Chapter One of Capital has proven itself more enjoyable on my third read than previous ones (including my painful initiation in the Spring of 2009 “Marxist Literary Theory,” when it took me about 20 minutes a page). Now, I have the chance to focus on Marx’s methodological choice in organization. I read Harvey’s introduction to the book, and the brilliance in the first section is Marx’s primary attention to the commodity. I do have several questions that are perhaps only answered or made more coherent with an expanded scope of economics.
But, for now, I will confine my remarks and questions to the minute amount of text that I have read thus far. In order to stick to schedule, I am due to finish chapter one by tomorrow, but section three is full of so many rich examples and illustrations that I overlooked before in my anxiety to reach and comprehend the famous fourth section.
In the third section, Marx inches closer and closer to money, the symbol of abstract human labor. It is a wonderful approach too. This section is the first time that the word money is even mentioned. The mention of money-form comes into play when Marx gives historical account of Aristotle’s formulation of value, which does not distinguish the money-form as being anything more than a complex expression of relative value.
Relative (exchange) value is saying as much as 20 yards of linen = 1 coat, where a coat is a fixed value for the purposes of this formula. The meaning of this formulation lies in the absence of fixed value; ie it is possible that in a market where these two commodities are fluctuating in the same direction (“going up in ‘worth’”), where the relativity of this particular commodity relationship is only uncovered in light of a third indicator… we haven’t gotten there yet but this seems to be a good segue for money to come in.
BUT WAIT! It can’t be! You know why? Well, Marx is just about to show us with Aristotle’s conception of exchange. Namely, Marx wants to illustrate that money (although… WE ARE NOT THERE YET) is not a relative expression of value, but is itself the commodity of itself, it is the representation of congealed labor. Marx writes:
“5 beds = 1 house is indistinguishable from “5 beds = x $”
Aristotle writes: ” There can be no exchange without equality, and no equality without commesurability… It is, however, in reality, impossible that such unlike things can be commensurate.”
This shows that Aristotle had no conception of ubiquitous or absolute matter of value; his belief in the impossibility of this expression belied his inability to recognize the value of labor, itself. Obvious ideological implications of Greek society‘s foundation on slavery and hence unacknowledged labor are apparent. However, Marx names this limitation a historical limitation and not a limitation of Aristotle’s genius. Rather, he formulates this failure as a historical contingency as something which hindered his genius. We are getting closer to the heart of the matter.
In this moment, we have moved away from the concrete explication of the commodity and its relationship to money and into the realm of historicity. Marx continues:
“The secret of the expression of value could not be deciphered until the concept of human equality had already acquired the permanence of a fixed popular opinion.” (Marx, 152)
This moment of popular acknowledgment in universal human equality is the very moment of the bourgeois revolution. It is the moment of industrialization and “equality” insofar as man is equal in civil society (in the Hegelian sense). I stopped my reading here for the moment to reflect on the implications of what Marx is writing. The ability to recognize and presuppose the foundational equality of men at the very moment that this relation between men is what determines value in capitalist exchange suggests that knowledge and historical interpretation have hitherto been contingent on historical framework and context. Like Hegel famously noted, knowledge was fated to come after the event.
But with Marx, even in this first chapter, we are liberated from the chains of contingency with the capacity to comprehend the social character of labor and the origin of social character, in our own moment as well as in the past. In this way, I am tempted to say that Marx viewed his own achievement in the execution of explanation but not in formulation. It is not mere historical accident or teleological necessity that we are now able to comprehend the social nature of commodity production, but capitalism signifies the zenith in contradiction of the concealed nature of value.
From the rooster’s crow in solitude we have found our laying hens; will we go hungry again?
