agonism, comes with the next sentence [with an acknowledgement of the theory-application model's impossibility]:

Sollte jedoch der deutsche Leser pharisäisch die Achseln zucken über die Zustände der englischen Industrie- und Ackerbauarbeiter, oder sich optimistisch dabei beruhigen, daß in Deutschland die Sachen noch lange nicht so schlimm stehn, so muß ich ihm zurufen: de te fabula narratur! [35]

Should, however, the German reader shrug his shoulders Pharaisically regarding the affairs of the English industrial and agricultural workers, or comfort himself optimistically that things aren't nearly so bad in Germany, I must assure him: the story is being told about you!

Regardless of the English example's "classical" status, Marx is arguing, a critique of political economy -- and the new theories of knowledge, of history, and of politics that accompany it -- can be no more limited to the national stage [in 1867, a peculiar stage in Germany, but surely one comfort available to the particularist he's singling out here] than its object: the historical development, the locus on the time-axis of stagist history, that England [far from exhibiting uniquely] merely shows best. The national perspective would allow an external analytic position, which [on the European stage, at least] has to remain unthinkable. I think this is a particularly strategic/tactical intervention, on Marx' part: while I don't think we'll ever be satisfied with any resolution of the [non-]literariness question Ben's opened, I think there's one thing with regard to which I'll be looking to satisfy myself: the development of a radically immanent science that Marx is hinting at here. The story is told not only about dir, the German PolyAnna: it's told about everybody -- and the old sciences, the ancien régime méthodologique-épistémologique, cannot be fit to investigate its narration [which takes the form of systems evolution in the sphere of Produktions- and Verkehrsverhältnisse] unless they seriously acknowledge their position within it, that is, acknowledge the impossibility of [themselves as] classical investigatory models. Being free to do science, it seems, involves an initial acknowledgment of the impossibility of any freedom from the processes one looks to subject to science.

I now quote from the foreword to the 1859 "Zur Kritik der politischen Ökonomie":

Bei dem Eingang in die Wissenschaft aber, wie beim Eingang in die Hölle, muß die Forderung gestellt werden:
Qui si convien lasciare ogni sospetto
Ogni viltá convien che qui sia morta
{Hier ziemt es, jeden Argwohn fahren lassen
Und jede Niedrigkeit muß hier ersterben} [722]

Entering into Science, like entering into Hell, requires the challenge:
Qui si convien lasciare ogni sospetto
Ogni viltá convien che qui sia morta
{It is appropriate here, to dismiss all suspicion
And all lowliness must die here}

Irony? Maybe. I wonder.

Part One: Chapter I

In my last post, I wrote that I did not intend to approach Capital as "literature." What then to approach it as? Certainly I have no idea how to write about a work of political economy, which Capital undoubtedly is. As a "historical document," there may be much to say, but this would be completely inappropriate for a blog. As philosophy, Capital is eccentric to say the least. Marx's own watchword seems to be "science." And yet this work of science includes so many quotes of Goethe and Shakespeare, so much playing with Hegel, and so many jabs at Christianity, that it can hardly be just that, either.

The first chapter answers the question, "What is the value of a commodity?", and clears away the illusions commonly held concerning value. That is the economic concern of the chapter.

The most-discussed aspect of Capital is probably the section, "The Fetishism of the Commodity and Its Secret," which I will leave aside, except for pointing out that "It is precisely the finished form of the world of commodities-- the money form--which conceals the social character of private labour and the social relations between the individual workers, by making those relations appear as relations between material objects, instead of revealing them plainly." (169) That is, as money is not just one commodity among others, neither does the fetishism (repression of the determination of value by human labour-time, and the seeming-to-belong-to-things-themselves of their exchange-values) of commodities stop at the money form. It is "precisely" the money form which "conceals" and distorts these relations. I mention this only because the famous passage about a table beginning to dance (164) tends to overshadow, in our collective mis-remembering of the chapter, that money is just such a fetishized commodity; even *the* fetishized commodity. Fetishism here always having the connotation of something-being-repressed (labor time).

The money form is the "universal equivalent" of exchange by which the value of commodities is represented to other commodities--but is there not another "universal equivalent," albeit in a different sense, in the chapter? Aristotle, Marx says, was prevented from seeing that "all labour is expressed as equal human labour...because Greek society was founded on the labour of slaves, hence had as its basis the inequality of men and of their labour-powers" (152). Labour, then, is both "equivalent" to itself--average and self-same in a given society--and "universal."* What will be a shock to no one is the conclusion to be drawn from this---that money and labour are commensurate; both are universal equivalents. Obviously Capital comes to this conclusion by another route, but the identity of value with labor and the immediate non-recognition of that identity within material exchange, is contained linguistically here in the "equivalency" of all human labour. This concept is barely comprehensible to me. Why average human labour?

In the next post I will be looking at the discussion of how the "forms" of the commodity "confront each other" (140) and then "recognize" each other (143), as well as the Gayatri Spivak article, "Scattered Speculations on Value."


*=  "The labour that forms the substance of value is equal human labour, the expenditure of identical human labour-power" (129). In a particular society, "simple average labour ...is given" (135).

Introductions

As I hope is evident from the title "Reading Capital," this blog will consist of Seth's and my simultaneous readings of Karl Marx's Capital over the coming weeks. My name is Ben, I am an English PhD student, and this will be my first time all the way through the book.

The original premise of this blog is that it would be fun to collectively read a difficult book on the internet; a similar project is imaginable for Finnegan's Wake , The Arcades Project, Clarissa, the Cantos, etc. Exclusively long works, you see, because my aim is not a "close reading," as in a seminar that very slowly parses out a text. It is more along the lines of, "How does this work?" And the specific genesis of this project, in my mind, is that Capital is something that we all "know" as a great work, as a reference point, and of Marxism as a school, as an -ism, as a political affiliation, as a pose, an inflection, etc., without having read it or really even being able to talk about it. Marx has so many great shorter works-- The Communist Manifesto, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, Theses on Feuerbach--that any "overview" of the subject is afforded the luxury of skipping Capital altogether.

I am coming to this from an English "background," but I should immediately disavow the possible implications of that. I am not overly interested in reading Capital "as literature." As literature, it ain't much. I would even go so far as to feign ignorance of what "as literature" means. Certainly Capital is in a different class than Thus Spake Zarathustra, The Republic , or Fear and Trembling in terms of the literary (readable) merit of philosophical texts. And if the phrase only connotes a naive-deconstructive idea that the divide between philosophical and literary readings is blurry or non-existent, well, that need hardly be brought up.

I have a busy semester already without this 900 page book thrown on top, but I will try and also look into some other texts (Althusser, Lenin, Lukacs, Derrida) when I have time, although obviously the secondary literature on the subject is overwhelming. Needless to say, the aim of this endeavor is to learn something and to clarify Marx's thought, even if only for ourselves.

I will be reading the Vintage edition of the Ben Fowkes translation.

Introductory Post

I'm Seth. I'm in German at the University of Michigan, and work on the late GDR with particular emphasis on politics [attempting to get beyond the complicity/trangression binary] against art [punk, Prenzlauer Berg, Götze, etc.] as a kind of un-untyable knot with all kinds of curves worth looking at.

Reading Kapital, I'll have an eye toward contemporary interventions [Laclau/Mouffe, Negt/Kluge, Therborn, Hardt/Negri, Adorno] that draw heavily on minutiae in Capital. One thing I'll try returning to throughout is Tony Judt's posthumous trouncing of Louis Althusser, in which one element is that Althusser's reading [and here I'm wondering if Judt really just meant Althusser, since you might put Zizek, among quite a few others, in the hot seat] "chopped Marx into little bits, selected those texts or parts of texts that suited the master's interpretation and then proceeded to construct the most astonishingly abstruse, self-regarding and ahistorical version of Marxist philosophy imaginable." My guiding question is: does Marx do systematic philosophy, from which individual elements are fundamentally irrecuperable? Or is what Judt curses as "symptomatic" reading admissible?

Also worth noting: my own Marx training only extends to and Die deutsche Ideologie and the Thesen über Feuerbach. Since these are two places Marx initially develops historical materialism, and at the same time quite early writings, it'll be worth seeing whether I can "spring over my own shadow" here. I'll be reading the Aveling translation primarily, republished on the hundredth anniversary of Marx' original publication. Alongside this I'll be working with a photo reprint of the final edit Marx made before he died, with all Vorworte intact.