Transcritique

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Transcritique
On Kant and Marx
Kojin Karatani
translated by Sabu Kohso
The MIT Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
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2003 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any
electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying recording, or information
storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher.
This book was set in New Baskerville by UG / GGS Information Services, Inc. and
printed and bound in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Karatani, Kojin, 1941
Transcritique on Kant and Marx / Kojin Karatani; translated by Sabu Kohso.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-262-11274-4 (alk. paper)
1. Kant, Immanuel, 17241804Contributions in political science.
2. Kant, Immanuel, 17241804Contributions in economics. 3. Kant, Immanuel,
17241804. 4. Marx, Karl, 18181883Contributions in political science.
5. Marx, Karl, 18181883Contributions in economics. 6. Marx, Karl,
18181883. I. Title
JC181.K3 K37 2003
320.01dc21 2002038051
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Contents
Preface vii
Acknowledgments xv
Introduction: What Is Transcritique? 1
I Kant 27
1 The Kantian Turn 29
1.1 The Copernican Turn 29
1.2 Literary Criticism and the Transcendental Critique 35
1.3 Parallax and the Thing-in-Itself 44
2 The Problematic of Synthetic Judgment 55
2.1 Mathematical Foundations 55
2.2 The Linguistic Turn 65
2.3 Transcendental Apperception 76
3 Transcritique 81
3.1 Subject and Its Topos 81
3.2 Transcendental and Transversal 92
3.3 Singularity and Sociality 100
3.4 Nature and Freedom 112
II Marx 131
4 Transposition and Critique 133
4.1 Transposition 133
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Contents
4.2 The System of Representation: Darstellung and Vertretung 142
4.3 The Economic Crisis as a Parallax 152
4.4 The Micro Difference 161
4.5 Marx and Anarchists 165
5 The Crisis of Synthesis 185
5.1 The Form of Value qua Synthetic Judgment:
Ex Ante Facto and Ex Post Facto 185
5.2 The Form of Value 193
5.3 Capitals Drive 200
5.4 Money and Its Theology, Its Metaphysics 211
5.5 Credit and Crisis 217
6 Value Form and Surplus Value 223
6.1 Value and Surplus Value 223
6.2 The Linguistic Approach 228
6.3 Merchant Capital and Industrial Capital 234
6.4 Surplus Value and Prot 241
6.5 The Global Nature of Capitalism 251
7 Toward Transcritical Counteractions 265
7.1 The State, Capital, and Nation 265
7.2 A Possible Communism 283
Notes 307
Index 349
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Preface
This book is in two parts: reections on Kant and on Marx. Although
the two names would appear to split the book, it is in fact thoroughly
inseparable; the two parts are interactive through and through. The
whole of the projectwhat I call Transcritiqueforms a space of
transcodings between the domains of ethics and political economy,
between the Kantian critique and the Marxian critique. This is an at-
tempt to read Kant via Marx and Marx via Kant, and to recover the
signicance of the critique common to both. This critique is something
that begins from a scrutiny, a rather elaborate self-scrutiny.
Now with respect to the pairing itself. Quite a few thinkers have
sought to connect these two since the late nineteenth century. This
was an effort to grasp a subjective/ethical moment missing in the
materialism called Marxism. It speaks to the fact that Kant was not in
the least a bourgeois philosopher. To him, being moral was less a
question of good and evil than of being causa sui and hence free, and
this compels us to treat other people as free agents. The ultimate
message of Kantian moral law lies in the imperative: Act so that you
use humanity, whether in your own person or in any other person,
always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means.
1
This is
not an abstract doctrine. Kant considered it a task to be realized pro-
gressively in the context of historical society. It might be that, in the
concrete, his goal was to establish an association of independent
small producers in opposition to the civil society dominated by mer-
chant capitalism. This was an ideal conceived in pre-industrial capi-
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talist Germany; later, however, in tandem with the rise of industrial
capitalism, the unity of independent small producers was mostly dis-
banded. But Kants moral law survived. Abstract as it might have
been, Kants position was a precursor to the views of the utopian
socialists and anarchists (such as Proudhon). In this precise sense,
Hermann Cohen identied Kant as the true primogenitor of German
socialism. In the context of a capitalist economy where people treat
each other merely as a means to an end, the Kantian kingdom of
freedom or kingdom of ends clearly comes to entail another new
meaning, that is, communism. If we think about it, from the begin-
ning, communism could not have been conceptualized without the
moral moment inherent in Kants thinking. Unfortunately and un-
fairly, however, Kantian Marxism has been eclipsed by history.
I, too, came to connect Kant and Marx, yet in a different context
from neo-Kantianism. From the beginning, the Kantian Marxists
recognition of capitalism appeared to me to be feeble. I felt the
same way about anarchists (or associationists). While their sense of
freedom and ethical disposition are noteworthy, what was undeni-
ably missing in them was a theoretical approach to the forces of the
social relations that compel people. For this reason, their struggles
were mostly helpless and miserably defeated. My political stance was
once anarchistic, and I was never sympathetic to any Marxist party or
state. Yet at the same time, I was deeply in awe of Marx. My admira-
tion for Capital, the book with the subtitle Kritik der politischen
konomie (Critique of the Economics of Nations) has only intensi-
ed year by year. Being a student of political economics and reading
Capital closely, sentence by sentence, I was always aware of and dis-
contented with the fact that Marxist philosophers from Lukcs to
Althusser did not really read it full-heartedly, but instead, only took
from it what was suitable to their philosophical concerns. I was also
discontented with the majority of political economists who deem
Capital simply a book on economy. Meanwhile, I gradually recog-
nized that the Marxian critique was not a mere criticism of capital-
ism and classical economics, but a project that elucidates the nature
and the limit of capitals drive [Trieb], and furthermore reveals, on
the basis of that drive, an essential difculty entailed in the human
act of exchange (or more broadly, communication). Capital does
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not offer an easy exit from capitalism; rather only by its very exitlessness
does it suggest a possibility of practical intervention.
Along the way, I became increasingly aware of Kant as a thinker who
also sought to suggest the possibility of practiceless by a criticism of
metaphysics (as is usually thought) than by bravely shedding light
on the limit of human reason. Capital is commonly read in relation
with Hegelian philosophy. In my case, I came to hold that it is only
the Critique of Pure Reason that should be read while cross-referencing
Capital. Thus the Marx/Kant intersection.
Marx spoke very little of communism, except for the rare occa-
sions on which he criticized others discourses on the subject. He
even said somewhere that speaking of the future was itself reac-
tionary. Up until the climate change of 1989, I also despised all ideas
of possible futures. I believed that the struggle against capitalism
and the state would be possible without ideas of a future, and that
we should only sustain the struggle endlessly in response to each
contradiction arising from a real situation. The collapse of the
socialist bloc in 1989 compelled me to change my stance. Until then,
I, as many others, had been rebuking Marxist states and communist
parties; that criticism had unwittingly taken for granted their solid
existence and the appearance that they would endure forever. As
long as they survived, we could feel we had done something just by
negating them. When they collapsed, I realized that my critical
stance had been paradoxically relying on their being. I came to feel
that I had to state something positive. It was at this conjuncture that
I began to confront Kant.
Kant is commonlyand not wronglyknown as a critic of meta-
physics. For the development of this line, the inuence of Humes
skeptical empiricism was large; Kant confessed that it was the idea
that rst interrupted his dogmatic slumber.
2
But what is overlooked
is that at the time he wrote Critique of Pure Reason, metaphysics was
unpopular and even disdained. In the preface, he expressed his re-
grets: There was a time when metaphysics was called the queen of
all sciences, and if the will be taken for the deed, it deserved this
title of honor, on account of the preeminent importance of its ob-
ject. Now, in accordance with the fashion of the age, the queen
proves despised on all sides.
3
It follows that for Kant, the primary
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task of critique was to recover metaphysics proper function. This in
turn charged Kant with the critique of Hume, who had once so radi-
cally stimulated him. I now want to reconsider the relationship
between Kant and Hume in the context of the current debate.
During the 1980s, a revival of Kant was a discernible phenome-
non. In Hannah Arendts pioneering work, Lectures on Kants Politi-
cal Philosophy, and in Jean-Franois Lyotards Lenthousiasme: La
critique kantienne de lhistoire, the return to Kant meant a rereading of
Critique of Judgment. The point taken was that universalitya sine
qua non for the judgment of tastecannot be achieved, in reality,
among a multitude of conicting subjects. At best what one gets is a
common sense that regulates conicting tastes case by case. This
work appeared to be drastically different from Kants Critique of Pure
Reason, which assumed a transcendental subjectivity that watches
over universality (a reading that I examine in the following chap-
ters.) The political implications of this new appreciation of Kant
were clear, not excepting those of Habermas, who sought to recon-
sider reason as communicative rationality: It was a criticism of
communism qua metaphysics.
Marxism has been accused of being rationalist and teleological in
its attempt to realize the grand narrative. Stalinism was indeed a
consequence of this tendency: The party of intellectuals led the pop-
ulace by reason embodying the law of history, and thus the infamous
tragedy. In opposition to this, the power of reason has been ques-
tioned, the superiority of intellectuals has been denied, and the
teleology of history negated. The reexamination of Marxism has in-
volved public consensus and negotiation among multiple language
games as opposed to the central control of reason, and heterogene-
ity of experience or complexity of causality as opposed to a rational-
ist (metaphysical) view of history; on the other hand, the present,
which has hitherto been sacriced by telos, is reafrmed in its quali-
tative heterogeneity (or in the sense of Bergsonian duration). I, too,
was part of this vast tendencycalled deconstruction, or the archae-
ology of knowledge, and so onwhich I realized later could have
critical impact only while Marxism actually ruled the people of many
nation-states. In the 1990s, this tendency lost its impact, having be-
come mostly a mere agent of the real deconstructive movement of
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capitalism. Skeptical relativism, multiple language games (or public
consensus), aesthetic afrmation of the present, empirical histori-
cism, appreciation of subcultures (or cultural studies), and so forth
lost their most subversive potencies and hence became the domi-
nant, ruling thought. Today, these have become ofcial doctrine in
the most conservative institutions in economically advanced nation-
states. All in all, this tendency can be summarized as the apprecia-
tion of empiricism (including aestheticism) against rationalism. In
this sense, it has become increasingly clear that the return to Kant in
recent years has actually been a return to Hume.
Meanwhile, it was in the effort of going beyond the empiricist
tendencyas a critique of Humethat I began to read Kant. This,
to state it outright, is a project to reconstruct the metaphysics called
communism. It was Kant who provided the most lucid insight into
metaphysics proper role and the inseparable and inevitable tie be-
tween faith and reason. Thus I had to deny knowledge in order to
make room for faith; and the dogmatism of metaphysics, i.e., the
prejudice that without criticism reason can make progress in meta-
physics, is the true source of all unbelief conicting with morality,
which unbelief is always very dogmatic.
4
With this statement, it is
not that Kant sought to recover religion per se; what he afrmed was
the aspect of religion that tends toward morality, encouraging us to
be moral.
In contrast to mainstream Marxists, Marx persistently refused to
consider communism as constitutive idea (or constitutive use of
reason) in Kants sense, and he rarely spoke of the future. Thus in
The German Ideology, Marx made an addition to the text written by
Engels: Communism for us is not a state of affairs which is to be es-
tablished, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call
communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of
things. The conditions of this movement result from the now exist-
ing premise.
5
Therefore, the dogmatization of communism as a
scientic socialism was much the kind of metaphysics Marx re-
futed. But this is not contradictory to the fact that he nurtured com-
munism as regulative idea (regulative use of reason). So the young
Marx stressed the categorical imperative: The criticism of religion
ends with the teaching that man is the highest being for man, hence
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with the categorical imperative to overthrow all relations in which man is
a debased, enslaved, forsaken, despicable being.
6
For him, commu-
nism was a Kantian categorical imperative, that is, practical and
moral par excellence. He maintained this stance his whole life,
though later he concentrated his efforts on the theoretical search
for the historico-material conditions that would enable the categori-
cal imperative to be realized. Meanwhile, the mainstream Marxists,
having derided morality and advocated historical necessity and
scientic socialism, ended up constituting a new type of slave soci-
ety. This was nothing short of what Kant called all pretensions of
reason in general [aller Anmaungen der Vernunft berhaupt]. Distrust
of communism has spread, and the responsibility for the true
source of all unbelief lies with dogmatic Marxism. One cannot and
should not forget the miseries of the twentieth century caused by
communism, nor should one take this mistake simply as misfortune.
From that juncture onward we have not been allowed to advocate
Idea of any kindnot even of the New Left, which came into exis-
tence by negating Stalinismwith a naive positivity. That is why in ac-
cordance with the fashion of the age, [communism] proves despised
on all ideas. Yet at the same time, other kinds of dogmatism are
ourishing in various costumes. Furthermore, while intellectuals of
advanced nations have been expressing their distrust of morality, vari-
ous kinds of religious fundamentalism have begun to gain strength all
over the world, and the intellectuals cannot simply scorn them.
For these reasons, beginning in the 1990s, my stance, if not my
thinking itself, changed fundamentally. I came to believe that theory
should not remain in the critical scrutiny of the status quo but
should propose something positive to change the reality. At the
same time, I reconrmed the difculty of doing so. Social democ-
racy to me would not offer any promising prospect, and it was nally
around the turn of the new century that I began to see a ray of hope
that led me to organize the New Associationist Movement (NAM) in
Japan. Certainly innumerable real movements that seek to abolish
the status quo are occurring in all corners of the world, inevitably,
under the procession of the globalization of world capitalism. But,
in order to avoid the repetition of bygone mistakes, I insist that a
transcritical recognition is necessary.
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That is to say, a new practice cannot be initiated without a thor-
ough scrutiny of existing theories; and the theories to which I refer
are not limited to political ones. I became convinced that there is
nothing that is unaffected by or outside of Kantian and Marxian cri-
tiques. In this project, henceforth, I did not hesitate to dive into all
possible domains including the theory of mathematical foundations,
linguistics, aesthetics, and ontological philosophy (i.e., existential-
ism). I dealt with problems with which only specialists are customar-
ily concerned. Furthermore, part I (on Kant) and part II (on Marx)
were written as independent reections, so their rapport might be
ostensible. For this reason, I had to write a rather long introduction
in order to make the connection visible, if not to summarize the
whole book.
Notwithstanding the complexity and variety of the theoretical sub-
jects, however, I believe that the book is accessible to the general
reader. The book is based upon a series of essays that were pub-
lished in the Japanese literary monthly Gunzo, beginning in 1992.
They were published alongside novels, which is to say that I did not
write them in the enclosure of the academy and scholarly discourse.
I wrote them for people who are not grounded in special domains.
Thus the nature of the book is not academic. There are many aca-
demic papers on Kant and Marx that carefully research historical
data, point out their theoretical shortcomings, and propose minute
and sophisticated doctrines. I am not interested in doing that. I
would not dare to write a book to reveal shortcomings; I would
rather write one to praise, and only for praiseworthy works. So it is
that I do not quibble with Kant and Marx. I sought to read their
texts, focusing on the center of their potencies. But I think that as a
consequence no book is more critical of them than this.
The main target of the book is the trinity of Capital-Nation-State.
I have to admit, however, that my analyses of state and nation are
not fully developed; the considerations on the economy and revolu-
tion of the underdeveloped (agriculture-centered) and developing
countries are not sufcient. These are my future projects.
Finally, I include here only a small portion of my reections on
the particular historical context of Japanthe state, its modernity,
and its Marxismin which my thinking was fostered. I plan to deal
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with these in a sequel. In fact, I owe much of my thinking to the tra-
dition of Japanese Marxism, and Transcritique was nurtured in the
difference between Japanese and Western as well as other Asian con-
texts, and in my own singular experience of oscillating and tranvers-
ing between them. In this volume, however, I did not write about
these experiences, but rather expressed them only in line with the
texts of Kant and Marx.
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Acknowledgments
In writing this book, I was supported by many people. I would espe-
cially like to thank the translators, Sabu Kohso and Judy Geib. I also
would like to thank Geoff Waite, who checked the English transla-
tion and gave us invaluable suggestions; Fredric Jameson and Masao
Miyoshi have given me enduring moral support and constructive
advice. I owe Akira Asada, Paul Anderer, Mitsuo Sekii, Indra Levy,
the late Yuji Naito, and Lynne Karatani for providing practical and
patient encouragement for the realization of the book.
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Introduction: What Is Transcritique?
Kantian philosophy is called transcendental, as distinct from tran-
scendent. Simply stated, the transcendental approach seeks to cast
light on the unconscious structure that precedes and shapes experi-
ence. And yet, cant it be said that from its very inception, philoso-
phy itself has always taken just such an introspective approach? If
that is the case, then what distinguishes Kantian reection? Kants
unique way of reection appeared in his early work, Dreams of a
Visionary. Kant wrote, Formerly, I viewed human common sense
only from the standpoint of my own; now I put myself into the posi-
tion of anothers reason outside of myself, and observe my judg-
ments, together with their most secret causes, from the point of view
of others. It is true that the comparison of both observations results
in pronounced parallax, but it is the only means of preventing the
optical delusion, and of putting the concept of the power of knowl-
edge in human nature into its true place. What Kant is saying here
is not the platitude that one should see things not only from ones
own point of view, but also from the point of view of others. In fact,
it is the reverse. If ones subjective view is an optical delusion, then
the objective perspective or the viewpoint of others cannot but be an
optical delusion as well. And if the history of philosophy is nothing
but the history of such reections, then the history of philosophy is
itself nothing but optical delusion. The reection that Kant brought
about is the kind that reveals that reections in the past were optical
delusions. This Kantian reection as a critique of reection is
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Introduction
engendered by pronounced parallax between the subjective view-
point and the objective viewpoint. To explain, take an example of a
technology that did not exist in Kants time.
Reection is often spoken of by way of the metaphor of seeing
ones image in the mirror. In the mirror, one sees ones own face
from the perspective of the other. But in todays context, photogra-
phy must also be taken into consideration. Compare the two. Al-
though the mirror image can be identied with the perspective of
the other, there is still certain complicity with regard to ones own
viewpoint. After all, people can see their own image in the mirror as
they like, while the photograph looks relentlessly objective. Of
course, the photograph itself is an image (optical delusion) as well.
What counts then is the pronounced parallax between the mirror
image and photographic image. At the time photography was in-
vented, it is said that those who saw their own faces in pictures could
not help but feel a kind of abhorrencejust like hearing a tape
recording of ones own voice for the rst time. People gradually be-
come accustomed to photographs. In other words, people eventu-
ally come to see the image in the photograph as themselves. The
crux here is the pronounced parallax that people presumably
experience when they rst see their photographic image.
Philosophy begins with introspection as mirror, and that is where
it ends. No attempt to introduce the perspective of the other can
change this essential fact. In the rst place, philosophy began with
Socrates dialogue. But the dialogue itself is trapped within the
mirror, so to speak. People alternately criticize Kant for having re-
mained in a subjectivist self-scrutiny, or search for a way out of that
in the Critique of Judgments introduction of plural subjects. But the
truly revolutionary event in philosophy had already occurred in Cri-
tique of Pure Reason, where Kant attempted to obliterate the complic-
ity inherent in introspection precisely by conning himself to the
introspective framework. Here one can observe the attempt to intro-
duce an objectivity (qua otherness) that is totally alien to the con-
ventional space of introspection mirror. Kant has been criticized
for his subjective method, lacking in the other. But in fact, his
thought is always haunted by the perspective of the other. Critique of
Pure Reason is not written in the self-critical manner of Dreams of a
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Introduction
Visionary. And yet, the pronounced parallax has not disappeared.
This emerged in the form of antinomy, which exposes the fact that
both thesis and antithesis are nothing more than optical delusions.
In part I, I reread Kant from this perspective. The same is true of
part II. For instance, in The German Ideology Marx criticized the
young Hegeliansa group to which he himself had belonged just
months before, when he was exiled to France. To Engels, this book
presented a new view of history that replaced German idealism with
an economic purview. German ideology was nothing more than the
discourse of a backward nation, attempting to realize conceptually
that which had already become a reality in the advanced nation of
England. But for Marx, it was by stepping outside of Germanys ide-
ology for the rst time that he was able to experience an awakening,
accompanied by a certain shock. This was to see things neither from
his own viewpoint, nor from the viewpoint of others, but to face the
reality that is exposed through difference (parallax). When he
moved to England, Marx devoted himself to the critique of classical
economics, which was then dominant. In Germany, Marx had al-
ready carried out the critique of capitalism and classical economics.
What was it that endowed Marx with the new critical perspective that
came to fruition in Capital? It was an occurrence that, according to
the discourse of classical economics, could only be an accident or
mistake: the economic crisis, or more precisely, the pronounced
parallax brought about by it.
What is important is the fact that Marxs critique was always born
from migration and the pronounced parallax that results from it.
Hegel criticized Kants subjectivism and emphasized objectivity. But
in Hegel, the pronounced parallax discovered by Kant is extin-
guished. Likewise, the pronounced parallax discovered by Marx was
extinguished by Engels and other Marxists. As a result, one is left
with an image of Kant and Marx as thinkers who constructed solid,
immovable systems. A closer reading, however, reveals that they
were in fact practicing constant transposition, and that the move to
different discursive systems was what brought about the pronounced
parallax. This is obvious in the case of the exiled Marx, but the same
thing can be observed in Kant as well. Kant was not an exile in spa-
tial termshe never moved away from his hometown of Knigsberg.
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Introduction
Rather, it was his stance that made him a kind of exile, a man inde-
pendent from the state: Kant rejected a promotion to a post in
Berlin, the center of state academia, instead insisting on cosmopoli-
tanism. Kant is generally understood to have executed the transcen-
dental critique from a place that lies between rationalism and
empiricism. However, upon reading his strangely self-deprecating
Dreams of a Visionary Explained by Dreams of Metaphysics, one nds it
impossible to say that he was simply thinking from a place between
these two poles. Instead, it is the parallax between positions that
acts. Kant, too, performed a critical oscillation: He continuously
confronted the dominant rationalism with empiricism, and the
dominant empiricism with rationalism. The Kantian critique exists
within this movement itself. The transcendental critique is not some
kind of stable third position. It cannot exist without a transversal
and transpositional movement. It is for this reason that I have
chosen to name the dynamic critiques of Kant and Marxwhich
are both transcendental and transversaltranscritique.
According to Louis Althusser, Marx made an epistemological
break in The German Ideology. But in my transcritical understanding,
the break did not occur once, but many times, and this one in par-
ticular was not the most signicant. It is generally thought that
Marxs break in The German Ideology was the establishment of histori-
cal materialism. But in fact that was pioneered by Engels, who wrote
the main body of the book. One must therefore look at Marx as a
latecomer to the idea; he came to it because of his obsession with a
seemingly outmoded problem (to Engels)the critique of religion.
Thus Marx says: For Germany the criticism of religion is in the main
complete, and criticism of religion is the premise of all criticism.
1
He conducted a critique of state and capital as an extension of the
critique of religion. In other words, he persistently continued the
critique of religion under the names of state and capital. (And this
was not merely an application of the Feuerbachian theory of
self-alienation that he later abandoned.)
The development of industrial capitalism made it possible to see
previous history from the vantage point of production. So it is that
Adam Smith could already pose a stance akin to historical material-
ism by the mid-eighteenth century. But historical materialism does
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Introduction
not have the potency to elucidate the capitalist economy that cre-
ated it. Capitalism, I believe, is nothing like the economic infrastruc-
ture. It is a certain force that regulates humanity beyond its
intentionality, a force that divides and recombines human beings. It
is a religio-generic entity. This is what Marx sought to decode for the
whole of his life. A commodity appears at rst sight an extremely
obvious, trivial thing. But its analysis brings out that it is a very
strange thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological
niceties.
2
Here Marx is no longer questioning and problematizing
metaphysics or theology in the narrow sense. Instead, he grasps
the knotty problematic as an extremely obvious, trivial thing.
Thinking this way about Marx, one realizes that an equivalent of
historical materialismor even what is known as Marxism for that
mattercould have existed without Marx, while the text Capital
could not have existed if not for him.
The Marxian turnthe kind that is truly signicant and that
one cannot overlookoccurred in his middle career, in the shift
from Grundrisse or A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy to
Capital : it was the introduction of the theory of value form. What
provoked Marxs radical turn, which came after he nished writing
Grundrisse, was his initiation to skepticism: It was Baileys critique of
Ricardos labor theory of value. According to David Ricardo, ex-
change value is inherent in a commodity, which is expressed by
money. In other words, money is just an illusion (Schein in Kant).
Based upon this recognition, both Ricardian Leftists and Proudhon
insisted on abolishing currency and on replacing it with the labor
money or the exchange bank. Criticizing them as he did, however,
Marx was still relying on the labor theory of value (akin to Ricardo).
On the other hand, Bailey criticized the Ricardian position by claim-
ing that the value of a commodity exists only in its relationship with
other commodities, and therefore the labor value that Ricardo in-
sists is inherent in a commodity is an illusion.
Samuel Baileys skepticism is similar to Humes criticism that
there is nothing like a Cartesian ego cogito; there are just many
egos. To this position, Kant responded that yes, an ego is just an illu-
sion, but functioning there is the transcendental apperception X.
But what one knows as metaphysics is that which considers the X as
6715 INTRO UG 1/29/03 7:42 PM Page 5
6
Introduction
something substantial. Nevertheless, one cannot really escape from
the drive [Trieb] to take it as an empirical substance in various con-
texts. If so, it is possible to say that an ego is not just an illusion, but a
transcendental illusion. Kant achieved this position later in his life;
but rst his dogmatic slumber had to be interrupted by Humes
skepticism. And in this precise manner, Marx must have been se-
verely stricken by Baileys skepticism. But, again, like Kant, Marx
developed this thought into another dimension, which I would like
to call the transcendental reection on value.
Classical economics held that each commodity internalizes a labor
value. But, in reality, commodities can have values only after their
relationship is synthesized by money, and each one of them is given
its value. In reality only prices exist as the indicators of the mutual
relations between commodities. Thus Bailey stressed that the value
of a commodity exists only thanks to its relationship with other com-
modities. But Bailey did not question what expresses price: money.
In other words, he did not question what relates commodities to
each other and composes the system: that is, money as the general
equivalent. Money in this sense is totally irrelevant to money as sub-
stance like gold or silver; rather, it is like a Kantian transcendental
apperception X, as it were. The stance to see it in relation to its ma-
teriality is what Marx called fetishism. After all, money as substance
is an illusion, but more correctly, it is a transcendental illusion in the
sense that it is hardly possible to discard it.
For mercantilists and bullioniststhe predecessors of classical
economicsmoney was an object to be revered. This was evidently
the fetishism of money. Scorning this, classical economists posited
the substance of value in labor in and of itself. But this so-called
labor theory of value did not resolve the enigma of money; rather, it
reinforced and sustained it. Both Ricardothe advocate of the
labor theory of valueand Baileyits radical critic (and the unac-
knowledged primogenitor of neoclassical economics)managed to
erase money only supercially. As Marx said, in times of crisis, people
still want money suddenly, going back to bullionism. The Marx of
Capital stands on the side of the mercantilist, rather than Ricardo or
Bailey. By criticizing both Ricardo and Bailey on such a premise, his
critique elucidated a form that constitutes the commodity economy.
6715 INTRO UG 1/29/03 7:42 PM Page 6
7
Introduction
In other words, what Marx focused on was not the objects them-
selves but the relational system in which the objects are placed.
According to Marx, if gold becomes money, that is not because of
its immanent material characteristics, but because it is placed in the
value form. The value formconsisting of relative value form and
equivalent formmakes an object that is placed in it money.
Anythinganythingthat is exclusively placed in the general equiva-
lent form becomes money; that is, it achieves the right to attain any-
thing in exchange (i.e., its owner can attain anything in exchange).
People consider a certain thing (i.e., gold) as sublime, only because
it lls the spot of general equivalent. Crucially, Marx begins his re-
ections on capital with the miser, the one who hoards the right to
exchangein the strict sense, the right to stand in the position of
equivalent format the expense of use. The desire for money or the
right to exchange is different from the desire for commodities them-
selves. I would call this drive [Trieb] in the Freudian sense, to distin-
guish it from desire. To put it another way, the drive of a miser is
not to own an object, but to stand in the position of equivalent form,
even at the expense of the object. The drive is metaphysical in
nature; the misers goal is to accumulate riches in heaven, as it were.
One tends to scorn the drive of the miser. But capitals drive to ac-
cumulate is essentially the same. Capitalists are nothing but rational
misers to use Marxs term. Buying a commodity from someone
somewhere and selling it to anyone anywhere, capitalists seek to re-
produce and expand their position to exchange, and the purpose is
not to attain many uses. That is to say that the motive drive of
capitalism is not in peoples desire. Rather, it is the reverse; for the
purpose of attaining the right to exchange, capital has to create peo-
ples desire. This drive of hoarding the right to exchange originates
in the precariousness inherent in exchange among others.
Historical materialists aim to describe how the relationships be-
tween nature and humans as well as among humans themselves
transformed/developed throughout history. What is lacking in this
endeavor is any reection upon the capitalist economy that orga-
nizes the transformation/development. And to this end, one must
take into consideration the dimension of exchange, and why the ex-
change inexorably takes the form of value. Physiocrats and classical
6715 INTRO UG 1/29/03 7:42 PM Page 7
8
Introduction
economists had the conviction that they could see all aspects of so-
cial relations transparently from the vantage point of production.
The social exchange, however, is consistently opaque and thus ap-
pears as an autonomous force which we can hardly abolish. Engelss
conviction that we should control the anarchic drive of capitalist
production and transform it into a planned economy was little more
than an extension of classical economists thought. And Engelss
stance was, of course, the source of centralist communism.
One of the most crucial transpositions/breaks in Marxs theory of
value form lies in its attention to use value or the process of circula-
tion. Say a certain thing becomes valuable only when it has use value
to other people; a certain thingno matter how much labor time is
required to make ithas no value if not sold. Marx technically abol-
ished the conventional division between exchange value and use
value. No commodity contains exchange value as such. If it fails to
relate to others, it will be a victim of sickness unto death in the
sense of Kierkegaard. Classical economists believe that a commodity
is a synthesis between use value and exchange value. But this is only
an ex post facto recognition. Lurking behind this synthesis as event
is a fatal leap [salto mortale]. Kierkegaard saw the human being as a
synthesis between nity and innity, reminding us that what is at
stake in this synthesis is inevitably faith. In commodity exchange,
the equivalent religious moment appears as credit. Credit, the treaty
of presuming that a commodity can be sold in advance, is an institu-
tionalization of postponing the critical moment of selling a com-
modity. And the commodity economy, constructed as it is upon
credit, inevitably nurtures crisis.
Classical economics saw all economic phenomena from the van-
tage point of production, and insisted that it had managed to demys-
tify everything (other than production) by reasoning that it was all
secondary and illusory. As a result, it is mastered by the circulation
and credit that it believes itself to have demystied, and thus it can
never elucidate why crisis occurs. Crisis is the appearance of the crit-
ical moment inherent in the commodity economy, and as such it
functions as the most radical critique of the political economy. In
this light, it may be said that pronounced parallax brought by
crisis led Marx to Capital.
6715 INTRO UG 1/29/03 7:42 PM Page 8
9
Introduction
In the preface to the second edition of Capital, Marx openly avowed
[himself] to be the pupil of that mighty thinker Hegel.
3
In fact, Marx
sought to describe the capitalist economy as if it were a self-realization
of capital qua the Hegelian Spirit. Notwithstanding the Hegelian de-
scriptive style, however, Capital distinguishes itself from Hegels philos-
ophy in its motivation. The end of Capital is never the absolute Spirit.
Capital reveals the fact that capital, though organizing the world, can
never go beyond its own limit. It is a Kantian critique of the ill-
contained drive of capital/reason to self-realize beyond its limit.
And all the enigmas of capitals drive are inscribed in the theory
of value form. The theory of value form is not a historical reection
that follows exchange from barter to the formation of money. Value
form is a kind of form that people are not aware of when they are
placed within the monetary economy; this is the form that is discov-
ered only transcendentally. In the reverse of his descriptive order
from form of value, money form to miser to merchant capital to
industrial capitalone has to read Marxs retrospective query from
the latter to the former. Classical economists rebuked the businesses
of bullionists, mercantilists, and merchant capitalists of the previous
age and denounced their economic role. They argued that while
they earn prot from the difference of unequal exchange, industrial
capital makes money from fair, equal exchange: it derives prot
from the division of labor and cooperative work. In contrast, Marx
thought of capital by returning to the model of merchant capital.
He saw capital in the general formula: Money-Commodity-Money.
This is to see capital essentially as merchant capital. Capital under
this light is a self-increasing, self-reproductive money. This is the
movement M-C-M itself. The case of industrial capitalwhich is
usually considered to be totally differentdiffers only in that the
role of C is a complex that consists of raw material, means of pro-
duction, and labor-power commodity. And this last, labor-power
commodity, is truly inherent in industrial capital. For industrial capi-
tal earns surplus value not only by making workers work, but also by
making them buy backin totalitywhat they produce.
Classical economists claim that merchant capital (or mercantil-
ism) conducts unequal exchange misses the point. The fact is, when
merchant capital attains surplus value from the exchange between
6715 INTRO UG 1/29/03 7:42 PM Page 9
10
Introduction
different value systems, each tradeeither M-C or C-Mis strictly
based upon equal exchange. Merchant capital attains surplus value
from spatial difference. Meanwhile, industrial capital attains surplus
value by incessantly producing new value systems temporallythat is,
with technological innovation. This categorical division does not
prevent industrial capital from attaining surplus value from the ac-
tivity of merchant capital. Whatever the kind, capital is not choosy in
how it attains surplus value; it always attains surplus value from the
difference of value systems by equal exchange within each deal. But,
one of the points I want to pose is that how surplus value is earnedin
contrast to how prot is earnedis strictly invisible, and the whole
mechanism remains in a black box, as it were. Thus invisibility is also
a condition for the struggle within the process of circulation.
It is troubling that many Marxists posit surplus value only in the
exploitation of the production process rather than in the differ-
ences between value systems. These Marxists see the relationship be-
tween capitalists and wage workers as a (disguised) extension of that
between feudal lord and serfs and they believe that this was Marxs
idea. But it originated in the Ricardian Socialists, who drew from
Ricardos theory of prot the idea that prot making is equal to the
exploitation of surplus labor. This became the central theory of the
English labor movement in the early nineteenth century. Though it
is true that Marx himself said a similar thing time and again and it
may entertain a vulgar ear, it should be distinguished from that as-
pect of Marx that actually elucidated the enigma of surplus value.
The best it can do is to explain absolute surplus value (achieved by
the elongation of the labor day), but not relative surplus value
(achieved by the improvement of labor productivity)the particu-
lar characteristic of industrial capitalism. What is more, seeing the
relationship between capitalist and wage worker in comparison with
the relationship between feudal lord and serf is seriously misleading:
rst, it results in envisioning the abolishment of the capitalist econ-
omy from the vantage point of the master/slave dialectic; and sec-
ond, it leads to centralizing the struggle in production process by
ignoring the circulation process.
The Marx of Capital, in contrast, stresses the priority of the circula-
tion process. In the manner of Kant, Marx points out an antinomy: He
6715 INTRO UG 1/29/03 7:42 PM Page 10
11
Introduction
says, on the one hand, that surplus value (for industrial capital) can-
not be attained in the process of production in itself, and, on the
other hand, that it cannot be attained in the process of circulation
in itself. Hence, Hic Rhodus, hic salta! Nevertheless, this antinomy
can be undone, that is, only by proposing that the surplus value (for
industrial capital) comes from the difference of value systems in the
circulation process (like in merchant capital), and yet that the differ-
ence is created by technological innovation in the production process.
Capital has to discover and create the difference incessantly. This is
the driving force for the endless technological innovation in indus-
trial capitalism; it is not that the productionism comes from peoples
hope for the progress of civilization as such. It is widely believed that
the development of the capitalist economy is caused by our material
desires and faith in progress; so it is that it would always seem possi-
ble to change our mentality and begin to control the reckless devel-
opment rationally; and further, it would seem possible to abolish
capitalism itself, when we wish. The drive of capitalism, however,
is deeply inscribed in our society and culture; or more to the
point, our society and culture are created by it; it will never stop by
itself. Neither will it be stopped by any rational control or by state
intervention.
Marxs Capital does not reveal the necessity of revolution. As the
Japanese Marxian political economist, Kozo Uno (18971977)
pointed out, it only presents the necessity of crisis.
4
And crisis, even
though it is the peculiar illness of the capitalist economy, is the cata-
lyst for its incessant development; it is part of the whole mechanism.
The capitalist economy cannot eradicate the plague, yet neither will
it perish because of it. Environmentalists warn that the capitalist
economy will cause unprecedented disasters in the future, yet it is
not that these disasters will terminate the capitalist economy. Also, it
is impossible that capitalism will collapse by the reverse dynamic,
when, in the future, commodication is pushed to its limitit is
impossible that it would die a natural death.
Finally, the only solution most of us can imagine today is state reg-
ulation of capitals reckless movement. But we should take notice
of the fact that the state, like capital, is driven by its own certain
autonomous powerwhich wont be dissolved by the globalization of
6715 INTRO UG 1/29/03 7:42 PM Page 11
12
Introduction
capitalism. This autonomy should nevertheless be understood in dis-
tinction from the sense of historical materialisms doctrine that state
and nation assume superstructure in relationship with economic
base; they are relatively autonomous to, though determined by, it.
First of all, as I have suggested, the very notion that the capitalist
economy is base or infrastructure is itself questionable. As I have
tried to elucidate in the book, the world organized by money and
credit is rather one of illusion, with a peculiarly religious nature.
Saying this from the opposite view, even though state and nation are
composed by communal illusion, precisely like capitalism, they in-
evitably exist thanks to their necessary grounds. Simply put, they are
founded on exchanges that are different from the commodity ex-
change. So it is that no matter how many times one stresses their na-
ture of being imagined communities,
5
it is impossible to dissolve
them. As young Marx pointed out vis--vis another bind: To abolish
religion as the illusory happiness of the people is to demand the real
happiness. The demand to give up illusions about the existing state
of affairs is the demand to give up a state of affairs which needs illusions.
The criticism of religion is therefore in embryo the criticism of the vale
of tears, the halo of which is religion.
6
The same can be said of state
and nation.
After reecting upon value form, the Marx of Capital seems
to explicate the historical genesis of commodity exchange in the
chapter Process of Exchange. There he stresses that it began
in between communities: The exchange of commodities begins
where communities have their boundaries, at their points of contact
with other communities, or with members of the latter. However, as
soon as products have become commodities in the external relations
of a community, they also, by reaction, become commodities in the
internal life of the community.
7
Despite its appearance, this depic-
tion is not strictly of a historical situation, but the form of exchange
that is discovered and stipulated only by a transcendental retrospec-
tion. Furthermore, Marxs statement, which I quoted earlier, is in
fact based upon the premise that there are other forms of exchange.
Commodity exchange is a peculiar form of exchange among other
exchanges. First, there is exchange within a communitya reciproc-
ity of gift and return. Though based upon mutual aid, it also
6715 INTRO UG 1/29/03 7:42 PM Page 12
13
Introduction
imposes the communitys codeif one does not return, one will be
ostracizedand exclusivity. Second, the original exchange between
communities is plunder. And rather it is this plunder that is the basis
for other exchanges: For instance, commodity exchange begins only
at the point where mutual plunder is given up. In this sense, plun-
der is deemed a type of exchange. For instance, in order to plunder
continuously, it is necessary to protect the plundered from other
plunderers, and even nurture economico-industrial growth. This is
the prototype of the state. In order to keep on robbing, and robbing
more and more, the state guarantees the protection of land and the
reproduction of labor power by redistribution. It also promotes agri-
cultural production by public undertakings such as regulating water
distribution through public water works. It follows that the state
does not appear to be abetting a system of robbery: Farmers think of
paying tax as a return (duty) for the protection of the lord; mer-
chants pay tax as a return for the protection of their exchange and
commerce. Finally, the state is represented as a supra-class entity of
reason.
Plunder and redistribution are thus forms of exchange. Inasmuch
as human social relations entail the potential of violence, these
forms are inevitably present. And the third form is what Marx calls
the commodity exchange between communities. As I analyze in de-
tail in the book, this exchange engenders surplus value or capital,
though with mutual consent; and it is denitively different from the
exchange of plunder/redistribution. Furthermore, and this is the
nal question of this book, a fourth kind of exchange exists: associa-
tion. This is a form of mutual aid, yet neither exclusive nor coercive
like community. Associationism can be considered as an ethico-
economic form of human relation that can appear only after a soci-
ety once passes through the capitalist market economy. It is thought
that Proudhon was the rst to have theorized it; according to my
reading, however, Kants ethics already contained it.
In his famous book, Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson said
that the nation-state is a marriage between nation and state that
were originally different in kind. This was certainly an important
suggestion. Yet it should not be forgotten that there was another
marriage between two entities that were totally heterogeneousthe
6715 INTRO UG 1/29/03 7:42 PM Page 13
14
Introduction
marriage between state and capital. In the feudal ages, state, capital,
and nation were clearly separated. They existed distinctively as feu-
dal states (lords, kings, and emperors), cities, and agrarian commu-
nities, all based upon different principles of exchange. States were
based upon the principle of plunder and redistribution. The agrar-
ian communities that were mutually disconnected and isolated were
dominated by states; but, within themselves, they were autonomous,
based upon the principle of mutual aid and reciprocal exchange.
Between these communities, markets or cities grew; these were
based upon monetary exchange relying on mutual consent. What
crumbled the feudal system was the total osmosis of the capitalist
market economy. But the economic process was realized only in the
political form, of the absolutist monarchy. The absolutist monarchi-
cal states conspired with the merchant class, monopolized the
means of violence by toppling feudal lords (aristocracy), and nally
abolished feudal domination (extra-economic domination) entirely.
This was the very story of the wedding between state and capital.
Protected by the absolutist state, merchant capital (bourgeoisie)
grew up and nurtured the identity of the nation for the sake of cre-
ating a unied market. Yet this was not all in terms of the formation
of the nation. The agrarian communities, that were decomposed
along with the permeation of the market economy and by the ur-
banized culture of enlightenment, had always existed on the founda-
tion of the nation. While individual agrarian communities that had
been autarkic and autonomous were decomposed by the osmosis of
money, their communalitiesmutual aid and reciprocitythemselves
were recovered imaginarily within the nation. In contradistinction
from what Hegel called the state of understanding (lacking spirit),
or the Hobbesian state, the nation is grounded upon the empathy of
mutual aid descending from agrarian communities. And this emo-
tion consists of a feeling of indebtedness toward the gift, indicating
that it comes out of the relation of exchange.
It was amid the bourgeois revolution that these three were legally
married. As in the trinity intoned in the French Revolutionliberty,
equality, and fraternitycapital, state, and nation copulated and
amalgamated themselves into a force forever after inseparable.
Hence to be strict the modern state must be called the capitalist
6715 INTRO UG 1/29/03 7:42 PM Page 14
15
Introduction
nation-state. They were made to be mutually complementary, rein-
forcing each other. When economic liberty becomes excessive and
class conict is sharpened, the state intervenes to redistribute wealth
and regulate the economy, and at the same time, the emotion of
national unity (mutual aid) lls up the cracks. When facing this fear-
less trinity, undermining one or the other does not work. If one at-
tempts to overthrow capitalism alone, one has to adapt statism, or
one is engulfed by nationalist empathy. It goes without saying that
the former appeared as Stalinism and the latter as fascism. Seeing
capitalist commodity exchange, nation, and state as forms of
exchange is possible only from an economic stance. If the concept of
economic infrastructure has signicance, it is only in this sense.
In the modern period, among the three principles of exchange, it
was the commodity exchange that expanded and overpowered the
others. Inasmuch as it operated within the trinity, however, it is im-
possible that the capitalist commodity exchange could monopolize
the whole of human relationality. With respect to the reproduction
of humans and nature, capital has no choice but to rely on the fam-
ily and agrarian community; in this sense capital is essentially depen-
dent upon the precapitalist mode of production. Herein exists the
ground of the nation. On the other hand, while absolutist monarchs
disappeared by bourgeois revolutions, the state itself has remained.
The state can never be dissolved and subsumed into the representa-
tives of national sovereignty (i.e., government). For the state, no
matter what kind, always exists as the bare sovereign vis--vis other
states (if not always to its nation); in crises (wars), a powerful leader
(the subject of determination) is always called for, as evidenced in
Bonapartism and fascism.
One frequently hears today that the nation-state will be gradually
decomposed by the globalization of capitalism (neo-liberalism).
This is impossible. When individual national economies are threat-
ened by the global market, they demand the protection (redistribu-
tion) of the state and/or bloc economy, at the same time as
appealing to national cultural identity. So it is that any counterac-
tion to capital must also be one targeted against the state and nation
(community). The capitalist nation-state is fearless because of its
makeup. The denial of one ends up being reabsorbed into the ring
6715 INTRO UG 1/29/03 7:42 PM Page 15
16
Introduction
of the trinity by the power of the other two. Countermovements in
the past, such as corporatism, welfare society, and social democracy,
resulted in the perfection of the ring rather than its abolition.
Marx thought that the socialist revolution would be possible only
in the most advanced country, England, because socialism was sup-
posed to be possible only in the stage where bourgeois society was
fully ripe, ripe enough to decompose. Nonetheless, in reality it
could not have seemed less likely to him that it would occur. In the
particular situation where universal suffrage was installed and labor
unions strengthened, revolution seemed like it had receded even
farther into the distance. What really receded, however, was the rev-
olution that was imagined from the vantage point of and as an ex-
tension of bourgeois revolution; the fact was that from that juncture
on, a different kind of revolution came to be called for. One should
not forget that it was under such circumstances that Marx came
to grips with the task of writing Capital. His recognition that a criti-
cism of capitalism would no longer sufce made him write such a
monumental piece.
After Marxs death, as the social democratic party in Germany
made remarkable advances, Engels came to abandon the classical
concept of violent revolution and believe in the possibility of revolu-
tion via parliamentary means. This was the path to social democracy,
in which the state manages the capitalist economy and redistributes
the wealth to the working class. Next, Engelss disciple Bernstein
eliminated the last dregs of the revolution fantasy that were still
present in Engels. Meanwhile, Marxism was established along the
line of Leninism, which rejects such visions of social democracy.
However, at the end of the twentieth century, the left has ultimately
returned to Bernsteins way of thinking. Clearly, this is to completely
lose sight of the critical need to supersede (aufheben) the capitalist
nation-state. In World War I, social democrats not only failed to pre-
vent the war, but also got involved in the frenzy of nationalism. And
it is quite possible that they will repeat the same faux pas in the fu-
ture. Yet, as all of us know well by now, Leninism cannot replace it.
Is there an alternative? I would posit that it can be found in Capital,
the book Marx wrote as he deliberately remained in England where
the possibility of classical revolution was fading away. As I have
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17
Introduction
explained, the trinity of capital, nation, and state is rooted in the
necessary forms that human exchange could assume, and therefore,
it is nearly impossible to get out of the ring. Marx in Capital,
however, discovered an exit, the fourth type of exchange: association.
The Marxists of the late nineteenth century overlooked the com-
munism of later Marx, the idea that an association of associations
would replace the Capital-Nation-State. In The Civil War in France
written as an address to the general council of the international
working mens associationMarx wrote: If united co-operative soci-
eties are to regulate national production upon a common plan, thus
taking it under their own control, and putting an end to the con-
stant anarchy and periodical convulsions which are the fatality of
capitalist productionwhat else, gentlemen, would it be but Com-
munism, possible Communism?
9
The association of producers/
consumers cooperatives has been conceptualized and practiced by
socialists since Robert Owen, and by Proudhonist anarchists. In Cap-
ital, too, Marx considers cooperatives in comparison with stock com-
panies and highly appreciates them: While stock companies are only
passive abolition [aufhebung] of the capitalist system, the positive
abolition is discovered in the cooperative of which stockholders are
workers themselves.
10
But Marx saw their limits as well. They are des-
tined either to fail in the erce competition with capital, or to turn
themselves into stock companies. For this reason, both Lenin and
Engels ignored them or, at best, marginalized them as subordinate
to labor movements. On the other hand, and notwithstanding
the limits, it was precisely in them that Marx saw the possibility of
communism.
Bakunin attacked Marx as a centralist thinker by associating him
with the state socialist Lassalle. He either did not know or ignored
the fact that Marx was critical of Lassalles direction (the Gotha Pro-
gramme) to have the state protect and foster cooperative produc-
tion. Marx was clear: That the workers desire to establish the
conditions for co-operative production on a social scale, and rst of
all on a national scale, in their own country, only means that they
are working to transform the present conditions of production, and
it has nothing in common with the foundation of co-operative soci-
eties with state aid. But as far as the present co-operative societies
6715 INTRO UG 1/29/03 7:42 PM Page 17
18
Introduction
are concerned, they are of value only insofar as they are the indepen-
dent creations of the workers and not protgs either of the govern-
ment or of the bourgeois.
11
In other words, Marx is stressing that
the association of cooperatives itself must take over the leadership
from the state, in the place of state-led cooperative movements,
whereby capital and state will wither away. And this kind of proposi-
tion of principle aside, Marx never said anything in particular about
future prospects.
All in all, communism for Marx was nothing but associationism, but
inasmuch as it was so, he had to forge it by critiquing. Marxs thinking
fell between that of Lassalle and Bakunin. This oscillation allowed
later generations to draw either stance from Marxs thought. But what
we should see here is less contradiction or ambiguity than Marxs
transcritique. What was clear to Marx was that it is impossible to
counter the autonomous powers of the trinity by simply denouncing
them. Based as they are upon certain necessities, they have au-
tonomous powers. In other words, functioning as they are as transcen-
dental apperception, not only are they irresolvable but also even
revive stronger. To nally abolish the trinity, a deep scrutiny into (and
critique of) them is required. Where can we nd the clue to form the
countermovement? This, I believe, is in the theory of value form in
Capital. In the preface, Marx claried his stance as follows:
To prevent possible misunderstandings, let me say this. I do not by any
means depict the capitalist and landowner in rosy colors. But individuals
are dealt with here only in so far as they are the personications of
economic categories, the bearers [Trger] of particular class-relations and
interests. My standpoint, from which the development of the economic for-
mation of society is viewed as a process of natural history, can less than any
other make the individual responsible for relations whose creature he re-
mains, socially speaking, however much he may subjectively raise himself
above them.
12
The economic categories mentioned here signify the forms of
value. Who are capitalists and proletariats is determined by where
the individuals are placed: in either relative form of value or equiva-
lent form. This is totally irrespective of what they think. This struc-
turalist view was a necessity. Here Marx did not sufce with simply
accusing capitalism of immorality; this is the essence of Marxian
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19
Introduction
ethics. In Capital, there is no subjectivity. Even capitalistsespecially
those in stock companiesare agents of capitals movement, but
not subjects. The same is true of workers. So it is that people either
read in Capital the (natural historical) law of history whereby a capi-
talist society gradually yet apodictically turns into a communist soci-
ety, or sought motives of revolutionary acts in pre-Capital texts. As is
evident, however, neither method worked. Concerning the former,
it is totally impossible to assume that capitalism will end autotel-
ically. In principle there cannot be a telos as such in natural history.
Concerning the latter, what was discovered in those texts was, more
or less, subsumed into a narrative of the Hegelian dialectic of master
and slave: that is, proletariat qua slave will nally rebel against bour-
geoisie qua master at the extremity of alienation and impoverish-
ment. In this narrative, a workers rebellion is supposed to take
place in the production process as a general strike, and this would
lead to their seizure of state power. I cannot believe that Marxs posi-
tion at the time of writing Capital was such. If Capital has been rather
shunned by Marxists themselves, it is more because of the difculty
in nding a prospect of revolution therein. And the new revolution
would have to be different from those which could happen in vari-
ous places of the world outside England and North America. Then,
how is a revolution possible in the world where there seems to be no
moment for subjective intervention to appear?
The fact that in value form place determines the nature of the
subject who occupies it nevertheless does not prevent capitalists
from being subjective. Since capital itself is the subject of a self-
reproductive movement, the agentscapitalistscan be active, and
this activity is precisely that of money or the position of purchaser
(the equivalent form). On the other hand, those who sell the labor-
power commodityworkershave no other choice but to be pas-
sive. In this relationality, it is only natural that they can only engage
in an economic struggle wherein they negotiate with capitalists over
their own commodity price. It is absolutely impossible to expect
workers to stand up under such conditions. If this has occurred his-
torically, it has been thanks to social chaos resulting from war, or a
situation where employers were particularly villainous. But it is
not that workers resistance against capital is totally hopeless. The
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20
Introduction
movement of capital M-C-Mnamely, the realization of surplus
valueis dependent upon whether or not products are sold. And
surplus value is realized in principle only by workers in totality buy-
ing back what they produce. In the production process, the relation-
ship between capitalist and workers is certainly like that between
master and slaves. But the process of capitals metamorphosis (or
transubstantiation) is not so one-dimensional as to be dened by
that. Because at the end of the cycle, capital, too, has to stand in the
position of selling (the relative form of value), and it is precisely at
this moment and this moment only that workers are in the subjec-
tive position. This is the place where the commodities of capitalist
production are soldthe place of consumption. This is the only place
where workers in totality with purchasing power are in the buying
position. Marx articulated this: What precisely distinguishes capital
from the master-slave relation is that the worker confronts him as
consumer and possessor of exchange values, and that in the form of
the possessor of money, in the form of money he becomes a simple cen-
ter of circulationone of its innitely many centers, in which his
specicity as worker is extinguished.
13
For capital, consumption is
the place where surplus value is nally realized, and for this objec-
tive precisely, the only place where it is subordinated to the will of
consumers/workers.
In the monetary economy, buying and selling as well as produc-
tion and consumption are separated. This introduces a split in the
workers subject: as workers (the sellers of labor-power commodity)
and consumers (the buyers of capitalist commodities). In conse-
quence, it comes to appear as if corporations and consumers were
the only subjects of economic activities. It also segregates the labor
and consumers movements. In recent history, while labor move-
ments have been stagnant, consumers movements have ourished,
often incorporating issues of environmental protection, feminism,
and minorities. Generally, they take the form of civil acts, and are
not connected to, or are sometimes even antagonistic to, the labor
movement. After all, though, consumers movements are laborers
movements in transposition, and are important only inasmuch as they
are so. Conversely, the labor movement could go beyond the bounds
of its specicity and become universal inasmuch as it self-consciously
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21
Introduction
acts as a consumers movement. For, in fact, the process of con-
sumption as a reproduction of labor-power commodity covers a
whole range of fronts of our life-world, including child care, educa-
tion, leisure, and community activities. But what is at stake here is
obviously related to, yet clearly different from, the process of repro-
duction in the sense of Gramsci: the cultural ideological apparati
such as family, school, church, and so forth. In this context, it is rst
and foremost the process of the reproduction of labor-power as a
topos of ordeal for capitals self-realization, and hence the position
in which workers can nally be the subject.
Marxists failed to grasp the transcritical moment where workers
and consumers intersect. And in this sense, the anarcho-sandicalists,
who opposed them, were the same. They both saw the specic class
relation in the capitalist economy (capitalist and wage workers) as a
version of that of feudal lord and serfs. They both believed that what
had been evident in the feudal system came to be veiled under the
capitalist commodity economy; therefore, the workers are supposed
to stand up and overthrow the capitalist system according to the di-
alectic of master and slave. But in reality, workers do not stand up at
all, because, they believe, the workers consciousness is reied by the
commodity economy, and their task as the vanguard is to awaken
workers from the daydream. They believe that the reication is caused
by the seduction of consumerist society and/or manipulation by cul-
tural hegemony. Thus, to begin with, what they should and can do is
to critically elucidate the mechanism. Or to say it outright, that is
the only business left for them today. What Fredric Jameson calls the
cultural turn is a form of despair inherent in the Marxist practice.
There are various forms of the despair, but they are, more or less, all
the result of production-process centrism.
What about civil acts that overlap the consumption front? In keep-
ing a distance from labor movements, they lack a penetrating stance
toward the capitalist relation of production. They tend to be ab-
sorbed into the social democracy that, approving the market econ-
omy, seeks to correct its shortcomings through state regulations as
well as redistribution of wealth.
I said that Marx of Capital did not present an easy way out of capi-
talism. But, from the beginning, there is no way for Capital, the
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22
Introduction
scrutiny of money that transforms into capital, to present a direct
procedure for abolishing/sublating it. The Marxists after Engels,
who read the theory of value form merely as an introduction, did
not develop any account of money themselves. They imagined that
the state regulation and planned economy would abolish the capital-
ist market economy, brushing aside the fact that abolishing the
market economy would be equal to abolishing free exchanges of in-
dividuals. Their stance was based totally on the labor theory of value
(of classical economics), that is, their vision totally belonged to the
domain of the value system of capitalist economy. From this stance,
the best we got was the vision of a society where everyone gets what
he or she earns. They were blinded to the autonomous dimension of
money that Marx tackled in Capital. As I have said, money is not
merely a denominator of value, but a mediating function through
which all individual commodities are exchanged, and through
which the value-relation among all commodities is constantly ad-
justed and readjusted. For this precise reason, money exists as an or-
ganizer of the system of commodities, namely, a transcendental
apperception X of human exchange. Certainly in the everyday market
economy, money qua illusion is hypostatized. Due to fetishism, the
movement of capital occurs as an auto-multiplication of money. Bour-
geois economists stress the superiority of the market economy by
veiling the aspect of capitals movement. Yet one cannot abandon
the market economy in general. It would result in a total loss. And
again, there is no prospect of abolishing capital and state in social
democracy that acknowledges but controls the capitalist market
economy.
The ultimate conclusion of Capital is the antinomy: money should
exist; money should not exist. To supersede (aufheben) money equals
the creation of a money that would fulll the conicting conditions.
Marx said nothing about this possible money. All he did was critique
Proudhons ideas of labor money and exchange bank. Proudhon,
too, was based upon the labor theory of value; he sought to make a
currency that purely valorizes labor time. Here there was a blind
spot: Labor value is conditioned by the social exchanges via money; it
is formed as value only after the fact of the exchange. That is to say,
the social labor time qua substance of value is formed via money,
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23
Introduction
which thus cannot replace money. Labor money would tacitly rely
on the existing monetary economy; even if it tried to challenge the
existing system, it would just be exchanged with the existing money
for the difference in price with the market value. What it could do at
best would be to neutralize money.
Having this antinomy in mind, the most exciting example to me is
LETS (Local Exchange Trading System), devised and practiced by
Michael Linton since 1982. It is a multifaceted system of settlement
where participants have their own accounts, register the wealth and
service that they can offer in the inventory, conduct exchanges
freely, and then the results are recorded in their accounts. In con-
trast to the currency of the state central bank, the currency of LETS
is issued each time by those who receive the wealth or service from
other participants. And it is so organized that the sum total of the
gains and losses of everyone is zero. In this simple system exists a
clue to solving the antinomy of money.
When compared to the exchange of mutual aid in traditional com-
munities and that of the capitalist commodity economy, the nature of
LETS becomes clear. It is, on the one hand, similar to the system of
mutual aid in the aspect that it does not impose high prices with high
interest, but, on the other hand, closer to the market in that the ex-
change can occur between those who are mutually far apart and
strangers. In contrast to the capitalist market economy, in LETS,
money does not transform into capital, not simply because there is no
interest, but because it is based upon the zero sum principle. It is orga-
nized so that, although exchanges occur actively, money does not
exist as a result. Therefore, the antinomymoney should exist and
money should not existis solved. Speaking in the context of Marxs
theory of value form, the currency of LETS is a general equivalent,
which however just connects all the wealth and services and does not
become an autonomous entity. The fetish of money does not occur. In
LETS, there is no need to accumulate money as the potency of ex-
changes, nor is there worry about an increase of losses. The system of
value-relation among wealth and services is generated via the curren-
cies of LETS, but the wealth and services are not unconditionally com-
mensurable, as in state currencies. Finally, among them, labor value as
the common essence would not be established ex post facto.
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Introduction
LETS is neither simply economic nor simply ethical. It creates an
economico-ethical association. While the mutual aid in traditional
communities compels delity to them, and the market economies
compel the belonging to the communities of currencies (states), the
social contract in LETS is like Proudhons association. Individuals
can quit a particular LETS and belong to another LETS anytime. Un-
like the currency of a state, the currency of LETS is really currencies
it is a multiplicity. More important, in contrast to other local
currencies, LETS offers each participant the right to issue his or her
own currency (simply by the act of registering/recording in an ac-
count). To say that one aspect of the sovereignty of the state exists in
the right to issue currency means that LETS actually offers sover-
eignty to the multitudes, going far beyond the specious motto sov-
ereignty resides in the people. Therefore, the potency of LETS is
not just to protect and stimulate the local economy. It engenders an
association that entails principles of exchange other than those of
the Trinity.
The last crucial aspect of LETS is that it is formed in the circula-
tion process, where consumers hold the initiative. While conven-
tional cooperatives of producers as well as consumers tend to falter
in the hopeless competition with full-hearted capitalist enterprises,
LETS could nurture the free, autonomous subjectivity of consumers-
as-workers. Only when LETS and the nancial system based upon it
expand, it should be said, can the noncapitalist producers and con-
cumers cooperatives autonomously exist. But, in terms of strategy,
LETS itself cannot terminate capitals auto-multiplying movement.
It would remain as partial, complementary to the market economy,
no matter how popular it would become. For this reason, what is
requiredaside from the movement that seeks to ex-scendent
14
cap-
italist economy like LETSis the struggle remaining within the capi-
talist economy. Where can they be united? It goes without saying
that it is in the position where workers appear as consumers,
namely, at the front of circulation.
In the movement of capital M-C-M, capital has to confront two
critical moments: buying labor-power commodity and selling prod-
ucts to workers. Failure in either moment disables capital from
achieving surplus value. In other words, it fails to be capital. That is
6715 INTRO UG 1/29/03 7:42 PM Page 24
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Introduction
to say that in these moments workers can counter capital. The rst
moment is expressed by Antonio Negri as Dont Work! This really
signies, in our context, Dont Sell Your Labor-Power Commodity!
or Dont Work as a Wage Laborer! The second moment says, like
Mahatma Gandhi, Dont Buy Capitalist Products! Both of them
can occur in the position in which workers can be the subject. But in
order for workers/consumers to be able not to work and not to
buy, there must be a safety net whereupon they can still work and
buy to live. This is the very struggle without the capitalist mode of pro-
duction: the association consisting of the producers/consumers co-
operatives and LETS. The struggle within inexorably requires these
cooperatives and LETS as an extra-capitalist mode of production/
consumption; and furthermore, this can accelerate the reorganiza-
tion of capitalist corporation into cooperative entity. The struggle
immanent in and the one ex-scendent to the capitalist mode of pro-
duction/consumption are combined only in the circulation process,
the topos of consumers workers. For it is only there that the mo-
ment for individuals to become subject exists. Association cannot
exist without the subjective interventions of individuals, and such is
possible only having the circulation process as an axis.
Karl Polanyi likened capitalism (the market economy) to cancer.
15
Coming into existence in the interstice between agrarian communi-
ties and feudal states, capitalism invaded the internal cells and trans-
formed their predispositions according to its own physiology. If so,
the transnational network of workers qua consumers and consumers
qua workers is a culture of anticancer cells, as it were. In order to
eliminate capital, it is imperative to eliminate the conditions by
which it was produced in the rst place. The counteractions against
capitalism within and without, having their base in the circulation
front, are totally legal and nonviolent; none of the three can inter-
rupt them. According to my reading, Marxs Capital offers a logical
ground for the creation of this culture/movement. That is, the
asymmetric relationship inherent in the value form (between com-
modity and money) produces capital, and it is also here where the
transpositional moments that terminate capital can be grasped. And
it is the task of transcriticism to make full use of these moments.
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I
Kant
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1
The Kantian Turn
1.1 The Copernican Turn
When Kant called his new project in Critique of Pure Reason the
Copernican turn, he was alluding to his own inversion of the
subject/object hierarchy: while pre-Kantian metaphysics had main-
tained that the subject copies the external object, Kant proposed
that objects are constituted by the form that the subject projects into the
external world. In this sense, the Kantian turn is obviously a shift to-
ward subject-centrism (or anthropocentrism), while the turn known
by the name of Copernicus tends toward the opposite: the shift from
geocentrism to heliocentrisma negation of the stance that is earth-
centered (identiable as ego-centered). Did Kant ignore the turn in
the latter sense? No, I think not. It is my contention that in his con-
stellation of thought surrounding the thing-in-itself and/or tran-
scendental object, he was echoing this very essence of the
Copernican turn, especially in stressing the passivity of subject in
relation with the external, objective world.
Kant wrote in Critique of Pure Reason:
The sensible faculty of intuition is really only a receptivity for being affected
in a certain way with representations, whose relation to one another is a
pure intuition of space and time (pure forms of our sensibility), which, in-
sofar as they are connected and determinable in these relations (in space
and time) according to laws of the unity of experience, are called object.
The non-sensible cause of these representations is entirely unknown to us,
6715 CH01 UG 1/29/03 7:44 PM Page 29
30
Kant
and therefore we cannot intuit it as an object; for such an object would
have to be represented neither in space nor in time (as mere conditions of
our sensible representation), without which conditions we cannot think any
intuition. Meanwhile we can call the merely intelligible cause of appear-
ances in general the transcendental object, merely so that we may have
something corresponding to sensibility as a receptivity. To this transcenden-
tal object we can ascribe the whole extent and connection of our possible
perceptions, and say that it is given in itself prior to all experience. But ap-
pearances are, in accordance with it, given not in themselves but only in
this experience, because they are merely representations, which signify a
real object only as perceptions, namely when this perception connects up
with all others in accordance with the rules of the unity of experience.
1
The central concern in this passage is the thing, which, prior to
our act of constituting objects, affects the subject by means of sensi-
bility and provides it with its contentswhat appears to be the
world. In other words, Kant stresses the passivity or Geworfenheit
(thrownness) of the subject. All philosophers after Kant except for
Heideggereven such a faithful Kantian as Schopenhauerdenied
the exterior validity of the concept of the thing-in-itself. As a conse-
quence, Kant came to be mistakenly identied as the founder of the
philosophy of subjectivitythat which insists upon the subject as ac-
tively constituting the world. This interpretation certainly seems to
accord with Kants implication in regard to the Copernican turn,
but Kant himself was quick to deny the simple-minded idealism. If
so, what did Kant really seek to do? Did he simply intend to combine
rationalism and empiricism critically?
In order to grasp the Kantian Copernican turn precisely, one rst
has to clarify the turn of Copernicus himself. The idea of heliocen-
trism had existed since ancient times, so it was not his invention. But
it was prohibited, and Copernicus was rather hesitant to endorse this
new cosmological position during his lifetime. According to
Thomas Kuhn, Copernicus basically followed the Ptolemaic cosmol-
ogy even in De Revolutionibus, which was published in 1543, the year
he died; it was only the addendum to the book, the part that only as-
tronomers could decipher, that became inuential for the coming
age. His real contribution here was the proposition that the discrep-
ancy among the revolutions of heavenly bodies, which had dogged
geocentricism since Ptolemy, could be solved if and only if we would
6715 CH01 UG 1/29/03 7:44 PM Page 30
31
The Kantian Turn
see the globe as revolving around the sun. This hypothesis does not
offer positive proof of heliocentrism itself, however, and it took as long
as a century for it to be fully accepted as a cosmological principle.
Nonetheless, even those who still believed in geocentricism had to rely
on the Copernican system of calculation. Although they believed that
the truth was that the sun revolves around the earth, for the sake of cal-
culation they still could think as if the opposite were the case. After
all, the true signicance of the Copernican turn lay in the hypothetical
stance itself. In other words, the signicance lay not in forcing any
choice between geocentricism or heliocentrism, but rather in grasping
the solar system as a relational structure using terms such as earth
and sunthat is totally independent of empirically observed objects
or events. And only this stance could render the turn toward helio-
centrism. Thus the signicance of the Copernican turn was twofold.
In the same manner Kant managed to get around the basic con-
tradiction in the philosophy of his time, whether it was founded in
the empirical senses (as was empiricism) or in rational thinking (as
was rationalism). Instead, Kant introduced those structuresthat is,
forms of sensibility or categories of understandingof which one is
unaware, calling them transcendental structures. Words such as
sensibility [Sinnlichkeit] and understanding [Verstand] had long
existed as conceptualizations of life experience: to sense and to
understand. But Kant completely altered their meanings in a way
similar to what Copernicus had done when he rediscovered sun
and earth as terms within the solar system qua reciprocal structure.
But here it is not necessary to reiterate Kants terminology. What is
crucial is this architectonic that is called transcendental. And even if
these particular words or concepts are not always used in various
post-Kantian contexts, the same architectonic can be found there.
One notable example is psychoanalysis, in which Thomas Kuhn saw
a direct correspondence with the Copernican turn.
Because the Copernican theory is in many respects a typical scientic
theory, its history can illustrate some of the processes by which scientic
concepts evolve and replace their predecessors. In its extrascientic conse-
quences, however, the Copernican theory is not typical: few scientic theories
have played so large a role in nonscientic thought. But neither is it unique.
In the nineteenth century, Darwins theory of evolution raised similar
6715 CH01 UG 1/29/03 7:44 PM Page 31
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Kant
extrascientic questions. In our own century, Einsteins relativity theories
and Freuds psychoanalytic theories provide centers for controversies from
which may emerge further radical reorientations of Western thought.
Freud himself emphasized the parallel effects of Copernican discovery that
the earth was merely a planet and his own discovery that the unconscious
controlled much of human behavior.
2
For that matter, the revolutionary aspect of Freudian psychoanalysis
was not in the idea of the unconscious controlling much of human
behavior; as presented as early as in Interpretation of Dreams (and this
idea had existed since antiquity), it was in his attempt to see what ex-
ists in the gap between consciousness and unconscious vis--vis the
form of language. In the course of this attempt, he came to extract
the unconscious qua transcendental structure. While stressing the
wide impact of the Copernican turn beyond the domain of the nat-
ural sciences, Kuhn ignored Kants own use of the gure. For Kuhn,
too, was bound by the stereotype about Kant, namely, that the Kant-
ian form and category were based on Euclidean geometry and New-
tonian physics. Yet this is simply not true. As I will show later, Kant
was able to conceptualize form with respect to sensibility only be-
cause he had already had a sense of the possibility of a non-
Euclidean geometry. All in all, the crux of Kants account of science
was that scientic cognition is an open system, and that any scien-
tic truth can be no more than a hypothesis (qua phenomenon).
But those who identify or criticize Descartes and Kant as subjec-
tivists, automatically posit geocentrism in Kant. Only as long as we
are bound by the stereotype does it appear that Kant was an anthro-
pocentrist (or rationalist), and that, in contrast, Freud posited the
unconscious (like the sun) as the center by overturning the position
that was consciousness-centered (earth-centered).
But Kuhns own position cannot even distinguish Freud from
Jung. In fact for him they are one and the same. While collaborating
in his early career with Freud, Jung himself likened the concept of
the Oedipus complex to the stable point outside of our own sphere
on which an objective understanding of its currents becomes possi-
ble, comparable to the Copernican revolution.
The importance of this realization should not be underestimated, for it
teaches us that there is an identity of fundamental human conicts which is
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The Kantian Turn
independent of time and place. What aroused a feeling of horror in the
Greeks still remains true, but it is true for us only if we give up the vain illu-
sion that we are different, i.e., morally better, than the ancients. We have
merely succeeded in forgetting that an indissoluble link binds us to the
men of antiquity. This truth opens the way to an understanding of the clas-
sical spirit such as has never existed beforethe way of inner sympathy on
the one hand and of intellectual comprehension on the other. [By making
the detour through the buried substructure of our own souls, we can seize
for ourselves the vital meaning of the culture of antiquity, and by this
means thus gain that stable point outside of our own sphere on which an
objective understanding of its currents becomes possible.] That at least is
the hope we draw from the rediscovery of the immortality of the Oedipus
problem.
3
This manner of emphasizing the unconsciousor, more precisely,
the collective unconscioushad already become inuential in Ro-
manticism, long before Freud and Jung. It was thus not Freuds
property. In fact, Jung quoted from various Romantic poets and
thinkers to support his claim. On the other hand, Freud opposed
the general notion of collective unconscious. Freuds unconscious
is strictly that which is discovered (or produced) in an analysands
resistance during the psychoanalytic dialogue. For Freud, there
would be no unconscious if not for resistance [Widerstand] and dis-
avowal [Verleugnung]. He conceptualized the triadic structure of
ego, superego, and id, not as something that exists in empirical real-
ity, but rather as a structural mechanism that is methodologically as-
sumed to exist in resistance and disavowal. As Freuds gures of the
judge of the superego and the censor of the superego clearly ex-
press, the triad is structurally similar to a court of law. And, for that
matter, Kant, too, persisted in speaking in judicial terms.
Jung came to break away from Freud in a way very similar to that
in which Herder, Fichte, and Schelling broke away from Kant. Alter-
natively put, Jung belonged to a lineage of Romanticism epitomized
by the same philosophers. Jungs negation of rationalism certainly
constituted a remarkable revolution, and it is true that, by contrast,
Freud was faithful to the tradition of the Enlightenment insofar as
he retained a rationalistic stance. But it was Freud who nally ren-
dered the truly radical turn, one that is totally irrelevant to the con-
cerns of vulgar Romanticism. Freudian psychoanalysis is as distinct
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Kant
from empirical psychology as it is from the collective unconscious. It
is, as he claimed, a metapsychology and, in our context, a transcen-
dental psychology. Seen from this perspective, the isomorphism be-
tween the Kantian faculties (of sensibility and understanding) and
the Freudian psychical structure is evident. Both are discoveries of
the transcendental query. That is, as a certain function that can be
spoken of only as gure ; they are functions about which we can only
say that they are at work. And with Lacan, who sought to recover the
Freudian sense of transcendental psychology, the triadic structure
came to be even more ostensibly Kantian: Kantian illusion/Lacanian
imaginary; the form/the symbolic; and the thing-in-itself/the real.
But my objective is not to interpret Kant through Freud, but the
opposite.
Kant is consistently the target of criticism accusing him to be the
primogenitor of the philosophy of subjectivity. What Kant really did,
however, was to present the boundaries or limits of human subjec-
tive faculties, and in so doing criticize metaphysics as an arrogation
that oversteps those boundaries. Much like Freuds id, ego, and
superego, Kants sensibility, understanding, and reason are not
things that exist empirically. In this sense, indeed, they are nothing;
which, however, is a nothing that exists as a certain function. More
precisely, transcendental apperception (or subjectivity) is the func-
tion as nothing that bundles the three faculties together into a
single system. Transcendental inquiry can be deemed ontological
(Heidegger), in the sense that it discovers the function as nothing
(qua Being). At the same time, in the specic sense that it designs
the structure of which we are unaware, it is also properly structural-
ist. But this kind of association does not always create new thoughts;
perhaps something is always lost in the contextual association. So it
is that we persist in the Kantian term, transcendental, except that
in order to elucidate its dynamism and function further, transcritique
has to intervene.
Kants Copernican turn is not a turn toward the philosophy of
subjectivity, but that toward the thing-in-itself by a detour of the
scrutiny of subjectivity. It was for this objective and nothing else that
Kant elaborated the transcendental structure of subjectivity. Then,
what is the concept thing-in-itself ? It has always been concerned with
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The Kantian Turn
the problematic of ethics, even before Critique of Practical Reason
took ethics up as subject matter. It is concerned, in other words,
with the problematic of the other. Kant did not initiate his whole proj-
ect with the matter of the other. And neither would I. But one of the
most crucial points I would like to address in this book is that the
Kantian turn is a revolution toward thought centered on the other,
and this turn was more radical than any self-claimed epistemological
turn has been since.
1.2 Literary Criticism and the Transcendental Critique
Kants three critiques targeted three domains consecutively: scien-
tic thought, morality, and the arts (and biology). Kant scrutinized
not only the peculiarity of each domain, but also their relationship
to each other. But his followers totally forgot that these domains
had not existed as such before Kantthey were the discoveries of
Kants criticism. The sun has existed consistently since before and
after Copernicus. It unchangingly rises from the east and sets in the
west. But after Copernicus, it came to be another thing: The term
took its place within the system of calculation. So now, with respect
to the same sun, one has different objects. In the same way, before
and after Kant the categorization of scientic thoughts, moralities,
and the arts was totally altered. One should not read Kants books,
therefore, taking his categorizations for granted. One should read
the Kantian critique that itself created the categorization.
Critique of Judgment (1790), the last of the three Critiques, is said to
have posed a solution to problems omitted from the previous two
Critique of Pure Reason (1781/1787) and Critique of Practical Reason
(1788). That is, the third Critique ostensibly bridged the gaps be-
tween cognition and morality and between nature and freedom by
way of positing art as the mediator. The main subject of the third
Critiquethe faculty of judgmentis isomorphic to the faculty of
imagination-power [Einbildungskraft] that mediates sensibility and
understanding in cognition. In Kants view, art does not begin from
concept but realizes it latently. In other words, art is that which can
intuitively (or sensually) realize what cognition and morality are sup-
posed to realize. This notion of art offered an important basis for
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Kant
the philosophers of Romanticism and thereafter. They believed that
art was the authentic knowledge from which both science and ethics
derived; in art, the synthesis of all domains was always already
achieved. Hegel posited philosophy as being higher than artbut
only after he had aestheticized philosophy. Heidegger, too, consid-
ered art (or poetry) as primordial in his turn from Being and
time to time and Being.
It is evident that Kant posited a clear relationality between sci-
ence, ethics, and art with his three Critiques. But what is more impor-
tant is that he ultimately presented the structure in which the three
categories form a ring, and that the thematic ring corresponds to
the triadic categorical structure on a different level: thing-in-itself,
phenomenon, and transcendental illusion, every one of which is in-
dispensable for attaining the structureor the Borromean knot,
to adopt a Lacanian term.
4
But it is misleading to think that in the
third Critique he resolved the impasse he had encountered in the pre-
vious two. It is not that the Kantian critiquethe discovery of the tri-
adic structurewas brought to a completion by Kants account
either of art or of the judgment of taste, in the third Critique. In-
stead, it could be said, from the beginning, the Kantian critique had
been derived from the problematic of the artistic experience.
There have been a number of etymological inquiries into the ori-
gin of Kants use of the term critique, all of which return eventually
to ancient Greece. But the problem with etymological retrospection
is that it tends to occlude origins of the recent past, the actual histor-
ical formation. I rather believe that the Kantian critique came most
immediately from criticism in the literal sense, that is, commercial
journalisman arena [Kampfplatz]wherein the classical aesthetics
ascribed to Aristotle are no longer relevant, and thus ongoing is the
struggle with respect to the assessment of value.
Kant confessed that the remembrance of David Hume [especially
his A Treatise of Human Nature (1739)] was the very thing that many
years ago rst interrupted [the] dogmatic slumber he was enduring
under the inuence of Leibniz-Wolfan School.
5
Perhaps this is
true, but Humes inuence was not the main source of Kants criti-
cal position. As Hans Vaihinger pointed out in his Kommentar zu
Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft (2 vols., 18811892), what must have
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The Kantian Turn
really awakened Kant was the book by the Scottish critic, Henry
Home (17661782), titled Element of Criticism (17631766). Accord-
ing to Vaihinger, the following remark by Kant indicates why he
read Homes book with such excitement: Home has more correctly
called Aesthetics Criticism, because it does not, like Logic, furnish a
priori rules.
6
This suggests that Kants use of the term critique may
indeed have derived from Home. Kant rst used the term critique
of reason in An Announcement for the Arrangement of the Lec-
tures in the Winter Semester 1765/1766.
7
In the text, the critique of
reason [die Kritik der Vernunft] is considered logic in the wide sense,
in juxtaposition to the critique of taste [die Kritik des Geschmacks]
namely, aestheticsas that which has a very close afnity of material
cause. From this, too, one can presume a nexus shared by Kants cri-
tique and Homes book with its eponymous criticism.
With Home, Kant seized the moment to reconsider the possibility
of an aesthetic judgment of taste and to investigate its basis. Home
had sought a universality of the judgment of tastea measure of
beauty and uglinessin principles immanent in human essence. He
insisted on the a priori nature of human sensibility with respect to
beauty and ugliness. At the same time, however, Home employed
empirical and inductive methods of observing the general rules of
taste, collecting and categorizing materials from all the domains re-
lated to art and literature from antiquity to the present. Confronting
the necessity of critical judgment, he refused to take any particular
principle for granted and charged himself with the task of question-
ing the foundational principles or infallible measures of criticism.
By taking up Homes term criticism, Kant further developed the
concept into his own critiquea signier of the fundamental
scrutiny of rational human faculties.
8
Home had to confront the element of criticism particularly in
England, because that is where two principles were clashing: on the
one hand, there was classicism positing a certain empirical norm in
art and literature; and on the other, there was the Romanticist ideal
cherishing an individuals uninhibited expression of emotion. Basi-
cally taking the latter standpoint, Home still dared to seek a ground
where critical judgment could be universal, and Kant was especially
struck by this endeavor. In Critique of Judgment, he dealt tacitly with
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Kant
the same thesis and antithesis. Like Home, Kant acknowledged that
the judgment of taste had to be subjective (or individual), while be-
lieving at the same time that it should also somehow be universal. In
Kants case, however, he distinguished universality from generality:
Thus we will say that someone has taste if he knows how to entertain his
guests [at a party] with agreeable things (that they can enjoy by all the
senses) in such a way that everyone likes [the party]. But here it is under-
stood that the universality is only comparative, so that the rules are only
general (as all empirical rules are), not universal, as are the rules that a
judgment about the beautiful takes upon itself [sich unternimmt] or lays
claim to.
9
A general rule induced from experience cannot be universal. Since
Aristotle, aesthetics has been general and not universal, in the same
way as physics. Classicism had consistently attempted to extrapolate
rules from works that had been given the designation master-
pieces, and make these rules normative. As opposed to this, for
Kant, there [could] be no rule by which someone could be com-
pelled to acknowledge that something is beautiful.
10
Nonetheless,
the judgment of taste, which is distinguished from mere comfort-
ableness, must be universal:
The judgment of taste itself does not postulate [postuliert] everyones agree-
ment (since only a logically universal judgment can do that, because it can
adduce reasons); it merely requires this agreement from everyone [es sinnet
nur jedermann diese Einstimmung an], as an instance of the rule, an instance
regarding which it expects conrmation not from concepts but from the
agreement of others. Hence the universal voice is only an idea.
11
To make it doubly clear: postulieren means to assume as self-evident,
while ansinnen means to make an (unreasonable) request or de-
mand. In the judgment of taste, there is no rule that can compel. At
this juncture, Kant introduces common sense [sensus communis],
that is, socially and historically engendered customs. In The New Sci-
ence, Giambattista Vico had argued that common sense [senso com-
mune] is judgment without reection, shared by an entire class, an
entire people, an entire nation, or the entire human race.
12
Com-
mon sense is a norm (following which innumerable mediocre works
are written). Common sense changes over time; but the change is
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The Kantian Turn
not continuous because it is caused by the violent intervention of
individuals (i.e., geniuses) who oppose and deviate from it. For his
part, however, Kant restricted this phenomenon to the judgment of
taste only, that is, to the ne arts [die schnen Knste]: In scientic
matters, therefore, the greatest discoverer differs from the most
arduous imitator and apprentice only in degree, whereas he differs
in kind from someone whom nature has endowed for ne art.
13
But there is still a problem. If common sense is a historically trans-
forming social convention, it cannot guarantee the universality of
the judgment of taste. Common sense is both historically and
presently pluralcommon senses. If there is universality at all, it must
be beyond plural common senses. Did Kant give up, then, on the re-
quirement of universality? Did he mean that in the ne arts one
should make do with common senses, since universality may be
found in other domains? Of course, such questions are themselves
wrong. Kant certainly distinguished among natural science, ethics,
and art, but the distinction itself is not his terminus ad quem, for he
consistently required universality in each of these domains. In Cri-
tique of Pure Reason and Critique of Practical Reason, for example, he
sought universal law as opposed to a general rule based upon expe-
rience. But, does it mean that scientic thought and ethics contain
universal law while art lacks it? No. If universality is unaccounted for
in art, it is the same in other domains. Or, at least, Kant began his
thinking in this manner. The radicalism of his critique exists in that
he reconsidered the question of universality from the vantage of the
judgment of taste.
In Critique of Pure Reason, Kant detects subjectivity in the au-
tonomous act of understanding, while in Critique of Judgment, he uses
the terms subjective versus objective in a highly prosaic manner: in
other words, the sensuous in general is considered subjective. It fol-
lows that the multitude of individual subjects expresses themselves
on the level of feeling: either pleasure or displeasure. Subjectivity as
understanding, on the other hand, is considered an impersonal,
a priori facultyin this case, languages facultyand does not ap-
pear as individual subject. Nonetheless, even though Kant poses the
issue of plural subjectivitybeginning from the feeling of pleasure/
displeasurethe problematic in Critique of Judgment is by no means
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Kant
conned to the matter of commonly understood cultural taste. In
the arena of the judgment of taste, no one can prove the universality
of his or her individual standpoint. And, viewed in inverse logic,
when people cannot prove the truth of their cognition, they use the
gure judgment of taste, no matter how serious the object. We say,
Well, its just a matter of taste or even, Well, its all a matter of
taste. Indeed, every judgment ultimately results in a judgment of
tasteexcept analytic judgment.
Finally, Kant distinguishes the judgment of taste from the matter
of pleasure/displeasure or comfort. Comfort is acknowledged to be
an individual matter, while the judgment of taste, from the begin-
ning, is required to prove its universality. In other words, the judg-
ment must be accepted by others. As Wittgenstein might say,
comfort is a private language, while the judgment of taste belongs
to a common language game.
14
When Kant speaks of common
sense, this is it. And the real problem lies in the fact that there are
many language games in the world. Therefore, the universality of
the judgment of taste becomes a problem of communication among
people who have different systems of rules, namely, among others.
The requirement of universality in the judgment of taste is the sine
qua non underlying all synthetic judgments. Therefore, it is wrong
to think that Kant discovered an autonomous, peculiar problem in
the ne arts. Rather, he sought to reconsider all problematics
through criticism in the judgment of taste.
Kant held that beauty is discovered by disinterest in the object. This
is, as it were, a methodological bracketing of the interests. What
kind of interests, then, must be bracketed? Intellectual and moral.
Confronting a certain object, one judges it in at least three domains
simultaneously: true or false; good or bad; pleasurable or displeasur-
able. Usually these form an intermixed complexity. And only when a
certain object is received by bracketing the other concerns (i.e., true
or false and good or bad) does it become an aesthetic object. But
what Kant characterized with respect to the judgment of taste is ap-
plicable also to both cognition and morality. In modern science, the
cognition of the object is realized only by bracketing judgments that
are moral (good or bad) and aesthetic (pleasurable or displeasur-
able). In the same way, Kant attempts a purication with respect to
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The Kantian Turn
morality. In this case, it is achieved by bracketing pleasure as well as
happiness. It is crucial to keep in mind, however, that bracketing is
not the same as negation.
If this is the case, it is not outrageous that Kant solved the third
antinomy in Critique of Pure Reason by considering that the conict-
ing terms could stand together.
ThesisCausality in accordance with laws of nature is not the only one
from which all the appearances of the world can be derived. It is also neces-
sary to assume another causality through freedom in order to explain them.
AntithesisThere is no freedom, but everything in the world happens
solely in accordance with laws of nature.
15
The idea that everything is determined by natural cause is made pos-
sible by the position that brackets freedom. Conversely, only when
the determination by natural cause is bracketed, can the idea of
freedom intervene. Which idea is correct does not matter, for the
very question never arises. One attains the cognitive domain by
bracketing moral and aesthetic dimensions, but they must always be
unbracketed whenever necessary. The same can be said of moral
and aesthetic domains. When one seeks to explain everything from
one and the same positionality, one is inexorably confronted by an-
tinomy. I deal with the ethical question of freedom in section 3.4.
Here I would stress one tangled problematic: cognitive, moral, and
aesthetic domains are all constituted by a change of attitude (i.e.,
transcendental reduction); and in the beginning these domains do
not exist in and of themselves. It follows that in every domain the
same problem recurs. For instance, in Critique of Practical Reason, the
problem of the other is explicit. But it is implied in Critique of Pure
Reason as well. And the very problem of the other is what Kant origi-
nally encountered with respect to aesthetic judgment. As I argue
later, the thing-in-itself is ultimately equal to the other. But, in
order to reach that point, it is a sine qua non to begin with the prob-
lematic of aesthetic judgment.
What distinguishes the third Critique from the rst two is the ap-
pearance of plural subjectivities. To tackle this Kant did not resort
to, say, general consciousness or general subjectivity; rather, he scru-
tinized what kind of agreement could be made among a multitude
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Kant
of subjectivities wherein there is no rule by which someone could
be compelled to acknowledge that something is beautiful. Hannah
Arendt granted primary importance to this aspect of the third Cri-
tique and sought to read it as a principle of political science.
16
Jean-
Franois Lyotard observed in it a mediation between language
games without the establishment of a meta-language.
17
But Lyotards
reading is a regression to Hume insofar as it considers the issue of
universality to be simply one of the coalition among common
senses. After all, it is misleading to presume a transition or develop-
ment between Critique of Pure Reason and Critique of Judgment, since
the former was already affected by and took into account the aporia
posed in the arena of criticism in the journalistic sense. Thus our
task is to reread Critique of Pure Reason from this vantage point.
Kants distinction between universality and generality sprang from
the problematic of modern science beginning with Copernicus. This
should be distinguished from Francis Bacons positions of corrobo-
rative evidence and induction exemplied. In the rst place, the he-
liocentricism (of Copernicus) is not the kind of matter that is easily
proven. Descartes sought to publish his account of the universe as
one sympathetic to Copernicus, but abandoned his plan after learn-
ing about Galileos prosecution, and then wrote Discourse on Method.
As this anecdote might imply, Descartes was not necessarily specula-
tive; rather, he stressed the signicance of hypothesis and presented
a methodology where hypothesis comes rst to be proven later by
experimentation (by whomever). But, again, can hypothesis be veri-
ed by experimentation at all? It is impossible to induce a law from
experience, or it is impossible to extract a universal proposition
from singular propositions. A universal proposition is technically an
indenite expansion of conjunctive propositions wherein it is impos-
sible to verify apodictically the innite chain of elementary proposi-
tions. Thus the crux of Humes skepticism is that since a universal
proposition cannot be constituted, a law is nally no more than a
custom. But some held that, while a universal proposition could not
be veried positively, at least it could be proven false. And inasmuch
as it is not proven false, the universal proposition can be considered
true. Karl Popper famously maintained that the universality of the
proposition could be claimed if no falsication were possible when
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The Kantian Turn
a proposition is posed in a falsiable way. Although Popper appreci-
ated the fact that this idea was latent in Kants own work, he also ac-
cused him of remaining in the subjectivist framework.
18
If a certain
proposition can be deemed universal at all, it is only insofar as one
presumes the existence of the other who may falsify it at present as
well as in the future. To Popper, however, Kant appears to have pre-
sented a rather different, arguably even opposite, approachas if
universality could be guaranteed by a priori rule! But, one has to be
extremely cautious with respect to Kants positionality here, for, as
we have seen, it was only after having confronted the problematic
of the judgment of taste (i.e., the universality in plural language
games) that Kant wrote Critique of Pure Reason.
Critique of Pure Reason begins by describing a single subjectivity, to
be sure. This does not mean, however, that Kant neglected the exis-
tence of the multitude of other subjects. Rather, he did not even
dream that universality could be attained by an agreement among
plural subjectivities, that is, by intersubjectivity. For Kant, who was
also a scientist, it was self-evident that an a priori synthetic judg-
ment is not easily attainedand a fortiori not during his lifetime,
when heterogeneous hypotheses were very much in conict in
the natural sciences and not merely on der Kampfplatz der Meta-
physik. An agreement with othersno matter how many, and in-
cluding a falsication that is based upon prior agreementhardly
guarantees universality. An agreement is customarily made within
the realm of common sense, just to reinforce it. If universality at all
exists, therefore, it must be something that goes beyond plural com-
mon senses.
It is small surprise, then, that Poppers position came to be criti-
cized within the philosophy of science. As Thomas Kuhn argued,
there is a possibility that even a proposition posed in a falsiable way
is not always falsied; instead, the institution of proof itself is deter-
mined by the paradigm.
19
Furthermore, as with Paul Feyerabend,
the truth-value of scientic cognition tout court is determined by dis-
cursive hegemony.
20
And so Popper eventually shifted his position to
think of the development of science more in the manner of evolu-
tionary theory, that is, that stronger theories survive.
21
Was the Kant-
ian critique buried by these later deployments? I think not. First,
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Kant
Kuhns paradigm closely corresponds to Kants common sense. Sec-
ond, what Kuhn spoke of in reference to his paradigm shift were
only those geniusesCopernicus, Newton, and Einsteinnot un-
like the geniuses who appear already in Kants third Critique. Per-
haps Kuhn never dreamt of such a coincidence because of the
complications: After all, Kant had limited his application of the con-
cepts genius and common sense to the domain of ne art; and
the sharp distinction between natural and cultural sciences made by
the neo-Kantians (Heinrich Rickert, among others) became very in-
uential. Meanwhile, the concept paradigm is widely accepted
against Kuhns own design precisely because it addressed a problem-
atic wider than that of natural science, which is to say that it has the
impetus of criticism or even literary criticism.
Seen from this standpoint, it might be that contemporary philoso-
phers of science have drawn close to the ground Kant cultivated in
Critique of Judgment. But again it must be noted that Kant had already
been aware of the problematic inherent in the arena of journalistic
criticism when he began writing Critique of Pure Reason. In this rst
Critique, the other (or the other subject) is ostensibly absent. The
book persists in pursuing the introspective mode of inquiry. Those
who criticize Kant unexceptionably question if introspective inquiry
(i.e., the monologue) is by itself sufcient to scrutinize the founda-
tion of science. It is true that Kant did not seek to introduce the
agreement of others, because the agreement itself would not guar-
antee a universal proposition. Instead, in the concept of the thing-
in-itself, he implied the future others who could falsify. But this is
not to say that our thought could never be universal because of fu-
ture others. On the contrary, the question of universality could not
be posed without taking the others into consideration. In the history
of philosophy, Kant was the rst to have introduced the problematic
of the other in this succinct manner.
1.3 Parallax and the Thing-in-Itself
Philosophy begins with introspection. Nonetheless, the kind of in-
trospection that Kant performed in Critique of Pure Reason is quite
unique. It is a criticism of introspection. Thinking of this aspect of
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The Kantian Turn
the Kantian introspection, one ought not ignore his rather strange
text Dreams of a Visionary Explained by Dreams of Metaphysics.
Kant wrote this essay in 1766 for a journal in the playful style of
eighteenth-century essayists. It was inspired by the famous earth-
quake that struck Lisbon on November 1, 1755, All Saints Daythe
very moment the faithful were at prayer in church. No wonder the
event raised such skepticism about the Grace of God. The Lisbon
earthquake shook all Europe at its rootthe general populace and in-
tellectuals alike. It rent a deep crack between sensibility and under-
standing, as it were, which, right up to Leibniz, had maintained a
relationship of remarkably seamless continuity. The Kantian critique
cannot be separated from this profound and multilayered crisis.
Several years later, Voltaire wrote Candide, deriding Leibnizian
predestined harmony, and Rousseau insisted that the earthquake
was punishment for human societys having lost touch with nature.
22
By distinct contrast, Kant (who wrote as many as three analyses of
the problem) stressed that the earthquake of 1755 had no religious
meaning whatsoever, attributable as it was to natural causes alone.
He also advanced scientic hypotheses about the cause of the
quake, as well as possible countermeasures to avert future occur-
rences. It is noteworthy that while even empiricists could not help
searching for meanings to attribute to the event, Kant did no such
thing. But his radical materialism coexisted with the opposite and
opposing radicalism that he simultaneously embracedthat is, his
concern with metaphysics. That is to say that he was fascinated by
the intellect of the visionary Swedenborg, who was said to have pre-
dicted the earthquake. Kant not only conducted an inquiry into
Swedenborgs purportedly miraculous power, but also wrote a letter
in the hope of meeting him.
23
Even with his interest in visionary phenomena, however, Kant per-
sisted in his belief in natural causes. The former he considered to be
daydreams, or a sort of brain disorder. He maintained that although
a vision is in actuality just a thought in the mind, it appears to have
come from the outside, by way of the senses.
24
At the same time, how-
ever, he could not deny Swedenborgs intellect. While, in many
cases, the claim to perceive the supra-sensible through the senses is
delusional, there are a very few whose claims of possessing such
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Kant
power might in some sense be veriable. Swedenborg was this ex-
ception: a rst-class scientist, he was by no means demented; and,
here there was credible evidence of his psychic power. Kant had to
acknowledge this, but at the same time he had also to negate it.
Though he called it a psychosis, he could not help taking the
dreams of a visionary seriously. And yet he problematized his own
seriousness: Therefore, by no means do I blame my readers, if they,
instead of acknowledging the visionary as a half citizen of the other
world, are quick to write him off as a hospital candidate and thereby
shirk from all further inquiry.
25
But this caveat would be less inter-
esting, were it restricted merely to the visionarys dreams. Kant
stresses that the same is true of metaphysicists and metaphysics,
since they treat thought not deriving from experience as substantial.
In this sense, his essay could be read as Dreams of Metaphysics Ex-
plained by Dreams of a Visionary. He asks, What kind of folly exists
which cannot be brought to the mood of the bottomless world wis-
dom [philosophy]? Whereupon he continues: Therefore, by no
means do I blame my readers . . . . In other words, the dreams of
metaphysicists are also rst class folly and evidence of a psy-
chosis. There is no major difference between being obsessed with
dreams of metaphysics and with the dreams of a visionary. At this
moment of his life, Kant admitted that being obsessed with meta-
physics was sheer madness, and yet philosophers could not help but
be mad in this sense. Thus his essay is really speaking of a metaphysi-
cian in the guise of speaking of a visionary, and the metaphysician in
this case was Kant himselfbefore he encountered Hume, that is.
A decade and a half later, Kant opened the 1781 preface to Critique
of Pure Reason, with the assertion that [n]ow, in accordance with the
fashion of the age, the queen [read metaphysics] proves despised on
all sides,
26
nonetheless, he added, it is pointless to affect indiffer-
ence with respect to such inquiries, to whose object human nature
cannot be indifferent. Moreover, however much they may think to
make themselves unrecognizable by exchanging the language of the
schools for a popular style, these so-called indifferentists, to the ex-
tent that they think anything at all, always unavoidably fall back into
metaphysical assertions, which they yet professed so much to de-
spise.
27
But this is precisely Kants own split, or rather the one he
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The Kantian Turn
had faced in Dreams of a Visionary, where he wrote in a completely
self-contradictory (indeed, antinomic) manner. He both afrmed
Swedenborg and metaphysics, and scorned this very afrmation. In
Critique of Pure Reason, this conict takes the form of denying reasons
expansion of knowledge beyond its limit, even while acknowledging
reasons drive to do precisely this. In the rst Critique, the satiric self-
criticism of Dreams of a Visionary thus turns into a critique of
reason by reason. Which is to say that, instead of treating this merely
as his personal problem, Kant turns (by a process that a Freudian or
Lacanian might well call transference) to treat it as a problem
given to [reason] by the nature of reason itself.
28
This, precisely, is
the crux of the transcendental critique, or one important aspect of
what I am calling transcritique.
In any case, the transposition from Dreams of a Visionary to Cri-
tique of Pure Reason is decisive. Yet, in order to read the latter, one
must refer to the former. For it is there that Kants idiosyncratic
manner of reection is explicit.
29
Formerly, Kant wrote in Dreams
of a Visionary, I viewed human common sense only from the
standpoint of my own; now I put myself into the position of an-
others reason outside of myself, and observe my judgments, to-
gether with their most secret causes, from the point of view of
others. It is true that the comparison of both observations results in
pronounced parallax, but it is the only means of preventing the opti-
cal delusion, and of putting the concept of the power of knowledge
in human nature into its true place.
30
Here Kant is not expressing
the commonplace, that not only must one see things from ones
own point of view, but also, simultaneously, from the point of view of
others. If this is what he meant, it would be run-of-the mill: the his-
tory of philosophy is lled with reections on seeing oneself as oth-
ers would see. In Kant this point of view of others would manifest
itself only by way of the pronounced parallax. To understand this
properly, it is necessary to exemplify a technology that did not exist
in Kants time.
Reection is often spoken of by way of the metaphor of seeing
ones image in the mirror. The mirror image is identied with the
image seen by the other. But in todays context, photography must
also be taken into consideration. Let us compare them. At the time
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Kant
photography was invented, those who saw their faces in pictures
could not help but feel a certain hideousnessjust like hearing a
tape recording of ones own voice for the rst time. While it had
been possible to see ones own image, whether by reection in a
mirror, water, or in a painted portrait, these methods were too sub-
jective. Although the mirror image can be identied with the image
seen by the other, there is still a certain complicity with regard to
ones own viewpoint. After all, we can see our own image in the mir-
ror any way we like; and the mirror image is not fully xed (not to
mention the fact that it is left/right inverted or inside out). A
painted portrait is a depiction by the other, but any hideousness in
seeing the image can be ascribed to the subjectivity (read malice) of
the other. By contrast, photography sustains a different, much more
severe, objectivity. Even though there is always a photographer, his or
her subjectivity is less inuential than the painters, for there is an in-
eradicable, mechanical distance in the photographic image. Strange
as it may be, we cannot see our faces (read the thing-in-itself ), ex-
cept as an image reected in the mirror (read phenomenon). And
only thanks to the advent of photography, did we learn that fact. But
again, photography is also an image, and, of course, people eventu-
ally get used to the mechanical image, so much so that they eventu-
ally come to feel that the image is themselves. But the crux here is
the pronounced parallaxthat which people presumably experi-
ence when they rst see their photographic image.
The effect of parallax is evident also in Derridas statement that
consciousness is equivalent to hearing oneself speak [sentendre par-
ler].
31
In regard to this claim, Hegel would say that it is the speaking
that objecties (or externalizes [entussert]) the self; but this objecti-
ed voice (or utterance [usserung]) in the Hegelian sense is not ob-
jective at allit is merely my view. To be objective, there must be the
displacement or derangement one experiences when one rst hears
ones own recorded voice. The hideousness or uncanniness one ex-
periences is due to the viewpoint of others that intervenes therein.
When I rst see my face and hear my voice from the others view-
point, I think it is not my face nor my voice. In Freudian terms, this
would be the resistance of the analysand. Eventually, one comes to
terms with the visual and audible images; one has to get used to
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The Kantian Turn
them. But in philosophical reection, this is not the case. The phi-
losophy that begins with introspection-mirror remains snared within
the specular abyss of introspection. No matter how it seeks to intro-
duce the others stance, this situation never alters. It is said that phi-
losophy began with Socrates dialogues. But the dialogue itself is
trapped within the mirror. Many have criticized Kant for having re-
mained in a subjectivist self-scrutiny, and suggest that he sought an
escape in Critique of Judgment when he introduced plural subjects.
But the truly revolutionary event in philosophy had already oc-
curred in Critique of Pure Reason, where Kant attempted to implode
the complicity inherent in introspection precisely by conning him-
self to the introspective framework. Here one can observe the at-
tempt to introduce an objectivity (qua otherness) that is totally alien
to the conventional space of introspection-mirror.
Most straightforwardly said, what is at stake in Dreams of a Vi-
sionary is the critical position that Kant himself was in at that time:
pursuing rationalist philosophy on the line of Leibniz/Wolff, there
was no other choice but to accept Humes empiricist skepticism, yet
he was not at all satised by either. For about ten years after that, up
until Critique of Pure Reason, he conned himself in silence. The
stance that he called transcendental came into existence sometime
during this period. Kants approach in Critique of Pure Reason is dif-
ferent not only from subjective introspection, but also from objec-
tive scrutiny. Though it is a self-scrutiny through and through, the
transcendental reection inscribes others viewpoint. Said inversely,
though it is impersonal through and through, the transcendental
reection is still self-scrutiny.
One tends to speak of the transcendental stance as a mere
method, and worse still, one speaks of the structure of faculties Kant
discovered as a given. The transcendental stance, however, could
not have appeared if not for the pronounced parallax. Critique of
Pure Reason is not written in the mode of self-criticism as is Dreams
of a Visionary, but the pronounced parallax is present, functioning
therein. It came to take the form of antinomy, the device to reveal
both thesis and antithesis as optical illusions.
After the publication of Critique of Pure Reason (A), Kant expressed
his realization that the order of his reasoning would have been
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Kant
better if he had dealt with the distinction between phenomenon
and the thing-in-itself after The Antinomy of Pure Reason (in the
section Transcendental Dialectic).
32
In fact, it is true that, because
Kant began with the distinction between phenomenon and the
thing-in-itself, many readers understanding of Kants total design
(his Architectonik) retrogresses to the conventional duality of phe-
nomenon and essence or surface and depth. This is the impression
given to both those readers who deny and those who afrm the con-
cept of the thing-in-itself . Those who reject it as mystical under-
stand it only within the dichotomy, and even those who retain it, like
Heidegger, interpret it only in the sense of the ontological depth or
abyss [Abgrund]. In truth, however, there are no mystical implica-
tions in the properly Kantian thing-in-itself.
33
It is something like
ones own face in the sense that it undoubtedly exists but cannot be
seen except as an image (read phenomenon). What is crucial here is
henceforth the antinomy as a pronounced parallaxthe sole thing
that reveals what is more than an image (phenomenon). In fact
Kant poses antinomy not only in the section on the transcendental
dialectic but almost everywhere. For instance, as one of the crucial
examples, he draws out transcendental subjectivity X from the antin-
omy between the Cartesian thesis, There is an identical ego, and
the Humian antithesis, There is no identical ego.
It is generally understood that in Critique of Pure Reason, Kant con-
siders the thing-in-itself as that which stimulates sensibility and gives
it content, while in Critique of Practical Reason, transcendental subjec-
tivity itself is deemed the thing-in-itself. This apparent inconsistency
has caused much confusion. And, concomitant with this, there is the
common interpretation that the rst Critique deals with the theoreti-
cal domain while the second deals with the practical. But this division
is not accurate. Hannah Arendt refuted this idea, arguing that the
counterconcept to the theoretical is not the practical, but the specula-
tive. (As I have claried with respect to the third conict of tran-
scendental ideas, the theoretical stance that pursues laws of nature
and the practical stance that pursues freedom can coexist, if the op-
eration of bracketing one or the other is necessitated.) In point of
fact, even scientic theory can be in no other way than practical,
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The Kantian Turn
because it would not even exist were it not for the regulative idea,
the assumption that nature be elucidated. Kant himself addressed the
issue of the doctrinal faith (or beliefs) [der doktrinale Glaube] that
accompanies theoretical judgments [theoretische Urteile] as follows:
[T]hus there is in merely theoretical judgements an analogous of practical
judgements, where taking them to be true is aptly described by the word
belief, and which we can all doctrinal beliefs [der doktrinale Glaube]. If it were
possible to settle by any sort of experience whether they are inhabitants of
at least some of the planets that we see, I might well bet everything that
I have on it. Hence I say that it is not merely an opinion but a strong belief
(on the correctness of which I would wager many advantages in life) that
there are also inhabitants of other worlds.
34
The connotation here is that scientic cognitionor synthetic
judgmentis not speculation, and yet it inexorably involves a certain
spec or bet (though one might also add that it is also a kind of spes, ex-
pectation or hope, insofar as it is related to faith). For this reason,
scientic cognition can be expansive.
However, just as it is misleading to denitively divide the theoreti-
cal and the practical, the thing-in-itself can also not be divided into
the thing and the other ego (or the other subject). It is not the thing
that negates (falsies) a scientic hypothesis; it is not the thing but
the future others who speak. However, while it is the other who can
negate our cognition (qua phenomenon), this negation has to be
accompanied by the others sense-datum (qua the thing). What is
crucial here is the otherness, be it of the thing or of the other per-
son. But this otherness is nothing mystical. What Kant implied by
the thing-in-itself was the alterity of the other that we can never take
for granted and internalize just on our whim or at our convenience.
Nor is the point merely that Kant deplored the fact that we are able
to know only phenomena and not substance. Rather, the Kantian
point is that the universality of phenomena (qua synthetic judg-
ment) is taken into consideration only insofar as we wholeheartedly
posit the alterity or otherness of the other.
Kant did consider the attitude that anticipates what the alterity
would be as speculative. On the other hand, however, he also held
that even though this attitudeagain spesattains only illusion
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Kant
[Schein], it is a sine qua non (vis--vis the transcendental illusion).
In fact, the regulative ideathat we be able to recognize nature
functions heuristically. The founder of cybernetics, Norbert Wiener,
who was involved in the Manhattan Project, said that what was
treated in the counterintelligence community as the real secret was
not the manual for making the atom bomb; it was the fact that it
had already been made. When both Germany and Japan were devel-
oping the idea of making the bomb, they would have succeeded in
its production had they discovered that it was possible. Solving tradi-
tional chess problems is far easier than playing a real game of
chess because the faith that the king can be checkmated is the most
helpful clue to the problems solution. The notion that the natural
world comprises mathematical structure is also an example of theo-
retical faith. For the same reason, natural science came into exis-
tence only in the modern West thanks to the theoretical faith it
had nutured.
It has also been said that Kant rejected metaphysics/theology in
Critique of Pure Reason but recuperated it in Critique of Practical
Reason. In reality, he rebuffed it in the latter, too, and in the former
he made the point clear that all theories, if they are to be synthetic
and expansive, cannot do away with a certain faith. What he sought
in the second Critique were the conditions prerequisite to establish-
ing a universal law of ethics as opposed to a general moral order
based on empirical data. By taking this approach, Kant rejected
the truth claim of religion, but accepted it as a regulative idea. To
be sure, one who chose to live strictly according to the universal
law of ethics would doubtless lead a tragic life in reality. If not for
eternal life and Gods nal judgment, such a life would inexorably
culminate in absurdity. It follows that Kant had to accept faith as
a regulative idea at the same time as he rejected any attempt to
prove it theoretically: that is, he rejected this particular aspect of
metaphysics.
Necessarily misled by the categorical distinctions among the theo-
retical, the practical, and the aesthetic, one should not overlook the
problematics Kant pursued consistently on other, different levels.
What is most important is that, in seeking universality, Kant had
to introduce the other, and that this other is not one who can be
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The Kantian Turn
identied with the self in any sense of intersubjectivity or common
sense. This is not some transcendent otherdivine or Godbut a
transcendental other. Nor is this other a one who introduces rela-
tivism into our thinking, but rather the one who makes us face the
problem of universality. The rigorous consistency of the Kantian cri-
tique, which informs all his work, derives directly from this radical
point of departure: the problematic of universality in the judgment
of taste, which is also to say, criticism in a journalistic sense.
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2
The Problematic of Synthetic Judgment
2.1 Mathematical Foundations
Regarded as he has been as a philosopher of subjectivity, the most
organized criticism of Kant understandably sprang up from the
philosophy of science. As I have been contending, however, one of
the most crucial points of Kants scientic thinking was the problem-
atic of the other, and this aspect has been overlooked. Kants theory
of mathematics in particular has been not simply misunderstood
but consistently disdained. Here I would like to argue against
this stance vis--vis mathematics and illuminate the brilliance of his
critique.
Kant detected synthetic judgment in every domain of thinking
except for logic, the domain of tautology. Mathematics was no ex-
ception. Or, more to the point, Kants radical contribution here was
that he considered even mathematicsthe very domain believed to
be most stable and certain because of its being analyticalas an
a priori synthetic judgment. During his lifetime, it was this stance that
earned Kant the worst reputation of all of his ideas, and it has been
constantly attacked ever since. But Kant maintained this stance be-
cause previous philosophy had insisted that only analytic judgment
was apodictic, and accordingly took mathematicswhich philoso-
phy was convinced was the most analytic of judgmentsas a norm.
I would like to shed more direct light on Kants intervention by look-
ing into specic instances of this old philosophical conviction.
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Kant
Leibniz held that the basis of truth lay in being identical or
reducible to the identical truth, and he further distinguished be-
tween contingent truth (truth of fact) and necessary truth (truth of
reasoning). In contingent truth, the predicate is contained in the
concept of the subject; nevertheless, contingent truth cannot be re-
duced to an equivalency or identity between subject and predicate,
and thus it can never be provenwhat Leibniz expressed as contin-
ued resolution. Still, according to Leibniz, only analytic judgment is
true. Nonetheless, he also came to posit, by way of the principle of
sufcient reason, that even truths of fact are analytic judgments
that are deducible from the subject. For example, in the contingent
proposition of fact Caesar crossed the Rubicon, the phrase crossed
the Rubicon is contained already (enthymemically, as Leibniz says)
in the subject Caesar. In short, Leibniz believed that all synthetic
judgments result in analytic judgments. The early Kant thought in a
similar manner. Meanwhile the Hume who interrupted [Kants]
dogmatic slumber with his acute skepticism still believed that only
mathematics was analytic. And for this, Kant criticized him:
[I]t was nonetheless just as if he had said: Pure mathematics contains only
analytic propositions, but metaphysics contains synthetic propositions a pri-
ori. Now he erred severely in this, and this error had decisively damaging
consequences for his entire conception [concerning the necessary connec-
tion between cause and effect]. For had he not done this, he would have ex-
panded his question about the origin of our synthetic judgments far
beyond his metaphysical concept of causality and extended it also to the
possibility of a priori mathematics; for he would have had to accept mathe-
matics as synthetic as well. But then he would by no means have been able
to found his metaphysical propositions on mere experience, for otherwise
he would have had to subject the axioms of pure mathematics to experi-
ence as well, which he was much too reasonable to do.
1
In this respect, it must be said that Humes skepticism was indeed in-
consistent; he did not move beyond the convention that solely ana-
lytical thinking is solid while the synthetic is questionable. By
contrast, Kants epoch-making contribution lay in his skepticism
concerning the analytic nature of mathematicsthe very ground of
metaphysics since at least Plato. But even those who agreed with
Kants critique of metaphysics did not understand his insight into
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The Problematic of Synthetic Judgment
mathematics as synthetic. As far as this point was concerned, they
were too steeped in metaphysical thinking. It was Kant alone who
dared to step into, and to subvert, the sacred precinct that the con-
icting philosophical polesrationalism and empiricismhad simply
taken for granted. What is more, this radicalism is intimately related
to the fact that Kant imagined the possibility of a new mathematics.
The so-called crisis of mathematics is said to have begun with two
mathematical innovations of the late nineteenth century: non-
Euclidean geometry and set theory. To be more precise, Carl
Friedrich Gauss (17771855) had already thought of both possibili-
ties, including what kind of crises they would cause; but he kept
quiet and even discouraged public discourse about them. There-
fore, it is not the case that the critical situation of mathematics sud-
denly surfaced in the late nineteenth century; by the mid eighteenth
century, the idea of non-Euclidean geometry was already known. For
instance, it had already been demonstrated that from the axiom,
the sum total of the three internal angles of a triangle is smaller
than that of two right angles, a system of theorems could be con-
structed without contradiction. Furthermore, non-Euclidean geome-
try in the context of the problem of the sphere had also already been
conceptualized. As Gottfried Martin points out, Johann Heinrich Lam-
bert (17281777), one of the founders of this tendency, was a friend
of Kants.
2
And Kants awareness of the possibility of new mathemat-
ics is evident in his papers on physics, as I will demonstrate.
What Kant sought to ground philosophically was certainly not the
mathematics and physics that had already been solidly established in
the eighteenth century. A foundational theory would never have to
be constructed in the rst place if not in response to a crisis of foun-
dation itself. What drives philosophers toward rigorous theoretical
grounding is always critical consciousnessas it is precisely exempli-
ed also in Marxs critique of political economy, which would not
have come into existence in the absence of actual nancial crises.
For his part, what drove Kant toward his own foundational theory
was a radical sense of crisis, which, however, was far too progressive
to be shared or accepted by his contemporaries. And, to a certain
degree, it could be said that Kant, like Gauss later, avoided publicly
declaring the crisis (so as to avoid the legendary fate of Hippasos).
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Kant
If Kants texts are so still suggestive today, it is ultimately because of
his pioneering sense of the crisis, but also because of his discursive
prudence with regard to stating more publicly the depth and impli-
cation of this crisis. Hence the need for a transcritical reading of his
work.
3
When he was twenty-two years old, Kant wrote in his graduate the-
sis that If the law changes, the expansion [of space] will also turn to
have different properties and dimensions. The science of all the pos-
sible space will be without doubt the highest geometry the nite un-
derstanding can undertake. Though, as we realize, it is impossible to
represent a more than three dimensional space.
4
Now, one of the most inuential aspects of The Elements by Euclid
(306283 B.C.E) is the thesis that a theorem can be deduced from an
axiom without contradiction. But this claim does not hold for the di-
verse mathematics that have developed over history. The develop-
ment of mathematics has been driven more by applied mathematics,
or by games, than by any principle. This is because the crux of math-
ematics has always been located in the practice of grasping the rela-
tion of things. As an effect of the Euclidean principle, however, it has
been assumed that all mathematical procedures could and should fol-
low the proof as a formal (and analytical) deduction from an axiom.
And this is the reason why mathematics has become established as the
fountainhead of analytical judgment. Nonetheless, prioritizing analyt-
ical judgment was not the specic property of mathematics itself. It is
metaphysics that has taken mathematics as the norm because of the pre-
supposition that mathematics is analytical. In other words, it is Platos
dogma that only analytical thinking is true that made Euclidean geome-
try possible. Therefore, to undermine Platos position, mathematics
must be the primary eld of critique.
And the truth of the matter is that the question of whether or not
the Euclidean elements are truly analytical has been asked more
or less from the inception of mathematics. The Elements consist of de-
nitions, axioms, and postulates, and among these, it is the fth pos-
tulate that has been most controversial: If a straight line crosses two
other straight lines so that the sum of the two interior angles on one side of it
is less than two right angles, then the two straight lines, if extended far
enough, cross on that same side. In the eighteenth century, this was
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The Problematic of Synthetic Judgment
restated into a simpler proposition, the famous parallel postulate:
Through a point P outside a line L there is one and only one line parallel
to L. The particular postulate in Euclids The Elements was thrown
into doubt by the following question: Isnt this theorem deducible
from other postulates and axioms? What non-Euclidean geometry
made clear was that Euclids fth postulate is independent of the
other Euclidean axioms; and further, not only that this is not intu-
itively self-evident but also that contradiction will not occur even if
other postulates are adopted. For instance, Lobachevskys geometry
was derived from the proposition The sum total of the three internal an-
gles of a triangle is smaller than that of two right angles, while Riemanns
geometry came from the proposition The sum total of the three internal
angles of a triangle is larger than that of two right angles. Using different
expressions, Lobachevsky adopted the postulate In a plane, through a
point outside a line L, there are an innite number of lines which do not in-
tersect L, while Riemann chose Through a point P outside a line L there is
no line parallel to it; that is, every pair of lines in a plane must intersect.
But, to repeat, and as Gottfried Martin also emphasizes, Kant had
already thought of the possibilities of non-Euclidean geometry. In
fact, when Kant considered mathematics as an a priori synthetic
judgment, he already had explicitly in mind the very nature of ax-
ioms. Kant clearly maintained both that axioms are independent of
empirical substance and that they are, at the same time, not sheer
constructs of the concept (or understanding). Empirically speaking,
for example, since parallel lines do not intersect, it follows that the
axiom, parallel lines intersect, is independent of empirical reality.
Viewed from the Leibnizian standpoint, within the concept of the
triangle (read the subject) what is already included is the predicate:
The sum total of the three internal angles of a triangle is equal to that of two
right angles. Therefore, non-Euclidean geometry is just a reductio ad
absurdum. From the Leibnizian standpoint, axioms as such had been
obstacles, so he had sought to do away with thembut in vain.
Kant thought of the problematic of axioms in a much more so-
phisticated manner. He explained the difference between analytic
judgment and synthetic judgment in two ways: analytic judgment is
where the concept predicate is included in the concept subject,
and it can be proven only by the law of contradiction. In contrast,
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Kant
synthetic judgment requires something other than the law of contradic-
tion. Which is to say that Kants consideration of mathematics as
being an a priori synthetic judgment derives rigorously from his con-
sideration of the status of axioms. Thus Kant opposed the reduction
of mathematics to logic. Kant notwithstanding, however, the concept
that mathematics is an analytic judgment proved itself not to be easily
shaken. A notable example is the later nineteenth-century logicism
of Frege/Russell, which expressed the clearest conviction that mathe-
matics be logical. Russell, in particular, was this delusions prime pro-
ponent. On the one hand, he was an empiricist like Hume; on the
other, he insisted that mathematics was analytical. As he put it:
The proof that all pure mathematics, including Geometry, is nothing but
formal logic, is a fatal blow to the Kantian philosophy. Kant, rightly perceiv-
ing that Euclids propositions could not be deduced from Euclids axioms
without the help of gures, invented a theory of knowledge to account for
this fact; and it accounted so successfully that, when the fact is shown to be
a mere defect in Euclid, and not a result of the nature of geometric reason-
ing, Kants theory also has to be abandoned. The whole doctrine of a priori
intuitions, by which Kant explained the possibility of pure mathematics, is
wholly inapplicable to mathematics in its present form.
5
Russells seminal account is deeply biased by the erroneous belief
that Kant pursued mathematics in the context of pre-non-Euclidean
geometry. But Kants mathematics was already far beyond the asser-
tion that it was wholly inapplicable to mathematics in its present
form. At the end of the day, it was sooner Russells twentieth-
century logicismall pure mathematics are nothing but formal
logicthat had been proleptically ruptured by possibilities con-
ceived in the eighteenth century by Kant.
During the twentieth century, the foundational theory of mathe-
matics diverged into three main sects: logicism, formalism, and intu-
itionism. An intuitionist, Luitzen Egbertus Jan Brouwer (18811966),
took a nitist stance, as opposed to treating innity as substance. In
his view, although the law of classical logic was based on nite sets,
people had mistakenly come to apply it to innite sets, forgetting its
true origin. He further argued that the crucial law of the excluded
middleEither a proposition A or its negation non-A must be
trueprecisely cannot be applied to innite sets. The law of the
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The Problematic of Synthetic Judgment
excluded middle is used in the manner: If the hypothesisit is not
Afalls into a paradox, the proofit is Ais achieved. This type of
proof is functional only in nite cases, but not in the case of innite
sets. Finally, Brouwer held that the paradox that occurs in innite
sets is due to abuse of the law of the excluded middle. And about
this, too, Kant had had something important to say.
Kantian dialectics in Critique of Pure Reason present how antinomy
occurs due to the abuse of the law of the excluded middle. Kant dis-
tinguishes between negative judgmenthe does not dieand in-
nite judgmenthe is immortal . Although the innite judgment is
an afrmative judgment, it is commonly mistaken for a negative
one. Similarly, the propositionthe world is not boundedis
deemed equipollent to the propositionthe world is innite. The
law of the excluded middle is functional in the case of the world is
bounded or not bounded, but not in the proposition the world is
bounded or innite, in which both propositions can be false. Thus
Kant revealed that the law of the excluded middle inexorably falls
into paradox with respect to innity. But arguably the most radical
paradox of contemporary mathematics derives from Georg Cantors
theory of innite setsespecially his attempt to treat innity as a
number. And this paradox, too (whether Cantor himself was aware
of it or not), is intimately connected to Kants theory of antinomy.
In order for a universal proposition to be established, for in-
stance, it is sine qua non to collect instances indenitely. And this
act will never reach the point where everything is collected, where
the innity is attained. Since ancient Greece, elementary logic has
always taken the example of syllogism: all humans die; Socrates is
a human; therefore, Socrates dies. In the strict sense, the proposi-
tion all humans die is a generality (indenity) based upon experi-
ence, and not universality (innity). There may be a man who does
not die. But, in terms of the procedure of proof, unless counterevi-
dence that there is a man who does not die is actually posed, the
proposition can be deemed a scientic truth. It is totally unlikely
that such counterevidence could ever be posed in reality, however, it
should still be considered a possibility. It is at this point that the
other has to intervene as the ultimate ground for a universal propo-
sition to be established. The concept of universality itself inexorably
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Kant
introduces the problematic of the other. The domain of mathe-
matics is not exempted from this, though those who considered
mathematics as a type of analytic judgment sought to do away with it.
Famously, the paradox of contemporary mathematics derived
from Cantors theory of sets that sought to grasp innity itself as a
number. And this must have some link to Kants theory of antinomy,
though Cantor did not think that way. According to Martin, the clos-
est approximation to Kants approach among all contemporary the-
ories of mathematical foundations is intuitionism. Intuitionism
acknowledges only nite objects, namely, those that can be consti-
tuted. In Martins words:
If we are trying, from todays point of view, to understand Kants explana-
tions about the constructive character of mathematics, then we [have to be]
aware that we are using facts which Kant hadnt yet known in this precise
way. Such an explanation of Kant based on our contemporary insights nev-
ertheless seems to be possible because the Intuitionists themselves accept
this relationship with the Kantian premises. Given this, the Kantian thesis of
the intuitive character of mathematics means the limiting of mathematics
to those objects that are constitutable [konstruierbar].
From here, Kants position towards Euclidean geometry can be made
clear. We have already said that even many Kantians passionately contested
the possibility of non-Euclidean geometry. Certainly this protest had a
certain justication in Kants positions, but things are much more dif-
cult here than one rst assumed. They became even more burdened be-
cause of the fact that Kantjust like Gauss laterneglected to speak of
non-Euclidean geometries. And when we view the battles provoked by the
introduction of non-Euclidean geometries, we must indeed say that Kant
was right to be cautious. There can be no doubt, however, that Kant himself
was quite clear about the fact that, in geometry, what is logically possible
goes far beyond the realm of Euclidean geometry. But Kant held fast, even
if presumably erroneously, to one thesis. What goes beyond Euclidean
geometry is logically possible, it is true, but it is not constitutable. This
means that it is not intuitively constitutable. And this means, in turn, that
for Kant it does not exist mathematically. Only Euclidean geometry exists in
the mathematical sense, whereas all non-Euclidean geometries are mere
thought-objects.
6
From this standpoint, Martin reinterprets the signicance of Kants
having deemed mathematics constitutive. Intuitive is equal to consti-
tutable. All geometries can be thought without contradiction, whereas
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The Problematic of Synthetic Judgment
cognizable ones are limited, and this limitation overlaps nite consti-
tutability. All in all, it was for this reason that Kant set up the distinc-
tions between thing-in-itself and phenomena, thinking and cognition.
Therefore, we must acknowledge that Kants theory is not in the
least obsolete; indeed it assumes a strong position in contemporary
theories of mathematical foundations.
Kant was aware that by taking up any axiom, an alternative geome-
try could be produced without contradiction; yet, at the same time,
he did consider space and timethe basic forms of sensuous intuition
to be Euclidean. For this reason, he is thought to have grounded Eu-
clidean geometry and Newtonian physics philosophically. Moreover,
his thinking has even been used as a basis to counter non-Euclidean
geometry. But, as I have been arguing, just the opposite is closer to
the truth. His starting point was that, in order for non-Euclidean
geometry to be constituted, Euclidean geometry was a sine qua non.
One of the methods to prove the consistency of an axiomatic system
is to appeal to an intuitive model. For example, in Riemannian
geometry, the axiomatic system takes the sphere of Euclidean geom-
etry as its model; it then assumes a plane to be a sphere in the Eu-
clidean system, a point to be a point on the sphere, and a straight
line to be the greater circle. By so doing, the individual axioms of
Riemannian geometry can be transferred into the theorems of Eu-
clidean geometry. Which is to say that, inasmuch as Euclidean geom-
etry is consistent, so too is non-Euclidean geometry. However, since
the consistency of Euclidean geometry cannot be proven in and of
itself, one has to appeal to intuition, after all. Thus the problematic
of non-Euclidean geometry eventually circles back to Euclidean
geometry.
One should note in passing, however, that the crux of the formal-
ism of David Hilbert (18621943) lies in jettisoning this problematic and
its procedures. In his Foundations of Geometry [Grundlagen der Geometrie,
1899], he insisted that not only Euclids fth postulate but also
other denitions and postulates are by no means self-evident truths,
in part because concepts such as point and straight line have no
meaning in and of themselves. So Hilbert formalized mathematics
into symbolic logic. This is not to say, however, that just any geome-
tries can be constituted. He set up a precise standard of judgment as
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64
Kant
to whether or not three measures can be satised within any
axiomatic system: (1)completeness (all theorems can be derived from
an axiomatic system); (2) independence (there are theorems which
can no longer be proven if any proposition is extracted from an ax-
iomatic system); and (3) consistency (it is impossible to prove mutu-
ally contradictory theorems within an axiomatic system). Hereby,
Hilbert sought to ground mathematics, not by intuitive self-
evidence, but solely by theoretical consistency. For this, he was criti-
cized by intuitionists; but to adhere strictly to intuitionism would in-
exorably limit the territory of mathematics. In response, therefore,
while Hilbert did adopt the nitistic stance advocated by intuition-
ists, he also still sought to ground mathematics without resorting to
intuition. This was the so-called Hilberts Program (developed
19171925), and it was basically Kantian in inspiration.
Finally, however, Kurt Gdel (19061978) pushed Hilberts Pro-
gram literally to the limit, by demonstrating that it (particularly its
third standard) falls inexorably into self-referential paradox.
7
Gdels proof (rst advanced in 1931) was executed within a persis-
tent formalism in its argument that, inasmuch as formalism is taken
for granted as a premise, it automatically reveals its paradox. And
this argument also helped implement the rupture of Russellian logi-
cism. The basic lesson of Gdels proof is that mathematical truth is
not necessarily expressed within the formal axiomatic system; in
other words, there can be truths which are not formally grounded.
But an additional lesson, arguably equally important, is this: inas-
much as a mathematical system is consistent, it cannot prove its own
consistency. Yet we neither need to lament nor get overly excited by
the absence of the mathematical ground Gdel revealed.
The dream of achieving a solid foundation by way of a formal ax-
iomatic system was never inherent in mathematics itself; this dream
was informed by metaphysics, for which only analytic judgment is
sound. And it was metaphysics, in this precise sense, that Kant
sought to undermine. But inasmuch as metaphysics relies on mathe-
matics, this critique rst had to be executed in mathematicsbefore
throwing the result back into philosophy. Gdels meta-mathematical
critique had such a function in the history of mathematics. In
this sense, Gdelian deconstruction can be connected to Kants
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The Problematic of Synthetic Judgment
transcendental critique. In any case, what I want to stress is that,
from todays standpoint, Kant was entirely correct when he deemed
mathematics a synthetic judgment. As Kant maintained, synthetic
judgment is an expansive judgment [Erweiterungsurteil]. And so it is
that mathematics has developed in the past and will continue to do
so in the future. In his later years, Wittgenstein spoke of mathemat-
ics as a motley bundle of inventions. In this expression, he, too, af-
rmed with Kant that mathematics is a synthetic judgment.
2.2 The Linguistic Turn
Philosophers of the postlinguistic turn tend to accuse Kant of having
remained within the philosophy of subjectivity. But this claim is sim-
ply not true, and conceals the true radicality of his thought. For
what Kant problematized as the activity of subjectivity was in actual-
ity language. Kants saying that phenomena are constituted by the
form of sensibility and by the category of understanding is equiva-
lent to saying that they are linguistically constituted. Not by chance,
a neo-Kantian philosopher like Ernst Cassirer renamed them sym-
bolic form. For this reason, the prospect of going beyond Kant by
appealing to the linguistic turn can only be misleading. To make
this point clear, I will refer to Wittgenstein, since he is commonly
embraced by linguistic turn thinkers.
Returning to Gdel for a brief moment, it is not as if his proof
paralyzed the whole practice called mathematics. It rendered obso-
lete only that part of the system which is infallibly deduced from an
axiom. Which is to say that Gdel liberated mathematics from the
bind of infallibility with which it had been unfairly charged from
without. This didnt shock Wittgenstein. Here is how he spoke of his
position with regard to Russell: It is my task, not to attack Russells
logic from within, but from without; and with regard to Gdel: My
task is not to talk about (e.g.) Gdels proof, but to by-pass it.
8
What
do those expressions, from without and to by-pass, mean? That
Gdel attacks Russells logic from within means that he, in effect,
deconstructs Russells formal system by inducing its undecidability
from within. So is Wittgenstein then declaring that he would do the
same thing from without? Not precisely. The fact that Wittgenstein
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Kant
spoke so much about Russell and so little about Gdel, in the
climate in which the Incompleteness Theorem was giving mathe-
matical society such a salutary shock, only speaks of Wittgensteins
antipathy toward Gdels position, and brings Wittgenstein closer to
Kants transcendental critique.
Gdel was a tacit Platonist. He demonstrated the undecidability of
Cantors continuum hypothesis, but with respect to the fallacy of
that hypothesis, it is said that Gdel claimed he could intuit it
through meditation, if not prove it formally. He acted out the
performance of negatively proving the absence of a foundation by
way of formal demonstration only because he believed a priori in
the mathematical substance that would require no further founda-
tion. Instead of writing positively, he implies negatively. If so, wasnt
Gdels negative theologydeconstructing the formal ground-
ing with a make-believe faiththe true target of Wittgensteins
antagonism, much more than Russells wholehearted faith in the
foundation?
9
In his late career, Wittgenstein focused on a radical reconsidera-
tion of the procedure of proofthe premise for Gdels undecidabil-
ity as opposed to decidability. Mathematical thinking is canonically
seen as infallible only insofar as it is consistently deduced from an
axiom. Wittgenstein thrust two explosive contingencies into this sys-
tem of faith. The rst of these contingencies is the practical and his-
torical nature of mathematics, namely, the index of its heterogeneity
and excess, which cannot be reduced to a basic axiomatic system. In
the case of Gdels proof, it is based upon a translation from the
foundations of non-Euclidean geometry: rst, into Euclidean geom-
etry, and second, into natural numbers. As Wittgenstein relates this
translation:
What is it to coordinate one system of proofs with another? It involves a
translation rule by means of which proved propositions of the one can be
translated into proved propositions of another.
Now it is possible to imagine someor allof the proof systems of pre-
sent-day mathematics as having been coordinated in such a way with one
system, say that of Russell. So that all proofs could be carried out in the sys-
tem, even though in a roundabout way. So would there then be only the
single systemno longer that many?But then it must surely be resolved
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The Problematic of Synthetic Judgment
into the manyOne part of the system will process the properties of
trigonometry, another those of algebra, and so on. Thus one can say that
different techniques are used in these parts.
10
Certainly, Wittgenstein opposed the projects of Russell, inter alia, to
ground the whole of mathematical practice in set theory. For in-
stance, according to Russell, 1, 2, 3, . . . can be translated into
1, 1 1, (1 1) 1, . . . as a grounding. With this method, how-
ever, any even moderately larger equation (say, 84 24 2,016) be-
comes too cumbersome. According to the Wittgenstein who noted
A mathematical proof must be perspicuous,
11
it is denitely
not perspicuous, whereas with the decimal system it becomes per-
fectly perspicuous. In Russells view, calculation in the cardinal sys-
tem (1, 1 1, [1 1] 1, . . .) is grounded and authentic; in
Wittgensteins, even calculation using the decimal system is a mathe-
matical invention and a system of proofs in and of itself. I want to
say that: if you have a proof-pattern that cannot be taken in, and by a
change in notation you turn it into one that can, then you are pro-
ducing a proof, where there was none before.
12
For Wittgenstein, it
was simply no longer necessary to prove mathematical systems by
means of a general foundation. As he put it, it is not something
behind the proof, but the proof, that proves.
13
New forms of expres-
sion or new mathematical proofs automatically produce new con-
cepts in and by themselves. For example:
Now surely one could simply say: if a man had invented calculating in the
decimal systemthat would have been a mathematical invention!Even if
he had already got Russells Principia Mathematica.
14
It [mathematics] forms ever new rules: is always building new roads for traf-
c; by extending the network of the old ones.
15
But the mathematician is not a discoverer: he is an inventor.
16
From time to time in mathematics it happens that identical theo-
rems arise from different elds and contexts. Rather than consider-
ing them as one and the same, however, Wittgenstein, who
understood mathematics as consisting of multiple systems, consid-
ered that they belong to different systems of rules. It was in this con-
text that he wrote, as we have seen, I should like to say:
mathematics is a MOTLEY of techniques and proofAnd upon this
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Kant
is based its manifold applicability and its importance.
17
Thus what
Wittgenstein objected to was founding multiple systems of rules upon
a single system. But this is not to say that mathematical polysystems
are completely separate and unrelated. Though they are translatable
into (i.e., interchangeable with) each other, they do not share the
same system. Family resemblances was the name he gave to such a
complicated network of similarities overlapping and crisscrossing.
18
Instead of producing something common to all that we call language, I am
saying that these phenomena have no one thing in common which makes
us use the same word for all, but that they are related to one another in
many different ways. And it is because of this relationship, or these relation-
ships, that we call them all language.
19
Likewise, what are grouped together under the umbrella term math-
ematics are polysystems that cannot be centralized. Wittgenstein
stressed this heterogeneity not only because mathematics deals with
heterogeneous Nature in a practical mannerno less than do the
various sciencesbut also, and more important, because hetero-
geneity comes from an acknowledgment of the other who cannot be
interiorized. And this is the second contingency, the rst being the
practical and historical nature of mathematics.
Wittgensteins critique of formalism was thus focused on its ten-
dency to exclude the otherness of the other, the contingency of the
relation to the other. Generally speaking, mathematical proofs ap-
pear to be done automatically and peremptorily. But Wittgenstein
stressed that, as to subjects following rules, they are less automatic
than compulsory. This position is reminiscent of the Platothough
unlike Gdels Platowho associated geometric proof with dia-
logue. Or more precisely, if Plato made mathematics infallible, it was
by way of introducing the proof as a dialogue in the sense of collabo-
rative inquiry.
In the Meno, Platos Socrates induces a boy who is not well-
educated in geometry to prove a theorem. In this demonstration,
Socrates proves that there is neither teaching nor learning, but
only recollection [anmnesis]. This is known as Menos paradox
or the paradox of pedagogy. The proof is executed in the form of a
dialogue, but a peculiar one in which the only thing Socrates need
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The Problematic of Synthetic Judgment
say is, You see Meno, that I am not teaching . . . only asking.
20
The
prerequisite to the dialogue is a rule that stipulates: Upon the ac-
ceptance of a basic premise (axiom), one must do nothing to con-
tradict it. Proof becomes unattainable at any moment if the boy
utters anything contradictory to what he has said previously. In
other words, the boy has always already been taught to follow the
rules, which he then recollects. Prior to the dialogue, he already
shares the a priori rules. Who taught them to him?
There is nothing extraordinary about Socrates method. It is
based on specic Athenian legal institutions. Nicholas Rescher has
reconsidered dialectics in terms of those forms of disputation and
courtroom procedure in which an interlocutor (prosecutor) pre-
sents his opinion, and an opponent (defendant) counters his point,
followed by the interlocutors response.
21
In this way, the rst inter-
locutors point does not have to constitute an absolutely infallible,
indisputable thesis. As long as no effective counterproposal is raised
against the initial assertion, it is understood to be valid and conse-
quential. In such argumentation, the interlocutor bears the onus
probandi, the burden of proof; and the defendant is not required to
give testimony. Socrates method clearly follows this course. It is sig-
nicant that Plato began the Meno by describing the case of Socrates
himself, who believed so strongly in the dialogic justice that he ac-
cepted his own death as a result of a verdict. For the Socratic
method, even if the verdict were found to be unjust, it is the process
of justice itself that is of primary importanceand Socrates acknowl-
edged as true only what passed through this process.
In many courts of law, both opponents must obey a common rule
that technically allows the prosecutor and the defense attorney to
exchange roles at any time. Those who do not acknowledge and ad-
here to the legal language game are either ordered out of court or
ruled incompetent by the court. In this sort of game, no matter how
forcefully or enthusiastically they might oppose one another, nei-
ther opponent occupies the position of the other. As Rescher
notes, this dialogue always has the potential to become a mono-
logue. Indeed, in the works of Aristotle and Hegel, dialectics did be-
come a monologue. And though Platos dialogues were written in
the form of conversation, nally they, too, must be considered
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Kant
dramatic monologuesas Bahktin pointed out in Problems of
Dostoevskys Poetics. Western philosophy thus began as an introspective
that is, monologicdialogue, or, alternatively, dialogic monologue.
Mathematics is privileged because its knowledge has a compelling
power far beyond that of the subjectivity I. Which does not mean,
however, that the power is due to the characteristics of mathematics
in and of itself; rather it is thanks to Platos and Euclids notion that
only that which survives the process of legal argumentation can be
deemed mathematics. In this manner, mathematical proof is pre-
sumed to be produced by intersubjectivity, that is, by that which lies
beyond individual cognition. The true Socratic/Platonic invention
is not the idea that reason inheres in the world or the self, as is often
claimed, but rather that only that which goes through the dialogic
process is rational. Those who refuse dialogue, no matter how deep
the truth they may grasp, are irrational. Whether or not the world or
the self contains reason in and of itself ultimately counts for noth-
ing; only those who are subjected to dialogue are rational. And this
is also the standpoint from which the pre-Socratics are scrutinized.
Being rational is equivalent to accepting, as premise, the principle
of dialogue with others. Proof, no matter how it be written, assumes
a compelling power because it includes collaborative scrutiny with
others. Finally, it is thanks to this process that mathematics has been
considered as the norm.
As I have pointed out, Poppers concept of proof to the contrary
is based on this same conviction. And Kants position, that mathe-
matics is a synthetic judgment, was its most radical critique. Syn-
thetic judgment is universal only insofar as proof to the contrary is
presupposednot the proof of the other who shares the same sys-
tem of rules, but of the other who does not share the same system of
rules. Kants radicalism exists in the fact that he pursued the prob-
lem of alterity in communication deep into mathematics, and that he
did this by introducing the transcendental other, the other who can-
not be internalized into the same system. The transcendental
otheras distinct from the transcendent other, the sacred other
(God)is a quintessentially secular other who is everywhere and
everytime in front of us. One of later Wittgensteins most crucial
contributions is his emphasis on precisely this secular other.
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The Problematic of Synthetic Judgment
Part of Wittgensteins skepticism was aimed at the dialogue that
supports the specically metaphysical foundation of the mathematic
proof. The Wittgensteinian skepticism is connected to the cognition
that mathematics, qua motley of various systems of rules and
proofs, cannot be deduced to a single system of rules, if mutual trans-
lation is possible. And his target extended beyond mathematics to
the language game in general. But, at the same time, one should
not forget that the privileged position of mathematics, along with its
metaphysics of proof, remained his primary target. Without this as-
pect, what we would have would be just another mundane language
game. Wittgenstein was skeptical of the Platonic dialogue because it
did not take the true other as its counterpart, and thus could always
be converted into a monologue. If a stranger, an ostensible other,
can be internalized, it is because he or she shares the common set of
rules. Strictly speaking, dialogue has to be with the one that engages
the other who does not share the same set of rules. Here is how
Wittgenstein posits the other who cannot be internalized: Someone
who did not understand our language, a foreigner, who had fairly
often heard someone giving the order: Bring me a slab!, might be-
lieve that this whole series of sounds was one word corresponding
perhaps to the word for building-stone in his language.
22
To com-
municate with foreigners or children is, in other words, to teach a
code to someone who does not yet know it. And in such a case, the
situation is the same from the others standpoint: To the other, I am
a foreigner or a child to be taught. Communication with the other
who does not share the same set of rules will inexorably take place in
a teaching/learning relationship. Conventional theories of commu-
nication take for granted a shared system of rules, but in the case of
communication with foreigners or childrenor psychotics for that
mattersuch a system is absent from the very outset, or never even
possible. This is no exception, but the daily landscape of human
lives.
As human beings, we are all born children and learn language
from our parents (or their equivalents). As a result, we come to
share common rules. Likewise, in our daily communication with oth-
ers, we must always have incommensurable domains, though we do
not always remember this surprising fact. Thus communication
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Kant
must, in reality, become mutual teaching. If there is a system of com-
mon rules, it is achieved only after the event of the teaching/learn-
ing relationship. In the beginning, this mutual relationship is
asymmetrical. And this is the most fundamental aspect of communi-
cation. Again, this is not an anomalyit is our daily state of affairs.
Rather, the anomalies are commonly considered to be the normal
cases, namely, in the dialogue that takes for granted a common set of
rules, as one big merry party or symposium. Therefore, Wittgen-
steins introduction of the other into his reection on communica-
tion is equal to having reintroduced the initial asymmetric
relationshipthe one so charged with impossible crossings.
In this context, teaching has nothing to do with authoritarian
hierarchy, because the teaching (or psychoanalytic) position is the
lesser one, subordinate to the others (or analysands) demand for
understanding. In the context of the political economy, teaching is
selling ones knowledge to the other. Marx made this fundamental
point very clear in his theory of exchange: The individual commod-
ity never contains the substantial value that classical economists
claimed was immanent in it. It cannot have a value (or even use
value) if it is not sold (exchanged). And, if not sold, it is a thing to
be simply discarded. The selling position is subordinated to the
choice of the buyer (the possessor of money), and their mutual re-
lationship is the epitome of asymmetricity.
To Wittgenstein, the someone who [does] not understand our
language, a foreigner, is not simply one among just any example he
might have taken. It is the very other, the sine qua non, in relation
to his methodical doubt. To borrow an example, when I shout,
Bring me a slab!, I may believe in the existence of a meaning inter-
nal to my utterance, but if it means building-stone to the other,
the internal signication is proven to be null and void. Wittgensteins
other is he or she who precisely nullies this entire internal
processthe one who appears as a bizarre skeptic, to adopt Saul
Kripkes expression.
23
In his early career, Wittgenstein had famously concluded,
Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
24
In that
case, whereof one cannot speak meant art and religion, but not yet
science and math. In this issue of categorical distinction, it is fairly
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The Problematic of Synthetic Judgment
easy to associate Wittgenstein with Kant. For instance, in Wittgensteins
Vienna,
25
Allan Janik and Stephen Toulmin have little trouble in de-
scribing how Wittgenstein developed his thinking in the Kantian/
Kierkegaardian atmosphere of Vienna, and the character traits he
developed there never changed, even throughout his later working
life in England, including, initially, with Russell. But what about
Wittgensteins later work? In his theory of the language game in
Philosophical Investigations, he banned the disciplinary division be-
tween science, ethics, and artmaking it look, perhaps, as if he had
nally distanced himself from Kantianism. However, the core of the
Kantian critique has nothing substantial to do any categorical divi-
sions; instead, it lies in the introduction of alterity into the architec-
tonic of the categorical universe. If this is true, then the later
Wittgenstein is even more Kantian than early Wittgenstein. It is here,
in this problematic of alteritythe other who is empirically om-
nipresent but grasped only transcendentallythat Kant and
Wittgenstein, most radically, most transcritically, intersect.
There is another canonical perception that Wittgenstein advo-
cated the precedence of social language over private language,
namely, solipsism. While this sounds plausible and benevolent,
nally it buries the radial crux of his skepticismnullifying it.
Wittgensteins skeptic really attacks only the tacit solipsistic nature
of intersubjectivity or dialogue, whenever it takes the form of apod-
ictic proof. It is high time for us to redene solipsism. It is not the
idea that only I exist, but that what is true of and for me is common to
everyone. This apparently innocuous, but in fact draconian move
functions as a tacit politics of internalizing the other. And, as tacit, it
is much harder to refute or combat than more explicit moves.
Furthermore, and for the same reason, I suggest that it is also high
time to redene dialogue. To repeat the main point, strictly speak-
ing it is that which occurs between others who do not share a com-
mon set of rules, namely, that which takes place in an irrevocably
asymmetrical relationship. And others are just like that, but they are
different from what anthropologists call strangers (or the uncanny).
As with Freud, unheimlich (uncanny) originally meant the familiar
(heimlich). Herein exists the mechanism of self-projection (as in self-
image). Furthermore, our other is not the Absolute Other that is
6715 CH02 UG 1/29/03 7:45 PM Page 73
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Kant
again a self-projection. What is truly crucial and problematic to us,
in contrast, is the otherness of the everyday, relative other.
If these points are not taken into consideration, serious confusion
will inevitably occur, as has happened with respect to Wittgenstein.
His theory has been mistaken as a sort of sociological observation.
One salient example is what has happened with his concept of
language game. Today, it is often conated with, and usurped by,
the Durkheimian fait social or the Saussurean langue. To be sure, in
fact Wittgenstein did often use the gure of chess, much like Saus-
sure. In Saussure, the gure shows this: rst, that the essence of lan-
guage exists in a form that is irrespective of the material, such as
sounds and letters; and, second, that the meanings of the pieces
exist in the rules of their movements, and that these are encoded
within the relational system (of difference) that encompasses other
pieces. For this reason, if the functions and arrangements of the
pieces were altered, the identical set of pieces would be playing to-
tally different games. In sum, the gure of chess suggests that lan-
guage is a differential formal system, independent of references and
meaningswhich are themselves the products of the system. This is
formalism, or at least one type. And Wittgensteins theory of the lan-
guage game was precisely poised to undermine the practical and his-
torical nature of mathematics very premises of this version of the
formalist idea. The gures of chess, indeed of games in general, lead
one to draw the inference that a rule can be presented explicitly.
For instance, grammar is considered a rule of language. But do
those who are able to speak, say, uent Japanese systematically or
systemically know the grammar? Most often not, including myself.
Grammar was originally conceptualized as a method for studying
foreign or dead classical languages. In a strict sense, grammar is not
a rule but a discovered (read also: produced) regularity without
which foreigners might never efciently master a language. On the
other hand, fully knowing the grammar of a language one already
speaks is not merely unnecessary but also simply impossible for the
speaking subject. Before the advent of modern nationalism, people
in Europe and elsewhere might never have dreamt that their vernac-
ular languages could have grammars, let alone grammars imposed
upon them, not to mention other kinds of rules.
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The Problematic of Synthetic Judgment
A rule of a language is discovered from the point of view of
foreigners who need to learnnot of those who speak it. Which is to
say that I do not need to and cannot know the grammar, say, of
the Japanese I am already speaking. At the same time, however, I
can point out the grammatical mistakes in foreigners speech.
Which is to say that, technically, I do know the grammar. Nonethe-
less, I cannot present a grammatical basis to explain the mistakes
of foreigners. I can simply point out that we do not say it that way.
It is in this sense that I dont know Japanese grammar; what do I
know is only the use.
Adults do not and cannot normally teach the rules of language;
they simply talk to their infants. When the infants begin to talk,
becoming mature, adults either correct their mistakes, or just laugh.
While adults do not know the rules as rules, they practice them all
the timeand by so doing they also teach. If we can teach children
grammar at all, it is only because they already know that language.
It is possible to say this is all that is indicated by Menos paradox.
I have just said that you are a rascal, and now you ask me if I can
teach you, when I say there is no such thing as teaching, only recollec-
tion.
26
Though a rule exists, it cannot be explicitly presented.
In spite of it all, however, teaching does exist. The boy who has
managed to demonstrate a geometric theorem by way of a dialogue
with Socrates has already been taught the rule. On the other hand,
as Plato also stresses, there is no teachingin the sense that a
teacher cannot present the rules explicitly. Wherein exists teaching/
learning a rule, therein exists something that cannot be rationally
elucidated any further. As noted earlier, Plato tried to solve this para-
dox by appealing to the doctrine of recollection [anmnesis]
knowing full well that it was a myth, a noble lie [gennaion pseudos],
noble in the sense of well-bred, which is in part only to say lin-
guistically competentthus tightly closing the tautologous circle.
The doctrine of recollection is based upon the idea that the identi-
cal exists fundamentally within everyone, collectively. So when Kant
speaks of the a priori form or category, it sounds as though he were
restating the recollection of the identical. But Kant, almost
uniquely, is not. His formulation of mathematics qua a priori syn-
thetic judgment was really posed in order to refute the very idea that
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Kant
mathematics is an analytical judgment, namely, a proof. Synthetic
judgment is posited with respect toand to respectthe problematic
synthesis of a radically split sensibility and understanding; and what
renders this split is the existence of the other, of polysystems. This is
what Kant sought to address with his concept the thing-in-itself.
2.3 Transcendental Apperception
In Critique of Pure Reason, Kant seems to maintain that cognition
(qua synthetic judgment) is established by transcendental subjectiv-
ity (or apperception). This does not entail, however, that cognition
(e.g., that of natural science) is established without the intervention
of other subjects, unlike the case of art. Neither does this entail that
synthetic judgment is automatically and easily established. Rather, in
his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant focuses on a specic inquiry: If cogni-
tion, which must be synthetic judgment, can be established at all,
then in what form? Kants presupposition of the transcendental sub-
ject (or apperception) has also been criticized by postlinguistic turn
philosophers. But it is impossible to eradicate the problematic whole
proposed by Kant (and, for that matter, by Descartes) by shedding
light on thinking or the subject from the vantage point of language
alone.
Saussure insisted that language is a social system. If so, how can he
grasp langue, which is a synchronic system? It is impossible to iden-
tify this problematic empirically, quite simply because it is impossi-
ble to survey the whole event of langue, that is, all the varieties of
words used at this moment. It follows that what Saussure calls
langue to him, as French speakeris technically the sum of all the
French words he knows at this moment. In other words, Saussures
linguistics really departs from transcendental introspection. He says
that langue is not substantive; it exists only in the speaking subject.
He rejects the conventional account, according to which a sign ex-
presses a certain meaning, because whenever there is a meaning to
a speaking subject, then there is also a form that discriminates the
meaningand the reverse is impossible. Langue exists not as an ob-
ject, but is considered to exist insofar as meanings are mutually com-
municated. Saussure also spoke of langue as a synchronic systembut
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The Problematic of Synthetic Judgment
such a whole is only presumed after the fact, from his own language
experience. In the Saussurean system, and its legacy, a word is the
synthesis of the signiant (the sensible) and the signi (the supra-
sensible). But the crucial point here is that such a synthesis is estab-
lished only ex post factothat it makes sense to me. In the end, when
Saussure suggested that form (le signiant) constitutes a differential,
relational system, the architectonic of the system tacitly took as a
premise what Kant had already called transcendental apperception.
It is Roman Jakobson who began to clarify this point. He opposed
Saussures notion that in language there are only differences, and
without positive terms.
27
He thought it would be possible to order the
phonetic organization Saussure had left in a jumble by reconstruct-
ing it as a bundle of binary oppositions.
Modern specialists in the eld of acoustics wonder with bewilderment how
it is possible that the human ear has no difculty in recognizing the great
variety of sounds in a language given that they are so numerous and their
variations so imperceptible. Can it really be that it is a purely auditory fac-
ulty that is involved here. No, not at all! What we recognize in spoken lan-
guage is not sound differences in themselves but the different uses to which
they are put by the language, i.e., differences which, though without mean-
ing in themselves, are used in discriminating one from another entities of a
higher level (morphemes, words).
28
Phonemes are not the same as voice/sounds; they are form that
comes into existence as differentiality only after entities of a higher
level are presupposed. The same can be said of morphemes, words,
and even sentences; they, too, are all extracted as differentiality (or
form) only when entities of respectively higher levels are presupposed.
This means that structures always and tacitly are premised on
the transcendental subjectivity that synthesizes them. Nevertheless,
structuralists thought it possible to do away with, and even deny,
transcendental subjectivity, because they presumed the existence of
a function that, though nonexistent substantially, makes a system
a system: Thus the zero sign. Jakobson introduced the zero
phoneme in order to complete the phonemic system. A zero-
phoneme, he wrote, is opposed to all other French phonemes by
the absence both of distinctive features and of a consistent sound
characteristic. On the other hand, the zero-phoneme is opposed to
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Kant
the absence of any phonemes whatsoever.
29
Zero signs of this sort
undoubtedly derived from mathematics. For instance, the mathe-
matical structure formulated by Nicolas Bourbaki (Andr Weil et al.)
is a transformational rule that is not visible like form, but is an invisi-
ble function. Included as a sine qua non within a transformational
rule is a nontransformational function. The zero phoneme Jakobson
established corresponds to the unit element e in mathematical trans-
formational groups. Owing to this, a bundle of oppositional rela-
tions of phonemes can constitute a structure. Lvi-Strauss was
inspired by this assertion of the orderly composition of chaos:
Structural linguistics will certainly play the same renovating role
with respect to the social sciences that nuclear physics, for example,
has played for the physical sciences.
30
And he applied the Kleinian
group (as algebraic structure) in his analysis of the heterogeneous
kinship structures among uncivilized societies. It was here that
structuralism in the narrow sense was born.
In the nal analysis, however, the zero sign is a restatement of
transcendental subjectivitythe nothingness that constitutes the
structure of a systemand it is impossible to do away with it. Zero
was invented in India, and originally the name for not moving a bead
on an abacus-like counting board. If it were not for zero, the num-
bers, say, 205 and 25 would be indistinguishable. In other words,
zero is opposed to the absence of any number whatsoever. It intro-
duced the place-value system. In Sanskrit the word for zero is the
same as the word for the Buddhist concept of emptiness, sunyata. It
is not an exaggeration to say that Buddhist philosophy was devel-
oped around this concept.
31
When Gilles Deleuze observes that
structuralism is inseparable from a new kind of transcendental phi-
losophy, where places surpass what occupies them,
32
he neglects to
add that a transcendental philosophy was already in place in the
place-value system. Thus structuralism began with an introduction
of the zero sign, though thereafter structuralists have not both-
ered to examine its philosophical implications. Instead, they believed
they had managed to clear out the modern thought originated in
the ego cogito. By the time they thought it possible to do away with
subjectivity, however, they had already and tacitly conceived of sub-
jectivity as a premise, and then forgotten it.
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The Problematic of Synthetic Judgment
Returning to Saussure, one has to see the signicance of his
ambiguitythe source of Jakobsons discontent. Saussure advocated
that in language there are only differences. He saw language as
valuean idea that represented only chaos for Jakobson. It is impor-
tant to note, however, that when Saussure saw language as value he
had already assumed the existence of the other, that is, different sys-
tems of languages (langues). The emphasis on only differences in
language was not only made in reference to within one relational sys-
tem (langue), but from the beginning was also addressed withoutto
the existence of a multitude of relational systems (langues). Which is
to say that Saussure discovered langue by way of an introspection,
while at the same time presupposing the externality beyond intro-
spection, or the alterity beyond internalization. Saussures skeptical
approach toward linguistics departed from the very sense of differ-
ence. Accordingly, it might be said that Saussures linguistics was
a Kantian critique of two existing tendencies: on the one hand,
Wilhelm von Humboldts early nineteenth-century linguistics, which
considered languages as Volksgeist, and, on the other, historical lin-
guistics, which observed the transformation of language, as if due to
a natural scientic law, as an object independent of consciousness.
Against the former, Saussures approach rejected the internal coher-
ence of language, and emphasized it against the latter. In other
words, his ambivalence lay in the fact that he considered langue as
an enclosed synchronic system, even as he negated such an internal
coherence.
From this perspective, the meaning of Saussures statement that
language is social becomes clear. He is not simply saying that lan-
guage is a fait social (Durkheim) beyond individual consciousness;
nor is he simply saying that individual terms exist only in a larger rela-
tional system. Those accounts consider language only as one langue
one system or community, and as such they are restatements of
transcendental subjectivity. But language is properly social only when
it is seen as, and in, communication with the otherwith those oth-
ers who belong to other systems of rules (langues) or communities.
As I noted earlier, Wittgenstein sought to scrutinize linguistic com-
munication in the context of teaching foreigners. He negated pri-
vate language not from the conventional positionthat language is
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Kant
a rule of a communitybut from a heterology that sees language in
that kind of social communication wherein those who belong to
different communities encounter each other. Therefore, if there is
such a thing at all as the linguistic turn, it exists not in the denial of
subjectivity from the vantage point of language, but rather in a dis-
covery of subject within the doubt fostered in the eld of social dif-
ference. Such is the transcritical critical place.
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Transcritique
3.1 Subject and Its Topos
Kants transcendental critique has been attacked for being a succes-
sor to the Cartesian method that constitutes the world by way of the
cogito. It is possible to defend Kant against this position by pointing
out a number of characteristics that dissociate him from Descartes.
But instead of doing this now, I would like to reconsider Descartes
himself, who is being nearly unanimously attacked nowadays. In his
Discourse on Method (1637), Descartes speaks autobiographically about
the motives behind his overall skepticism: reading old books he had
learned that discourses on truth vary according to different histori-
cal contexts; and by traveling he had learned that truths themselves
are the constructs of grammars and customs of communities. He
wrote:
and, having recognized since then, in traveling, that all those who have sen-
timents very contrary to ours are not, for that reason, barbarians or savages,
but that many of them make use of reason as much as or more than we do;
and, having considered how much different one and the same man, with
his very same mind, being brought up from his infancy among the French
or the Germans, becomes from that which he would be if he had always
lived among the Chinese or the cannibals; and how, even down to the very
fashions of our clothing, the same thing that pleased us ten years ago, and
that will perhaps please us once again ten years hence, now seems to us ex-
travagant and ridiculousso that it is much more custom and example that
persuade us than any certain knowledge, and yet the voices of the majority
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are not a proof that be worth anything for truths even a little difcult to
discover, because it is much more likely that one man alone had found
them than that a whole people had: having learned, having recognized and
having considered all this, I say, I was unable to choose anyone whose opin-
ions might have seemed to me to have to be preferred to those of the oth-
ers, and I found myself constrained, as it were, to undertake to guide myself
by myself.
1
It is commonly said that Descartes was a solipsist who closed off dia-
logue and sought to secure truth by way of his concept of ego. As is
evident in the passage just cited, however, Cartesian doubt begins
from his realization that the truths people believe in are simply de-
termined by the example and custom of the community to which
they belong, namely, by shared rules and paradigms. That is to say
that Descartes had already been observing the world in the manner
of a cultural anthropologist. As I pointed out earlier, many postlin-
guistic-turn philosophers reject methods such as his, motivated as
they appear to be in introspection. But the reason Descartes himself
tended toward introspection in the rst place was because his prede-
cessors of the philosophia scholasticawhether nominalist or realist
had all thought within the frame of the grammar of the
Indo-European language group. In this respect, the Cartesian cogito
is nothing if not the awareness that our thought is always already
bound by language. In Kants terminology, this is the transcenden-
tal standpoint toward language. The transcendental position is
equivalent to bracketing the imagined self-evidence of the empirical
consciousness in order to reveal the (unconscious) conditions that
constitute it. What is crucial here is that the transcendental stand-
point inexorably accompanies a certain kind of subjectivity.
According to Wittgenstein, as we have also seen, skepticism is
made possible by a language game; it is a part of the game. Cer-
tainly, today, beginning from Cartesian doubt is already a language
game. But what Descartes doubted originally was the specic game
of skepticism that had been dominant since antiquity. As he framed
the problem of doubt in Discourse on Method, Not that I were, in
order to do this, to imitate the skeptics, who doubt only in order to
doubt, and who affect being always undecided: for, on the contrary,
my whole plan tended only toward assuring me, and toward casting
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aside the shifting earth and the sand in order to nd the rock or the
clay.
2
Certainly, today, this doubt is incorporated into modern phi-
losophy, supporting as it does the philosophy of subjectivity. And,
isnt precisely such an institutionalized doubt what Wittgenstein
sought to undermine? In fact, Wittgenstein, too, called the proper
stance from which to inquire about philosophical issues, from the
vantage point of language, transcendental.
3
Here it is possible to
nd Wittgensteins otherwise concealed change of attitude,
though he never spoke of it himself. Meanwhile, many of those who
advocate the linguistic turn in the philosophical context, though
often invoking Wittgenstein, forget the problematic of a certain
cogito that is already inexorably involved in the change of attitude.
Let us take up the example of another one of Descartes major
critics, Lvi-Strauss. Speaking of a traditional ethnographer, he criti-
cizes the cogito as follows:
Here they are, he says of his contemporaries, unknown strangers, non-
beings to me since they so wished it! But I detached from them and from
everything, what am I? This is what remains for me to seek (First Walk).
Paraphrasing Rousseau, the ethnographer could exclaim as he rst sets eyes
on his chosen savages, Here they are, then, unknown strangers, non-beings
to me, since I wished it so! And I, detached from them and from everything,
what am I? This is what I must nd out rst.
To attain acceptance of oneself in others (the goal assigned to human
knowledge by the ethnologist), one must rst deny the self in oneself.
To Rousseau we owe the discovery of this principle, the only one on
which to base the science of man. Yet it was to remain inaccessible and in-
comprehensible as long as there reigned a philosophy which, taking the
Cogito as its point of departure, was imprisoned by the hypothetical evi-
dences of the self; and which could aspire to founding a physics only at the
expense of founding sociology and even a biology. Descartes believes that
he proceeds directly from a mans interiority to the exteriority of the world,
without seeing that societies, civilizationsin other words, worlds of men
place themselves between these two extremes.
4
I return momentarily to Descartes, after noting that while Lvi-
Strauss does pass Descartes off as a villain here, this move is strategic.
His real targets are certain successors of Cartesianism in France
Sartre in particular. On the other hand, Discourse on Method had al-
ready been written from the standpoint of an anthropologist. The
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Kant
Cartesian cogito was originally what James Clifford called an an-
thropological Cogito. Writing as an anthropologist, Descartes
continues the passage as follows:
It is true that, so long as I did nothing but consider the customs of other
men, I found there hardly anything of which to assure myself, and that I no-
ticed there almost as much diversity as I had previously done among the
opinions of philosophers. So the greatest prot that I derived therefrom
was that, seeing many things that, although they seem to us very extravagant
and ridiculous, do not cease to be commonly accepted and approved among
other great peoples, I learned not to believe too rmly anything of which I
had been persuaded only by example and custom; and thus I delivered my-
self, little by little, from many errors that can obfuscate our natural light
and render us less capable of listening to reason. But, after I had spent
some years thus studying in the book of the world and trying to acquire
some experience, I one day made the resolution to study within myself, too,
and to employ all the powers of my mind in choosing the paths that
I should follow. In this I succeeded much better, it would seem to me, than
if I had never been away, either from my country or from my book.
5
Reading this, it is impossible for us not to associate Descartes with
Lvi-Strauss, among the most merciless of his critics. For instance,
the retrospective style in Tristes tropiques (1955) is in important
respects reminiscent of the Discourse on Method. After receiving his
degree in philosophy, as he relates his story, Lvi-Strauss chose to go
abroad instead of continuing study in Francehe had hoped to go
to Japan rst, but could not. It is likely that he would have gone any-
where that was not the West. In other words, he did not go abroad
as an anthropologist. But at this moment, his anthropological
inquiryalbeit informalhad already begun moving away from his
country and his book. Or, more precisely, this was a commence-
ment less of anthropological research than the continuation of a
certain, as yet unnamable, philosophical investigation. Descartes
primary concerns had also not entailed the experience of the plural-
ity of places he traveled; and, for his part, Lvi-Strauss expresses
this laconic disclaimer about traveling at the beginning of Tristes
Tropiques: I hate traveling and explorers. For traveling and explo-
ration simply consume and dissolve difference: by traveling we never
encounter the difference or the other who resists our internaliza-
tion. What Descartes saw in the uncivilized people he encountered
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were not fascinating, interesting strangers, but the other who rejects
empathy la Rousseau.
Lvi-Strauss adds a further claim in Tristes tropiques: The fact that
so much effort and expenditure has to be wasted on reaching the
object of our studies bestows no value on that aspect of our profes-
sion, and should be seen rather as its negative side. The truths that
we seek so far aeld only become valid when they have been sepa-
rated from this dross.
6
The truths Lvi-Strauss seeks so far aeld
precisely as had Descartes before himexist only when they have
been separated out from the pluralism encountered by traveling
and expedition. The ultimate weapon Lvi-Strauss uses against this
process is precisely what Descartes weapon had been: mathematics
(structuralism). Lvi-Strauss acknowledges the existence of universal
reason against/within the various myths and marriage systems he
eventually encounters. If so, the Lvi-Strauss who considered
Rousseau to be founder of anthropology, seeing in him the princi-
ple, the only one on which to base the science of man, should have
quoted Descartes rather than Rousseau, or anybody else.
What is more, Lvi-Strauss encountered the same difculties as had
Descartes. The unconscious structure he grasps is a deductive en-
tity; and, for this reason, it has been subjected to innumerable criti-
cisms by positivist anthropologists. For him, contrary to his critics,
the last standard upon which to judge the adequacy of hypothetical
models lies in whether or not they have a higher explanatory value
that is itself consistent. And it is the role of experimentation to
examine this value and internal consistency. This is denitely a dif-
ferent method from any that seeks an inductive theorization ad-
duced from the collection of empirical data. To the precise contrary,
this is the Cartesian method par excellencewhich is hardly limited
to or by the natural sciences in the narrow sense.
Lvi-Strausss method contributed mightily to an intellectual revo-
lution, the advent of structuralism, very much because he chose to
start from the axiomatic (or formal) operation by transcendentally
reducing the empirical consciousness of both the observed and the
observer. Michel Serres has maintained that structure should be de-
ned as a sheerly imported concept, namely, from contemporary
formal mathematics. Structure as such is achieved only when the
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Kant
formal sets of elements and relations can be extracted by excluding
content (or meaning); and, as he stresses, the structuralist analysis en-
gendered a new methodical spirit and was an important revolution
with respect to the question of meaning.
7
But what one must acknowl-
edge precisely here is that the founder of structuralism in this sense was
neither Saussure nor Marx, and certainly not Rousseau, but Descartes.
For he himself innovated mathematics itself instead of just importing
concepts from mathematics to his philosophy. The axiomatism of con-
temporary mathematics derived not from Euclids geometry but from
Descartes analytical geometry, which transposed perceptive geometric
gures into the coordinate of numbers. This inevitably introduced the
problem of real numbers, as distinct from natural numbers, and led
to the advent of the post-Cantorian theory of sets.
So far, I have deliberately tried to defend Descartes from those who
attack him as an (hypothetical) enemy. But it is impossible to deny the
fact that there was a confusion in Descartes himself which made his
accusers almost inevitable. The problem concerns the discrimination
between to doubt [dubitare] and to think [cogitare]. In Discourse on
Method, Descartes reects that the existence of the doubting subject
cannot be denied after doubting everything else. But then, just after
this, he quickly concludes with his famous, or infamous, I think,
therefore, I am [cogito, ergo sum]. Nonetheless, doubting and
thinkingor the subject of doubt [res dubitans] and the subject
of thinking [res cogitans]must be different. Descartes posits think-
ing as the ground of all actions: But what, then, am I? A thing that
thinks. What is a thing that thinks? That is to say, a thing that doubts,
perceives, afrms, denies, wills, does not will, that imagines also, and
which feels.
8
Kant called this kind of thinking subject a transcenden-
tal subject of thought X. (This could also be written as the tran-
scendental subject, though I do not necessarily like this kind of word
play.) To Kant it is apperception that can never be represented, and
for him Descartes formulation that it is (or I am) [sum] is a fallacy.
Cartesian cogito is dogged by the ambiguity between I doubt and I
think; furthermore, the ambiguity is inevitable as far as trying to
speak of the transcendental ego is concerned. Descartes writes:
For a long time I had noticed that, as for morals, it is sometimes necessary
to follow opinions that one knows to be quite uncertain, all the same as if
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they were indubitable, as has been said above; but, because I then desired to
devote myself solely to the search for the truth, I thought that it was neces-
sary that I were to do completely the contrary, and that I were to reject, as
absolutely false, all that in which I could imagine the least doubt, in order to
see whether there would remain, after that, something in my beliefs that
were entirely indubitable. [. . .] I resolved to feign that all the things that
had ever entered my mind were no more true than the illusions of my
dreams. But, immediately afterward, I took note that, while I wanted thus to
think that everything was false, it necessarily had to be that I, who was think-
ing this, were something. And noticing that this truthI think, therefore
I amwas so rm and so assured that all the most extravagant suppositions
of the skeptics were not capable of shaking it, I judged that I could accept
it, without scruple, as the rst principle of the philosophy that I was seeking.
9
Note the sudden jump that occurs between I doubt and I think.
In Descartes, I doubt is a personal determination of will. And this
I is a singular existenceDescartes himself (1). In a sense, (1) is
an empirical self, and is simultaneously the doubting subject (2),
who doubts the empirical subject (1)by way of which the transcen-
dental ego (3) is discovered. In Descartes discourse, however, the
relationship between these three phases of the ego is blurred.
When Descartes says, I am [sum], if he means that his transcen-
dental ego exists, it is a fallacy, as Kant said. For the transcendental
ego is something that can only be thought, but cannot be or exist,
that is, it cannot be intuited. On the other hand, Spinoza interpreted
I think, therefore I am as neither a syllogism nor a reasoning but
as meaning simply, I am as I think or I am thinking [ego sum cogi-
tans]; or, even more simply and denitively, man thinks [homo cogi-
tant].
10
But, speaking more realistically, the Cartesian, I think,
therefore I am, means I am as I doubt [ego sum dubitans]. The de-
termination to doubt the self-evidence of the psychological ego
cannot simply originate from a psychological ego, but neither can it
from the transcendental ego that is discovered by doubt. If this is so,
however, what exists? Actually, as I will show later, the correct way of
formulating the question is not, what exists? but who is it? But
this move requires a detour through Husserl.
The questionWhat exists?was hardly irrelevant to Kant. For
in the transcendental critique, the determination to bracket em-
pirical self-evidence, or I criticize [reprehendo], is omnipresent,
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Kant
notwithstanding the fact that Kant did not mention it. The ultimate
importance of the Discourse on Method lies in the fact that it revealed
another problem in the sum: how does the I who brackets all self-evi-
dence exist?though Descartes never touched upon it again after
this particular text. (To Kant, too, the problematic of sum was nally
imperative. As I touch upon later, the Kantian transcendental critique
was not simply abstract and theoretical, but a matter of his own
existence.) On the other hand, Husserl criticized Kant, to develop
transcendental phenomenology, by returning to Descartes. Accord-
ingly, Husserl wrote, one might almost call transcendental phenom-
enology a neo-Cartesianism, even though it is obligedand precisely
by its radical development of Cartesian motifsto reject nearly all the
well-known doctrinal content of the Cartesian philosophy.
11
In the
place of considering the transcendental ego as apperception, as had
Kant, Husserl considered it, as had Descartes, to be a ground from
which solid science can be deduced, and thought it imperative to de-
velop this line more persistently and rigorously than had his predeces-
sor. In this context, Husserl made a noteworthy point:
We can describe the situation also on the following manner. If the Ego, as
naturally immersed in the world, experiencingly and otherwise, is called
interested in the world, then the phenomenologically alteredand, as so
altered, continually maintainedattitude consists in a splitting of the Ego:
in that the phenomenological Ego established himself as disinterested on-
looker, above the naively interested Ego. That this takes place is then itself
accessible by means of a new reection, which, as transcendental, likewise
demands the very same attitude of looking on disinterestedlythe Egos
sole remaining interest being to see and to describe adequately what he
sees, purely as seen, as what is seen and seen in such and such manner.
12
Here Husserl not only distinguishes between psychological ego and
phenomenological (or transcendental) ego, but also points out the
being of the I who further observes the splitting of the Ego as an
onlooker. This ego exists as a will to phenomenological (or tran-
scendental) reductionwhich is, for Husserl, equivalent to the will-
ing to forge philosophy into a science built on an absolutely solid
ground. In the strict sense, therefore, it is insufcient to point out the
existence of only two kinds of egopsychological and transcendental.
Husserl continues, Obviously it can be said that, as an Ego in the
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natural attitude, I am likewise and at all times a transcendental Ego,
but that I know about this only by executing phenomenological re-
duction.
13
Which is to say that there are three egos: the empirical
ego; the ego who seeks to transcendentally reduce that ego; and the
ego who is transcendentally discovered as a result. In this account,
Husserl recovers the distinction between I doubt and I think that
Descartes had blurred, namely, the distinction between the I who
doubts (or executes the transcendental reduction) and the tran-
scendental subjectivity (who is discovered by it).
Husserl attempts to constitute the world by the transcendental
ego, including other egos, yet he does not consider the ego to be a
substance, as had Descartes. The Husserlian transcendental ego is
the intentional function (noesis) of consciousness, which intervenes
in the intentional object (noema). With this formulation, Husserl
thought he had given philosophy the right to constitute beings from
consciousness. This is different from Fichtes earlier attempt, in the
more immediate post-Kantian context, to constitute the world by the
transcendental ego. For, in Husserls case, the transcendental ego is
sustained by the willingitself an empirical consciousnessthat
discovers it by a transcendental change of attitude. But Husserls
new distinction confronts him with a serious paradox: the world is
constituted by the transcendental ego, yet the I who wills to doubt
everything belongs to the same world. As Husserl himself put it:
This is precisely the difculty. Universal intersubjectivity, into which all ob-
jectivity, everything that exists at all, is resolved, can obviously be nothing
other than mankind; and the latter is undeniably a component part of the
world. How can a component part of the world, its human subjectivity, con-
stitute the whole world, namely, constitute it as its intentional formation,
one which has always already become what it is and continues to develop,
formed by the universal interconnection of intentionally accomplishing
subjectivity, while the latter, the subjects accomplishing in cooperation, are
themselves only a partial formation within the total accomplishment.
The subjective part of the world swallows up, so to speak, the whole world
and thus itself too. What an absurdity!
14
Husserl believed that the paradox of human subjectivity: being a
subject of the world at the same time as being an object in the
world was resolvable. He sought to do so by transforming it into a
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new question: How I can have, beyond my individual self-consciousness,
a general, a transcendental-intersubjective consciousness?
15
How-
ever, this only leads to yet another aporia: Can the other egos be
constituted by the ego? With respect to this question, Husserl rst
explained the constitution of the other Ego by way of a self-transpo-
sition-into [Selbsthineinversetzen], a Blickwechsel, toward what appears
as the object (or body): Because of its sense-constitution [the
Other] occurs necessarily as an intentional modication of that
Ego of mine which is the rst to be Objectivated, or as an inten-
tional modication of my primordial world: the Other as phenom-
enologically a modication of myself.
16
After all, for Husserl, the other is no more than a modication of
myself. He nds the alterity, being other, in the self-differentiation
(the distinction between self and nonself) within the transcendental
ego. There is no doubt that the otherness of the other is absent in
this move. Everything occurs inside the transcendental ego: Within
and by means of this ownness the transcendental Ego constitutes,
however, the Objective world, as a universe of being that is other
than himselfand constitutes, at the rst level, the other in the
mode: alter Ego.
17
Husserl maintains that his solipsism is tentative,
heuristic, and methodologicalone which should be overcome by
an association of monads, namely, intersubjectivity. But, as is already
evident, the other whom Husserl sought to constitute cannot be
deemed the veritable other in our transcritical context.
Earlier I argued that Kant introduced the other in order to attain
the universality of science. This otherness appears under the name
thing-in-itself, or it is the otherness grasped by way of the passivity of
sensibility. Husserl borrowed the term transcendental from Kant
but only in order to return to Descartes, ignoring Kant. Husserl
could not acknowledge the structures of Kants architectonic: sensi-
bility, understanding, and reason; thing-in-itself, phenomenon, and
idea (transcendental illusion). If Kants transcendental critique ap-
peared to Husserl to be impure, it was precisely because it contained
the heterology, the others standpoint.
Kant maintained that one can think ofbut not intuitthe thing-
in-itself, and that, if not for this discrimination, one would be
entrapped by antinomy. Thus Husserls paradox is just the same as
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what Kant meant by antinomy. For instance, there is nothing new in
Husserls argument that grasping the whole world, we are within it;
or vice versa: being in the world, we grasp it; saying that we are
nowhere but in this world, we are on the meta-level of the world.
Husserl encountered it at the end of his inquiries, but it is the prob-
lem he really should have confronted at the very outset. That is to say
that being other should not be a conclusion, because it is that which
motivates the transcendental critique from the rst. It should be said
that Husserlian phenomenology is ultimately a solipsism that has no
way out. In his Speech and Phenomenon, Derrida rebuked Husserlian
phenomenology as phonocentrism and West centrism. But the same
critique cannot be applied to Kant. As I have said many times, his
transcendental position is initiated by a pronounced parallax, that is,
notably dogged by otherness. While Husserl saw his philosophical
ground in the West since ancient Greece, Kant was a cosmopolitan.
He neither traveled nor exiled himself like Descartes; he lectured
mainly on geography and anthropology; he refused an invitation from
Berlin University and remained in his hometown, Knigsberg. In his
case, this refusal to move assumed a kind of transposition.
In passing, Descartes was not the kind of thinker that Husserl
wanted to make of himself. According to Husserl, Descartes has
sought to secure the validity of the transcendental egos constitution
of the world by way of God, instead of intersubjectivity, before mov-
ing on to his existential proof of God. There are three kinds of
proof in Descartes, two of which are the same as those put forth by
Anselm of Canterbury (10331109) and the philosophia scholastica.
The one that is original to Descartes is expressed in the following
passage from Discourse on Method:
[E]ngaging in reection thereupon that I doubted, and that, as a conse-
quence, my being was not totally perfect, for I clearly saw that it is a greater per-
fection to know than to doubt, I decided to search for the source from which
I had learned to think of something more perfect than I was; and I knew evi-
dently that this had to be from some nature that were, in effect, more perfect.
18
Descartes scrutinized this problem further in the third of his Medita-
tions on the First Philosophy (1641), in what might well be called a
proof after the effect. This proof for the existence of God by no
means belongs on the same level as the previous ones. Descartes had
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demonstrated the validity of the existence of res cogitans by the fact
that the doubting self itself remains after doubting everything. In his
proof of Gods existence, he again invoked I doubt [reprehendo].
The difference here, however, is that, instead of the transcendental
cogito, a doubting singularity now appears. If so, what does this
proof really indicate? Punning on Spinozas interpretation of cog-
ito, Descartes is saying that I am as I doubtthanks to the existence
of what makes me doubt.
What compels Descartes doubt is the temporal and spatial het-
erogeneity of discourses, and in being-other to the community one
belongs to. The heterogeneity, the difference, is not what one pro-
duces; and it is not that which is grasped from the vantage point of
identity. When one says the multitude of cultural systems are differ-
ent, for example, one tacitly takes for granted the existence of a
common, objective world. To Descartes, however, the existence of
the objective world had to be founded in the rst place. Seen from this
perspective, one recognize that what Descartes called God was the
very difference that compelled him to doubt, namely, the otherness
that can never be internalized. In the nal analysis, and from the
very beginning, what is hidden under doubting is the alteritythe
otherness of the other. Pascal accused Descartes of wanting to do
away with God, if possible. And if one really tries to do away with
God, one should just restate God as the otherwho is not tran-
scendent and absolute, but relative. The crux of Cartesian doubt
Cogito is that it was constantly dogged by the other. This crucial
problem of transcriticism was effectively lost after Descartes Medita-
tions, which corresponded, in turn, to his own loss of being as
doubting and its external mode of existence. And so it was that
Lvi-Strauss, too, lost his anthropological Cogito in his later years.
Once he stated that his stance would be progressive toward his own
culture and conservative toward the objective cultures; nally, he
ended up being conservative toward his own culture as well.
3.2 Transcendental and Transversal
In Der Verlust der natrlichen Selbstverstndlichkeit., W. Blankenburg
called schizophrenia a living phenomenological reduction.
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Phenomenologists methodologically bracket the self-evidence of the
life worldthat is, I exist and the objective world existsbased
upon the premise that they can unbracket it anytime they want. For
schizophrenics, on the other hand, the self-evidence is always al-
ready lost. Schizophrenics know that they exist and the world exists,
but they cannot sense it vividly; for them it is tremendously difcult
to live the world of self-evidence, namely, to unbracket phenomeno-
logical reduction. And if, in contrast, phenomenologists can bracket
and unbracket self-evidence at will, then by what means?
Hume radically questioned the Cartesian ego cogito, arguing that
there are multiple Ismultiple egos in one persons beingand
that identical subjectivity as such exists only customarilysuch as a
republic or commonwealthas an imaginary union of the Is. In re-
gard to this kind of skepticism, he expressed his feelings as follows:
We have, therefore, no choice left but betwixt a false reason and
none at all. For my part, I know not what ought to be done in the
present case. I can only observe what is commonly done; which is,
that this difculty is seldom or never thought of; and even where
it has once been present to the mind; is quickly forgot, and leaves
but a small impression behind it.
19
But then he is quick to correct
himself.
But what have I here said, that reections very rened and metaphysical
have little or no inuence upon us? This opinion I can scarce forbear re-
tracting, and condemning from my present feeling and experience. The in-
tense view of these manifold contradictions and imperfections in human
reason has so wrought upon me, and heated my brain, that I am ready to re-
ject all belief and reasoning, and can look upon no opinion even as more
probable or likely than another. Where am I, or what? From what cause do
I derive my existence, and to what condition shall I return? Whose favour
shall I court, and whose anger must I dread? What beings surround me?
and on whom have I any inuence, or who have any inuence on me? I am
confounded with all these questions, and begin to fancy myself in the most
deplorable condition imaginable, environed with the deepest darkness, and
utterly deprived of the use of every member and faculty.
Most fortunately it happens, that since reason is incapable of dispelling
these clouds, nature herself sufces to that purpose, and cures me of this
philosophical melancholy and delirium, either by relaxing this bent of
mind, or by some avocation, and lively impression of my senses, which oblit-
erate all these chimeras. I dine, I play a game of back-gammon, I converse,
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and am merry with my friends; and when after three or four hours amuse-
ment, I would return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strained,
and ridiculous, that I cannot nd in my heart to enter into them any further.
20
Even after this correction, however, Hume continues to spell out his
contradictory feelings about skepticism: It is just empty and frivo-
lous, it results in self-destruction, and so on. These depictions tell us
that, for Hume as for Descartes, to doubt was never merely some
sort of intellectual puzzle. It induced in him an almost morbid state
of mind. But then, after dining with friends and having other diver-
sions, he managessomehowto regain the world of self-evidence.
From the Kantian standpoint, what this transformative event points
to, if negatively, is that the transcendental Ego (or apperception) ex-
ists. The nature of Kantian apperception is that it is revealed as the
lack of itself. In the reading of Heidegger, it is nothing as a being but
exists as an ontological function.
To Hume, practicing transcendental reduction by bracketing the
world of self-evidenceand then coming back to the same world by
unbracketingcould never be voluntary. If it is true that the only
distinction between philosophers and psychotics is that the former
can bracket and unbracket freely and the latter cannot, then David
Hume denitely belongs to the latter group. If, however, Hume is
not a psychotic, it would be wrong to dene philosophersnot
scholars of philosophy, of courseas free agents of bracketing. In a cer-
tain sense, they, too, are compelled to doubt the world of self-evidence. It
seems that philosophers intentionally deplete the self-evidence of
the world, but perhaps they do so because they have already lost
self-evidence from the beginning. I am not trying to say that phi-
losophers are close to or candidates for schizophrenia, but I am sug-
gesting that the transcendental reduction in philosophy cannot
merely be a methodology.
Socrates attributed the commencement of his skepticism to the
oracle of Apollo, while Descartes attributed his to a dream. But these
two cases nevertheless indicate the same thing: their doubts are not
motivated simply by their spontaneous wills. Doubting is not a game
we opt to play, but a produced, constructed experience. Doubting,
in tandem with the subject that exists as doubting, ensues from
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realistically existing difference or otherness. Yet this subject is de-
nitely different from the transcendental subject. In contrast to
Descartes, Kant spoke little of it, save with respect to the criticizing
self. Now, this is the paththe only one that remainedwhich
I have pursued, and I atter myself to have found on it the elimina-
tion of all the errors that had thus far set reason, as used indepen-
dently of experience, at variance with itself.
21
The I spoken here is
this I, namely, Immanuel Kant himself. This is neither a transcen-
dental ego, nor an empirical ego; for this I is the one that doubts the
empirical I, and, we shall see in a moment, it is the most crucial to
the transcritical context. Unlike Descartes, however, Kant did not
confuse the doubting I with the thinking I.
A critique that assesses what our cognitive powers can accomplish a priori
does not actually have a domain as regards objects. For it is not a doctrine:
its only task is to investigate whether and how our powers allow us (when
given their situation) to produce a doctrine. The realm of this critique ex-
tends to all the claims that these powers make, in order to place these pow-
ers within the boundaries of their rightful [use].
22
The transcendental critique is distinct from the faculties discovered
by it; it does not belong to any domain of the faculties. So where
does the critique come from? From the topos on which Kant was
standingnamely, the interstice between empiricism and rational-
ism. For Kant, empiricism and rationalism were not simply two
scholastic doctrines. Between them he encountered the paradox be-
tween being in the world and being the subject who constitutes the
worldthe same paradox as the one with which Husserl was to
struggle. Taken together, empiricism and rationalism struck Kant as
a pronounced parallaxand, as I have already mentioned, this is
where Kants critique began. For him, the critique was inseparable
from his being as criticizing, that is, externalized existence. In con-
trast to Descartes, Kant did not speak of I doubt [dubito]. Conse-
quently, the critical cogito after Descartes existed in certain
thinkersincluding Kantwho kept quiet about it, or even publicly
negated it.
The rst major example is Spinoza, the rst of Descartes exten-
sive critics. Descartes himself, in his later work, considered thinking
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and extension to be two substances. But, as he put it in Discourse on
Method, if thinking is determined by grammar and customs, it is
also just a machine in the broad sense. The crux of the Cartesian
cogito existed only in the doubts: What if we are just made to
think, while we believe we actively think? What if we are enframed by
sham problems charged by language? For his part, Spinoza consid-
ered thinking and extension to be two aspects of one and the same
substance. By this move, however, it is not that Spinoza negated the
Cartesian cogito; rather, he sought to recover its critical function.
For Spinoza, God is equal to the world; and Descartes free will
and God, far from going beyond the world, are just representations
produced within the world. In a sense different from Heidegger,
Spinoza implied that humans are beings-in-the-world/nature and
cannot transcend it. This was a critique of Cartesianism, but not,
in the properly transcritical sense, a denial of being as doubting
[dubitans].
In fact, though denying free will, Spinoza thought it possible that
humans could be relatively liberated from the rule of passion by re-
vealing the cause of being ruled. In other terms, Spinoza afrmed
the freedom of will to cognize the world; yet again, this will should
not be spoken of positively, for it cannot be separated from the sum:
being as doubting [dubitans]. Indeed, this is precisely his Ethica.
Spinoza was himself a singular cogito who refused to belong to any
community; his was an externalized existence. He was not a tempo-
rary refugee, like Descartes, but lived in the interstice of nowhere
land, having been excommunicated not only from the Christian
church but also from the Judaic synagogue. Making the interstice
difference itself his world, Spinoza literally lived ego sum dubitans. He
never spoke of the cogito, except when he wrote of Descartes.
Which, however, does not contradict the fact that he himself existed
as a cogito. The one and only substance for Spinoza, God world,
implies his transcendentalization of the space in between individual
systems; and by this, Spinoza undermines all the grounds of self-
evidence inherent in those systems.
But our task here is to return Descartes dubito to the empirical
world from whence it originatednot to recuperate or recontexual-
ize by Husserls transcendental motive, or by so many philosophers
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will to understand everything transparently. But return is not the
same thing as a straightforward going back to the empirical world. In-
stead, we have to reconsider Descartes sum, especially in the way it is
coextensive with dubitansthat is, reconsider sum transcendentally.
From this perspective, cogito sum reveals itself as being similar to,
but also radically different from, the Being of beings that Heidegger
disclosed. Here is Heideggers formulation of the problem:
If the cogito sum is to serve as the point of departure for the existential
analytic of Dasein, then it needs to be turned around, and furthermore its
content needs new ontologico-phenomenal conrmation. The sum is then
asserted rst, and indeed in the sense that I am in a world. As such an en-
tity, I am in the possibility of Being towards various ways of comporting
myselfnamely, cogitationesas ways of Being alongside entities within-the-
world. Descartes, on the contrary, says that cogitanes are present-at-hand,
and that in these an ego is present-at-hand too as a worldless res cogitans.
23
Heidegger undeniably inverts the order of cogito and sum. In
other words, his starting point is not cogito but being there [Dasein]
as in being-in-the-world [in-der-Welt-sein]. In this manner, Heidegger
believed he had succeeded in overturning the thought initiated in
the Cartesian ego. But while this might be a critique of Husserl, it is
by no means a critique of either Descartes or Kant. Heidegger trans-
gured the Kantian distinction between the empirical and transcen-
dental levels to that between the ontic and the ontological, and
emphasized this shift as if it were his own invention. He also per-
sisted in stressing the importance of the transcendental ego as noth-
ing, namely, Beingas opposed to the empirical egos of beings. But
he never mentioned a word about the external beings who exist be-
tween communities. For this reason, his being there [Dasein] is at
the same time a Being-with [Mitsein]. Which, for him, however,
meant (the German) Volk. And here there is no margin or gap for
the doubting cogito, the singular existence, ever to emerge.
Still, if one dares to persist in using ontological terms, one could
induce ontology from Cartesian doubt in the following manner.
Cogito qua dubito is the awareness of the difference between systems,
and sum is being in between them. What is really commonly con-
cealed in philosophy is not the difference between beings and
Being, as Heidegger claimed, but the transcendental difference or
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the intersticethe very thing Heidegger himself ended up conceal-
ing by his political ontology. And so it is also that Heidegger inter-
preted the Kantian transcendental critique exclusively along its
vertical vector, to its depth. For me, by contrast, transcendental cri-
tique should be considered and practicedat the same timealong
its transversal vector. And I call this multidimensional oscillating en-
gagement transcritique.
Now, in criticizing Descartes, Heidegger returned to the pre-
Socratics. To be kept always in mind here, however, is the fact that
these thinkers were foreigners to Athens. Being in the Mediterranean
space of intercourse, they thought in the interstices, or intermundia
to use Marxs favorite term from Epicurus.
24
They did not depart
from any polis as the self-evident premise of their thinking. Par-
menides, for example, deed the Gods, and Heraclitus rebuked
community rituals. As Ortega y Gasset said, It was in them [other
cities] and not in Athens that this new type of individual was
formed.
25
Although it was the center of politics and information,
Athens was initially less developed with respect to thinking than
were the margins of the Greek world. The people of the Athenian
community, who were enjoying their politico-economic hegemony,
suddenly experienced an inundation of the paradoxa of previously
unknown thinkers. For a people [Athenians] as profoundly reac-
tionary and intensely adherent to traditional beliefs, it was an ex-
tremely unsettling experience.
26
In this climate, Socrates occupied quite an ambiguous positional-
ity. Executed by Athenians as a dangerous thinker whose faith was
informed by foreign elements, to his mind he was a genuine Athen-
ian, faithful to the polis. Unlike foreigners, he did not charge for his
teaching. Instead of purging foreign thought, by means of his dia-
logue, Socrates scrutinized and internalized it. In actuality, the dia-
logue itself is the very form that excludes the other heterogeneous
as well as the thinker merchant. The fact that Socrates himself was ex-
cluded came to conceal his oppression of the other-heterogeneous.
In Plato, Socrates execution assumes the same signicance as that
of Jesus death for the Apostle Paul. Which is to say that Plato dra-
matized Socrates death, one of many contingent executions of the
time, as a sacrice for the whole community of the polis. We can
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never know who Socrates really was, but at least we know what Plato
accomplished in Socrates name: the way of excluding external
thought by internalizing and detoxifying its radicality. In Platos
philosophy, just as in Hegels, all anterior thoughts are superseded
[aufheben] or elevated stored abolished. Platos dialectics (dialo-
gos), established by the exclusion of otherness, were another mono-
logue (monologos).
So when Heidegger praises Parmenides and Heraclitus while at-
tacking Plato, I cannot help but be skeptical about his intentions, as
when he writes: Parmenides stood on the same ground as Heracli-
tus. Where indeed would we expect these two Greek thinkers, the
inaugurators of all philosophy, to stand if not in the being of the es-
sent?
27
What does the expression in the being [Sein] of the essent
[Seiendes] mean? Heideggers sophistic rhetoric and forced ety-
mology blind us to a much more crucial matterthe fact that these
philosophers stood in between communities. According to Heidegger,
Heraclitus saw Being as the gathering together of the conicting,
and Parmenides saw identity as the belonging-together of antago-
nisms.
28
In the nal analysis, all that this really should mean, how-
ever, is that they thought in the world as a heterogeneous space of
intermundial intercourse, rather than thinking in the space of a com-
munity gathered around a univocal set of rules.
From the beginning, it is impossible for those within a community
to be inaugurators of all philosophy. It was only by standing in be-
tween communities that Heraclitus was able to see Being as the
gathering together of the conicting, and Parmenides to see iden-
tity as the belonging-together of antagonisms. It is clear that this
radical positionality was lost in the Platonic Socrates, who was rmly
rooted in the community of Athens. Problematizing the loss of
Being, Heidegger may have attacked Plato as the instigator of this
line of thinking, yet his own positionality was isomorphic to Platos
excluding the heterogeneity of the thought that comes from the
topos of trade, and internalizing the denuded skeleton of that
thought. For Heidegger, in the end, the loss of Being was equal to
the loss of the German agrarian community. In our own context,
if the term loss of Being retains any signicance at all, it should
be as the loss of the topos as difference, the loss of the space of
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intercourse in the intermundia. And precisely this loss is the proper
site of transcritique.
3.3 Singularity and Sociality
Kant drew a keen distinction between universality and generality,
similar to the manner in which Spinoza had distinguished idea from
concept. While generality can be abstracted from experience, uni-
versality cannot be attained if not for a certain leap. As I have been ar-
guing all along, the condition for a certain cognition to be universal
is not necessarily that it be based upon an a priori rule, but that it be
exposed to the judgment of others who follow a different set of
rules. Thus far, however, I have been speaking mainly of this condi-
tion spatially, which will now have to be dealt with temporally. What I
particularly want to stress is this point: The veritable others whom
we cannot anticipate are the ones who live in the future. Or, more
accurately, the future is truly the future only insofar as it is of the
other; the future we can anticipate is not the veritable future. (I deal
more fully with the other as the future in chapter 4 vis--vis Kant
and Marx.) Thinking in this manner, it is clear that universality can
never be grounded by public consensus, because the latter can be
pertinent only to a single community, no matter how large. This
does not mean, however, that we can abandon the concept public.
Instead, our task is to change the very meaning of publicwhich is
precisely what Kant did.
In his response to the question, What is enlightenment? Kant an-
swered that it is mans emergence from his self-incurred immatu-
rity. In the concrete, this means becoming a member not (only) of
a national community but (also) of a cosmopolitan society. What is
noteworthy about this formulation is that Kant shifted the signica-
tions of the public/private pair.
The public use of mans reason must always be free, and it alone can bring
about enlightenment among men; the private use of reason may quite often
be very narrowly restricted, however, without undue hindrance to the
progress of enlightenment. But by the public use of ones own reason
I mean that use which anyone may make of it as a man of learning addressing
the entire reading public. What I term the private use of reason is that which
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a person may make of it in a particular civil post or ofce with which he is
entrusted.
[. . .] But in so far as this or that individual who acts as part of the ma-
chine also considers himself as a member of a complete commonwealth or
even of cosmopolitan society [Weltbrgergesellshaft], and thence a man of
learning who may through his writings address a public in the truest sense
of the word, he may indeed argue without harming the affairs in which he
is employed for some of the time in a passive capacity.
29
In common usage, public, as opposed to private, is uttered at the
level of community or nation, but Kant considered the public in this
sense to be the private domain in reverse. Here is another indispens-
able aspect of the Kantian turn. This turn exists not simply in the fact
that Kant emphasized the precedence of the public domain, but in
the fact that he radically transformed the meaning of public.
Within a community, paradoxically, being public cosmopolitan
appears to be rather individual. In a community, being individual is
deemed being private, because it is against the shared public con-
sensus. For Kant, however, being individual is equivalent to being
publicin the cosmopolitan sense.
Communities and nation-states exist in reality, and so do interna-
tional organizations centered on certain nation-states, but cos-
mopolitan society or world-civil-society [Weltbrgergesellshaft] in
the Kantian sense does not exist in reality. People cannot be mem-
bers of world-civil-society in the same sense that they belong to their
communities. If not for an individuals will to be cosmopolitan or a
world citizen, world-civil-society would not exist. Employing reason
in regard to the world-civil-society necessitates consideration of the
future other, even at the expense of any present public consensus.
It is well known that Hegel negated such a stance as the spirits
abstract, subjective stage; for him, individuals become universal only
as members of a nation-state.
In order to avoid possible confusion and misunderstanding here,
I would like to redene several pairs of keywords. First, I stress the
distinction between universality and generality. These two words are
almost always confused, and the same is true of their opposing
concepts: singularity and particularity. Gilles Deleuze drew a
lucid distinction between universality and generality in Difference and
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Kant
Repetition (1968) while touching upon Kierkegaardian repetition:
Generality, as generality of the particular, thus stands opposed to
repetition as universality of the singular.
30
His point is that while
the connection between particularity and generality requires a medi-
ation or a movement, that between singularity and universality is di-
rect and unmediated. Which is to say, sensu stricto, that while
generality and individuality are mediated by particularity, the latter
pair can never be mediated. Universality in the sense of Romanti-
cism is the equivalent of generality in our context. For instance,
while for Hegel individuality is connected to universality (in his case,
universality equals generality for this precise reason) by way of par-
ticularity (qua the nation-state), for Kant there is no such mediation.
What exists in between the terms is only incessant ethical determina-
tion (or, for Deleuze, repetition). This latter way of being individual is
precisely the way of being singular. Only the singular man can be
universalthis is Kierkegaardian terminology, but it is implicit al-
ready in Kant.
With respect to sensibility and understanding, Kant invoked what
he called the scheme as that which synthesizes these terms with
imagination. Consider a triangle drawn on a piece of paper. The tri-
angle could be arbitrary and of diverse shape, but we recognize any
three lines connected to each other at their endpoints as a triangle
in general. Because of the scheme, the individual and the general are
synthesized. Later, Ernst Cassirer reformulated this idea as symbolic
form, just as earlier the Romantics had reconsidered mediation as
the particular that synthesizes individuality and universality (equal-
ing generality, in their case). Hegel formulated the problem as
follows: the particular, because it is only the determined universal,
is also an individual, and conversely the individual, because it is the
determinate universal, is just as much a particular.
31
In other words,
the particular includes in itself both the universal and the individual,
and constitutes the middle term of the formal syllogism. What the
Romantics then introducednamely, the celebration of language,
organicism, nation, and the likecan be seen logically as an orienta-
tion of particularity. And Georg Lukcs criticized Kant for not over-
coming the segregation between individuality and universality,
between sensibility and understanding. Following Hegel, who, for
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him, went beyond Kants distinction, Lukcs accounts for particular-
ity in the following way:
Because in theoretical recognition the movement in both directions oscil-
lates from one extreme to the other, and the middle, the particular, plays a
mediating role in either case, in the case of artistic reection, the middle
becomes literally the center, the focal point, where the movements center
themselves. Therefore, herein exist both a movement from particularity to
universality (and back) as well as a movement from particularity toward sin-
gularity (and back), whereas in both cases the movement towards particu-
larity is the determinant one. Particularity now achieves a non-resolvable
xation [unaufhebbare Fixierung]: and upon this, the world of forms of art-
works constructs itself. The mutual overturn [Umschlagen] and fusion [In-
einanderbergehen] of categories are changing: singularity as well as
universality appear always resolved [aufgehoben] in particularity.
32
But it was not Hegel who had rst proposed this recognition of
particularity. It had been well nurtured by the Romantics. Already
Johann Gottfried Herders concept of language had entailed the
particularity that synthesizes sensibility and understanding, individu-
ality and universality. From the start, however, the syllogism linking
individuality-particularity-universality (or, in the concrete, individual-
race-genus) was not necessarily developed as a property specic to
language. For one thing, nation has always been considered the
middle term (particularity) between individuality and humanity.
Furthermore, in between the natural and the spiritualnature and
freedom in Kants termswas posited organism (qua life) as partic-
ularity. In fact, for Herder, language was always inseparable from the
notion of nation qua organism. Wilhelm von Humboldts idea that
language is an organism was also derived from Herder. For the
Romantics, the idea of nation came to be privileged because of a
grounding logic according to which particularity synthesizes, even
originates, individuality and universality. Within this logic, it is only
particularity that assumes the concrete. This idea is most typically ex-
pressed in the famous words of Joseph Marie Compte de Maistre:
there is no such thing as man in the world. In the course of my life
I have seen Frenchmen, Italians, Russians etc.; I know, too, thanks to
Montesquieu, that one can be a Persian. But as for man, I declare that
I have never met him in my life; if he exists, he is unknown to me.
33
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Kant
The individual becomes an individual person primarily within
ones own national language (and nation). The universality of the
human beinga human in generalis abstract and empty when the
particularity is absent. Hence, the concept cosmopolitan has always
been scorned, and still is. Yet, for his part, as we now know, Kant
never thought of the world-civil-society as substance. He never de-
nied that everyone always belongs to a certain community. He sim-
ply urged that individuals behave as cosmopolitans in thinking and
action. In actuality, being cosmopolitan would be impossible were it
not for the struggle of individuals (through enlightenment) within
and against their own communities.
In the history of philosophy, German Romanticism is customarily
categorized as post-Kantianafter all, it was a movement that came
after Kant. But individual thinkers such as Herder and Fichte were
in fact Kants contemporaries, and often criticized by him.
34
Notably,
Kants world-civil-society was a concept coined as a critique of the
Romantics concept of nation. Although in Critique of Pure Reason,
Kant seems to criticize the metaphysics of the past, his true and
more crucial target was the metaphysical drive of reason, as it was
being resuscitated in his own time in the form of the nation. Kant
maintained that sensibility and understanding are synthesized by the
power of imagination [Einbildungskraft], which is to say that, from
the reverse perspective, the synthesis is just imaginary. Inverting
Lukcss view that Kant could not get beyond the dichotomous
crack, we have seen that Kant deliberately rendered a crack in an
imaginary synthesis that had long existed. This, to repeat, is the very
crux of the Kantian transcendental critique.
Now I return to the distinctions between individuality-generality
and singularity-universality. In Kants terminology, the former pair is
empirical, while the latter is transcendental. The pair singularity-
universality reveals the fact that the synthesis by individuality-generality
is merely an imaginary construct. After Hegel, Kierkegaard and Max
Stirner introduced the concept of singularity, each in his own
manner. For Hegel, God is anthropomorphized in Christ because
a human is already God, which, in Feuerbachs terms, is to say that
individuals are originally beings of generic essence, or species be-
ings. It was in order to negate such an uncritical and dangerous
synthesis that Kierkegaard invoked his own concept of singularity
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Transcritique
by seeking to introduce the circuit of singularity-universality in op-
position to the circuit of individuality-generality.
Singularity is often associated with existentialism, of course, but this
is a simpleminded view. In much the same climate as Kierkegaard,
Stirner posed the concept of the single man or single ego [der
Einzige] to criticize Feuerbach, who, despite his materialist overturn-
ing of Hegel, had remained within the Hegelian framework. For
Stirner, this I is singular, containing no generic essence or species
being. Refuting both the Hegelian Geist and the Feuerbachian Wesen
as ghosts, Stirner advocated a form of communism as a free social
association of single men or egos [Einzigen]. In The German Ideology,
Marx and Engels attempted of course to make Stirner publicly risible,
christening him Saint Max. But their earlier private correspondence
clearly shows Stirners importance as a protoform of communism.
35
Extending this line of argument, for the Marxian turn to occur, what
was requiredfar beyond any materialist overturning of Hegelwas
also the circuit of singularity-universality that severs the double circuit
of individual-genus and individuality-generality. (And I return to this
later.)
It was in the context of his critique of Feuerbach that Marx began
to use the adjective social [sozial ] as a key concept. It goes without
saying that Marxs social is employed in contrast to the traditional
community (Gemeinschaft), but more importantly, it is distinct from
civil society (Gesellschaft), too. In Capital, Marx stressed time and
again that the economic exchange begins in the interstice between
communities. He reserved the term social for the exchange be-
tween communities, which is quite distinct from the kinds of ex-
change based upon the reciprocities of division of labor and
gift-giving within a community. It was when the trade with outside
worlds was internalized within Gemeinschaft that Gesellschaft was
formed. Nevertheless, the latter also came to share the aspects of a
community that is shaped around a certain, same set of rules. The
social relations in the true Marxian sense are the relations with oth-
ers to which we are tied, though typically without being conscious of
the constraint.
Men do not therefore bring the products of their labor into relation with
each other as values because they see these objects merely as the material in-
teguments of homogeneous human labor. The reverse is true: by equating
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Kant
their different products to each other in exchange as values, they equate
their different kinds of labor as human labor. They do this without being
aware of it.
36
For classical economics, exchange value is internalized within in-
dividual commodities. But for Marx, as I have already begun to note,
particularly the Marx of Capital, commodities do not have exchange
value or even use value if they are not sold (exchanged); if not, they
are simply discarded. Marx called the jump of commodity into
money the fatal leap [salto mortale] of the commodity. When he
speaks, then, of the sociality of the commodity or of the labor that
produces it, he unequivocally refers to the fatal leap and the in-
evitable blindness of ours that accompanies it. The synthesis of the
two aspects of commodityuse value and exchange valueis akin
to Kierkegaards synthesis of nite and innite. Losing the rela-
tionship with the other, the unsold commodity is like the self des-
perately wanting to be himself.
37
In this sense, Marxs dialectics is
not a simple overturning of Hegel but is instead closer to the
Kierkegaardian qualitative dialectics. What is crucial to consider at
this point is the fact that, radically inscribed in Marxs sociality, is
the moment of singularitynotwithstanding the fact that he re-
jected Stirners single ego and his own [der Einzige und sein Eigen-
tum] as quintessential bourgeois individualism.
In his Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, Richard Rorty categorizes
thinkers from the past as two basic types: those who deal with indi-
viduality and those who deal with sociality. He puts Marx squarely in
the latter group.
38
However, as I have pointed out, things are not
nearly so simple, not after having learned that for Marx sociality is
inseparable from singularity. Rorty fails to distinguish community
a communication network (or exchange) among those who share
the same set of rulesand societycommunication between differ-
ent systems. Singularity, as exemplied by the Cartesian cogito, is
the way of existing in social space; hence it is far from being private
or introverted, as has been long claimed. With the term social,
Marx pointed to the way in which individuals belonging to different
systems/communities are connected by exchange without their
being aware of it. This is same critical space Kant identied with his
term world-civil-society. And it is the space of transcritique.
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Yet we cannot speak directly of singularity. Why not? Because it is
the nature of language to pull the circuit of singularity-universality
back to the circuit of individuality-generality. No matter how pre-
cisely we may try to describe this thing or this I, the description can
be no more than a specication of a general concept. We feel that
this thing or this I is singular, but, as soon as we speak in the deictic,
our discourse results in the limitation of general concept. Hegel crit-
icizes the attitude to persist in the singularity that language cannot
grasp:
The I is merely universal like Now, Here, or This in general; I do in-
deed mean a single I, but I can no more say what I mean in the case of I
than I can in the case of Now and Here. When I say this Here, this
Now, or a single item, I am saying all Thises, Heres, and Nows, all single
items. Similarly, when I say I, this singular I, I say in general all Is (. . .).
39
By the same token, for Hegel, the universal is equal to the general. He
continues:
Consequently, what is called the unutterable is nothing else than the un-
true, the irrational, what is merely meant [but is not actually expressed].
If nothing more is said of something than that it is an actual thing, an
external object, its description is only the most abstract of generalities and
in fact expresses its sameness with everything rather than its distinctiveness.
When I say: a single thing, I am really saying what it is from a wholly uni-
versal point of view, for everything is a single thing; and likewise this thing
is anything you like. If we describe it more exactly as this bit of paper, then
I have only uttered the universal all the time. But if I want to help out
languagewhich has the divine nature of directly reversing the meaning of
what is said, of making it into something else, and thus not letting what is
meant get into words at allby pointing out this bit of paper, experience
teaches me what the truth of sense-certainty in fact is: I point it out as a
Here, which is Here of other Heres, or is in its own self a simple together-
ness of many Heres; i.e., it is a universal.
40
What Hegel appears to be trying to say here is this: that the individu-
ality of the Here and Now, inasmuch as it is expressed in language,
already belongs to generality; that any individuality that is not gener-
ality is merely meant; and that even the ineffable is constituted
by language. In other words, singularity exists only as a divine nature
of language. The political implication of this statement is that
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Kant
cosmopolites as well as world-civil-society are only imagined con-
structs from the point of view of nation-states; and the individuality
that is contradictory to the public is merely meant as a phantasm.
And in this precise manner, Hegel himself ended up caging the cir-
cuit of singularity-universalityprecisely the circuit Kant had once
opened upwithin the circuit of individuality-generality.
In the introduction to the Japanese translation of Why Does Lan-
guage Matter to Philosophy? Ian Hacking argues that it was Hegel who
considered language to be public propertyas opposed to the Kant
who, in Hackings view, was trapped in the philosophy of subjectiv-
ity. This Hegel is said to have initiated an important shift of emphasis
when he stated that language is a self-consciousness as being-for-the-
other, and that language is an externalized substance. When one
recognizes that language is external, public, and social, one at the
same time experiences a radical shift also concerning ego and iden-
tity.
41
Hacking also points out that it was J. G. Hamann, the friend
and critic of Kant (who also inuenced Herder), who rst conceived
this idea. There is, however, a distinct vagueness both in Hackings
use of the term public and in his distinction between community
and society. For this reason, Hacking cannot distinguish between
Herders and Hegels accounts of language as being public and
Wittgensteins critique of private language.
42
The Kantian tran-
scendental critique, as I have already said, was in actuality dealing
with the matter of language. So it is wrong to assume that a new
linguistic turn would clear away the problematic of ego, especially
when the ego equals the doubting existence.
In the problematic of language, there is a knotty obstacle that can-
not be subsumed into the circuit of individuality-generality: proper
names. Since ancient times, philosophers have been struggling over
individuality and generality. Realists maintain that substance exists
as a general concept, whereas individuality is only its contingent
appearance. For instance, a dog is a contingent appearance of the
concept canis. Taking the opposite tack, nominalists hold that only
the individual exists as substance, whereas generality is merely a con-
cept attained from the former. On this view, the concept canis is an
empirical abstraction from a multitude of dogs.
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Now, it is to be expected that realists think lightly of proper names;
but, surprisingly, nominalists, too, dislike proper names, even though
they do take into account that the individual qua substance is named
by a proper name. This is because proper names are socially given
and, after all, do not precisely indicate individuality. In Greece today,
for instance, many men are still named Socrates. For this reason,
nominalists came to neglect proper names on technical termsfor
their being contingent and secondaryeven though they considered
them to be theoretically necessary. The last nominalist to presume
the individual to be substance and yet still sought to abolish proper
names was Bertrand Russell. He thought that proper names could be
reduced to a bundle of descriptions. Following this logic, for in-
stance, Mt. Fuji can be transposed into the description: the highest
mountain in Japan. Insisting that only deictic markers such as this
and that can be a subject or substance, Lord Russell dubbed them
logically proper names. For instance, with respect to the expres-
sion, X exists, and X is Mt. Fuji, Russell considers X a proper name.
But Russells theory of description conates singularity and indi-
viduality. Suppose there is a dog. On the axis of individuality, this
dog is one of the genus canis, and is dened by various characteris-
tics, say, white, long-eared, sleek. Seen from the axis of singularity,
however, this dog is no-other-than-this dog, and irreplaceable by any
other dog. The same is true with this I. I feel that this I is singular.
Which does not mean in the least that I am (or is) superior or extra-
ordinary. Rather, in this case, this this (i.e., this haecceity) is not to
be equated with, or reduced to, the this that indicates something, or
some thing. One cannot describe this I or this dog, namely, this sin-
gularity. No description can grasp thisnessexcept to say that it ac-
crues a bundle of descriptions or a bundle of sets. In contrast, this
I or this dog qua singularity means no-other-than-this, which is the
same as saying: This is so in reality, though it could have been other-
wise. For this reason, to tackle singularity I have to introduce the
problematic of modality.
Saul Kripke criticizes Russell by introducing the concept of modality
into his theory of possible worlds. A possible world is something like a
world that could exist if certain matters were different: Possible
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Kant
worlds are total ways the world might have been, or states or histo-
ries of the entire world.
43
But in our context, we have to be cautious
about two things: rst, that possible worlds are thought only from
the vantage point of the existing real world or the world that has
existed; and, second, that possible worlds are not worlds very far
removed from this world. According to Russell, the proper name
Mt. Fuji can be transposed to the description the highest moun-
tain in Japan. But let us imagine a world in which Mt. Fuji is not the
highest mountain in Japan. (And, in historical fact, Mt. Fuji was not
the highest mountain in the former Japanese Empire, which had an-
nexed Taiwan.) In this case, while we could say that Mt. Fuji is not
the highest mountain in Japan, we cannot say that the highest
mountain in Japan is not the highest mountain in Japan. Thinking
of the real world through possible worlds in this manner, the differ-
ence between proper names (Kripkes) and denite descriptions
(Russells) becomes clear. Kripke calls the proper name a rigid
designator because it is adequate to and in all possible worlds. He
negates, most of all, the idea that the individual, no matter what it
might designate, is no more than a set of characteristics. This is to
say that the proper name is unrelated to the description of an indi-
viduals characteristics, but indicates instead the individuality of an
individual in a direct way.
Seen from our point of view, Kripke criticizes Russell for reducing
the world with proper names to the circuit of generality-individuality.
To Kripke, even names of species, which are deemed general nouns,
are ultimately proper names. In this one can see his design to recon-
sider natural science as natural historycontrary to Russell, who
sought to reduce natural science to logic. In a different sense from
Russell, Hegel, too, had reduced the history of philosophy into a
logic without proper names. Proper names presuppose a singularity
that cannot dissolve into generality. History itself is no longer history
if not for proper names. But, at just this point, we have to approach
the problematic with another of our concernssociety-community.
Kripke stresses that rigid designation by proper name cannot be a
private matter; naming is done by the community and by a chain of
historical transmission. When Kripke uses the term community,
however, the transmission must be, in a strict sense, the one that
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Transcritique
occurs between communities, that is, a social transmission. In fact,
however, proper names can never be translated into other lan-
guages, traveling through different languages as they do; they are
the very indicators of social intercourse. The fact that linguists tend
to omit proper names from their disciplines can be explained by the
inherent untranslatability of proper names. This is not so much due
to the fact that the proper name is the source of the misconception
that language is connected directly to referents, but because the
proper name prevents us from grasping language as an enclosed dif-
ferential relational system (langue). The proper name makes possi-
ble the rigid designation of a referent because it intervenes in
manifold systems. And proper names exist at once within and with-
out langue.
Hegel was correct in saying that singularity cannot be expressed in
language. Which does not mean, however, that it does not exist. It
reveals itself to us only in a detoured manner. Language has a resis-
tance that cannot be subsumed into the circuit of individuality-
generality, which appears in the paradox of proper names. It is in
this instance that we nd out in the negative way that singularity is
concerned with the social. It is now clear why claims about language
being public and social cannot lead immediately to the superseding
of either Descartes or Kant. The enduring question is what the term
public (or social) implies. Most important for us here is the dis-
tinction between the circuit of singularity-universality, which opens
itself to society, and the circuit of individuality-generality, which be-
longs to community. Altering the denition of words does not solve
real problems, but at least it can help avoid unnecessary confusion.
When Marx stressed that people become individuals in society, he
did so in order to seek beyond the binary opposition: individual-
social. But the implication of a statement changes according to what
society means. Should it mean community, then the individual (e.g.,
Marx himself ) would mean he who attempts to be universal,
counter to community in his subjective fantasy. But should it mean
societythe space between communitiesit would imply that people
become singular in universality.
The proper name is also often associated with private property. For
this reason, attacking the proper name appears to be antibourgeois.
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Kant
In the context of textual theory, it is argued that a text is appropri-
ated by an author with a proper name, or is authorized by the name
of the author. To take a seminal example, Roland Barthes insisted
on denying authorship and on giving the text back to its imagined
intertextual heterogeneity. But this move cannot be achieved by re-
ducing a text to the world where there are no proper names, or a
general structure. Rather, this entire argument should remind one
of the fact that, when a text cannot be reduced to the being of an
author due to the excess of signication, one has no option but to
call the singularity of the excess by a certain proper name.
Throughout this text, I have been using the name Kantwhich
however is not the author; neither is it the philosopher who has
been appropriated by Germany or the West. The text of Kant is pub-
lic to the world-civil-society. And it is this possibility that transcritique
calls Kant.
3.4 Nature and Freedom
I have waited to deal with Kantian ethics until now, the last chapter
of the section. But I have been tacitly talking about itespecially
via the problematic of the other. The transcendental position that
began with the pronounced parallax between my stance and the
others stance persistently entails the problematic of alterity. In this
sense, the transcendental attitude is thoroughly ethical. Speaking of
ethics as a specic genre often blinds us to that aspect. For instance,
art is customarily dened as a mediator between nature and freedom,
namely, between scientic knowledge and morality. Yet scientic
recognition involves as its premise both the activity of understanding
(or imagination-power) that sets up hypotheses of the natural world
and the existence of the others that would make the universality of
the hypotheses possible. That is, it contains elements common to
both art and morality. If so, what Kant thought with the terms free-
dom, nature, and the mediator do not aptly correspond to the of-
cially existing objective domains of morality, scientic recognition,
and art. His concepts were not conned to them. And such open-
ness must also be true in such domains as history and economy that
he did not write about as critique. In his book on Nietzsche, Deleuze
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said that what Nietzsche had sought to do was write the fourth cri-
tique that Kant had not completed.
44
For that matter, what Marx
sought to do in his critique of political economy would be another
critique in the series.
Now let me begin with Kants theory of art (or aesthetics). Pre-
Kantian classicists thought that the essence of the aesthetic experi-
ence existed in the objective form, while post-Kantian romanticists
maintained that it existed in subjective emotion. Though Kant is
often deemed a predecessor of romanticism, his thinking in fact
operated in critical oscillation between romanticism and classicism,
assuming the same transcritical stance that he took, in a different di-
mension, between empiricists and rationalists. He certainly did not
compromise between the dichotomies or contexts. Instead, he ques-
tioned the ground that makes art art, in the same way that he ques-
tioned the ground that makes cognition cognition.
A certain object is received as artwork only thanks to the opera-
tion of bracketing other interests projected onto the object. Be it a
natural object, a mechanical reproduction, or a daily utensil, the na-
ture of the object in and of itself does not matter directly. Seeing
an object by bracketing daily interests, or the change in attitude it-
self, makes the object an artwork. The common saying that Kants
aesthetics is subjective is correct to a certain extent, with the proviso
that the Kantian subjectivity is totally different from the romanticist
one. Kants subjectivity is the will to execute transcendental brack-
eting. It is for this reason that the Kantian critique is still sug-
gestive while classicist and romanticist aesthetics became obsolete
long ago.
45
When Marcel Duchamp submitted the urinal on a pedestal,
signed R Mutt and titled Fountain, to the exhibition of The Soci-
ety of Independent Artists in New York in 1917, he questioned what
makes art art as a conceptual and institutional analysis. What he
shed light on in this peculiar manner was very much one of the
Kantian problematics, namely, to see things by bracketing daily in-
terests.
46
And another crucial point Kant proposed is of course that
there is no universality in aesthetic judgment, though it is required;
that is, when one considers a certain thing to be universal, it is
always merely based upon historically engendered common sense.
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Although these two points were made vis--vis aesthetic judgment
and written as the third Critique, they had already existed prior to his
accounts on cognition and ethics. The above two points raised in the
context of aesthetic experience persist in all domains, beyond aes-
thetic concerns. I said all domains, but for that matter, one of
Kants most crucial propositions is that domains themselves come
into existence by way of transcendental reduction (bracketing). On
the one hand, Kant doubted the idea that an essence of art exists
objectively, while on the other he questioned the idea that it exists
only in subjectivity (i.e., emotion). Kantian subjectivity appears with
this precise doubt, and it takes art out of the constant canonization
of this or that school, and back to its arch, where certain experi-
ences or objects are made into art. Kant is consistent in questioning
the idea that the aesthetic domain, be it objective or subjective, ex-
ists in and of itself.
Modern science was established by bracketing moral and aesthetic
judgments. Only at this moment did the object appear. But this
was not limited to natural science. Machiavelli came to be known as
the father of modern political science precisely because he discov-
ered the domain of politics by bracketing morality. Importantly,
with the domain of morality the same can be said. The moral do-
main does not exist in and of itself. When we confront the world, we
have at least three kinds of judgment at the same time: cognitive
judgment of true or false, ethical judgment of good or bad, and aes-
thetic judgment of pleasure or displeasure.
47
In real life, they are in-
termixed and hard to distinguish. Scientists make observations by
bracketing ethical and aesthetic judgments: Only by this act can the
objects of cognition come into existence. In aesthetic judgment, the
aspects of true and false and good and bad are bracketed, only at
the precise moment that artistic objects come into existence. These
operations are emphatically not done naturally. Rather one is always
ordered to bracket by the external situation.
48
And being accustomed
to it, one forgets that one brackets, and think that the objects
scientic or artistic or moralexist by themselves.
Morality appears to exist objectively. At least that is the way we are
taught. But the morality considered in this manner is unequivocally
one that belongs to communitys codes. Therein moral norms are
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Transcritique
transcendent to individuals. Then comes another view of morals,
conceptualized from the vantage point of an individuals happiness
and prots. One might say that the former is rationalist, while the
latter is empiricist. But both are heteronomous and not autonomous.
Kant again intervenes to oscillate between them, and transcendentally
questions what makes morals moral. In other words, he extracts a
moral domain by bracketing a communitys codes as well as personal
emotion and interests.
Kant maintains that the moral domain cannot be grounded by
feelings of pleasure/displeasure or by happiness, indicating that,
from the beginning, Kants moral world is attained by bracketing
them. Just for the sake of conrmation, I would like to stress that
this account is not to deny the fact that morality accompanies feel-
ings of pleasure/displeasure; and it is not to say that morality itself
opposes feelings. Bracketing is not the same as negation. Rather
Kant himself rebuked those stern moralists who sacriced other
dimensions for the sake of moral correctness. For Kant, morality is
nally a matter of freedom rather than goodness or badness. If not for
freedom, there is no good and bad. Freedom is synonymous to being
causa sui, self-motivated, subjective, and autonomous. But, is there
such a freedom? In Critique of Pure Reason, Kant proposes the follow-
ing antinomy as the third conict of the transcendental ideas:
ThesisThe causality according to laws of nature is not the only one from
which all the appearances of the world can be derived. It is also necessary to
assume another causality through freedom in order to explain them.
AntithesisThere is no freedom, but everything in the world happens
solely in accordance with laws of nature.
49
This antithesis should be read not from the standpoint of the causal-
ity of modern science, but of Spinozian determinism. According to
Spinoza, everything in the world is determined necessarily, but the
causality is so complicated that there is no other choice for us but to
assume freedom and contingency. Kant approves this antithesis,
namely, the fact that what we consider as a determination of free will
is always already that by the complex of causalities.
I am never free at the point of time in which I act. Indeed, even if I assume
that my whole existence is independent from any alien cause (such as
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Kant
God), so that the determining grounds of my causality and even of my
whole existence are not outside me, this would not in the least transform
that natural necessity into freedom. For, at every point of time I still stand
under the necessity of being determined to action by that which is not within
my control, and the series of events innite a parte priori which I can only
continue in accordance with a predetermined order would never begin of
itself: it would be a continuous natural chain, and therefore my causality
would never be freedom.
50
On the other hand, however, he acknowledges elsewhere the thesis
that speaks to the freedom of human acts, and says:
In order to clarify the regulative principle of reason through an example of
its empirical usenot in order to conrm it (for such proofs are unknow-
able for transcendental propositions)one may take a voluntary action,
e.g. a malicious lie, through which a person has brought about a certain
confusion in society; and one may rst investigate its moving causes,
through which it arose, judging on that basis how the lie and its conse-
quences could be imputed to the person. With this rst intent one goes
into the sources of the persons empirical character, seeking them in a bad
upbringing, bad company, and also nding them in the wickedness of a
natural temper insensitive to shame, partly in carelessness and thoughtless-
ness; in so doing one does not leave out of account the occasioning causes.
In all this one proceeds as with any investigation in the series of determin-
ing causes for a given natural effect. Now even if one believes the action to
be determined by these causes, one nonetheless blames the agent, and not
on account of his unhappy natural temper, not on account of the circum-
stances inuencing him, not even on account of the life he has led previ-
ously; for one presupposes that it can be entirely set aside how that life was
constituted, and that the series of conditions that transpired might not have
been, but rather that this deed could be regarded as entirely conditioned
in regard to the previous state, as though with that act the agent has started
a series of consequences entirely from himself. This blame is grounded on
the law of reason, which regards reason as a cause that, regardless of all the
empirical conditions just named, could have and ought to have determined
the conduct of the person to be other than it is.
51
What is noteworthy here is that Kant locates the freedom of action
only ex post facto, not ex ante facto. There is no freedom as such ex
ante facto. Kants universal imperative of duty is: act as if the maxim
of your action were to become by your will a universal law of nature.
52
This drew the criticism that Kants ethics was subjectivist, and that it
attached importance to the purity of motive of the moral act but
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ignored its result.
53
One must not forget, however, that he sustained,
at the same time, the antithesis: I am never free at the point of time
in which I act. To repeat, he certainly said: act as if the maxim of
your action were to become by your will a universal law of nature. But the
fact of the matter is that the intention and the result of action are
different things, as Wittgenstein said: And to think one is obeying
the rule is not to obey a rule.
54
We do things differently from our
intentions, and it is extremely rare that what we intend is actually re-
alized. The most crucial point here is that of responsibility, the re-
sponsibility for the result. Only when we are considered free agents,
though we are not at all in reality, do we become responsible. Kants
phrase, this deed could be regarded as entirely conditioned in re-
gard to the previous state, as though with that act the agent has
started a series of consequences entirely from himself, means just
that. When we have done something wrong without knowing that it
would be harmful (or sinful), are we still responsible even if we did
not know it? Those who have the potency to know that it was harm-
ful are said to be responsible.
While in the rst conict of transcendental ideas, the thesisthe
world has a beginning in time and in space it is also enclosed in
boundariesand antithesisthe world has no beginning and no bounds in
space, but is innite with regard to both time and space
55
are both
proven to be false by antinomy, in the third conict of transcenden-
tal ideas, both thesis and antithesis can be established. Why? Because
the thesis signies the stance of seeing human action by bracketing
natural causality, while the antithesis signies the stance of seeing
the causality of human action by bracketing peoples assumption of
freedom. As long as they are bracketing different domains, they can
stand together. Let me call the former a practical stance, and the lat-
ter a theoretical stance. And, as evident now, the theoretical and
practical domains do not exist in and of themselves; they exist only
when one subjectively takes theoretical and practical stances.
Critique of Pure Reason is aimed at refuting the metaphysical argu-
mentations that seek to prove self, subject, and freedom as sub-
stance. On the other hand, Critique of Practical Reason queries the
ways by which self, subject, and freedom can exist in the phase
where the necessity of nature [Naturnotwendigkeit] is bracketed. In
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Kant
reality, we can have various choices, and without knowing to what
extent the choices are compelled by the necessity of nature. As a re-
sult, we come to acknowledge, to a certain degree, decisions deter-
mined by causality and, to a certain degree, those determined by
free will. Suppose there is a criminal. There are many causes for his
crime, personal as well as social. If one named every possible cause,
it would turn out that he had no free subject, and thus no responsi-
bility. Upset by such a defense and vindication, people would claim
that he must have also had freedom of choice. Therefore, common
sense would be to accept that humans are determined by various
causalities, while acknowledging their free will. Kant, however, re-
jected this kind of middling solution. First we should think that
there is no such thing as free will. When we think we do something
by our free will, we do so only because of our unawareness of its
being determined by external causes. After realizing this, it is nally
possible to ask how freedom is possible. From the beginning, nei-
ther freedom nor responsibility emerges out of the theoretical stance
that queries the cause. According to Kant, the criminals responsibil-
ity arises when the causality is bracketed, that is, when he is a free
agent. In reality, he does not have freedom sensu stricto. But, he has
to be deemed free in order for him to be responsible. Such is the
practical standpoint.
Kant thought that freedom lay in the duty to obey (or command).
This is a tricky point where logic tends to falter, because obeying
commands seems to be the opposite of freedom. (As I return to
later, many accusations concentrate on this point.) But it is clear
that Kant did not identify duty with that which is imposed by the
communitys code. If the command of duty is of community, to obey
it is a heteronomous act, and not free. In order to be free, then,
what kind of command does one have to obey? That is no other
than the command: be free! There is no contradiction here. Nei-
ther is there any enigma in Kants word: he can do something be-
cause he is aware that he ought to do it,
56
which simply means that
freedom can spring only from the imperative of being free.
Where does this imperative come from? It comes neither from
community nor from God; it originates from Kants transcendental
attitude itselfthat which entails the imperative: bracket it!
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Returning to R Mutt, Duchamp is not commanding viewers to see
the urinal as an artwork by bracketing their daily concerns; instead,
the contextbeing installed in an exhibitionis itself commanding
viewers to see it as artwork, though most viewers are not aware of it.
Likewise, the fact that the transcendental stance itself contains the
imperative is forgotten, and nally the fact that the transcendental
stance is spurred by an imperative is forgotten. Where does the tran-
scendental stance spring from? It is spurred on by the existence of
the others. In this sense, it can be said that the transcendental stand-
point is ethical.
This imperative be free! ultimately contains the imperative to
treat others as free agents. Kants moral law is little more than the
command: So act that you use humanity, whether in your own per-
son or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end,
never merely as a means.
57
And it is only thanks to the imperative
that the personalities of the others come into existence. Within the
theoretical stance, neither my personality nor that of any other can
exist. Only in the practical domain do they appear. Thus Kants laws
of morality are synonymous to being practical.
Now to interpret the causality of the necessity of nature from a
wider perspective. Remember that the causes of the criminal case
come not only from personal feelings but also from social relations.
If so, then, how can we assess those social relations? Marx wrote
about this with respect to his methodological stance in Capital:
To prevent possible misunderstanding, let me say this. I do not by any
means depict the capitalist and the landowner in rosy colors. But individu-
als are dealt with here only in so far as they are the personications of eco-
nomic categories, the bearers [Trger] of particular class-relations and
interests. My standpoint, from which the development of the economic
formation of society is viewed as a process of natural history, can less than
any other make the individual responsible for relations whose creature he
remains, socially speaking, however much he may subjectively raise himself
above them.
58
This stance insists on seeing the social structure as a necessity of
nature, thereby forestalling any attribution of responsibility. But I
contend that Marx attained this gaze from the natural historical
stance, namely, by bracketing responsibility.
59
When he saw social
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Kant
relations as a natural historical process, it could be said, he took a
theoretical positionwith which to execute the bracketing of sub-
jectivity and responsibilitybut not to negate them. Marx could
have spoken moralistically like Proudhon, who insisted, La Pro-
prit, cest le Vol, but he did not. The Marx in Capital persisted in
the bracketing. And this was driven by his ethical will. If so, there is
no need of searching for Marxian ethics outside Capital. For his part,
Kants ethics cannot be sought only in his accounts of morality.
Being theoretical at the same time as being practicalthe transcen-
dental stance is itself ethical.
I now take up the three main currents of thinking in postwar
France: existentialism, structuralism, and poststructuralism. The ex-
istentialist, Jean-Paul Sartre, stressed freedom, while admitting the
structural determinedness of humans. His vantage point might be
dened as practical. On the other hand, when the structuralists
questioned the concept of subject as a substance and saw it merely as
an effect of structure, they took a theoretical stance. In this context
it is quite understandable that they returned to Spinoza. As I men-
tioned earlier, the thesis of Kants third antinomy results in Spinozas
positionthat everything is determined by causes, but people think
they act freely because the causes are so complex. Free will as well as
anthropomorphized Godthings that supposedly go beyond the
necessity of natureare imaginary constructs that are themselves
determined naturally and socially. In fact, what one calls causes are
retrospective constructs of the effects. Louis Althusser coined the
concepts of structural causality and overdetermination in refer-
ence to Spinozaand they, too, are a kind of determinism in a
broad sense.
One should not be overly excited by these theoretical achieve-
ments. They are nothing but shifts of stance that occur because of
the bracketing operation that is inherent in the theoretical stance.
There is nothing new about the series of problematics that was pre-
sented in the dichotomy of existentialism vs. structuralism or subject
vs. structure; it is little more than a variation of what Kant presented
as the third antinomy. It is meaningless to oppose subject against
the structuralist stance, or to seek the subject therein. Because, from
the beginning, it is only by bracketing the subject that structural
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determinism is attained. Conversely, only when structural determina-
tion is bracketed can the dimension of subject and responsibility
return. Later, when poststructuralism sought to reintroduce morality
it was simply as a matter of course.
60
So in this sense, none of them
was necessarily new. Being swayed by a spectacular succession of
new trends, one tends to overlook the aspect that they were alter-
ations of theoretical and practical stances. Meanwhile, the lesson of
the Kantian transcendental critique is to keep both stances at the
same time. One has to know how to bracket and unbracket at the
same time.
In Critique of Practical Reason, Kants harshest target was eude-
monism (or utilitarianism). He rejected it because happiness is gov-
erned by physical causes, namely, because it is heteronomous.
Freedom, on the other hand, is metaphysical. Kants reconstruction
of metaphysics is nothing if not involving this. But eudemonism was
not the only thing Kant considered heteronomous. So was the
morality that belongs to the community.
In Encyclopedia Logic, Hegel rst praised Kant for having criticized
eudemonism, but then quickly criticized him for remaining in indi-
vidualism. What was dominant at that time was the conventional
moralism imposed by family, community, and church; and eude-
monism (or individualism) of English origin was rather accused of
endangering this kind of moralism. Along this line, Hegel acknowl-
edged Kants critique of eudemonism, but attacked him by advocat-
ing the primacy of objective ethics [Sittlichkeit]. The intention was to
recover the authority of family, community, and nation-state. Against
such a position, Kant would rather support eudemonism. From eude-
monism, however, one can never induce universal moral law.
The principle of happiness can indeed furnish maxims, but never such as
would be t for laws of the will, even if universal happiness were made the
object. For, because cognition of this rests on sheer data of experience,
each judgment about it depending very much upon the opinion of each
which is itself very changeable, it can indeed give general rules but never
universal rules.
61
We must pay attention to this distinction between general and
universal. Kant did not extract moral law from existing various
morals. He certainly formalized morality, but not in order to extract
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Kant
the general of morals. For him, the moral domain exists only in the
imperative (or duty): be free! What the moral law is telling us is
nothing other than to be free and to treat others as free agents. As
I have mentioned before, that Kant saw freedom in obeying duty
caused many misunderstandings. It is easily mistaken for obeying
the duties imposed by community and nation-state. Nonetheless
Kants point was to grasp morality not in good and evil but in free-
dom. In the (theoretical) dimension where we are mainly tossed
about by natural/social causalities, there is no good and evil. In ac-
tuality, there is nothing like freedom (causa sui) sensu stricto; all
acts are determined by causes. Yet if freedom as such (as a regulative
idea of reason) intervenes at all, it is only at the moment when we
consider ourselves as the cause of all of our acts. The imperative
be free is equal to the imperative of bracketing natural causes.
Nietzsche, who accused Kant of dividing the world between phe-
nomenon (read nature) and thing-in-itself (read freedom), stated as
follows:
My new path to a YesPhilosophy, as I have hitherto understood and lived
it, is a voluntary quest for even the most detested and notorious sides of
existence. From the long experience I gained from such a wandering
through ice and wilderness, I learned to view differently all that had hith-
erto philosophized: the hidden history of philosophy, the psychology of its
great names, came to light for me. How much truth can a spirit endure,
how much truth does a spirit dare?this became for me the real standard
of value. Error is cowardiceevery achievement of knowledge is a conse-
quence of courage, of severity toward oneself, of cleanliness toward one-
selfSuch an experimental philosophy as I live anticipates experimentally
even the possibilities of the most fundamental nihilism; but this does not
mean that it must halt at a negation, a No, a will to negation. It wants rather
to cross over to the opposite of thisto a Dionysian afrmation of the
world as it is, without subtraction, exception, or selectionit wants the eter-
nal circulation:the same things, the same logic and illogic of entangle-
ments. The highest state a philosopher can attain: to stand in a Dionysian
relationship to existencemy formula for this is amor fati.
62
In On the Genealogy of Morals and Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche re-
buked morals as the resentment of the weak. We must be careful to
interpret the word weak, however. In the most straightforward inter-
pretation, Nietzsche himself, who failed as a scholar and suffered
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from syphilis, was nothing but the weak. But the case is not so sim-
ple. To him, the strong or the berman is the one who accepts
such a miserable life as ones own creation in the place of attribut-
ing it to someone else or to given conditions. That is his formula of
amor fati. The berman is not an exceptional human. And amor fati
is the stance to accept ones destiny determined by external causes
(nature) as if it were derivative of ones free will (consistent with the
principle of causa sui), in Kantian terms. This is a practical stance
par excellence. Nietzsche scrutinized the way of being a free subject
in the practical sense. His thoughts have nothing to do with afrma-
tion of the status quo. And his will to power is attained by bracket-
ing the determination of causality; nevertheless what he forgot was
the need to see the world by unbracketing it now and then. That is,
while attacking the resentment of the weak, Nietzsche did not dare
to see the real relations that necessarily produce it. He ignored the
view that individuals are nally the products of social relations, no
matter how much they think they are beyond them.
Theodor Adorno read Kants moral imperative as a social norm
and criticized this point in reference to Freud. According to
Adorno, Kant excluded the genetic moment from moral philoso-
phy, and in recompense, attributed to it a noumenal characteristic.
No Kant interpretation that would object to his formalism and undertake to
have the substance demonstrate the empirical moral relativity which Kant
eliminated with the help of that formalismno such interpretation would
reach for enough. The law, even in its most abstract form, has come to be;
its painful abstractness is sedimented substance, dominion reduced to its
normal form of identity. Psychology has now concretely caught up with
something which in Kants day was not known as yet, and to which he there-
fore did not need to pay specic attention; with the empirical genesis of
what, unanalyzed, was gloried by him as timelessly intelligible. The
Freudian school in its heroic period, agreeing on this point with the other
Kant, the Kant of the Enlightenment, used to call for ruthless criticism of
the super-ego as something truly heterogeneous and alien to the ego. The
super-ego was recognized, then, as blindly, unconsciously internalized
social coercion.
63
This interpretation is a typical misreading. For Freud himself, after
Beyond the Pleasure Principle, amended his idea of the superego.
64
While
he did not deny, in principle, his previous stance that superego was
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Kant
rooted in the social norm, at the same time, he came to conceive
that superego was formed by an introversion of the death drive or
aggression drive (the extroverted death drive). Here Freud assumed
an autonomy: namely, the superego that derives from the destructive
drive controls the destructive drive itself. And, as Freud himself had
to admit, the death drive is a metaphysical concept. But isnt Adorno
himself, in the following passage, metaphysical?
Perennial suffering has as much right to expression as a tortured man has to
scream; hence it may have been wrong to say that after Auschwitz you could
no longer write poems. But it is not wrong to raise the less cultural question
whether after Auschwitz you can go on livingespecially whether one who
escaped by accident, one who by rights should have been killed, may go on
living. His mere survival calls for the coldness, the basic principle of bour-
geois subjectivity, without which there could have been no Auschwitz; this is
the drastic guilt of him who was spared. By way of atonement he will be
plagued by dreams such as that he is no longer living at all, that he was sent
to the ovens in 1944 and his whole existence since has been imaginary, an
emanation of the insane wish of a man killed twenty years earlier.
65
Karl Jaspers would call this metaphysical guilt in contrast to moral
guilt.
66
That is to say that while moral responsibility is generated in
committing certain vices (even indirectly), metaphysical responsibil-
ity could arrive without committing anything. But if Adorno and
Jasper had thought they went beyond Kants theory of morality by
these accounts, they would have been wrong. To Kant, morality is
consistently metaphysical, and in contrast, the morality (good/evil)
of a community is physical (or natural). Therefore, Adornos state-
ment above actually crossed the point where Kant conceptualized
his morality.
I said earlier that, in Kant, the moral domain comes into existence
only after the imperative be free! But, who is doing the command-
ing? Not the community. Not the nation-state. Not the religion. Nei-
ther is it from the inside. It must come from outside. Jacques
Derrida reected upon responsibility from the vantage point of re-
spondability.
67
Responsibility appears only as a response to the other.
The necessity to respond to others pushes us into the dimension of
freedom. In the case of Adorno, it is a response to those who died in
Auschwitz; those whose thoughts are nevertheless never knowable.
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In reality he had no guilt; he himself was a victim. Adorno felt
responsibility toward the dead, however, because he felt he survived
on the shoulders of the dead. This responsibility is the kind that
comes into existence only when, in the terms of Kant, one follows
the imperative: So act that you use humanity, whether in your own
person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an
end, never merely as a means.
Adornos feeling of responsibility toward the dead appears to have
come from inside; but after all, it comes from outside, that is, the
other. When one says the other, it does not have to mean existing
others. The othersthose who do not share a common set of
rulesare not only those in outside communities, but also include
those who do not exist in the here and nowfuture humans as well
as the dead. Rather, with respect to otherness, they should be the
model. Generally speaking, ethics takes only living beings in consid-
eration, while Kantian ethics, that sees the others as the thing-in-
itself, takes hold of the others who have been and who will be.
Anglo-American philosophy negated the Kantian position and
sought to construct ethics by returning to utilitarian concerns. On
the other hand, Jrgen Habermas conceived that Kantian ethics
could be surpassed by public consensus or inter-subjectivity. Both of
them limit their denition of the others to those who are present
here and now, or worse still, to those who share the same set of
rules. The deadthose who lived in the pastas well as the yet-to-
be-bornthose who will live in the futureare out of their range of
concern. Today, those ethicists who have negated the Kantian posi-
tion and proposed utilitarian moral law are increasingly facing an
aporia vis--vis environmental problems: take, for instance, the
tremendous amount of industrial waste produced for the sake of our
comfortable lives that will be charged to future generations. A pub-
lic consensus among adults living today might be establishedalbeit
restricted to advanced Western and non-Western nationswhile di-
alogue and consensus with future people are impossible. Also impossi-
ble is communication with past people. They wont say anything. Why,
then, does one feel responsible to them? (In fact there are many
people who do not feel any responsibilityespecially those who are
moralists when it comes to state and community.)
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Kant
This sense of responsibility is different from the residue of dutys
call to community that has endured since the primitive stage of
human history. It appears only in correspondence to the imperatives
be free! and treat others as free agents! Notwithstanding that
Kant called this the inner moral law, it does not exist internally. It ex-
ists vis--vis the others who cannot be internalized. One must note
that Kantian others are always posited in asymmetric relationships,
and they are distinct from Hegels and Sartres another self-
consciousness, namely, those who share the same set of rules and
desires. The others are rather uninterested in me. When speaking of
the others, people call to mind only those others living today. But
the otherness of the other appears most strikingly in the dead.
Thus, in Kierkegaard:
the most frightful of all is that one dead gives no hint at all. Beware, there-
fore, of the dead! Beware of his cunning; beware of his deniteness, beware
of his strength; beware of his pride! But if you love him, then remember
him lovingly, and learn from him, precisely as one who is dead, learn the
kindness in thought, the deniteness in expression, the strength in un-
changeableness, the pride in life which you would not be able to learn as
well from any human being, even the most gifted.
One who is dead does not change; there is not the slightest possibility of
excuse by putting the blame on him; he is faithful. Yes, it is true. But he is
nothing actual, and therefore he does nothing, nothing at all, to hold on to
you, except that he is unchanged. If, then, a change takes place between
one living and one dead, it is very clear that it must be the one living who
has changed.
68
One cannot project ones empathy onto the dead. Neither can one
represent their will. They never talk; they never show their interest.
Those who speak for the sake of the dead are just speaking for them-
selves. Those who mourn for the dead do it in order to forget them.
By mourning, the dead wont change; it is we who change. By not
changing at all, they reveal our changes. Thus they are cunning.
They are the others in this very sense. Seeing the others as the thing-
in-itself, as Kant did, is equal to seeing the others as someone from
whom one can never evoke mutual consent, onto whom one can
never project a representation, and of whom one can never speak
as a representative. They are, however, different from Levinass
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absolute Other. They are the relative others who are around one
everyday. What is absolute is not the others themselves but our rela-
tionship with the relative others.
I have pointed out that the inclination toward universality in
Kants epistemology and aesthetics premises the future other. In the
same way, in order for moral law to be universal, not only does it
have to be formal, but it also has to presume the future other. And
in the nal analysis, the future other implies the past otherthe
deadbecause for the future other, one is dead. One must not
forget ones destined position in history.
In this precise sense, the Kantian critique essentially involves the
problematic of history. At the end of his career, Kant began to tackle
the problems of history head-on. Yet this was not a change of atti-
tude, because his stance, both theoretical and practical, persisted. The-
oretically speaking, history has no end; it has only a complex of
causality. (Those who pursue the causality of history must persist in
it without the assumption of any nality.) But, from the beginning,
the meaning and end of history do not exist in the same dimension
as theoretical scrutiny; they are practical problems par excellence.
Kant approached history with the same stance as the one he took
in Critique of Judgment: Although there is no end in natural history, a
certain nality may be presumed. Although there is no end in
human history, it can be seen as if it had a nality. According to
him, We should be content with providence and with the course of
human affairs as a whole, which does not begin with good and then
proceed to evil, but develops gradually from the worse to the better;
and each individual is for his own part called upon by nature itself to
contribute towards this progress to the best of his ability.
69
It is easy
to refute this teleological position theoretically. Being theoretical is
equal to seeing things by bracketing ends.
70
In the rst place, Kant
himself considered such an idea of history as transcendental illu-
sion. What is more important, however, is that Kant located a puz-
zle in the relationship between generationsthat which appears to
assume an end in human history.
Yet nature does not seem to have been concerned with seeing that man
should live agreeably, but with seeing that he should work his way onwards
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Kant
to make himself by his own conduct worthy of life and well-being. What re-
mains disconcerting about all this is rstly, that the earlier generations
seem to perform their laborious tasks only for the sake of the later ones, so
as to prepare for them a further stage from which they can raise still higher
the structure intended by nature; and secondly, that only the later genera-
tions will in fact have the good fortune to inhabit the building on which a
whole series of their forefathers (admittedly, without any conscious inten-
tion) had worked without themselves being able to share in the happiness
they were preparing. But no matter how puzzling this may be, it will appear
as necessary as it is puzzling if we simply assume that one animal species was
intended to have reason, and that, as a class of rational beings who are mor-
tal as individuals but immortal as a species, it was still meant to develop its
capacities completely.
71
That one cannot share in the happiness [one was] preparing im-
plies that even though an individual intends to struggle and die for
future generations, future generations will neither acknowledge nor
thank that individual for such sacrice. One does the same vis--vis
ones ancestors. Of course, within communities and nation-states,
certain people are thanked and praised emblematically after their
deaths. But community worship is another story entirely. As Walter
Benjamin claimed, history belongs to the victors. But most of ones
efforts will be ignored by the future others. What Kant stressed was
precisely that we have to endure this disconcerting absurdity. For
whatever we do for the future others, our acts are motivated by our
own problems. For freedom has nothing to do with happiness. Free-
dom is not the same as the negation of happiness, yet the imperative
be free! is often cruel.
Kants theory of morals is historical in essence because, as I have
tried to show, it implicates the requirement that the moral law be re-
alized historically: So act that you use humanity, whether in your
own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as
an end, never merely as a means. At the same time, however, he never
ignored the natural historical process. As Hermann Cohen once re-
minded us, it is important that Kant stressed here never merely
as.
72
With this, Kant also took as a premise the production and the
relation of productionthe domain that Marx scrutinized in Capi-
tal. To Kant, the use of others humanity as a means was already an
inevitability in the production and the relation of production in
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Transcritique
the commodity economy. Any account of human relations that over-
looks this concern is merely a monastery or dormitory daydream,
from the hotbeds of those who use the humanity of the faithful
and parents merely as a means. Kantian ethics tends to be de-
graded only because it is read as if speaking to an end but not
means in the place of an end, never merely as a means. The king-
dom of the end exists upon a material and economic basis, and the
personalism, when the base matters are not taken into considera-
tion, cannot help but becoming a priestly sermon. Taking this as-
pect of Kant into consideration, Cohen called him the true
originator of German socialism.
73
Communist society, for that mat-
ter, must be a society where others are treated as an end at the same
time as a means; and communism is possible only by reorganizing the
social system where people are treated merely as a means. In other
words, here apodictically arrives the regulative idea of superseding
capitalism.
The dominant trend in contemporary ethics is the utilitarianism
rebuked by Kant. This considers good as if it were calculable like in-
terest. Along this line, ethics is reduced to economics, not to mention
that it was coined from the standpoint of capitalist development. As
opposed to this tendency, John Rawls (b. 1921) insisted on social
justice by invoking Kant. His idea was to dissolve social inequality by
redistributing wealth relying on cumulative taxation. This was the
same as the idea of a welfare society or social democracy. It lacked
motivation toward a society where others are treated as an end at the
same time as a means. But something happened in the 1980s when he
began to pose Kantian constructivism. He began to advocate the
democratic system of possessions as an alternative to capitalism. His
idea of liberal socialism is no longer identical to the social democ-
racy based upon the redistribution of wealth within the connement
of capitalism. His idea of the 1980s is very close to communism qua
associationism in the sense of Proudhon and Marx. Though his idea
still lacks practical orientation, the fact that he came to pose this idea
is an encouraging example: inasmuch as one thinks about ethics not
from the vantage point of good/bad and happiness/interest but
Kantian freedom, it is apodictic to induce communism qua associa-
tionism. If so, how could the communists of the mid-nineteenth
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Kant
century be unconcerned with Kantian ethics? From its fountain-
head, communism was an ethico-economic problematic.
Marxs communism cannot be considered merely as a necessity of
natural history, but also as an ethical intervention. Young Marx
wrote about the categorical imperative of communism: The criti-
cism of religion ends with the teaching that man is the highest being for
man, hence with the categorical imperative to overthrow all relations in
which man is a debased, enslaved, forsaken, despicable being.
74
This drew a response from Ernst Bloch, who had criticized the
Marburg School as a Kantian revisionism of Marxian doctrine and
still stressed as follows: This material categorical imperative is by
no means, as alleged by the bisectors of Marx, conned to the young
Marx. No part of it was suppressed when Marx transferred what he
had formerly termed real humanism into the materialist philoso-
phy of history.
75
It must be said that lurking behind this categorical
imperative is a thread of Kantian thinking. Communism as practice
is neither merely economic nor merely moral. To adapt Kants
rhetoric, communism without economic basis is empty, while com-
munism without moral basis is blind.
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II
Marx
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4
Transposition and Critique
4.1 Transposition
Marx left a massive amount of work. But fragmentary as it is, it is im-
possible to induce Marxs philosophy or political economy or com-
munism out of the corpus. It was Engels who, after Marxs death,
rst sought to make it into a system. He constructed an edice of
Marxism in conformity with the Hegelian system: dialectic material-
ism (vis--vis logic), natural dialectics (vis--vis the philosophy of na-
ture), historical materialism (vis--vis the philosophy of history),
political economy and state theory (vis--vis the philosophy of right),
and so on. Since then, Marxism has striven to perfect this system,
including theories of literature and art (qua aesthetics). Yet these
projects have become increasingly far-fetched.
It appears to me that Marx never intended to systematize his
thought, not because he could not, but because he chose not to. To
understand Marxs intervention, one has to bracket the conven-
tional categories of political economy, philosophy, and political phi-
losophy. It is necessary to observe Marxs footwork, regardless of the
targeted object. And in so doing, there is one clear thing that stands
outMarxs thought existed as nothing other than a critique of pre-
vious thought. Capital, the book written systematicallythough left
incompleteis subtitled Kritik der politischen konomie [Critique of
National Economy]: a book of critique. But this critique is far from a
condemnation. Marx never intended to construct a certain positive
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Marx
doctrine upon the denial of his predecessors, that is, Ricardo or
Hegel or any one else. Neither was he an epigone of any of them. It
is crucial to read Marxs corpus as critique. I believe that his critique
will never lose its signicance, even as the historical contexts in
which it appeared become obsolete. Thus my objective is to recover
the function and signicance of his critique and recognize what
kind of epistemological light it sheds on the coming ages.
Marx once told his daughters to doubt everything on principle.
But this doubt of everything should be distinguished from unprin-
cipled skepticism. To Marx, doubting was not separate from living.
What kind of life was it? Marx persisted in doubting the subject qua
the substantial center, and saw it as a product of relational structure.
Where, then, does the doubting subject exist? This is the question
that was omitted by the major trend of thought that fabricated the
false dichotomy of Marxism and existentialism, and so on. This line
of thought ignored the very existence of Marx.
In the rst place I disagree with the common framework that op-
poses Marx to Descartes and/or Kant. As I have mentioned, cogito,
the doubting subject, appears in between systems, in between com-
munities. And this interstice is a space of sheer difference; nally, it
is insubstantial and amorphous. It cannot be spoken of positively; no
sooner than it is, its function is lost. It is a transcendental toposa
space for transcritique. Yet at the same time, to approach this space,
one must begin with a reference to concrete space, and for that one
can turn to some cities where radical intercourse occurred, like
Amsterdam, Knigsberg, and London. Descartes wrote about
Amsterdam, where he lived in exile, as a place where in the crowd
of a great, active people, and of one more concerned with its own af-
fairs than curious about those of others, I have been able, without
lacking any of the conveniences that there are in the most fre-
quented towns, to live as solitarily and retired as in the most remote
deserts.
1
Cartesian cogito, the subject of radical skepticism, cannot
be grasped if separated from this kind of space. Later in his life,
Descartes lost the critical aspect of cogito and his thinking resulted
in the thinking subject (transcendental ego), parallel, it seems, to
his return to Paris, where he became an authoritarian gurethe
founder of Cartesianism.
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Transposition and Critique
Kant, for his part, rarely left Knigsberg during his lifetime.
Among philosophers, Kant was perhaps the least inclined to travel.
But Knigsberg, though geographically remote, was not in the least
a rustic, provincial town. It was one of the commercial centers of the
Baltic Sea, then the site of the most active Northern European trade.
It was a city where various kinds of information intersected. Kant
wrote about it:
A city like Knigsberg on the river Pregel, the capital of a state, where the
representative National Assembly of the government resides, a city with a
university (for the cultivation of the sciences), a city also favored by its loca-
tion for maritime commerce, and which, by way of rivers, has the advan-
tages of commerce both with the interior of the country as well as with
neighboring countries of different languages and customs, can well be
taken as an appropriate place for enlarging ones knowledge of people as
well as of the world at large, where such knowledge can be acquired even
without travel.
2
Because of the sea trafc, it was in a sense closer to London, the cap-
ital of the British Empire, than Berlin was. Knigsberg, having once
belonged to East Prussia, was later occupied by Russia and has been
a part of it ever since. Kants cosmopolitanism is inseparable from
the atmosphere of the citywhich, one can say, he chose. Like Hegel
and Fichte, Kant was invited to teach at the state academy in Berlin;
unlike the others, he rejected the invitation. Had he accepted, he
would have been compelled to think from the standpoint of the
state. Hence, Kants refusal was in a sense a transposition, and an
exile lacking physical movement.
And Marx. When considering him, too, one is drawn into think-
ing about transposition and its signicance in the formation of
thought. But one cannot simplemindedly emphasize Marx the
refugee. For the fact is that Marx was deported and exiled to Britain,
but he was later pardoned and returned home for a brief period in
the 1850s. He then chose to return to England and London, be-
cause this nationthe most advanced in capitalist developmentand
its capital were ideal for his analysis of capitalism. Therefore, he can-
not plainly be considered a political refugee. He chose to live in Lon-
don. The point to be stressed is that Marx also thought in the
intersticethe transcritical spacewhere one has to confront
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Marx
different languages, thoughts, and value systems; and from which it
is impossible to induce a certain positive doctrine.
When he was in exile in Paris in 1843, Marx wrote Economic and
Philosophical Manuscripts. Those reectionsoften identied as early
Marxepitomize an application of the Feuerbachian theory of self-
alienation to the political economy, an approach similar to the one
Moses Hess had already rendered. In this sense, it is possible to say
that Marx at that time was still within the problematic consciousness
of the Young Hegelians. Soon after, he wrote Holy Family; and two
years later, in 1845, he was expelled from France and moved to
Brussels. There he wrote Theses on Feuerbach and, in collaboration
with Engels, The German Ideology.
Louis Althusser famously considered Marxs turn in this period
crucial, calling it an epistemological break
3
and implying that
Marx not only overturned Hegels philosophy materialistically, but
also realized a discontinuous transformation of, or development
from, the Hegelian framework itself. This is certainly a radical turn.
Meanwhile, my transcritical position observes that it is not the only
radical turn that occurred in Marx.
4
In reference to Kants Copernican turn, I remarked earlier that it
is commonly understood as a remarkable revolution from geocen-
trism to heliocentrism, but that such an idea had existed since
long before Copernicus. It was nally constituted as a theory by
Copernicusonly thanks to his shift from the position that the sub-
ject passively perceives the objective world to the position that ob-
jects are composed by the form of the active subject. It was the latter
that Kant appeared to consider important. But when, in conse-
quence, post-Kantian idealism was established around this position
and ourished, another, more ultimate destination of the Kantian
turnthat one is thrown into the world, instead of the world
being of ones own compositionwas forgotten. At that point Kant
quickly intervened to refute those idealists who had grown under his
inuence. In the history of science, the event of the Copernican
turn happened only once. But in Kant, the Copernican turn oc-
curred more than once. For the Kantian critique involved incessant
transposition and was not rooted in a static positionality. I call this
transcritique.
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Transposition and Critique
It is also possible to propose a Marxian turn as such. The early
Marx, who was one of the Young Hegelians, was faithful to Feuerbachs
materialist overturning of Hegelian idealism. Feuerbachs critique
of religion argued that God is a self-alienation of the generic essence
(or the species-being) of humans, and that individuals as sensuous
beings should recover their generic essence. The early Marx basi-
cally relied upon this critique, except that he transposed and extended
the account of self-alienation to the domains of the monetary econ-
omy and the state. In this context, Marx observed: The basis of irre-
ligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man.
Religion is the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has al-
ready lost himself again. But man is no abstract being encamped out-
side the world. Man is the world of man, the state, society. This state,
this society, produce religion, an inverted world-consciousness, because
they are an inverted world.
5
What is noteworthy here is that Marx goes on to liken this over-
turn to the Copernican turn:
The criticism of religion disillusions man to make him think and act and
shape his reality like a man who has been disillusioned and has come to rea-
son, so that he will revolve round himself and therefore round his true sun.
Religion is only the illusory sun which revolves round man as long as he
does not revolve around himself. The task of history, therefore, once the
world beyond the truth has disappeared, is to establish the truth of this world.
The immediate task of philosophy, which is at the service of history, once the
holy form of human self-estrangement has been unmasked, is to unmask
human self-estrangement in its unholy forms. Thus the criticism of heaven
turns into the criticism of the earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism
of law and the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics.
6
This materialist overturn may appear to be decisive, but it is still
incomplete. The true Copernican turn of Marx later expressed
itself when he criticized this materialism and afrmed an active mo-
ment, conversely, in the idealism: The chief defect of all previous
materialismthat of Feuerbach includedis that the object [Gegen-
stand], reality, and sensuousness are conceived only in the form of
the object, or of contemplation, but not as human sensuous activity, prac-
tice, and not subjectively. Hence it happened that the active side,
in contradiction to materialism, was set forth by idealismbut only
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Marx
abstractly, since, of course, idealism does not know real, sensuous ac-
tivity as such.
7
Marxs Copernican turn, too, occurred more than once; and the
discursive transpositions were always accompanied by travel between
real existing places. The German Ideology was written from such an
interstice:
If we wish to rate at its true value this philosophic charlatanry, which awak-
ens even in the breast of the righteous German citizen a glow of patriotic
feeling, if we wish to bring out clearly the pettiness, the parochial narrow-
ness of this whole Young-Hegelian movement and in particular the tragi-
comic contrast between the illusions of these heroes about their
achievements and the actual achievements themselves, we must look at the
whole spectacle from a standpoint beyond the frontiers of Germany.
8
The standpoint that locates itself as beyond the frontiers of
Germany is not simply a real place like France or England. This is the
difference, as it were, between German discourse and French/English
discourse. As a point of fact, Marxs attempt, in collaboration
with Arnold Ruge, to establish the German-French Annual Journal
[Deutsche-Franzsische Jahrbcher], namely, to combine German phi-
losophy and French political movements editorially, was contemptu-
ously ignored by French activists. There was no possible way for the
French Socialists, who had matured through real political experi-
ences, to accept a theory deduced merely from philosophy. It was
not national antagonism that prevented the easy acceptance of such
a project but actual experience. Young Marx, who had abundant
self-condence, had to learn the hard lesson that German philoso-
phy turned to be irrelevant or odd beyond the frontiers of Ger-
many, and that there was a reality developing far away from the
theory.
In contrast, for Engels there was no such repercussion from be-
yond the German frontiers, for he had long been exposed to the
realities of capitalism in Britain, and in confronting classical eco-
nomics. In many ways, he was much more mature than Marx. On
the occasion of publishing part of The German Ideology in 1888, years
after it was written, Engels stressed that historical materialism was
rst formulated in that book, and by Marx. Concerning this, in the
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Transposition and Critique
early 1960s, the Japanese philosopher Wataru Hiromatsu presented
evidence that challenged that assertion. Hiromatsu conducted an
elaborate text critique of The German Ideology, and showed that the
text on Feuerbach was mostly written by Engels; Marxs participation
was limited to some crucial revisions here and there; and further-
more, comparing the earlier writings of both, he proved that Engels
had conceptualized historical materialism rst.
9
What Hiromatsu
wanted to say was that Engels was, at that point, theoretically more
advanced than Marx, who was still in the paradigm of the Young
Hegelians.
Why, then, didnt Engels simply spell out his advanced position?
I believe it was not because of any humility, but rather because it was
his intention to construct Marxism after Marxs death.
Marx himself did not use the words, historical materialism, but
seems to have persisted in so-called economic determinism: that
economic infrastructure determines superstructure. This manner of
seeing things is correct if and only if one is deliberately engaged in
an ex post facto analysis of history from a long perspectiveand that
is the only case. In his The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism,
Max Weber stressed the importance of the role played by the Reli-
gious Reformation qua superstructure in the development of indus-
trial capitalism. But the Religious Reformation itself could not have
come into existence if not for the social transformation that had ac-
companied the osmosis of the commodity economy in the rst
place. Hence Webers observation cannot wholly surpass the general
thesis: economic infrastructure determines superstructure. When
observing historical events, however, one has to take into considera-
tion various causalities (reciprocal causality) at the same time. In
The German Ideology, Marx and Engels were extra-cautious about this
aspect. They insisted on seeing history rather from an empiricist
standpoint.
10
But in Britain such was not a new or innovative stance,
but rather common at that time. For instance, at the end of The The-
ory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith announced his future research
project, which was never realized. In reading his idea, one discerns
the kind of empiricism that could have developed into historical
materialism.
11
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Marx
The historical materialism completed by Engels was therefore a
view of history that had appeared thanks to the establishment of in-
dustrial capitalism. That is to say that industrial capitalism made the
materialist view of seeing the historical past possible, while the
viewhistorical materialismcannot elucidate capitalism. The com-
modity economy under capitalism has itself a potency to organize
the world, and this potency is in a sense an ideational power par ex-
cellence. So it is that the capitalist economy is not infrastructure per
se. Yet neither is it superstructure per se. In order to take the capital-
ist economy into account, one has to, once and for all, discard
historical materialisms framework of infra/superstructures. The
movement of capitalism, as perverted a form as it may be, has an ac-
tive aspect. As Marx pointed out in his Theses on Feuerbach, it was
Hegel, rather than positivist historians, who understood it clearly.
For this reason, Marx returned to Hegel as soon as he began his
critique of political economy work in the 1850s.
In any event, it is true that Marx came after Engels in terms of his-
torical materialism. This delay was due to his engagement in the cri-
tique of religion. He was seeking to grasp state and money as a sort
of religion. And he never abandoned this project; Capital was written
as a development of his earlier concerns. Therefore, what makes The
German Ideology so important is not its new view of history, but Marxs
parallax caused by his delay. Engles wrote, It has not occurred to
any one of these philosophers to inquire into the connection of
German philosophy with German reality, the relation of their criti-
cism to their own material surroundings.
12
Then, what about Marx,
who had been within the circle of German philosophy up until the
moment his life in exile began? It had not occurred to him, either.
This awareness that must have nally occurred to him, while reading
the passage, must have been totally different from the at and static
scheme of historical materialism (similar as it may seem): namely,
that German philosophy (qua superstructure) is determined by
German material circumstances. What nally struck Marx outside
Germany was the pronounced parallax.
Then, in 1844 in Paris, Marx wrote in The Holy Family:
The maitre decole describes correctly the condition to which isolation from
the outer world reduces a man. For one to whom the sensuously perceptible
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Transposition and Critique
world becomes a mere idea, for him mere ideas are transformed into sensu-
ously perceptible beings. The gments of his brain assume corporeal form.
A world of tangible, palpable ghosts is begotten within his mind. That is
the secret of all pious visions and at the same time it is the general form of
insanity.
13
German Idealism was established at the point that the moment of
sensibility qua passivity (in Kants conceptualization) was discarded,
and, as Marx criticized, what it created was little more than a world
of pious visions or insanity. But what Marx stresses here is be-
yond the matter of the philosophical stance per se. To this transcriti-
cal Marx, the positionalitywhether or not materialist, radical,
concerned with exteriority, and so onmakes little difference if it is
caught within an enclosed discursive system. All in all, what isolates
thinkers, including Marx himself, from the outer world is neither
national frontier nor psychosis, but eachs own discursive system.
And this fact strikes them only when they are dislocated and out of
the system. This outside is not another positionality, however. Marx is
not criticizing the idealism from a certain new positionality. For
Marxs transcritical materialism exists only in the parallax between
idealism and empiricism. If the parallax is lost, that is, if it turns out
to be a positionality, even materialism will be another optical illu-
sion, to use Kants term. Marx continues: Whilst in ordinary life
every shopkeeper is very well able to distinguish between what some-
body professes to be and what he really is, our historiography has
not yet won even this trivial insight. It takes every epoch at its word
and believes that everything it says and imagines about itself is
true.
14
The Marxian transcritique appears only in the awareness of
the gap between what one thinks (understanding) and what one
really is (sensibility). Marx, who had seen Germany from the outside,
several years later came to see France from the outside. In contrast
to the German scene, the discourses in France were not produced
only within philosophers fantasies, but in relationship with real po-
litical struggles. But here, too, it has not occurred to any one of
[these revolutionaries] to inquire into the connection of [French]
philosophy with [French] reality, the relation of their criticism to their
own material surroundings. They could not distinguish between the
illusions about their achievements and the actual achievements
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Marx
themselves. In this sense, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
was written in the manner of The French Ideology, as it were.
4.2 The System of Representation: Darstellung and Vertretung
As Marxs transcritical stance revealed, German ideologues thought
and spoke under the design of Hegelian philosophy. Things were
not the same, however, vis--vis French ideologues. Expressing them-
selves as representatives of political parties, they were less speculative
than practical. And yet, in the minds of everyoneparticipants and
observers alikethe process of the real political events dating from
February 24, 1848 to December 2, 1851, appeared as an incompre-
hensible, uncanny dream. To Marx, it was self-evident that at the
substratum of the series of events, the drama, were the social classes
and their struggles. But what he sought in The Eighteenth Brumaire
of Louis Bonaparte was not to point out the base structure, but to
illuminate the way the political process was formed by a dreamlike
metamorphosis. The primary characteristic of the affair was that the
dramatic personae were dressed in the linguistic costume of the rst
French Revolution (17891799), and further that the whole event
came to be resolved along the plot lines of the past affair. In order
to decode the new affairthat notoriously resulted in the inaugura-
tion of Louis Bonaparte as emperorsimply pointing out the infra-
structure was obviously insufcient. Thus Marx employed the
process of the rst French Revolution as an a priori form, so to
speak, that constituted the process of events.
Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please;
they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under
circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past.
The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the
brain of the living. And just when they seem engaged in revolutionizing
themselves and things, in creating something that has never yet existed,
precisely in such periods of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up
the spirits of the past to their service and borrow from them names, battle
cries and costumes in order to present the new scene of world history in
this time-honored disguise and his borrowed language. Thus Luther
donned the mask of the Apostle Paul, the Revolution of 1789 to 1814
draped itself alternately as the Roman republic and the Roman empire, and
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Transposition and Critique
the Revolution of 1848 knew nothing better to do than to parody, now
1789, now the revolutionary tradition of 1793 to 1795.
15
It was the ghosts and ideas from the past that were ruling the parties
of the time: they could understand what they were doing only in
terms of the past; that is, they were dominated by the historical
words and phraseslanguage. If so, it was isomorphic to what Marx
pointed out with respect to the German philosophers: that they were
too eager to ddle with Hegelian problems and criticize Hegel by
expanding this or that detail of the Hegelian system, but that they
were nally little more than an undersized representation, a farce,
of Hegel himself. While Hegel at least posed a system of thought
outright, the Young Hegelians, merely as his chorus, were obsessed
with arguments, ostensibly grandiose, but in actuality empty and
fruitless. For the German philosophers, the Hegelian system as the
tradition of all the dead generations weigh[ed] like a nightmare on
the[ir living] brain. The Eighteenth Brumaire thus performed a dex-
terous satire of Hegels Philosophy of History. In the process of the
political drama of 1848 to 1851, Louis, the nephew of Napoleon
Bonaparte (who was, for Hegel, the very epitome of a world histori-
cal individual [weltgeschichtliches Individuum]) came to hold the seat
of power by resorting to that very same illusion of the world histori-
cal individual; and this notwithstanding that he had no ideal nor
assignment to be realized other than his given roleto repress, as
long as possible, the contradictions inherent in the capitalist econ-
omy by way of state intervention. In this manner, Louis Bonaparte
became the enduring prototype for all counterrevolutionaries,
including twentieth-century fascists.
What Marx paid attention to most in this text was the aspect that
this particular process of events came into existence within the par-
liamentary system (the system of representatives) as a given. The rev-
olution of February 1848 delivered universal suffrage for the rst
time, and this was accomplished under the republicanism that had
abolished the monarchy. The process that was brought to a close by
the installment of petit Louis the Emperor could have occurred only
under the bourgeois parliamentary system. Marx pointed out the
existence of the real social classes behind the representation. Later
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Marx
Engels again attributed to Marx the discovery that behind the
ideological (i.e., political, religious, philosophical) representations
[Darstellung] there exists the economic class structure, and that the
struggle between classes is driven by the law of history. Reading the
text closely, however, what Marx discovered in the series of events
was quite the reverse: The conjunctures developed independent of,
or even contrary to, the economic class structure. What he sought to
elucidate were the autonomous operations of events as such. And
the agent of the operations was obviously the institution of the rep-
resentative system [Vertretung] itself. In the parliamentary system
based upon universal suffrage, the representative system is thor-
oughly ctitious as compared to Stndeversammlungan assembly
of different castes/professions from preindustrial Europe, as Hans
Kelsen later claimed.
16
That is to say that there is no apodictic rap-
port between the representer and the represented in the institution
of representatives. The point Marx stressed here was that the acts
and discourses of political parties were independent of the real
classes. Or to use Kenneth Burkes expression in The Grammar of
Motives, the real classes are little more than class unconsciousness
17
which can come into consciousness as classes only in the discursive
arena of political parties.
In the following passage, Marx explains the arbitrariness of the
relation between representer and represented:
Just as little must one imagine that the democratic representatives are in-
deed all shopkeepers or enthusiastic champions of shopkeepers. In their
education and individual position they may be as far apart as heaven from
earth. What makes them representatives of the petty bourgeoisie is the fact
that in their minds they do not get beyond the limits which the latter do not
get beyond in life, that they are consequently driven, theoretically, to the
same problems and solutions to which material interest and social position
drive the latter in practice. This is, in general, the relationship between the
political and literary representatives of a class and the class they represent.
18
And elsewhere, he says:
The parliamentary party was not only dissolved into its two great factions,
each of these factions was not only split up within itself, but the party of
Order in parliament had fallen out with the party of Order outside parlia-
ment. The spokesmen and scribes of the bourgeoisie, its platform and its
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Transposition and Critique
press, in short, the ideologists of the bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie itself,
the representatives and the represented, were alienated from one another
and no longer understood each another.
19
Only because the relationship between the representative and the
represented is arbitrary was it possible that the industrial bour-
geoisie as well as other classes, could abandon their representatives
and choose Louis Bonaparte. At the point in time of February 24,
1848, parties existed as representatives of classes, namely, they ap-
peared as difference in the discursive arena. In only three years, how-
ever, Bonaparte somehow seized power as the representative of all.
Marx refused to ascribe this to the person of Bonaparte: his ideals,
politics, psychology, or character. No matter what kind of scope one
employs, it is impossible to decode the enigma of Bonaparte, who
was a nobody (except for being Napoleons nephew) three years
before, who came to seize the throne of Emperor.
As Marx says in Capital, it is easy to see that money is a commodity,
but the challenge is to gure out how a commodity becomes money;
it is the same conundrum that Marx observed vis--vis Bonaparte. As
opposed to Victor Hugo, who connes himself to bitter and witty
invective against the responsible publisher of the coup dEtat, Marx
declares he would demonstrate how the class struggle in France cre-
ated circumstances and relationships that made it possible for a
grotesque mediocrity to play a heros part.
20
To be certain, no mat-
ter how many times one repeats criticism like Hugos (precisely like
repeating that money is simply a piece of paper), it does not amount
to a criticism of anything. Nonetheless, neither can Marxs enigma
how it is possible for a grotesque mediocrity to play a heros partbe
elucidated by resorting to the class struggle. That the representative
(qua discursive) system exists autonomously; that classes come into
consciousness only via this system; and that the system is porous
here exists the enigma that made Bonaparte Emperor.
According to Engels, It was precisely Marx who had rst discov-
ered the great law of motion of history, the law according to which
all historical struggles, whether they proceed in political, religious,
philosophical or some other ideological domain, are in fact only the
more or less clear expression of struggles of social classes.
21
But, as
Wataru Hiromatsu observed, as far as such a stance is concerned, it
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Marx
should have been Engelss before Marxs.
22
The crucial point here is
that social classes can appear as they are only by way of the dis-
courses (of their representatives), and not in the least according to
the great law of motion of history. But Marx also points to the exis-
tence of a class which, without representatives, without discourses
that speak for their class interest, has to be represented by someone
totally unrelated to them.
In so far as millions of families live under economic conditions of existence
that separate their mode of life, their interests and their culture from those
of the other classes, and put them in hostile opposition to the latter, they
form a class. In so far as there is merely a local interconnection among
these small-holding peasants, and the identity of their interests begets no
community, no national bond and no political organization among them,
they do not form a class. They are consequently incapable of enforcing
their class interest in their own name, whether through a parliament or
through a convention. They cannot represent themselves, they must be rep-
resented. Their representative must at the same time appear as their mas-
ter, as an authority over them, as an unlimited governmental power that
protects them against the other classes and sends them rain and sunshine
from above. The political inuence of the small-holding peasants, there-
fore, nds its nal expression in the executive power subordinating society
to itself.
23
The fact was that the small-holding peasants who rst appeared on
the political stage supported Bonaparte. But they welcomed him not
as their representative but as their Emperor. We have seen that, es-
pecially from the twentieth century onward, this class has welcomed
and supported Fascism most fervently. But more crucially, it was the
system of representative democracy that gave them this role in the
political theatre.
24
For instance, Hitlers regime came into existence
from within the ideal representative system of the Weimar Republic.
A fact unknown to the West and often ignored is that the Emperor
[Tenno] Fascism of Japan appeared only after the realization of uni-
versal suffrage in 1928. In the 1930s in Europe, Marxists considered
Hitler simply as an agent for the bourgeois economyseeking to
save it from crisisand thought it would be enough to reveal that
infra-structural fact. Like the Nazis, Marxists also found the
Weimar congress deceitful. But the masses gradually chose to be
represented by Nazism, as opposed to Marxists expectations. This
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Transposition and Critique
cannot be explained merely by the effects of Nazis shrewd manipula-
tion of passion and violence combined. From the beginning, the
communist party was also one of the representatives which could not
claim any apodictic connection with the represented, the proletariat.
With the experiences of the failure of the revolution after World
War I and the resulting fascism, the relative autonomy of super-
structure became one of the Marxists key concepts. In criticizing
the Marxists of the time, Wilhelm Reich used psychoanalytic theory
to nd the cause of Germans being drawn to Nazism. It was there he
discovered the authoritarian family ideology and its sexual repres-
sion.
25
Later, the Frankfurt School introduced psychoanalysis into
the analysis of the mechanism of Fascism, too. In this context, psycho-
analysis denitely became a new tool for analyzing superstructure. In
order to tackle Fascism, however, one should rather return rst to
The Eighteenth Brumaire. In this text, Marx almost preempted the
Freudian stance of The Interpretation of Dreams. He analyzes the series
of dreamlike events that occurred during the period of time, em-
phasizing not the dream thoughts, that is, expressions of real class
relations, but the dream work [Traumarbeit]: how class uncon-
scious is condensed and transferred. For that matterto the favor of
our transcritical viewFreud himself used the metaphor of the rep-
resentative system in his New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis:
The dream is seen to be an abbreviated selection from the associations, a se-
lection made, it is true, according to rules that we have not yet understood:
the elements of the dream are like representatives chosen by election from
a mass of people. There can be no doubt that by our technique we have got
hold of something for which the dream is a substitute and in which lies the
dreams psychical value, but which no longer exhibits its puzzling peculiari-
ties, its strangeness and its confusion.
26
Freud himself likens dream work to a congress elected by universal
suffrage. If so, instead of introducing psychoanalysis into an analysis
of Marxs text, we should rather read psychoanalysis from the stand-
point of The Eighteenth Brumaire. Thus fascism qua Bonapartism is
revealed in its most crucial dynamisma collapse of representation
as the solution to the unrepresentable.
Louis Althusser made an effort to explain the relative autonomy of
superstructure with the concept of overdetermination, borrowed
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Marx
from Lacanian theory, as opposed to the conventional economic de-
terminism. In my opinion, this is a general theoretical reinterpreta-
tion of historical materialism, and thereby lacks the moment to
analyze concrete facts and situations. In contrast, Marxs analytical
device in The Eighteenth Brumaire is much more specic and intricate.
What he is pointing to is the duplicity of the representational system
itself: on the one hand there is congress qua legislative power, and
on the other there is presidency qua administrative power. The latter
is chosen by the direct vote of the people. (In fact, Louis Bonaparte
advocated universal suffrage in opposition to the Republican Party,
which sought to limit voters. As a result, he became popular as the
representative of the nation. Thereafter he appealed repeatedly to
national referendums, precisely as Hitler did.) But the difference
between a congress and presidency lies not merely in the way they
are elected. As Carl Schmitt explained, the parliamentary system is
liberalistic in the sense that it governs through discussion, while the
presidency is democratic in the sense that it represents the general
will (i.e., in the sense of Diderot and Rousseau). Schmitt further
states that dictatorship contradicts liberalism but not necessarily
democracy. Bolshevism and Fascism by contrast are, like all dicta-
torships, certainly antiliberal but not necessarily antidemocratic. . . .
The will of the people can be expressed just as well and perhaps bet-
ter through acclamation, through something taken for granted, an
obvious and unchallenged presence, than through the statistical ap-
paratus that has been constructed with such meticulousness in the
last fty years.
27
This problematic consciousness had already been explicit in
Rousseau, who had derisively criticized the British Parliament, a rep-
resentative system as follows: My argument, then, is that sover-
eignty, being nothing other than the exercise of the general will,
can never be alienated; and that the sovereign, which is simply a col-
lective being, cannot be represented by anyone but itselfpower
may be delegated, but the will cannot be. . . . If a people promises
simply and solely to obey, it dissolves itself by that very pledge; it
ceases to be a people; for once there is a master, there is no longer a
sovereign, and the body politics is therefore annihilated.
28
Follow-
ing the example of Greek direct democracy, Rousseau disparaged
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Transposition and Critique
the representative system. This position would result either in the
Hegelian stance that saw the general will not in the parliament but
in another administrative powerthe bureaucrator in the urge to
replace the parliamentary representative system with the directness
of a national referendum. (It goes without saying that the direct
national referendum is nevertheless nothing but another form of
representative system.)
Furthermore, the problematic of the political representative system
corresponds to the larger problematic of representation. The differ-
ence between parliament and presidency as representational forms
corresponds to that of epistemological representations. That is, on
one hand, there is the Cartesian positionthat truth can be deduced
from a priori clear evidenceand on the other hand, there is the po-
sition common in Anglo-American philosophythat truth can exist
only as a tentative hypothesis attained by agreement among others. In
the political context, the former is equal to the idea that the general
will is represented by Being beyond conicting individuals and classes,
while the latter is equal to the idea that the general will must consis-
tently be determined by agreement through discussion. What is clear
is that, as with Heideggers discontent, both are modernist thoughts
seeking truth not directly but only via representation.
Heidegger radically criticized both positions. And politically,
he denied both presidency and parliament. To him, truth had to be
disclosed (erschlissen) directly by Being via a poet-thinkerthe
fhrer. In such a context, Heidegger insisted that the national refer-
endum Hitler organized should not be an election to choose
representatives
29
but a direct revelation (Erschlossenheit). But, in my
context, this is another form of representation, and perhaps its ulti-
mate collapse: an imaginary and aesthetic synthesis of the split of
the contradicting classes. What Heidegger insisted was that the
fhrer be an emperor to whom the nation pays obeisance as their
master, rather than its representative elected via a national referen-
dum. In the story of Bonapartes victory, one sees precisely the rst
instance of the crisis of representation and the imaginary sublation
of the contradictions therein. In this sense, The Eighteenth Brumaire
takes in advance the essential elements of political crises that there-
after appeared and reappeared.
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Marx
Then, what does an emperor who is neither parliament nor presi-
dent embody? Nothing other than the state. The bourgeois state is
constituted by overthrowing the absolutist monarchy. Its nature is
that by exhibiting constitutionalism and the representative system, it
conceals the substantive ingredients of the stateincluding its bu-
reaucratic and military organizations. The executive power with its
enormous bureaucratic and military organization, with its extensive
and articial state machinery, with a host of ofcials numbering half
a million, besides an army of another half million, this appalling
parasitic body, which enmeshes the body of French society like a net
and chokes all its pores, sprang up in the days of the absolute
monarchy, with the decay of feudal system, which it helped to has-
ten.
30
Precisely as money is deemed the means to represent com-
moditys value, in the bourgeois state, bureaucracy and the army
appear to belong to the organ that represents the will of the nation.
At moments of crises, however, the state-in-itself appears, precisely
as, in economic crises, money-in-itself appears. Marx continues:
Only under the second Bonaparte does the state seem to have
made itself completely independent. As against civil society, the state
machine has consolidated its position so thoroughly . . .
31
That is to
say that when the bourgeois economy reaches a deadlock, the state
organ intervenes under the name of the emperor.
In Capital, Marx registered only three classes: capitalists, landown-
ers, and wage workers. These are sheer aliases of the economic cate-
gories: capital, ground rent, and labor power commodity; and the
real formations of the social hierarchy are much more complex than
this triad. Even in Britain, which Marx selected for his model, there
was no such tripartite division; rather various classes, including all
the dead generations, existed in reality. In France, worse still, there
were few industrial laborers in 1848. And those whom Marx called
proletariat in The Eighteenth Brumaire were very much those crafts-
men who turned radical, having been deprived of their jobs by the
osmosis of British industrial capital. This is why they too ended up
supporting Louis Bonaparte, the Saint-Simonist on horseback, whose
slogans were state-led economic development and social welfare.
What Marx sought to present in Capital was not the prospect that the
development of industrial capital would lead to the tripartite class
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Transposition and Critique
division, but the principles of the capitalist economy that are over-
looked under the complex formation of the real social hierarchy.
This division, therefore, should not be mechanically employed as a
scheme for actual historical development.
By scrutinizing the French experience in The Eighteenth Brumaire,
Marx grasps class and class struggle as difference forming a polymor-
phous complex, and politics as a matter of discursive and represen-
tative apparati. He also, however, offers a principal reection upon
the relationship between state and capital, taking France as a model.
In his Socialism: Utopian and Scientic, Engels stated that Marxs
thought consisted of German philosophy, French socialism, and
English political economy. I would rather say that it really exists in
his transcritique between them. Written in a journalistic style, The
Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte yet offers a principal reection,
different from yet certainly as important as the one in Capitalthe
critique of nation-state (polis) economics [Zur Kritik der Politischen
konomie]. It should be read as the critique of national politics, as it were.
To conclude this chapter on political representation, I would like
to touch upon what dictatorship of the bourgeoisie meant to Marx,
because it is certainly not irrelevant to his dictatorship of the prole-
tariat. It is crucial to note that Marx saw a dictatorship of the bour-
geoisie in universal suffrage, the backdrop of the coup of the
Eighteenth Brumaire, rather than a direct violent means of rule. It is
a system wherein people of all classes participate in the elections.
But that is not allat the same time, and inversely, in this system, all
individuals are, for the rst time, separated in principle from all class
relations and relations of production. The representative assembly
had already existed in the feudal system as well as in the absolutist
monarchy; but it was at the point when universal suffrage and then
secret balloting were introduced that the representative assembly
turned into the unequivocal bourgeois parliament. Hiding who votes
who for whom, secret voting liberates people from their relations;
at the same time, however, it erases the traces of their relations.
Thus the relationship between representative and represented is
radically severed once, and becomes arbitrary. So it is that the repre-
sentative chosen by secret balloting is no longer controlled by the
represented. In other words, the representative can behave as if he
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Marx
represented everyone, even though that is not the case. That is the
nature of dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. It is not quite the same as
the bourgeois class running society by occupying the parliament.
Rather it is a mechanism that erases class relations or the relations of
domination by temporarily reducing people into free and equal
individualsand this mechanism itself functions as the dictatorship
of the bourgeoisie. In elections, the freedom of individuals is guar-
anteed, but this exists only at the moment that the hierarchical rela-
tions in the real relations of production are suspended. So it is that
there is no democracy sensu stricto in capitalist enterprises, outside
elections. That is to say, managers are not elected by employees, and
furthermore not by their secret voting. And it is impossible that state
bureaucrats are elected by peoples direct voting. Peoples freedom
exists only to the extent that they can choose their representatives
in political elections. And, in reality, universal suffrage is just an
elaborate ritual to give a public consensus to what has already been
determined by the state apparati (military and bureaucracy).
4.3 The Economic Crisis as a Parallax
Now living in exile in England and dealing with British discourse,
Marx could no longer rely on his previous approaches. He had to
shift his stance once more. In confronting German and French ideo-
logues, it was signicant and even imperative to invoke the economic
class structure that was repressed in their discourses, whereas in
British discourse, the very empiricist stance that he had posed against
German philosophers and the very economic problematic that he
had introduced against French ideologues were dominant. There is
no doubt that the economic problematic was the veiled infrastruc-
ture in the idealist tradition. But it was not veiled in the English con-
text; class struggles over economic interests were especially manifest
in the climate of the mid to late nineteenth century. Both classical
economists and Ricardian socialists had been approaching the prob-
lematics of society and history via the explicitly economic standpoint.
In fact the issue concerning the exploitation of surplus-value (qua
surplus-labor)the very notion that is believed have been coined by
Marxhad already been posed by the Ricardian socialists.
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The most crucial problem Marx encountered in England was the
potential for crisis inherent in the capitalist society. In classical eco-
nomics, there is no crisis in principle; if it were acknowledged, it
would only signify misfortune or a failure of economic policy. Classi-
cal economists disclaimed the fetishism of money inherent in their
predecessor, mercantilism. To them, money was merely a denomina-
tor of the value of commodity, that is, of the labor objectied in the
commodity or the social labor time. Ricardo writes: Productions are
always bought by productions, or by services; money is only the
medium by which the exchange is effected.
32
The enlightenment of
the political economy in this sense had been accomplished long be-
fore Marx. And it is precisely the real occasions of economic crisis
that derided such enlightenment thinking.
Marx described the nature of crisis:
Such a crisis occurs only where the ongoing chain of payments has been
fully developed, along with an articial system for setting them. Whenever
there is a general disturbance of the mechanism, no matter what its cause,
money suddenly and immediately changes over from its merely nominal
shape, money of account, into hard cash. Profane commodities can no
longer replace it. The use-value of commodities becomes valueless, and
their value vanishes in the face of their own form of value. The bourgeois,
drunk with prosperity and arrogantly certain of himself, has just declared
that money is a purely imaginary creation. Commodities alone are money,
he said. But now the opposite cry resounds over the markets of the world:
only money is a commodity. As the heart pants after fresh water, so pants
his soul after money, the only wealth. In a crisis, the antithesis between
commodities and their value-form, money, is raised to the level of an
absolute contradiction. Hence moneys form of appearance is here also a
matter of indifference. The monetary famine remains whether payments
have to be made in gold or in credit-money, such as bank-notes.
33
Taking such a phenomenon in consideration, one can no longer
criticize the illusion of the capitalist economy or the illusion of
money by invoking substancesuch as products or labor. For, at
the very moment of crisis, the moment the fantasy collapses, it is
money to which people throng. The magic of money that Ricardo
was thought to have liquidated, here returns. The rst of the crises
(that thereafter recurred in ten-year cycles) hit in 1819, soon after
Ricardo published The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation in
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Marx
1817. The crisis hit precisely as the most radical critique of his eco-
nomic theory. Although money had been at work in reality in the
capitalist economy, it was theoretically cremated. In his critique of
classical economics, Marx thus reintroduced the money they had
eliminated in their enlightenment.
Money was thoroughly absent from the perspective of classical
economics. Adam Smith was well aware that the developments of
commodity exchange and division of labor transform society, but he
overlooked the fact that both are rendered only by money, and
furthermore, only as a movement of capital. Smith wrongly believed
that the worldwide division of laborconstantly being organized
and reorganized by merchant capitalhad existed since the very
onset of economic history, and it followed that money was deemed
by him a mere barometer or medium. The classical economists
labor theory of value negated the dimension proper to commod-
ity exchange and conceptually reduced the source of value to
production in general. It cast a perspective by which to see precapi-
talist societies from the vantage point of production and relation
of production, namely, from the viewpoint of historical materi-
alism, thereby overlooking the dimension proper to the capitalist
economy.
Capital is a kind of self-increasing, self-reproductive money.
Marxs rst formulation of this is M-C-M. It represents the activity of
merchant capital, with which usurers capital, M-M is made possi-
ble. According to Marx, merchants capital and usurers capital are
antediluvian forms of capital. The formulation of merchants capi-
tal is nevertheless also consistent with industrial capital; the main
point of difference is that in industrial capital the content of C is a
complex entity, that is, C mp (means of production) L (labor-
power); thus, in Marxs equation, the movement of industrial capital
is M-{mp L}-M. At the stage at which industrial capital became
dominant, a divergence occurred: merchants capital came to be
merely commercial capital, while usurers capital became bank or
financial capital. But, in order to consider capital in the full sense,
one should always start from the consideration of the process M-C-M,
for capital is equal to the whole process of the transubstantiation or
metamorphosis.
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Seen from a different angle, this process is also the process of cir-
culation: C-M and M-C, the domain where it appears that only com-
modity exchange via money is taking place. So much so that money
is merely a measure of value albeit a means of purchase and pay-
ment. What Adam Smith and David Ricardo both sought to eluci-
date was a mechanism that equilibrates and adjusts the division of
labor and exchange. This theoretical inclination was shared by both
classical and neoclassical economists. What they omitted was the fact
that expansions of division of labor and exchange happen only as
the self-reproductive movement of capital/money. Whether classical
or neoclassical, economists tend to give primary importance to the
production of wealth by division of labor and the exchange of
wealththings which are merely the tail end of capitals movement.
To Adam Smith, that people pursue their own prots is conse-
quently benecial to the whole; he attributed it to the auto-adjustment
mechanismthe invisible hands (of God)in the marketplace.
On the other hand, Marx located a salto mortale in M-C-M, at the
moment C-M is realized or not, that is, the moment when it is deter-
mined whether or not the commodity is sold. In order to escape the
critical moment and continue its self-reproductive movement, capi-
tal has to create an articial pact of presuming that the commodity
has already been sold. This is so-called credit. Crisis is not caused
merely by an accumulation of the discouraging outcome of com-
modities not being sold, but very much by a forced revelationat
the moment of nal liquidationthat commodities that are sup-
posed to have been sold have not been sold in reality. Crisis is
caused by the overheating of credit. And this phenomenon has
existed since before the advent of industrial capitalism.
34
In England, German Idealism was mainly despised. Before he came
to England, Marx himself had been scorning the speculative philoso-
phy that began with Fichtethat considered Ego and Spirit as auto-
poetically creating the worldas a case of insanity isolated from the
outer world. But, ironically, in England there was an uncanny coinci-
dence between the real and the ideatic. There money-dealing capital
was autonomousprecisely like the Ego and Spiritas a self-increasing
entity (M-M). The investors thought it a matter of course that they
got interest from their savings as well as dividends from their stock
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Marx
investments. That is to say that speculative philosophy turned into a
daily event, as it were. The drive for expansion without production
and circulation is like the drive for metaphysics in Kantian philoso-
phy, namely, the expansion of cognition without synthetic judgment.
The motive drive of usurers capital (or interest-bearing capital) is
precisely such. Marx spoke of interest-bearing capital (expressed as
M-M) as follows: The formula M-M further expresses the fact that it
is the exchange-value, not the use-value, that is the decisive inherent
purpose of the movement. It is precisely because the money form of
value is its independent and palpable form of appearance that the cir-
culation form M-M-M . . ., which starts and nishes with actual
money, expresses money-making, the driving motive of capitalist pro-
duction, most palpably. The production process appears simply as an
unavoidable middle term, a necessary evil for the purpose of money-
making. (This explains why all nations characterized by the capitalist
mode of production are periodically seized by ts of giddiness in
which they try to accomplish the money-making without the media-
tion of the production process.)
35
Credit and speculation appear to be frivolous, secondary things.
However, it is they that regulate the production process in reality.
Occasions of crisis reveal that. But classical economists and their fol-
lowers turned a blind eye to the parallax that crises deliver. It was
Marx who intervened to tackle the truth of capitalism vis--vis the
parallax. The truth I mean is nevertheless nothing like the so-
called evils (exploitation and alienation) of capitalism, which others
had pointed out long before Marx. Adam Smith was well aware that
the capitalist economy rendered a class division between the haves
and have-nots. Therefore, he proposed a sort of welfare economics
based upon sympathy (moral sentiments), at the same time as af-
rming the inevitable egoism of individuals. Hegel, as well, pointed
out the evil effects of civil society (based upon the market economy)
and insisted that they be solved by the power of state. Meanwhile, so-
cialists like Robert Owen and Pierre Joseph Prouhdon more radically
stated that the capitalist economy could exist thanks to the exploita-
tion of surplus-labor (theft), however, their recognition of the capi-
talist economy was not far from that of the classical economists whom
they attacked.
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For that matter, even Marx himself was, up until the mid-1850s,
not much better than these others. He had believed that crisis would
utimately collapse the capitalist society. But it was after this hoping-
for-the-day theory failed that his understanding of capitalism deep-
ened. Up until then, Marx had thought that crises would occur due
to the anarchic impetus of capitalist production: that the crises
would break down the capitalist economy and then a revolution
would take place to nally expunge the crises as illness. From this
derived Engels and Lenins idea to solve the crises by way of a
planned economy. As we all know now, even though the planned
economy might succeed in avoiding crisis, it would inevitably cause
another illness.
Crisis is a chronic disease inherent in the capitalist economy, yet
also a solution to its internal defects. In other words, capitalism
makes temporary repairs to its innate problem by crises, thus it will
never collapse because of it. It can be compared with hysteria, the
springboard of Freudian psychoanalysis. For an ill patient, hysteria is
itself a solution, thanks to which the patients stability is secured for
the time being. But, for Freud, what was more crucial than hysteria
was the mechanism of unconscious that would cause itwhich exists
in a person whether or not he or she is ill. In the same way, for
Marx, crisis was no longer the terminator of capitalist economy. It
became important only because it would reveal the truth of the capi-
talist economy that is invisible in the everyday economy. Thus Marxs
stance on seeing the capitalist economy by way of the pronounced
parallax provoked by the crisis.
Marx wrote Capital in conformity with Hegelian Logic, wherein
the status of capital is very similar to that of Spirit (Geist). Capital is
nevertheless nothing like a materialistic inversion of the Hegelian
system. In his attempt to grasp crisis as an innate element in capital-
ism, it required Marx take a completely non-Hegelian viewpoint.
This was, I insist, the transcendental standpoint. In Kantian philoso-
phy, crisis would function like a critique of capital Geist that seeks
to self-expand over its boundaries. Thus for Marx to elucidate
the drive of capitalism what was required was a kind of transcenden-
tal retrospection. In this aspect, Marxian critique comes close to
psychoanalysis.
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Marx
In his Philosophy of Spirit of The Encyclopedia Logic, Hegel sees illness
as a symptom of clinging to a lower stage in spirits development. In
a sense, Freuds account of psychosis is subsumed in this position.
But Freuds method was not simply to conduct a retrospective or be-
lated search into the lower stage (i.e., infancy); he also presented
how normal development is achieved by a forgetting of the trauma
of having encountered crisis.
In a similar framework, Marx comments on classical economics:
The unceasing ght of modern economists against the monetary and mer-
cantile systems is mainly provoked by the fact that the secret of bourgeois
production, i.e., that it is dominated by exchange value, is divulged in a
naively brutal way by these systems . . . Political economy errs in its critique
of the monetary and mercantile systems when it assails them as mere illu-
sions, as utterly wrong theories, and fails to notice that they contain in a
primitive form its own basic presuppositions.
36
In the well-advanced industrial capitalism, the naively brutal way is
oppressed, except when, in crises, a return of the repressed occurs.
The ideology of what economists refer to as the healthy market econ-
omy denies the previously existing naively brutal ways, but it sits on
top of them. Hence, in the style of Hegelian Logic, Marx describes the
development of industrial capitalism, from commodity to money,
from money to merchant capital, from merchant capital to industrial
capital. Nevertheless, when one reads it, one should do so backward. In
his description, the development is not a sublation of contradictions, as
commonly believed, but the development as a repression of contradic-
tions. Our task vis--vis Capital is thus to elucidate what is erased in the
most advanced stage and appears only in crises, by conducting a retro-
spective/belated search into the archaic form of capital. What is at
stake here is not the historical origin. It is the arch as a form whose
traces remain in the already complete capitalist economy.
37
In England, where classical economics and empiricist historiogra-
phy were dominant, Marx rediscovered Hegel. It was in such a
context that Marx professed himself to be Hegels disciple. Paradox-
ically, however, it was in this period that Marx was criticizing Hegel
most radically, much more than during the period he was techni-
cally criticizing various details of Hegelian philosophy. In fact, the
book entitled Capital: The Critique of National Economics could have
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Transposition and Critique
been entitled Capital: The Critique of Hegelian Philosophy of Right. Peo-
ple refer back to Hegelian philosophy in order to approach Capital,
because it is written in the framework of Hegelian Logic. But
Hegels Elements of the Philosophy of Right, for instance, has its own his-
torical limit: it was an attempt to ground, from the vantage point of
exchange and contract, the trinity of Capital-Nation-State when the
capitalist economy came to organize the greater part of modern
Western society, namely, the trinity was completed ( the end of
history in a sense) therein. Within such a historicity, Hegel saw the
market economy (civil society) as a system of wants. That is to say, he
could not see the market economy as formed by a perverted drive of
capitalism. In this sense, he was within the same connement as the
classical economists. Meanwhile, Marxs insight was that the capital-
ist economy is a system of illusion, that it is driven by the movement
M-C-M, and that at its fountainhead is the drive to accumulate
money (qua the right to exchange-ability)in distinction from the
wants and desire to achieve wealth. To achieve this objective, he re-
turned to value form. Therefore, Capitals similarity to the Hegelian
system should not confuse us.
After writing Grundrisse, Marx commented in retrospect on his
own doctoral dissertation in a letter to Ferdinand Lassalle:
During this time of tribulation I carefully perused your Heraclitus. Your re-
construction of the system from the scattered fragments I regard as bril-
liant, nor was I any less impressed by the perspicacity of your polemic. . . . I
am all the more aware of the difculties you had to surmount in this work
in that about 18 years ago I myself attempted a similar work on a far easier
philosopher, Epicurusnamely the portrayal of a complete system from frag-
ments, a system which I am convinced, by the by, wasas with Heraclitus
only implicitly present in his work, not consciously as a system. Even in the
case of philosophers who give systematic form to their work, Spinoza for in-
stance, the true inner structure of the system is quite unlike the form in
which it was conciously presented by him.
38
But, arrestingly, the same mechanism can be observed in Marxs
own work. The true inner structure of the system in Capital is quite
unlike the form in which it was consciously presented by him.
Here exists the very moment when the transcendental critique of
reason-capital intervenes. Capital should be read as such.
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Marx
One of the most acclaimed impressions about Capital is that it is
historical and at the same time logical. But rather this proves it to be
neither. The history that Capital grasps is distinct from the history
that historical materialism grasps. Marxs objective, unlike that of
Engels and others, did not exist in explaining the historical whole
via the so-called economic infrastructure. What he sought to grasp
was history insofar as it is organized by the monetary economy. He
discovered thus that the capitalist market economy transformed the
whole world, and that the source of its power was the self-reproductive
drive of capital (the fetishism of money). History in this sense is logi-
cal, because it is that which is organized by the economic category.
But at the same time, the economic category in Capital never does
logically self-realize like the Hegelian concept; its development is al-
ways preceded by real historical events. Before dealing with indus-
trial capitalism, Marx gives a long positivist reection on primitive
accumulation. The transformation from merchant capital to indus-
trial capital is formally that from M-C-M to M-{mp L}-M. But for
this to happen, the separation between the means of production
(mp) and the laborer (L), namely, the commodication of labor-
power, must have taken place. This transformation, once seen as an
economic category, appears to be quite smooth and clear, neverthe-
less for this formal development to occur (or to be grasped as occur-
ring), the real historical process has to be taken into consideration as
a sine qua non.
Marx never belittled the historical/contingent given, except that
he employed the category of the capitalist economy as that which of-
fers form to the contents (the givens). Only to this extent can it be
said that he brackets the givens. The real capitalist economy primar-
ily exists encompassed within states; it is states that frame the com-
modity economy; but the commodity economy coexists along with
various productions and classes that are not formally subsumed in its
category. Marx brackets noncapitalist production as well as state in-
tervention, namely, he treats them as if they were already internal-
ized, because they ultimately have to follow the principles of the
capitalist economy; because the capitalist economy has the potency
to constantly involve its externality and turn it into its internal given.
Such is the autonomous potency of the capitalist economy. And it is
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never identiable as infrastructure. Marxs lifelong assignment was
to shed light on the secret of this potency.
4.4 The Micro Difference
There have been many disputes over assessments of early and late
Marx. One was a tendency to appreciate the alienation theory of
early Marx as opposed to the economic determinism of later Marx.
Counter to this, Althusser stressed the epistemological break that oc-
curred in the period of The German Ideology. There is an important
aspect of Marx that both of the tendencies overlooked, that is, the
critique of Marx, or Marx as a critic. As I have been pointing out,
Marxs thought could not have been formed if not for the incessant
transpositions and turns. And it is wrong to induce some essential
philosophy out of it.
In his doctoral dissertation, Difference between the Democritean
and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature in General, written before his
Economic and Philosophical Manuscript, Marx had already pre-
sented his critical (and more crucially, transcritical) stance. In this,
Marx sees the difference between Democritus and Epicurus in terms
of their philosophies of nature. It is commonsense that there are
large differences in their philosophies; yet in their philosophies of
nature they were very similar. Epicurus modied Democritus me-
chanical determinism by introducing the concept of the swerve of
the atom away from the straight line. This had been considered as a
diversion, rather than a serious development. Marx, on the other
hand, sought to prove that the difference between their philosophi-
cal systems derived precisely from this micro difference. The
uniqueness of Marxs method in his dissertation lies in that it speaks
of the difference between Democritus and Epicurus in their almost
identical philosophies of nature rather than the whole of their
philosophies.
Indeed, on the one hand it is an old and entrenched prejudice to identify
Democritean and Epicurean physics, so that Epicurus modications are
seen as only arbitrary vagaries. On the other hand I am forced to go into
what seem to be microscopic examinations as far as details are concerned.
But precisely because this prejudice is as old as the history of philosophy,
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Marx
because the differences are so concealed that they can be discovered as it
were only with a microscope, it will be all the more important if, despite the
interdependence of Democritean and Epicurean physics, an essential dif-
ference extending to the smallest details can be demonstrated. What can be
demonstrated in the small can even more easily be shown where the
relations are considered in larger dimensions, while conversely very general
considerations leave doubt whether the result will hold when applied to
details.
39
Marx intended to break down the prejudiceas old as the history
of philosophythat determined Epicurus modications as arbi-
trary vagaries; or more to the point, he challenged the topos of
identication itself that erased their differences. A similar method
might be observed in our reading of his own Capital. When writing
the book, Marx inherited so many thoughts from classical econom-
ics that neoclassical economists customarily regard Capital as a varia-
tion of Ricardos work. This claim is not totally incorrect as far as his
work up until Grundrisse is concerned. But Capital renders an ele-
ment radically different from before. The theory of value form in
the opening of Capital is initiated by Marxs serious consideration of
Baileys critique of Ricardos labor theory of value. Hence Capital
should be read not only in its difference from Ricardo but also from
Bailey, the true (yet often unacknowledged) originator of neoclassi-
cal economics. This interstice between them was one of the most
signicant stages for Marxs transcritique.
When contrasting Democritus and Epicurus, Marx was also keep-
ing in mind another philosopher, Aristotle. On one pole Marx
placed Democritus, who was a sensationalist, mechanical determin-
ist, and also a skeptic as a result, while on the opposite pole he
posited Aristotle, a teleologist and rationalist. The intermundia was
traversed by Epicurus, a proto-transcritic insisting upon the swerve
or declination [clinamen] of the atom.
40
According to Marx, it is
this declination of the atom that renders a transmutation (or devel-
opment) that is beyond being just mechanistic. (But this came to be
grasped by Aristotle teleologically from the standpoint of predeter-
mined harmony). For Marx, Epicurus is thus the one who criticizes
both teleology and mechanical determinism by way of gazing into
the swerve of the atomic movement.
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In the age when dissertations had to be written strictly about the
classics, it was only natural that contemporary problematic concerns
were superimposed therein. There is no doubt that Marx was really
problematizing his contemporary materialism and idealism. More-
over, his Epicurus is reminiscent of Kant, who criticized both Hume
and Leibnitz from their intermundia. In this phase Marx was Kantian
par excellence.
41
But this was not because Marx consciously followed
Kant. Rather the opposite. It was his own engagement that brought
him close to Kant. (Although Marx was literally Kantian in his early
study of the philosophy of law, I am not alluding to this correspon-
dence.) It was because Marx himself lived transcritique. One observes
the same gaze in his Preface to the First Edition of Capital:
The value-form, whose fully developed shape is the money-form, is very sim-
ple and slight in content. Nevertheless, the human mind has sought in vain
for more than 2,000 years to get to the bottom of it, while on the other
hand there has been at least an approximation to a successful analysis of
forms which are much richer in content and more complex. Why? Because
the complete body is easier to study than its cells. Moreover, in the analysis
of economic forms neither microscopes nor chemical reagents are of assis-
tance. The power of abstraction must replace both. But for bourgeois soci-
ety, the commodity-form of the product of labor, or the value-form of the
commodity, is the economic cell-form. To the supercial observer, the
analysis of these forms seems to turn upon minutiae. It does in fact deal
with minutiae, but so similarly does microscopic anatomy.
42
What distinguishes Capital from previous work lies in the introduc-
tion of the microscopic view vis--vis the theory of value-form. This
had not existed in Grundrisse of the 1850s or in A Contribution to the
Critique of Political Economy of the early 1860s. One should read the
micro difference between Capital and these previous works, because
[w]hat can be demonstrated in the small can even more easily be
shown where the relations are considered in larger dimensions.
The conviction that Marxs important break occurred only once has
made us overlook how crucial this shift was.
Here is another example concerning the movement of Marxs think-
ing, written in 1843, before Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts:
In investigating a situation concerning the state one is all too easily tempted
to overlook the objective nature of the circumstances and to explain everything
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Marx
by the will of the persons concerned. However, there are circumstances
which determine the actions of private persons and individual authorities,
and which are as independent of them as the method of breathing. If from
the outset we adopt this objective standpoint, we shall not assume good or
evil will, exclusively on one side or the other, but we shall see the effect of
circumstances where at rst glance only individuals seem to be acting. Once
it is proved that a phenomenon is made necessary by circumstances, it will no
longer be difcult to ascertain the external circumstances in which it must
actually be produced and those in which it could not be produced, al-
though the need for it already existed. This can be established with approx-
imately the same certainty with which the chemist determines the external
conditions under which substances having afnity are bound to form a
compound.
43
This position already pregures the preface to Capital, where Marx
explains his intention to regard both capitalist and landowner as
personications of economic categories, and thus not to question
their subjective will and moral responsibility. Herein his natural his-
torical standpoint is clearly present, and it is totally irrelevant to the
inuence of Feuerbach and the residue of Hegelian thoughtno
matter how crucial they were to Marx. But what I want to say is not that
Marx was consistent from early on. To the contrary, I believe, Marxs
thinking should be read in reference to the micro differences within
similarities and proximities.
Finally, Capital is undoubtedly the most important achievement of
Marxs lifelong work, but one should not consider it his ultimate
position. This is not merely because the book is unnished, but
more important because Marx persisted in criticizing dominant dis-
courses within systems, from an external footing, constantly transposing
and turning. Yet the external position is not something that exists
substantively. This footing is the difference or the interstice between
discourses which abrogates any standpoint. What is crucial here is
Marxs transcritical footwork that opposes historical heterogeneity
to idealism, while counterposing the autonomous power of category
that constitutes reality to empiricism. This prompt transposition ulti-
mately exceeds any selfsame system of thought that can be attrib-
uted to him (and because what he says is often inverted according to
contexts, one can induce any thought one likes from him). It is
counterproductive to look for a doctrine in his work; his thought
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Transposition and Critique
and practice lie in his transcritique. Finally, Marx was less a scholar
of philosophy and political economy than a journalistic critic.
4.5 Marx and Anarchists
Another aspect of Marxs ambiguity is his relation with the three
anarchists: Bakunin, Proudhon, and Stirner. Bakunin incisively
branded Marx as an authoritarian and dictatorial thinker, which be-
came an established reputation among later anarchists. By contrast,
Marxists formulated Marx as a thinker who entirely negated anar-
chism. But both overlooked the subtle difference in the Marxian
critique of anarchism. For instance, Bakunin attacked Marx along
with Lassallians. That was Lassalles program, and it is also the pro-
gram of the Social-Democratic Party. Strictly speaking, it belongs not
to Lassalle but to Marx, who expressed it fully in the famous Manifesto
of the Communist Party, which he and Engels published in 1848 . . . Is it
not clear that Lassalles program is in no way different from that of
Marx, whom he acknowledged as his teacher?
44
It must have been a
big misunderstanding, if not outright slander; Bakunin ignores the
deployment of Marxs thought during the 1860s and 1870s.
Marx was critical of the idea (i.e., of Lassalles Gotha Programme)
to have the state protect and foster cooperative production. Marx was
clear: That the workers desire to establish the conditions for co-
operative production on a social scale, and rst of all on a national
scale, in their own country, only means that they are working to
transform the present conditions of production, and it has nothing
in common with the foundation of co-operative societies with state
aid. But as far as the present co-operative societies are concerned,
they are of value only insofar as they are the independent creations of
the workers and not protgs either of the government or of the
bourgeois.
45
In other words, Marx is stressing that the association of
cooperatives itself must take place of the state, instead of state-led co-
operative movements, whereby capital and state are to wither away.
And this kind of proposition of principle aside, Marx never said
anything in particular about future prospects. Marx extolled
the Paris Commune mainly achieved by Proudhonists, and found in
it possible communism: If united co-operative societies are to
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Marx
regulate national production upon a common plan, thus taking it under
their own control, and putting an end to the constant anarchy and peri-
odical convulsions which are the fatality of Capitalist productionwhat
else, gentlemen, would it be but Communism, possible Commu-
nism?
46
This sort of association must be fundamentally different
both from a traditional community and a state-centrist organization.
It must correspond to what Marx called the social, that is, the form
in which those who have once gotten out of communities are re-
assembled on a different level. In this sense, communism is a project
in attempt to shift the social relation that is formed as a result of capi-
tals accumulative movement into the association of free and equal pro-
ducers, and furthermore, into a global association of associations. In
the third volume of Capital, Marx highly evaluated cooperatives side
by side with stock company. He saw stock companies as the abolition
of capital as private property within the connes of the capitalist
mode of production itself.
47
This is because stock companies abol-
ished the previous integrity of capitalists by the separation of capital
and management. Yet this is only a passive abolition of the capitalist
system. The positive abolition (sublation) is discovered by Marx in
the producers cooperative of which stockholders are workers them-
selves. In this context, Marx spoke of a new phase of individual
property as opposed to private property.
The capitalist mode of appropriation, which springs from the capitalist
mode of production, produces capitalist private property. This is the rst
negation of individual private property, as founded on the labor of its pro-
prietor. But capitalist production begets, with the inexorability of a natural
process, its own negation. This is the negation of negation. It does not re-
establish private property, but it does indeed establish individual property
on the basis of the achievements of the capitalist era: namely, co-operation
and the possession in common of the land and the means of production
produced by labor itself.
48
What does this distinction between private property and individ-
ual property mean? Precisely because modern private ownership
was that which was awarded by the absolutist state in exchange for
paying taxes, private ownership is equal to state ownership. So it is a
total fallacy to abolish private property by means of state ownership.
The abolition of private property must be an abolition of the state
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itself. To Marx, communism came to signify the establishment of a new
kind of individual property, and this was because he considered commu-
nism as being equal to an association of producers cooperatives.
Such a view is obviously based upon Proudhon, whose book
Quest-ce que la proprit? that young Marx praised, is famous for its
unhesitant vocation, la proprit, cest le vol. Yet Proudhon did
not deny property in general. What he denied was earning income
without working. So he distinguished between possession and prop-
erty, and insisted on abolishing property. He believed that this revi-
sion would change every aspect of social institutions: law, politics,
and economy.
In addition, he never identied unearned prot with feudal plun-
dering. What he calls unearned prot is rather intrinsic to the capi-
talist mode of production. For instance, each individual worker is
paid wages for their work, but not for their joint work or increased
production by their collective power, which goes to the capitalist.
Adam Smith regarded this as a legitimate source of prot, but
Proudhon regarded it as theft. Meanwhile, the Left Ricardians in
Britain had called it the exploitation of surplus value. While it moti-
vated a vehement political labor movement there, in France Proudhon
was rather against political activity, advocating workers partnerships
where there could no longer be theft, at the same time as advocat-
ing a rise in productivity by cooperative work. He believed that the
expansion of such an ethico-economic exchange system would re-
place capital and the state.
In this light, it turns out that Marx never abandoned the basic
ideas he had learned from Proudhon since his youth. What he
called individual property in contrast to private property is no
other than what Proudhon called possession. Marx did criticize
Proudhon, but their relation should not be viewed from the later
opposition between Marxism and Anarchism, since between them
was an intricate mutual reciprocity. In order to understand this situ-
ation, we should take into consideration the ssure between discur-
sive systems in Britain, France, and Germany, and actual societies
therein (precisely as Marx presented in The German Ideology).
In the nineteenth century, the labor movement and cooperatives
began in Britain; this under the inuence of the Left Ricardians,
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Marx
who drew the idea of surplus value from Ricardos labor value
theory long before Proudhon drew the idea of prot-theft from
Smith: exemplary works include Thomas Hodgskins Political
Economy (1827), and William Thompsons An Inquiry into the Principles
of the Distribution of Wealth (1824). These led to the Chartist movement.
Another reason Proudhon believed it possible to dissolve capital and
the state through workers association without workers political strug-
gle was that, in 1830s France, industrial capitalism was underdeveloped
and there were very few industrial workers. Saint-Simonism, which was
then predominant, advocated development of industry and redistribu-
tion of wealth to the workers: It was the precursor of corporatism. In
fact, the large industrial revolution in France took place at the time
of Louis Bonaparte, a Saint-Simonist, by whom the socialists were
coopted. In contrast, Proudhon was unswervingly opposed to such
state-socialism. It was just like the way Marx had objected to Lasserls
state socialism, which conformed to Bismarcks state capitalism.
Meanwhile, there was neither industrial capitalism nor socialist
movement in the Germany of the 1830s. They existed only as ideas, to
the extent that an introductory book by Lorenz von Stein, Socialism
and Communism in France Today,
49
had a large inuence. Left Hegelians
were, in a word, little more than a movement of those philosophers
who were impacted by French socialism and communism. The
movement appeared most importantly and crucially as a critique of
Hegel. Hegelian philosophy was a dominant state ideology, and
furthermore, Hegel himself was well informed about classical eco-
nomics and even criticized it philosophically in his system, with the
stance that the state qua reason would transcend the contradiction
and disruption caused by the civil society as the system of wants.
All Left Hegelians, headed by Feuerbach, assumed the critical
stance against Hegel. Feuerbach called himself a communist, seek-
ing to practice the German philosophical interpretation of French
communism. However, other young philosophers, motivated by
him, began to extend the Feuerbachian critique to the sociopolitical
sphere. For instance, Marx criticized Hegels Philosophy of Right by
applying the Feuerbachian critique of Christianity. Feuerbach
asserted that man, a sensual being, had alienated its own species
being (communal essence) in the phantasm of God and should
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retrieve it. Likewise, Marx considered that human beings are species-
essential beings only in the political state (parliamentary democracy)
qua communal fantasy, while in civil society (the social state), they ac-
tually pursue their own interests, resulting in inequality and repres-
sion. He considered this gap as self-alienation. But, to abandon such
a fantasy and realize the communal being in reality, we would have
to change the civil society and abandon the capitalist economy.
What should be stressed here is the fact that Marx did not agree with
the idea of abolishing the capitalist economy by way of the state. It
derived from Hegels position which then, in later times, grounded
state capitalism as well as state socialism. Meanwhile, Marxs goal was
to abolish the political state itself, and for this purpose precisely, it
was necessary to recompose the civil society taken over by the capi-
talist economy into a social state. This was basically the same as the
anarchist idea, which Marx never left behind. Around this time,
however, Marx did not have any concrete or practical scope toward
the realization; his thinking was still revolving around the concept of
species being, and did not necessarily exceed Feuerbach philosoph-
ically. It is not surprising that, for Max Stirner, Marx up to this point
appeared to be a follower of Feuerbach. Furthermore, Marx was at
the time an admirer of Proudhon.
Without considering this context, we would not understand why
Stirner (in The Ego and Its Own) criticized not only Feuerbach but
also Proudhon. Stirner claimed that what Feuerbach called Man was
a version in disguise of God or Spirit, where this myself (deicitic) was
fatally missing. He made a similar remark on Proudhon.
So Feuerbach instructs us that, if one only inverts speculative philosophy,
always makes the predicate the subject, and so makes the subject the object,
and principle, one has the undraped truth, pure and clean. With this, to be
sure, we lost the narrow religious standpoint, lost the God, who from this
standpoint is subject; but we take in exchange for it the other side of reli-
gious standpoint, the moral standpoint. Thus we no longer say God is
love, but love is divine.
50
Furthermore,
Piety has for a century received so many blows, and had to hear its superhu-
man essence reviled as an inhuman one so often, that one cannot feel
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170
Marx
tempted to draw the sword against it again. And yet it has almost always been
only moral opponents that have appeared in the arena, to assail the
supreme essence in favor ofanother supreme essence. So Proudhon, un-
abashed, says: Man is destined to live without religion, but the moral law (la
loi moral ) is eternal and absolute. Who would dare today to attack morality?
51
Stirner maintains that in Proudhon the state is negated, but only to
be replaced by society, the general, where this I is disregarded, while
the Iqua a member of the society onlyis acknowledged. He
termed this I as my own, which sounds like my property, a set-
back. However, it should be noted that this was strictly uttered as his
response to Proudhons What Is Property? In fact, it has nothing to do
with property: freedom is and remains a longing, a romantic
plaint, a Christian hope for unearthliness and futurity; ownness is a
reality, which of itself removes just so much unfreedom as by barring
your own way hinders you. . . . The own man (der Eigene) is the free-
born, the man free to begin with; the free man, on the contrary, is
only the eleutheromantic, the dreamer and enthusiast.
52
That is to
say that to Stirner freedom is not something to be owned. Elsewhere
he calls it nothingness. What he calls uniqueness signies a mere
singularity, the fact that each one is oneself in ones own way, and
not a particular talent as such.
53
Stirner claims he is an egoist. At the same time, he insists that so-
called egoists are not egoists sensu stricto, because they are possessed
by their desires and interests, that is to say, they are not their own.
Therefore, it is not contradictory for him to seek the association,
while maintaining egoism. He would rather say that only egoists can
form associations and that associations should be as such. Stirner
sensed the smell of the church and community in Proudhons as-
sociation, and he denied the morals imposed by the church, commu-
nity or state; with this critical bias, he proposed the new ethics. He
argues that, so far, individuals have been acknowledged only as mem-
bers of the same family, the same ethnic group, the same nation, the
same human species; that is, individuals have been acknowledged
only via the higher being, but never simply as themselves.
Only for the sake of a higher essence has any one been honored from of
old, only as a ghost has he been regarded in the light of a hollowed, a pro-
tected and recognized person. If I cherish you because I hold you dear,
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Transposition and Critique
because in you my heart nds nourishment, my need satisfaction, then it is
not done for the sake of a higher essence whose hallowed body you are, not
on account of my beholding in you a ghost, an appearing spirit, but from
egoistic pleasure; you yourself with your essence are valuable to me, for your
essence is not a higher one, is not higher and more general than you, is
unique [einzig] like you yourself, because it is you.
54
Stirner came up with the kind of ethics that treats other individuals
who are actually in front of us as free humans, without the media-
tion by any higher being such as family, community, ethnicity, state,
or society.
55
This ethics leads to the egoists associationhis socialism.
Otherwise, socialism would result in the predominance of the soci-
ety over individuals. Thus Stirner criticized Proudhons association
as the community that subordinates individuals. Nevertheless,
Proudhon was different from the kind of communism that Stirner
criticized. He denied the association in this sense. It should be said
that his socialism was rather an egoists association, as is clear in his
later work, The Principle of Federation. The social contract par excel-
lence is a federal contract, which dene as follows: a bilateral and
commutative contract concerning one or more specic objects, hav-
ing as its necessary condition that the contracting parties retain more
sovereignty and a greater scope of action than they give up.
56
Yet, at
that point of time in the 1840s, it had not yet been clear to him.
Meanwhile, the signicance that Stirners critique of Feuerbach
had in Germany was more philosophical. Indeed, young Hegelians
reversed Hegels idealism, but they never doubted Hegelian think-
ing that saw the individual as a member of a category of higher
being. Rejecting the substantiation of the general notion (qua
Geist), they yet posited it as being internalized within the individual.
In this manner, the higher being (qua the general) remained. In
contrast, Stirner regarded the individual as real, and the general no-
tion as a specter. This sounds pretty much like the nominalist asser-
tion that only the individual is the substance, while the general is a
mere notion. But it is different. In fact, he refuted not only realism
but also nominalism. How, then, is his stance different from that of
nominalism? In this respect, Stirners my own (property) is sugges-
tive. For instance, nominalists saw the individuality of the individual
in the proper name, namely, property. Nonetheless, the proper
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Marx
name exceeds the logic of individual genus (individuality-generality).
The problematization of the proper name goes beyond individual-
ity-generality, and unequivocally touches the dimension of singular-
ity-universality (qua sociality). All in all, it was not only that Stirner
posited the individual as the only substance, but furthermore, that
he refused to think of the individual in terms of individualgenus (gen-
erality). Therefore, when he grasped the ego as singularity, it could
result in the association of egoists.
57
You bring into a union (associ-
ation) your whole power, your competence, and power; in a society
you are employed, with your working power; in the former you live
egoistically, in the latter humanly, that is, religiously, as a member in
the body of this Lord.
58
It is well known that Marx mockingly criticized Stirner in The
German Ideology, but the book was not published contemporaneously.
Stirner was rapidly forgotten, not due to Marxs criticism, but be-
cause of the revolution in 1848. When Stirner was reevaluated in
the late nineteenth century, Marxs criticism of Stirner also drew
attention. However, since it was read within the scheme of Marxist-
Anarchist opposition, the relationship between the two was not suf-
ciently considered. It is apparent that Stirners critique of Feuerbach
played a decisive role in Marxs getting out of the enclosure of
Hegelian discourse. In fact, it brought Marx what Althusser called
the epistemological break. Marx wrote in 1845 after Ego and
Its Own came out: Feuerbach resolves the essence of religion into
the essence of man. But the essence of man is no abstraction inher-
ent in each single individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of the
social relations.
59
This man is what Stirner called a specter. Marx wrote with Engels
as if responding to Stirner: The premises from which we begin are
not arbitrary ones, not dogmas, but real premises from which ab-
straction can only be made in the imagination. They are the real in-
dividuals, their activity and the material conditions of their life, both
those which they nd already existing and those produced by their
activity.
60
Now Marx starts with individuals, located in the social re-
lations. We are located in multiple relations such as gender, family,
class, ethnicity, and nationality, which often contradict each other.
For example, I am a parent to my child, and a child to my parent.
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Transposition and Critique
I am a teacher and a student. I employ others and am employed by
others, and so on. The essence of me, namely, what I am is dened
only by the ensemble of those relations, while the imaginary notion
such as man qua essence effaces those relations. Yet, at the same
time, I am an existence that is different from the essence deter-
mined by those social relations. My existence is, after all, nothing,
in the sense that it owns no positive contents.
61
However, it is this
nothingnessowning nothingthat enables us to dissent the given
relatedness. That was what Stirner called my ownness.
Should I still oppose Marx to Stirner?
62
If I do, I too fall into the
problematic of Marxism vs. existentialism. I should do otherwise,
that is, see something that passed from Stirner to Marx. What counts
here is to see that just as Stirner took up the absoluteness of this
(deictic) I by bracketing all the relations, Marx took up the absolute-
ness of the relations that cannot be effaced by ones will or ones
idea, particularly the idea of Man. Marx persisted in this recognition
in Capital, that is, his thoroughgoing natural historical viewpoint
that sees individuals as located in the terms of relational structures.
Marx criticized Stirner in The German Ideology (1847) and Proudhon
in The Poverty of Philosophy (1848). But this chronological order tends
to overlook the fact that both Stirner and Marx learned from and
targeted Proudhon. Like other young Hegelians, Marx had been ap-
proaching and criticizing British economics by way of Proudhons
socialism. When Marx wrote The Poverty of Philosophy, Proudhon was
rather negative toward the idea of political revolution wherein the
working class seizes power, and he contended that the expansion
of a free associative exchange systemsay, producers cooperatives
and exchange banks without interestwould replace the state and
capitalist economy. Marx argued that so long as classes and class
opposition last, it is impossible to reduce politics to economy; the
liberation of the working class should be made through political rev-
olution. However, one cannot understand the whole of Proudhon
and Marxs relation from considerations of this period alone. Before
long their positions came, in a way, to be reversed. In 1848,
Proudhon participated in the political revolution. In the meantime,
after 1848, Marx began to nd hope in the noncapitalist cooperative
production in Britain, where workers political movements (the
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174
Marx
Chartist movement et al.) reached their peak in 1848 and turned
apolitical.
One should not distinguish these two directions as political revo-
lution and social revolution, as has been done. I propose reconsider-
ing and redening them as the struggle remaining within the
capitalist economy and the struggle that seeks to ex-scendent the
capitalist economy. They are both indispensable to the abolition of
the capitalist economy, and we have to see how they can relate to
each other. For this purpose, it is necessary to elucidate the capitalist
economy theoretically. It is clear that Proudhon did not have this
problematic consciousness, but neither did Marx at that point.
Marx was not negative of Proudhons associationism; but he rec-
ognized that it could only be a partial and complementary move-
ment under the strain of capital and state. Proudhon took the
capitalist economy too lightly. Following the labor theory of value,
English classical economics grasped money only as a means of desig-
nating labor value. In a similar way, Proudhon took money lightly
and had the nave objective of abolishing money and creating an or-
ganization of mutual exchange with the spirit of give and take by es-
tablishing a currency without interest. In The Poverty of Philosophy,
Marx began to appreciate the bourgeois economist Ricardo, of
whom he had been negative under the inuence of Proudhon. The
book expresses Marxs appreciation of Ricardos project of analyzing
the system of the capitalist economy by the labor theory of value.
Ricardo shows us the real movement of bourgeois production, which consti-
tutes value. M. Proudhon, leaving this real movement out of account,
fumes and frets in order to invent new processes and to achieve the reor-
ganization of the world on a would-be new formula, which formula is no
more than the theoretical expression of the real movement which exists
and which is so well described by Ricardo. Ricardo takes present-day society
as his starting point to demonstrate to us how it constitutes value
M. Proudhon takes constituted value as his starting point to constitute a
new social world with the aid of this value. . . . The determination of value
by labor time is, for Ricardo, the law of exchange value; for M. Proudhon, it
is the synthesis of use value and exchange value. Ricardos theory of values
is the scientic interpretation of actual economic like; M. Proudhons the-
ory of values is the Utopian interpretation of Ricardos theory. Ricardo
establishes the truth of his formula by deriving it from all economic relations,
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Transposition and Critique
and by explaining in this way all phenomena, even those like rent, accumu-
lation of capital and the relation of wages to prots, which at rst sight
seem to contradict it.
63
Marx is not necessarily upgrading Ricardo by degrading Proudhon.
It just occurred to him that, in order to overcome the capitalist econ-
omy, it was necessary to grasp it as a system rst. In this sense, The
Poverty of Philosophy initiates Marxs path to Capital. To Marx, Proudhon
was blind to the dynamic force of capitalism that incessantly trans-
forms social relations, because he took for granted the free individ-
uals as such who were themselves products of the capitalist market
economy. For instance, Proudhons concepts of the masses or
people do not involve socioeconomic relations. After having been
exiled to Belgium in 1858, Proudhon published The Principle of Feder-
ation (in 1863) in order to criticize the former socialists who were
falling into nationalism and centralism. Although this work pointed
out the antinomy between authority and liberty, it failed to under-
stand why people supported the Emperor Bonaparte. Proudhon saw
it as the nature of people themselves.
The organization of liberal or democratic government is more complicated
and more sophisticated, its practice more laborious and less dramatic than
that of monarchical government; consequently, it is less popular. Almost al-
ways the masses have regarded forms of free government as aristocratic,
and they have preferred absolute monarchy. Hence that vicious circle in
which progressives are trapped, and which will trap them still for many
years to come. Naturally, it is in order to improve the lot of the masses that
republicans demand liberties and securities; it is, therefore, upon the peo-
ple that they must rely. But it is always the people who, through their dis-
trust of or indifference to democratic forms, stand in the way of liberty.
64
In this there is a recognition that Bakunin could not have had. Yet it
is rather odd that, after Marxs intricate analysis of the social rela-
tions and the parliamentary system in The Eighteenth Brumaire, Prou-
dhon ascribed the whole issue to the nature of people. He is
explaining the reason why Bonaparte became the Emperor merely
by the inclination of people to love authority. When Proudhon pub-
lished this, Marx was writing the corpus that was later edited and
published as the third volume of Capital, striving to understand why
the capital and state endure so tenaciously. Nevertheless, this does
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Marx
not mean in the least that Marx denied Proudhons associationism.
This does not mean that Proudhons ideas of cooperative and ex-
change bank were obsolete. At the same time he approved these
ideas, or precisely because of his approval, Marx criticized Proud-
hon. Marxs critique stressed the point in his Instructions for Dele-
gates to the Geneva Congress:
It is the business of the International Working Mens Association to com-
bine and generalize the spontaneous movements of the working classes, but
not to indicate or impose any doctrinaire system whatever. The Congress
should, therefore, proclaim no special system of cooperation, but limit itself
to the enunciation of a few general principles.
(a) We are acknowledged the cooperative movement as one of the trans-
forming forces of the present society based upon class antagonism. Its great
merit is to practically show, that the present pauperizing and despotic sys-
tem of the subordination of labor to capital can be superseded by the re-
publican and benecent system of the association of free and equal producers.
(b) Restricted, however, to the dwarsh forms into which individual wage
slaves can elaborate it by their private efforts, the cooperative system will
never transform capitalistic society. To convert social production into one
large and harmonious system of free and cooperative labor, general social
changes are wanted, changes of the general conditions of society, never to be real-
ized save by the transfer of the organized forces of society, viz., the state
power, from capitalists and landlords to the producers themselves.
(c) We recommend to the working men to embark in cooperative produc-
tion rather than in cooperative stores. The latter touch but the surface of the
present economical system, the former attacks its groundwork.
(d) We recommend to all cooperative societies to convert one part of
their joint income into a fund for propagating their principles by examples
as well as by precept, in other words, by promoting the establishment of
new cooperative fabrics, as well as by teaching and preaching.
(e) In order to prevent cooperative societies from degenerating into or-
dinary middle-class joint-stock companies (socit par actions), all workmen
employed, whether shareholders or not, ought to share alike. As a mere
temporary expedient, we are willing to allow shareholders a low rate of
interest.
65
Marxists who have believed that the rst step toward communism is
the planned, state-owned economy have neglected both producers
cooperatives (or cooperative production) and consumers coopera-
tives (or cooperative stores). Originally conceptualized by Utopians
since Robert Owen, cooperative movements gained popularity in
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Transposition and Critique
the 1860s in England after innumerable setbacks. Not only did Marx
never deny them, but he saw possible communism in the association
of free and equal producers. At the same time, Marx pointed out the
limit of the cooperative movements; they are constantly placed in se-
vere competition with capital. Their options would be either to re-
main partially in the area of production where capitalist mode is
hardly developed, to become a stock company itself, or to be de-
feated in the competition and go bankrupt. Therefore, to convert
social production into one large and harmonious system of free and
cooperative labor, general social changes are wanted, changes of the
general conditions of society, never to be realized save by the transfer of
the organized forces of society, namely, the state power, from capi-
talists and landlords to the producers themselves.
Needless to say, as is clear in his critique of Lassalle, it is not to fos-
ter cooperative societies with state aid. To transfer state power to the
producers does not mean that they seize it, but that they abolish it.
Association of associations should take the place of the state.
As I mentioned before, Bakunin thought that Lassalles idea de-
rived from Marx. But nothing is so alien to Marx than resorting to
state power, as Lassalle did. Nonetheless, Marx was also different
from Bakunin in the very aspect that Marx assumed a center for inte-
grating the multiple associations, while refusing the center of the
state power. Is it his authoritarianism? According to Proudhon, anar-
chism is not anarchic (chaotic), but orderly: it is still a sort of govern-
ment. While acknowledging that the phrase anarchic government
involves a kind of contradiction and sounds absurd, Proudhon in-
sists that anarchy is a form of government, that is, self-government
or autonomy. Also he dened anarchism as the idea of reducing po-
litical functions to industrial functions; and that a social order arises
that forms nothing but transactions and exchanges.
66
In this light,
Marxs idea of converting social production into one large and har-
monious system of free and cooperative labor is not contradictory to
Proudhons idea; it has nothing to do with state control.
It is worth noting that Proudhon regarded authority and liberty as
not merely contradictory but as antinomy. Which means that
the two opposite propositions are valid; the thesis is: there ought to be
the center. The antithesis is: there ought not to be a center. For instance,
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Marx
anarchists defy any authority, but if this stance only brings about
chaos, it would end up helping authority to reassert itself. Proudhon
believed he found the principle to overcome this antinomy in the as-
sociation (he called it federation in his late years). It [the idea of
federation] resolves all the problems posed by the need to reconcile
liberty and authority. Thanks to this idea we need no longer fear
being overwhelmed by the antinomies of rule.
67
It would be a new
system that solves the antinomy of freedom and authority.
Earlier in the same book he said:
To balance two forces (authority and liberty) is to submit them to a law
which, obliging each to respect the other brings them into agreement.
What will supply us with this new element, superior to both authority and
liberty, and acquiring pre-eminence with the consent of both?the con-
tract, whose terms establish right, and bear equally upon two contending
forces.
68
Therefore, when Marx criticized Bakunin, he did it not as an author-
itarian. Rather he took the antinomy that Proudhon pointed out
much more seriously than Bakunin did. What is more, Marx praised
the Paris Commune, carried out mainly by Proudhonists, in which
he found the vision of possible communism. Marx was seeking a
method of achieving the liberty that neither falls into chaos nor into
state authority.
Marxs manuscript for the third volume of Capital reads as follows:
Wird gesagt, da nicht allgemeine Ueberproduction, sondern Dispropor-
tion innerhalb der verschiednen Produktionszweige stattnde, so heit das
weiter nichts als da innerhalb der kapitalistischen Productionszweige die
Proportionalitt darstelt, indem hier der Zusammenhang der Produktion
als blindes Gasetz auf die Productionsagenten wirkt, sie nicht als assozierter
Verstand ihn ihrer gemeinsamen Controlle unterworfen haben.
69
This translates to the following:
If it is said that there is no general overproduction, but simply a dispropor-
tion between the different branches of production, this again means noth-
ing more than that, within capitalist production, the proportionality of the
particular branches of production presents itself as a process of passing
constantly out of and into disproportionality, since here the interconnec-
tion of production as a whole functions on the agents of production as
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Transposition and Critique
a blind law, and they do not bring the productive process under their
common control as their associated understanding [assozierter Verstand].
As Japanese philosopher Minoru Tabata pointed out, Engels made
an alteration to the passage while editing Capital:
Wird gesagt, da nicht allegemeine berproduktion, sondern Dispropor-
tion innerhalb der verscheidnen Produktionszweige stattnde, so heit dies
weiter nichts, als da innerhalb der kapitalistischen Produktion die Propor-
tionalitt der einzelnen Produktionszweige sich als bestndiger Proze aus
der Disproportionalitt darstellt, indem hier der Zusammenhang der
gesamten Produktion als blindes Gesetz den Productionsagenten sich
aufzwingt, nicht als von ihrem assozerten Verstand begriffners und damit
beherrschtes Gesetz den Produktionsproze ihrer gemeinsamen Kontrolle
unterworfen hat.
70
This is the same as the version available in English today:
If it is said that there is no general overproduction, but simply a dispropor-
tion between the various branches of production, this again means nothing
more than that, within capitalist production, the proportionality of the par-
ticular branches of production presents itself as a process of passing con-
stantly out of and into disproportionality, since the interconnection of
production as a whole here forces itself on the agents of production as a
blind law, and not as a law which, being grasped and therefore mastered by
their combined reason [assozierter Verstand], brings the productive process
under their common control.
71
Engels interpolation is almost criminal. With his insistence on the
law, he shifted Marxs regulative idea to the constitutive idea of
the Kantian problematic. Obviously, Engelss position is that rule by
the cognition of objective law is equal to freedom. In this context,
assozierter Verstand is no more than Hegelian reason, that is, com-
bined reason. This inexorably leads to the faith that party-state
bureaucrats-reason control economic process. Therefore we can say
that from Engels sprang the idea of communism qua state centrism.
In contrast, Marx never suggested that assozierter Verstand be estab-
lished in one decisive coup.
72
They [the working class] know that
the superseding of the economical conditions of the slavery of labor
by the conditions of free and associated labor can only be the pro-
gressive work of time.
73
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Marx
The term assozierter Verstand sounds rather strange. There is an
issue of translation: whether it be translated as associated under-
standing (in the Kantian manner) or combined reason (in the
Hegelian manner). The rst case is understandable when compared
with, for example, Habermass attempt to reinterpret reason as pub-
lic consensus by communication. But it involves more intricate and
signicant issues.
The fact that Marx intentionally used the terms of classical German
philosophy here shows that the problematic is linked to the past
philosophical problems concerning sensuality and reason, or empiri-
cism and rationalism. For instance, association in the theory of polit-
ical organization could be likened to Humes concept of association
of ideasthe source of Humes skeptical conclusion that there is no
self-same, consistent, single ego. This might be the model of organiza-
tion totally without a center. Counter to this account, Kant claimed
that although there is no substantial ego as Descartes claimed, still ex-
isting is the transcendental apperception X that integrates the mani-
fold associations. Kant stood critically in between Descartes and
Hume. If we can apply it to the theory of political organization, state
centrism is likened to the rule by Cartesian subject, while anarchism
assumes Hume-ian association that dees all identical substance;
and the function of Kantian transcendental apperception corre-
sponds to Marxs associated understanding [assozierter Verstand].
74
In
Marxs idea, association has something like the transcendental apper-
ception Xthat which should not be considered as a substantial cen-
ter, like state or party. In this sense, standing in between archism
(Lassalle) and anarchism (Bakunin), Marx sought to transcriticize
both at the same time. It is for this reason that Marx sometimes ap-
pears to be anarchist and sometimes archist; this ambiguity or even
ambivalence should not be forced into a synthesis, for it is in this con-
stant shift that Marxs transcritique lives. And this must be something
that would solve the antinomy of freedom and authority.
An anarchist such as Bakunin denies all power and center.
75
This
idea takes for granted the tacit assumption that the masses liberated
from oppression create an autonomous order by free association.
But, as Proudhon warned, it would not happen that way. Such a
process would rather invite a more muscular power. Furthermore,
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Transposition and Critique
there is no guarantee that differences between individual abilities
and the love of power would disappear in free associations. Instead,
we should rst assume that these would inexorably remain, and con-
ceptualize a system where these would not found a static power and
class system. Marx did not write about this. But when he highly appre-
ciated the Paris Commune realized by the leadership of Proudhonists,
he saw a step toward a possible communism.
76
This was consistent
with his earlier thinking.
Early Marx began his critical intervention with the critique of
Hegels Philosophy of Right. What he grasped therein were the separa-
tions between civil society and political state, private person and pub-
lic person, that occurred in the modern state. There, while individuals
are treated equally as public persons, they belong to the class relation
of production intrinsic to the capitalist economy. Individuals as public
persons can have only legislative rights or the right to vote, but they
have no administrative rights whatsoever. The so-called peoples sov-
ereignty is real only in that they can vote. Look at the so-called democ-
ratic nation-states; there is no democracy whatsoever in companies
and governmental ofces. Marx thought that, by changing civil society
(social state), it would be possible to abolish the political state. From a
more concrete viewpoint, it is by establishing a system where the social
state is never alienated by the political state, where a static power sys-
tem is never congealed out of the social state (qua commune). What
Marx discerned in Paris Commune was a concrete form of this, which
he called the dictatorship of the proletariat.
On the other hand, Lenins concept of the dictatorship of the
proletariat resulted in the dictatorship of reason-party, the dictator-
ship of a bureaucratic system. Consequently, todays Marxists seem
to swerve away from, ignore, discard, or deny the concept of the dic-
tatorship of the proletariat. But if this new tendency of Marxism re-
sults in the parliamentary democracy and is satised by certain
reformations within it, it is futile. One may not need to cling to such
a misleading concept as dictatorship any longer, yet one should not
forget that historical failure contains crucial lessons. Marxs dictator-
ship of the proletariat is, needless to say, the conceptual opposite of
the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, which signies the parliamen-
tary democracy. Historically speaking, the parliamentary democracy
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Marx
that came into existence by overthrowing the absolutist monarchy is
the quintessential form of bourgeois dictatorship. So it is that a
Marxian proletariat dictatorship would not assume anything similar
to the form of rules extant before the bourgeois dictatorship: feudal
dictatorship or absolutist dictatorship. The bourgeois state invented
devices by means of which to prevent the recurrence of dictatorship:
the separation of legal, administrative, and judicial powers and the
secret ballot. The separation, however, is only nominal. It is just the
principle advocated in order to make sense of the duality of civil
society and political state. In contrast, the dictatorship of the prole-
tariat is, far from the dictatorship of anything, that which aims at the
abolition (sublation) of state power itself. Thus it should be super-
sensitive to the xation of any power structure.
The Paris Commune assumed both a legislative organ and an ad-
ministrative organ; in this sense, it was the sublation of the duality
civil society/political stategeneric in the modern state. But even in
such a social state where the division/duality of public persons and
private persons was sublated, the separation of legal, administrative,
and judicial powers remained. In order to support the participatory
democracy persistently, it had to be sensitive to the separation of
three powers (in a different sense from that of Montesquieu). The
Paris Commune had these three departments of power. That is, it also
had the representative and bureaucratic systems. It had the institution
to elect and ostracize judicial and administrative ofcers. But would
this extent be sufcient to prevent all possible xation of legal, admin-
istrative, and judicial powers, namely, bureaucratization? As Max
Weber said in his Politik als Beruf (1919), the bureaucratic system is in-
evitable and necessary in those societies where the division of labor is
developed; and it cannot be discarded simplemindedly. Accordingly,
we have to admit that even association necessitates representative and
bureaucratic systems, and that the difference of individual abilities
and the will to power remains. Except that we should prevent them
from resulting in any xation of the power system.
There is one crucial thing we can learn from Athenian democracy
in this respect. The ancient democracy was established by overthrow-
ing tyranny and equipped itself with a meticulous device for prevent-
ing tyranny from reviving. The salient characteristic of Athenian
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Transposition and Critique
democracy is not a direct participation of everyone in the assembly, as
always claimed, but a systematic control of the administrative power.
The crux was the system of lottery: to elect public servants by lottery
and to surveil the deeds of public servants by means of a group of
jurors who are also elected by lottery. Interestingly, Perikles, who exe-
cuted political reformation implementing this idea, later fell from
power by the same system. My point is that the core of the system in-
vented to stop the xation of power in Athenian Democracy lay not
in the election itself, but in the lottery. Lottery functions to introduce
contingency into the magnetic power center. The point is to shake up
the positions where power tends to be concentrated; entrenchment
of power in administrative positions can be avoided by a sudden at-
tack of contingency. It is only the lottery that actualizes the separation
of the three powers. If universal suffrage by secret ballot, namely, par-
liamentary democracy, is the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, the in-
troduction of a lottery should be deemed the dictatorship of the
proletariat. The association of associations or assozierter Verstand inex-
orably entails a center; yet the center is constantly replaced by the
contingency; the centrality of the center is displaced in this manner.
The center exists and does not exist at the same time. That is to say, it is the
concrete form of the Kantian transcendental apperception X.
Proudhon learned much from Athenian democracy, but he criti-
cized the bourgeois system of universal suffrage, referring to it as
just like a lottery. Notwithstanding the derogatory nuances at-
tached to the term lottery, lottery is not in the least obstructive to
the electoral system, but a sine qua non to maximize its function. In
any kind of representative voteeven of a communethe represen-
tative and the represented are split in xation. The same group of
people are always chosen, and factional strife transpires. Can we
choose all representatives by lottery in all elections? That is not real-
istic; the system itself would be too arbitrary to gain the trust of the
people. In Athens, the generals were not elected by lottery, but they
were replaced every day; thereby a xation of power was avoided.
Speaking of the use of lottery in institutions today, it is used only
for posts anyone can do, but no one wants to do, such as jurors. In
other words, lottery is used only in the case where the candidates
abilities are equal or do not matter. For us, the point of using it is
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Marx
the opposite. We would use it in order to save the elections from
corruption and choose relatively talented leaders.
Considering these examples, what is preferable to us would be to
choose the most crucial post by lottery: namely, rst choosing three
candidates by secret vote (three in one choice) and then nally
electing one by lottery. Because the last and most crucial stage is de-
termined by contingency, factional disputes or conicts over succes-
sors would not make sense. As a result, a relatively superior, if not
the best, representative would take up the post. Furthermore, the
one who is chosen could not parade his or her superiority and
power, while those who are not chosen have no reason to refuse col-
laboration. This kind of political technique would be functional and
would go beyond the clich, all the power will fall. Employed in
such manner, the lottery would be an ideal method to free the
power center from xation in the long run and choose able man-
agers and leaders when necessary. To repeat, we should not assume
that the human nature of loving power ever changes, or that the dif-
ference and heterogeneity of individual abilities ever disappears.
Even in the production systems or cooperatives managed by work-
ers, these elements are sustained. Especially when the extracapitalist
production systems have to compete with capitalist enterprises, they
are forced either to adopt the organizational principle of corpora-
tions for the sake of improving production or lose and disappear.
Our ideal organization should assume the existence of hierarchy
from the beginning, except that it introduces the election and lot-
tery to escape the stagnation of the power structure.
77
Organization for any counteraction against state and capitalism
must introduce within itself the device of introducing contingency in
the magnetic power center. If not, it will be like the thing it intends
to counter. But unfortunately, as a point of fact, various civil acts that
have begun to negate power-centralist hierarchical organization
remain scattered and have yet to gather themselves for a collective
intervention. They tend to offer the most reliable source of votes for
relatively progressive parties. They are incapable of executing real
counteractions to capital and state. Meanwhile, if and only if we in-
troduce the political technique outlined earlier will we not have to
fear the dangers of centralization.
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5
The Crisis of Synthesis
5.1 The Form of Value qua Synthetic Judgment: Ex Ante Facto
and Ex Post Facto
Capital is a book of political economy. So it is that the majority of
Marxists tacitly swerved their attention to other writings in order to
nd Marxs philosophy or political ideas. In other words, they
sought to interpret Capital by way of the philosophy found else-
where. I am not necessarily of the opinion that Marxs non-Capital
work can be ignored; yet still I insist that Marxs philosophy as well
as his idea of revolution should be found in Capital.
Generally speaking, political economy is a science that cannot ac-
knowledge the being of enigma in human exchange (economic activ-
ity). It takes for granted that the economic activity is sachlich and clear,
though there may be bizarre and complex enigmas, outside, in other
domains. Political economists rather believe that they can elucidate
these enigmas by relying on the objective knowledge of the political
economy. On the other hand, there is no human activity that is not an
exchange (communication). The state, nation, and even religion are
forms of exchange. In this sense, it is possible to see all human activi-
ties as economic. Seen in this way, the domain of political economy is
not necessarily more simple, practical, and objective than others. The
world of political economy, the world organized by money or credit is,
precisely like the world organized by gods and faith, totally phantas-
magoric, yet powerful in its ability to bind and trample our beings.
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Marx
Classical economists had sought to approach the issue of com-
moditys value from the vantage point of labor; they had seen money
merely as the index of labor-value. To them there was no enigma of
money. Based upon the experience of observing the newly appeared
industrial capitalism, they had been inclined to defy the previous
forms of capital: merchant capital and interest-bearing capital.
Then, Marx intervened; he sought to reconsider capital from the
vantage point of merchant capital and interest-bearing capital. He
presented the accumulation of capital using the formula M-C-M.
Marx especially paid attention to interest-bearing capital, that is, the
antideluvian form of capital.
We have seen how merchants capital and interest-bearing capital are the
oldest forms of capital. But it lies in the very nature of the matter that inter-
est-bearing capital should appear to the popular mind as the form of capital
par excellence. In merchants capital we have a mediating activity, whether
this is considered as fraud, labor or whatever. In interest-bearing capital, on
the other hand, the self-reproducing character of capital, self-valorizing
value, the production of surplus-value, appears as a purely occult quality.
1
The retrospection to the oldest form of capital is not due to any
historical concern. It derived from his keen awareness that the for-
mula of merchant capital and interest-bearing capital was presently
at work, and transforming the world. He returned to the old form,
precisely because it was imperative to disclose the notion of the
market economy as an ideology of industrial capital, he did this by
a retrospection.
The formula [M-M] itself expresses that the money is not spent here as
money, but is only advanced, and is thus simply the money form of capital,
money capital. It further expresses the fact that it is the exchange-value, not
the use-value, that is the decisive inherent purpose of the movement. It is
precisely because the money form of value is its independent and palpable
form of appearance that the circulation form M . . . M, which starts and n-
ishes with actual money, expresses money-making, the driving motive of
capitalist production, most palpably. The production process appears sim-
ply as an unavoidable middle term, a necessary evil for the purpose of
money-making. (This explains why all nations characterized by the capital-
ist mode of production are periodically seized by ts of giddiness in which
they try to accomplish the money-making without the mediation of the
production process.)
2
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The Crisis of Synthesis
Therefore, the domain of economic activity cannot be limited to the
exchange of products and services among people.
The young Marx shifted his problematic from the critique of reli-
gion to the critique of political economy. And in Capital, he discov-
ered that the economic world was the ultimate religious world:
A commodity appears at the rst sight an extremely obvious, trivial
thing. But its analysis brings out that it is a very strange thing,
abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties.
3
That is to say that in the simple commodity lurks the essential prob-
lem of metaphysics and theology.
4
By way of speaking of the eco-
nomic problematic, the Marx of Capital was actually wrestling with
the issues of metaphysics and theology more than any other work.
Adam Smith maintained that commodity consisted of use-value
and exchange-value. But for such a synthesis to be established, rst
of all the commodity must be exchanged with another commodity
(an equivalent). Smith obviously thought of commodity in an ex
post facto manner. For him, exchange value is equal to purchasing
power, namely, money-power, or, in other words, every commodity
is already and tacitly money, and currency is just a denominator of
the value. And the exchange value is determined by the amount of
labor-time expended on the production. Smith and Ricardo both
erased money, as it were, by rst considering it as inherent in each
commodity. This is isomorphic to the humanism (of Feuerbach, for
instance) that denies God by rst internalizing God (qua common
species-being) in the individual.
Like classical economists, Marx, too, claimed that commodity was
use-value and value at the same time; the difference was that he
grasped it as a synthesis that might happen in the future. He saw it
ex ante facto. Seen in this way, there is no guarantee as to whether
the synthesis is realized. What does this differenceto see ex post
facto and ex ante factoreally mean? We should scrutinize this by
returning to Kant.
In Critique of Judgment, Kant distinguishes determinative judg-
ments, which categorize concrete individual facts by established
laws, from reective judgments, which pursue a new universality
that subsumes the exceptional facts that are not yet categorized by
established laws. The difculty of synthetic judgment is obviously
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Marx
concerned with the latter. The assumption that reective judgment
proceed smoothly is only made possible by doctrinal faiths [doktri-
nalen Glauben]. But once veried by some way, a reective judg-
ment turns into a determinative judgment. Here it is possible to see
the distinction between reective and determinative as analogous to
that between ex ante facto and ex post facto. For instance, Critique of
Pure Reason presents an ex post facto inquiry into transcendental
conditions upon which synthetic judgments are established, tenta-
tively assuming that they have already been established. This de-
nitely takes an ex post facto position. Nevertheless, this is not to say
that synthetic judgments can easily be established. Synthetic judg-
ments are essentially speculative, containing a certain leap, and it is
precisely because of this risk and ungroundedness that they are ex-
pansive. On the other hand, Kant acknowledges a difculty in syn-
thetic judgments when he sees things from an ex ante facto stance,
as it were. It is not too much exaggeration to say that Kant sought
to think in the ex ante facto stance, except for his transcendental
reections.
Seen from this perspective, it is obvious that Leibnitz spoke from
an ex post facto stance when he considered proposition of fact as an-
alytic proposition, that is, crossed the Rubicon is contained in the
subject Caesar. The same is true of Hegel when he insisted on be-
coming of essence as a result [Wirkung]. Hegel dismissed Kants dis-
tinction between phenomenon and thing-in-itself, claiming that it
was just the distinction between already-recognized and not-yet-
recognized. The absolute spirit qua the absolute after-the-fact-ness
(or the end) allowed him to omit the thing-in-itself. In this manner,
every becoming is realized teleologically as a self-realization of the
Spirit. To Kant, metaphysics and speculative philosophy meant all at-
tempts to prove what could be constituted only as synthetic judgment
by way of analytic judgment. But this critique can be applied, in prin-
ciple, to all ex post facto thought. If so, it might be said, metaphy-
sics is all thought that projects what was already achieved as a result
(or ex post facto) onto future (or ex ante facto) events. Hence
Nietzsches critique of metaphysics took the form of a genealogy: a
belated scrutinity as to how an ex post facto recognition is formed as
a perversion of perspective. But Kants transcendental critique had
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The Crisis of Synthesis
already been genealogical in the sense that it sought to reveal that
the points of departure of empiricists and rationalistssensibility
and conceptswere already and always end-results of the mediation
by certain symbolic forms (Cassirer).
Now we have Kierkegaard and Marx as the most radical critics of
Hegelian ex post facto synthesis. In their respective contexts, both
stressed the salto mortale as apodictically contained in synthetic judg-
ments. Kierkegaard said that speculation is backward-looking, while
ethics is forward-looking. The former is ex post facto, while the lat-
ter is ex ante facto. To Kierkegaard, acknowledging Jesus as Christ is
equal to the synthetic judgment, a man called Jesus is God. For
Hegel, Jesus-as-Christ was proven by the historical fact that Christian-
ity expanded, while Kierkegaard questioned whether we could know
it contemporaneously, namely, ex ante facto. It is only the faith as
salto mortale that allows us see the man Jesus appearing in all of his
lowliness as God.
Kierkegaard saw man as a synthesis of nity (sensibility) and inn-
ity (understanding). But whether or not the synthesis is established
cannot be determined by the ego-self; this requires the intervention
of the other (qua Christ). That is to say that in order to realize the
ego as a synthesis, the salto mortale is sine qua non. Kierkegaard
called this synthesis the qualitative dialectic. And what I want to say
here is that the same critical dialectic is found in Capital, though
Marx is often considered to be antagonistic to Kierkegaard. Marxs
dialectic is not a materialist version of the Hegelian dialectic, as con-
sistently claimed, but a qualitative dialectic, which consciously in-
volves the critical ssure (qua crisis) of synthetic judgment (qua
capital). The approaches of Kierkegaard and Marx point to a univer-
sal problematicbeyond differences of domains, namely, religion,
art, political economyconcerning after-the-fact-ness and before-
the-fact-ness in synthetic judgment.
5
Considering commodity to be use-value and value assumes a synthe-
sis of sensuous and suprasensuous, nite and innite; and the synthe-
sis is not possible if not for a leap. Herein Marx saw an antinomy.
All commodities are non-use-values for their owners, and use-values for their
non-owners. Consequently, they must all change hands. But changing of
hands constitutes their exchange, and their exchange puts them in relation
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Marx
with each other as values and realizes them as values. Hence commodities
must be realized as values before they can be realized as use-values.
On the other hand, they must stand the test as use-values before they can
be realized as values. For the labor expended on them only counts in so far
as it is expended in a form which is useful for others. However, only the act
of exchange can prove whether that labor is useful for others, and its prod-
uct consequently capable of satisfying the needs of others.
6
Elsewhere, Marx said: C-M. First metamorphosis of the commodity, or
sale. The leap taken by value from the body of the commodity into
the body of gold is the commoditys salto mortale, as I have called it
elsewhere. If the leap falls short, it is not the commodity which is de-
frauded but rather its owner.
7
In the strict sense, the unsold and
discarded commodity is defrauded, too. Whether or not the com-
modity is valuable is determined only after the salto mortale of the ex-
change. The commodity that is not sold is entrapped in the form of
wanting in despair to be oneself or in sickness unto death from
Kierkegaard. Commodity may be seen as a synthesis of use-value and
exchange-value only inasmuch as seen from the ex post facto stance,
while such a synthesis does not exist ex ante facto. The value of a
commodity can come into existence only after it is exchanged with
another commodity, an equivalent.
What Marx sought to grasp as value form is the situation in
which a commodity can attain value only by being exchanged by an-
other commodity. This is to say that Marx attached importance to
use-value. Since classical economics started from the result of com-
modities already being placed in equivalency, it did not have to
worry about the phase in which whether a commodity has use-value
(utility) or not to others is crucial. Taking for granted the equiva-
lence, it posited the expended labor as the common essence in-
cluded in every commodity. Seen from the ex ante facto stance, on
the other hand, no matter how much labor is expended on produc-
tion, a commoditys use-value to others has to be questioned. Reject-
ing Smith and Ricardos labor theory of value as metaphysics,
neoclassical economists premised the perspective of utility for buy-
ers. For them, Marx was just an epigone of classical economics. In a
reverse of their understanding, however, Marx, of Capital in particu-
lar, started from the point that a commodity has to have use-value to
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The Crisis of Synthesis
others in order for it to have value. Finally, nothing can be a value
without being an object of utility. If the thing is useless, so is the labor
contained in it; the labor does not count as labor, and therefore cre-
ates no value.
8
Since before Capital, Marx had criticized various aspects of classi-
cal economics. For instance, taking the idea that the substance of
value is labor time, Marx had stressed that it is social labor time. In
other words, he was well aware that it was realized only by the regula-
tions of exchange via money. But classical economics, too, had seen
labor-value from the vantage point of social equilibrium; and Marxs
stress of social characteristics had not really been an overcoming of
it. It could be said that the pre-Capital Marx had sought to explain
the monetary economy, taking for granted the social division of
laborthe very result of the organization of the monetary economy.
This after the fact inquiry was basically the same as that of classical
economics. He had not thought much as to why the exchange of
commodities had to be done via money. Marx had assumed that the
social characteristic of labor realizes itself via money, rather than
the reverse.
Or nally let us take communal labor in its naturally evolved form as we
nd it among all civilized nations at the dawn of their history. In this case
the social character of labor is evidently not mediated by the labor of the in-
dividual assuming the abstract form of universal labor or his product assum-
ing the form of a universal equivalent. The communal system on which
[this mode of] production is based prevents the labor of an individual from
becoming private labor and his product the private product of a separate
individual; it causes individual labor to appear rather as the direct function
of a member of the social organization. Labor which manifests itself in ex-
change value appears to be the labor of an isolated individual. It becomes
social labor by assuming the form of its direct opposite, of abstract universal
labor.
Lastly, it is a characteristic feature of labor which posits exchange
value that it causes the social relations of individuals to appear in the per-
verted form of a social relation between things. The labor of different per-
sons is equated and treated as universal labor only by bringing one use
value into relation with another one in the guise of exchange value.
Although it is thus correct to say that exchange value is a relation between
persons, it is however necessary to add that it is a relation hidden by a mate-
rial veil.
9
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Marx
Marx made the point that the social relations of individuals appear in
a perverted form of a social relation between thingsthis is known as
alienation theory. Lukcs later attached primary importance to this
and raised it to the thesis of reication. But, in fact it is based upon
the same concept as Marxs earlier alienation theory. They both take
the form of projecting what is discovered ex post facto as ex ante
facto. From an ex post facto stance, the social division of labor formed
by the commodity economy looks precisely the same as the division of
labor formed in an enclosed space of community or factory. While the
division of labor in the latter (community) is consciously organized
and transparently apprehensible, the way humans and their labors are
interconnected in the former (society) is unknowable.
Suppose I buy a melon with the royalties I earn from writing this
book. The melon is perhaps grown by a farmer in Florida. He can
never know that his labor is placed in equivalency with my labor.
Furthermore, between the farmer and me lies capital. If we can de-
tect a division of labor between us, it would be only from an ex post
facto position, from which everything becomes transparent.
Certainly Capital, too, contains this ex post facto view. Yet Marx
opposes the idea that different commodities become equivalent be-
cause they contain the same amount of labor.
Men do not therefore bring the products of their labor into relation with
each other as values because they see these objects merely as the material
integuments of homogeneous human labor. The reverse is true: by equat-
ing their different products to each other in exchange as values, they
equate their different kinds of labor as human labor. They do this without
being aware of it. Value, therefore, does not have its description branded
on its forehead; it rather transforms every product of labor into a social hi-
eroglyphic. Later on, men try to decipher the hieroglyphic, to get behind
the secret of their own social product: for the characteristic which objects of
utility have of being values is as much mens social product as is their lan-
guage. The belated scientic discovery that the products of labor, in so far
as they are values, are merely the material expressions of the human labor
expended to produce them, marks an epoch in the history of mankinds de-
velopment, but by no means banishes the semblance of objectivity pos-
sessed by the social characteristics of labor.
10
Only after being posited in equivalency can commodities attain a
common essence, and not vice versa. Abstract labor or social labor
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The Crisis of Synthesis
time is discovered only ex post facto by the exchange (placing in
equivalency). Therefore, social relation should be dened as an
unconscious relation. Marx never denied the labor theory of value,
because it is correct from an ex post facto stance, and because labor
value was actually imposed upon all products via prices by money,
beginning in the stage of industrial capitalism.
In reality, world economic competition is taking place over the
shortening of labor time for production or productivity of labor.
Which does not mean, however, that the vantage point of labor
value explains the enigma of the capitalist economy: The labor the-
ory of value has forgotten money, that is, it has forgotten capitalism.
5.2 The Form of Value
What distinguishes Capital from previous economic works such as A
Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy or Grundrisse is the appear-
ance of the theory of value form. It is one of the chief failings of classi-
cal political economy that it has never succeeded, by means of its
analysis of commodities, and in particular of their value, in discovering
the form of value which in fact turns value into exchange-value. Even
its best representatives, Adam Smith and David Ricardo, treat the form
of value as something of indifference, something external to the na-
ture of the commodity itself.
11
This is true of the pre-Capital Marx him-
self, who was, even if radically critical, within the frame of Ricardian
thought. But, then, there was a radical epistemological breakmuch
more than that in The German Ideology, as Althusser claimedbetween
Grundrisse and Capital, which was rendered by the theory of value form.
We have to take its signicance into deep consideration.
12
What inspired Marx to analyze value form was Samuel Baileys cri-
tique of Ricardo. To Ricardo, all commodities have immanent values
determined by expended labor; in this case, money is gold and its
value is determined by the labor time expended for its production.
Bailey disagreed and insisted that the value of a commodity is ex-
pressed only relatively by the use-value of another commodity, and
that there is no absolute measure of value beyond the relation.
Value denotes consequently nothing positive or intrinsic, but merely the rela-
tion in which two objects stand to each other as exchangeable commodities. . . .
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Marx
In the circumstance, that it denotes a relation between two objects, but
merely the relation in which two objects stand to each other as exchange-
able commodities. . . .
It is from this circumstance of constant reference to other commodities,
or to money, when we are speaking of the relation between any two com-
modities, that the notion of value, as something intrinsic and absolute, has
arisen.
13
While Ricardo maintained that every commodity contains value
(qua labor time) within, Bailey insisted that the value of a commod-
ity exists only in its relation with other commodities: thus it is only
customary. Marxs theory of value form was formed transcritically
between these poles.
To Bailey, values of things are little more than their relationship
with other things (including gold); there is no immanent value sub-
stance. Values of things produce a chain of relations, either without
a center or with innumerable centers. In reality, the incessant uctu-
ation of value proves the inherent centerlessness. Ricardo also saw
the difculty of the labor input theory of value therein. In fact, in
the beginning of the section on value form in Capital, Marx, too, de-
ployed an account of the uctuation of the labor time necessary for
production and its inuence over relative value form.
14
The point
being that, if the value of a commodity were determined merely by
its value relation with all other commodities, the whole system would
be affected by the change of a single item.
Baileys comment on the subject is especially crucial: Value is a
relation between contemporary commodities, because such only
admit of being exchanged for each other; and if we compare the
value of a commodity at one time with its value at another, it is only
a comparison of the relation in which it stood at these different
times to some other commodity.
15
That is to say that commodities
form a synchronic system of relation, as it were. But Bailey over-
looked a simple factthat commodities cannot be exchanged directly. All
commodities are mutually interrelated, but only mediated by money
qua the general equivalent. Ricardo considered labor-value substan-
tial and money secondary, while tacitly relying upon the being of
money. In a similar way, Bailey tacitly took moneys being for
granted: his synchronic system is organized by the very money that is
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The Crisis of Synthesis
a zero sign or a repressed center. Nonetheless he made little of
money, because he identies money with gold.
16
But, this presents a
formal and logical problem vis--vis money: even if money can be gold,
gold cannot be money. One cannot exchange a commodity directly
with gold. First, we have to change it to money, and then buy gold.
Then, what makes gold money? Or why can commodities not be di-
rectly exchanged with each other? This is precisely what Marx ques-
tioned in his theory of value form.
The difference between Ricardo and Bailey might be identied as
that between dogmatism (or rationalism) and skepticism (or empiri-
cism). Indeed Bailey is like Hume (aside from Humes own theory of
political economy). As Kants dogmatic slumber was interrupted, so
was Marx, who had been dependent upon Ricardos theory of value
substance-input labor, shaken by Baileys skeptical approach. There-
fore, Marxs Copernican turn in Capital is isomorphic to the Kantian
turn provoked by Humes subversive skepticism. In between object
(qua use-value) and value, Marx discovered the form of value which
makes them what they are, from which they derive. Kant, on the one
hand, rejected rationalism as metaphysics, and on the other hand,
pointed out to Hume that the sense data, his point of departure, was
already a product of the mediation by the form of sensibility. Hence
Kant discovered symbolic formin the term of Ernst Cassirerin
between sensibility and concept, the unmediated points of departure
for previous philosophers. Such is transcendental reection. And
precisely in the same manner, Marx extracted value form, the very
magic that makes products and commodities money.
As I have said earlier, Hume dismissed the Cartesian ego cogito
and posed plural egos instead. Then Kant intervened, rebuking the
Cartesian ego as illusion; with respect to Humes thesis, he criticized
it, pointing to the function of transcendental apperception X on the
basis of the plural egos. The stance to consider the X as some empir-
ical substance is metaphysics, but we can hardly escape from the
drive to consider the X as substance. In this sense, it is more correct
to say that ego is not just an illusion but a transcendental illusion.
The point here is that money is something like that. According to
Ricardo, commodities contain exchange-value in themselves, and it
is money that is the denominator. That is to say, for him, money is
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Marx
just an illusion. Based upon this idea, both Ricardian leftists and
Proudhon proposed the labor money and exchange bank as alterna-
tives. Criticizing this position, however, Marx was still within the con-
nement of the labor theory of value. Then suddenly he was
confronted by Baileys critique that claimed that the value of a com-
modity exists nowhere but in its relationship with other commodi-
ties. Therefore the labor-value claimed to be internalized in
commodities is just an illusion and thereafter, Marxs theory of value
was forged to be transcendental.
It was only after the relational system of commodities was synthe-
sized by money and each commodity was given value that classical
economics was able to consider each commodity as internalizing
labor-value. For his part, Bailey insisted that there existed only val-
ues qua commodity relations; however, his thought neglected to
question what is money that prices them. This was the same as hav-
ing overlooked the agent that composes the system of commodities,
namely, money as the general equivalent form in Marxs term.
Money in this sense is precisely like a transcendental apperception
X, in contrast to the substantial aspect of money such as gold or sil-
ver. To take it substantially is, to Marx, fetishism. Money as fetish is
an illusion. But, in the sense that it is the kind of illusion that is hard
to eliminate, it is a transcendental illusion.
For the mercantilists and monetary system that preceded classical
economics, money was a special thing. Marx called it the fetish of
money. Classical economics scorned it and posed labor as an alter-
native value substance, yet they left the fetishism of money intact.
The auto-reproductive movement of capital (M-C-M) itself is the
product of the fetish of money. Both Ricardo, the pioneer of labor
theory of value, and his critic, Bailey (the unacknowledged founder
of the neoclassical school), just covered up money on the surface. At
times of crises, as Marx said, people rush to money, turning back to
the monetary system. Thus, the Marx of Capital traced a trajectory
back to mercantilism passing Ricardo and Bailey. And by criticizing
both of his predecessors, Marx revealed the formthe transcenden-
tal formthat constitutes the commodity economy.
For Marx, what makes a certain thingnamely, goldmoney is
not precisely its material nature. Gold becomes money only because
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The Crisis of Synthesis
it is posited in a certain formthe general equivalent form. In this
sense, it does not have to be gold. What Marx discovered was the
form that makes objects money. In the same way, what makes objects
commodity is the commodity form. Classical economists did not dis-
tinguish commodities from objects in general. They believed that
objects in and of themselves had value, and it was here that Marx in-
serted his break, stating that what makes objects commodity is the
commodity form.
To understand this, Marxs formalist intervention, I refer to lan-
guage. In linguistics, the material voice/sound and the phoneme
that which discriminates meaningare distinguished. The phoneme
is already a form that renders signication. In the same sense, ob-
jects and the objects posited in the commodity form are different.
The use-values of commodities provide the material for a special
branch of knowledge, namely the commercial knowledge of com-
modities. Use-values are only realized [verwirklicht] in use or in
consumption. They constitute the material content of wealth, what-
ever its social form may be. In the form of society to be considered
here they are also the material bearers [Trger] of . . . exchange-
value.
17
In value form, the value of a commodity is expressed by the
use-value of another commodity. In this case, use-value should be
considered as a signier rather than as just material function. It is a
material form for value. Lacking this differentiation, classical econo-
mists could not distinguish goods (and their production) from com-
modities (and their production). Missing this distinction is equal to
missing the distinction between production in the capitalist com-
modity economy and other kinds of social productions. To say it dif-
ferently, classical economics did not distinguish them because they
assumed that capitalist production would sooner or later prevail
against all other productions. And this assumption was wrong. The
capitalist commodity economy forms a worldwide system of the divi-
sion of labor, nevertheless it does not cover all kinds of production.
Instead this continues to give noncapitalist and noncommodity pro-
ductions a ctitious institution. This is expressed in Marxs discourse:
[a small peasant] is rst of all considered as his own employer
(capitalist), employing himself as a worker, and his own landowner,
using himself as his own farmer. He pays himself wages as a
6715 CH05 UG 1/29/03 7:55 PM Page 197
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Marx
worker, lays claim to prot as a capitalist and pays himself rent as a
landowner.
18
The commodity economy is that which organizes objects and their
production within its ctitious institution, thus giving them com-
modity form. No matter how much it expands, those products and
productions that are not yet fully encompassed by it endure. In
other words, what we grasp as objects of the political economy are
never the things-themselves but only the phenomena that are
constituted by the commodity economy. The capitalist commodity
economy discovers its limit in those things that it cannot organize at
its disposal. As I relate later, these are the natural environment (that
agriculture seeks to organize), and human beings (the labor power
that industrial capital exploits as commodity).
Scrutinizing commodity form thus necessitates a transcendental
elucidation of the form that makes objects commodity and/or money.
In the simple form of value, the value of commodity A is expressed
by the use-value of commodity B. Therein commodity A is in the rela-
tive form of value, while commodity B is in the equivalent form. The
simple form of value is expressed in the following equation:
20 yards of linen 1 coat
(relative form of value) (equivalent form)
Setting out from this premise, Marx logically describes the develop-
ment to the expanded form of value, to the general equivalent
form of value wherein one commodity exclusively stands in the
equivalent form of value while others are in the relative form of
value, and nally to money form. Although this description seems
like a Hegelian development, in fact it is the reverse: Marx discovers,
stage by stage, what is repressed by the more developed forms by way
of his transcendental-genealogical retrospection. In other words, he
discovers the enigma of money lurking behind the simple form of
value.
What the equation indicates is that twenty yards of linen cannot
express its value by itself; its value can be presented in its natural
form only after being posited in the equivalency with one coat. On
the other hand, one coat is in the position that it can always be ex-
changed with the former. It is the equivalent form that makes the
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The Crisis of Synthesis
coat seem as if it had exchange-value (direct exchangeability) in it-
self. The equivalent form of a commodity, accordingly, is the form
in which it is directly exchangeable with other commodities.
19
The
enigma of money is lurking behind the equivalent form. Marx called
it fetishism of the commodity.
But, this simple equation does not mean that the one coat is the
only, unequivocal, equivalent form. It is possible for twenty yards of
linen to be in the equivalent form as well.
Of course, the expression 20 yards of linen 1 coat, or 20 yards of linen is
worth 1 coat, also includes its converse: 1 coat 20 yards of linen, or 1 coat
is worth 20 yards of linen. But in this case I must reverse the equation, in
order to express the value of the coat relatively; and, if I do that, the linen
becomes the equivalent instead of the coat. The same commodity cannot,
therefore, simultaneously appear in both forms in the same expression of
value. These forms rather exclude each other as polar opposites.
Whether a commodity is in the relative form or in its opposite, the equiv-
alent form, entirely depends on its actual position in the expression of
value. That is, it depends on whether it is the commodity whose value is
being expressed, or the commodity in which value is expressed.
20
Thus it is strictly up to its position whether a thing is a commodity or
money. A thing can be money only because it is posited in the equiv-
alent form. And the thing can also be a commodity when posited in
the relative form of value. The relative form of value and the equiv-
alent form are two inseparable moments, which belong to and mu-
tually condition each other; but, at the same time, they are mutually
exclusive or opposed extremes, that is, poles of the expression of
value.
21
In the money form, gold or silver occupies the position of
the general equivalent form, while everything else is placed in the
relative form of value. In consequence:
[w]hat appears to happen is not that a particular commodity becomes
money because all other commodities express their values in it, but, on the
contrary, that all other commodities universally express their values in a
particular commodity because it is money. The movement through which
this process has been mediated vanishes in its own result, leaving no trace
behind. Without any initiative on their part, the commodities nd their
own value-conguration ready to hand, in the form of a physical commod-
ity existing outside but also alongside them. This physical object, gold or sil-
ver in its crude state, becomes, immediately on its emergence from the
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Marx
bowels of the earth, the direct incarnation of all human labor. Hence the
magic of money.
22
To be certain, classical economists were free from the magic of money
that had haunted bullionists (the monetary system). Nonetheless, re-
garding money simply as secondary, as an external object, they ig-
nored the asymmetricitybetween the equivalent form and the
relative forminherent in the form of value. This was the same as
negating the difculty inherent in exchange. Marxs simple form of
value is not a historical departure from which money developed, but
an arch that is discovered only by the transcendental-genealogical ret-
rospection from the market economythat which classical econo-
mists deemed self-evident.
5.3 Capitals Drive
Marxs theory of value form does not deal with the historical origin
of money. It is a transcendental (and retrospective) reection upon
exchange mediated by money. Adam Smith famously posited the
origin of money in the barter system. In exchange via money, one
can certainly locate the exchanges of things at one end. This does
not mean however that the exchange of things develops into the
monetary economy. The exchange of things is made possible by
something totally different: the reciprocity of gift and return.
Adam Smith wrote as follows:
This division of labor, from which so many advantages are derived, is not
originally the effect of any human wisdom, which foresees and intends that
general opulence to which it gives occasion. It is the necessary, though very
slow and gradual, consequence of a certain propensity in human nature
which has in view no such extensive utility; the propensity to truck, barter,
and exchange one thing for another.
Whether this propensity be one of those original principles in human na-
ture of which no further account can be given; or whether, as seems more
probable, it be the necessary consequences of the faculties of reason and
speech, it belongs not to our present subject to inquire. It is common to
all men, and to be found in no other race of animals, which seem to know
neither this nor another species of contracts.
23
Marx cast doubt upon the premises assumed by the theories of origin.
(In Smiths time, there were many reections on originand of
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The Crisis of Synthesis
language in particularby Rousseau and Herder, for instance).
Smiths position on barter as the origin was itself a product of the capi-
talist market economy. Once the origin was identied as barter, money
was posited as secondary product. But the market economy is far knot-
tier than it looks: It is not just a place where things and services are ex-
changed via money; it is a place where the exchanges occur as capitals
movement. Smiths theory of origin covers up the peculiarity of the
capitalist market economy, namely, the asymmetry inherent in the ex-
change between commodity and money. The implication is that the
position of money form and the position of commodity form are not
symmetric; those who are in money form (the buyer) and those who
are in commodity form (the seller) are not symmetric. Those who
have money can buy things anytime they want, while those who have
commodities have to sell them as soon as possible before they depreci-
ate. Having money is far more advantageous. This becomes conspicu-
ous especially in the relationship between those who have only
labor-power commodity and those who buy it with money. This is a
free relationship based upon lawful contract, unlike feudal domina-
tion and subordination. Yet it is also a hierarchical relationship par ex-
cellence, based as it is upon the asymmetric relationship (form)
between commodity and money (capital). Speaking of the origin of
money, Smith gives the impression that the symmetry in the relation of
exchange is a permanent natural form (based upon human instinct).
On the contrary, by way of transcendentaland not empiricalretro-
spection, Marx discovered the form of value, namely, the asymmetric
relationship between the relative value form and the equivalent form.
This veries that the exchange can never be symmetric.
After this, in the chapter, The Process of Exchange, Marx ap-
pears to give a historical account of the genesis of monetary ex-
change. There his stress is the intermundia, the space between
communities. The exchange of commodities begins where commu-
nities have their boundaries, at their points of contact with other
communities, or with members of the latter. However, as soon as
products have become commodities in the external relations of a
community, they also, by reactions, become commodities in the in-
ternal life of the community.
24
This discourse is, in the strict sense,
not dealing with an empirical problematic per se but the kind of
problematic that is grasped only by the power of abstraction, to
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Marx
use Marxs term, because this is not something that came into exis-
tence at a certain time in a remote age, but something that is always
already and presently going on, and furthermore, because the impli-
cation of Marxs communities is manifold, including many levels,
from the family, tribe, nation-state, and so on.
What is the implication of the statement that commodity ex-
change begins in between communities? First, this exchange is dif-
ferent from that which takes place within communities in the
common sense, which is mainly motivated by the principle of reci-
procity in gift and return. For instance, even in those nation-states
where the commodity economy is most advanced, within families
there isif a division of laborno commodity exchange. Within
families the functional exchange is the reciprocity of a gift called
love. Second, there is looting in disguise within a community, also
known as taxation and redistribution, which is yet different from the
violent form that occurs in contact between communities. Thus, in
precommodity economic situations, dominant within communities
were the relationships based on gifting and/or looting, while the
commodity economy took place only marginally.
Karl Polanyi made such a claimthat the reciprocity of gifting
and redistribution was dominant before the market economy took
holdin his book The Great Transformation.
25
Here the point I would
like to stress is that redistribution is, from the beginning, a form of
plunder, or more to the point, an institution in order to plunder
continuously. Feudal lords ruled agrarian communities as they pil-
laged their products. They restricted the amount of robbing to a
level where peasants could survive; they also had to protect them
from external forces, and conduct public undertakings such as irri-
gation works. For this reason, the peasants obligation to pay the
land tax was represented as a return or duty. That is to say that plun-
der takes the guise of reciprocity. This form of redistribution was es-
sentially consistent with that in absolutist monarchies as well as
nation-states. By redistributing the tax it levies, the state apparatus
seeks to resolve class conicts and solve unemployment problems.
And again all of these are represented as the states gift.
Plunder is compulsive, while the reciprocity of gifting assumes a
different kind of compelling power. That is, a gift compels the gifted
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The Crisis of Synthesis
to make a return. As typically observed in potlatch, gifting the other
is returned by the others double gift, and this reciprocity continues
ad innitum. This compelling power is different from the one in ex-
change, that enforces the carrying out of a contract. This power
(called mana or hau by some aboriginals) is driven by the psychologi-
cal feeling of debt. Functionalist anthropologists interpreted this
reciprocity of gifting as having resulted in exchange. Herein the ex-
change had not been intended. Therefore, gift and commodity ex-
change should be deemed a genealogically unrelated, but coexisting
difference. And it is never likely that commodity exchange would
cover the whole domain of human exchanges, precisely like com-
modity production remains a part of production in general. Even in
fully developed capitalist economies where commodity exchange
reaches its zenith by way of commodifying labor power, commodity
exchange remains strictly partial. The forms of robbery and gifting
persist even in the stage in which commodity production and
commodity exchange appear to permeate to the limit.
Marxists typically held that the economic domain was a base struc-
ture, while state and nation were superstructure. Furthermore, they
restated that the superstructure nevertheless was relatively au-
tonomous to, though determined by, the economic base. First, the
very notion that the capitalist economy is base or infrastructure is it-
self questionable. The world organized by money and credit is
rather one of illusion, with a peculiarly religious nature. Saying this
from the opposite view, even though state and nation are composed
by communal illusion, precisely like capitalism, they inevitably exist
thanks to their realistic grounds. So it is that we cannot dissolve
them by saying that they are illusory.
It must be thought that capital, state, and nation are indepen-
dently based on different principles of exchange. It is difcult to dis-
tinguish them because they formed a trinity at the beginning of the
bourgeois modern state that still persists. It is thus necessary to dis-
tinguish the principles of exchange, according to each type. This at-
tempt should be different from a historiographical analysis, rather a
kind of transcendental retrospection. We would discover herein the
three types of exchange: the reciprocity of gift and return, plunder
and redistribution, and commodity exchange via money. What is
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Marx
more, there is another type of exchange: we call this association.
This is based upon a principle distinct from either of the three:
therein the exchange would no longer be exploitive like that in the
state and capital; the reciprocity would be spontaneous and open
unlike that in the agrarian community.
It is possible to say that in the beginning of modernity the commod-
ity exchange expanded dramatically, overpowering other types of ex-
change. No matter how much it expands, however, it wont be able to
assimilate every domain. (In this sense, todays prospects based on the
globalization fever are wrong.) First, as Marx said, it is the juridical
relation, whose form is the contract.
26
In other words, it already relies
on the state apparatus that guarantees and protects the execution of
the contract by means of violence. Second, it wont be able to decom-
pose the traditional community entirely. For instance, it wont be able
to replace the family relationship with the commercial relationship in
the market economy. It has to rely on the noncommercial relation-
ship within family. Furthermore, the commodity economy cannot to-
tally assimilate agricultural production. Capital has to depend on the
relations in family and community, especially in order for the produc-
tion of humans and nature. The capitalist economy can exist upon
the premise of the non/precapitalist mode of production. Therefore,
these other forms will persist, no matter how far the capitalist market
economy is globalized. Later on, I scrutinize the cases of the state and
nation. Here it is crucial to note that capital, state, and nation should
be seen as different forms of human exchange, and not structured
like the architectonic metaphor: base/superstructure. It is important
to understand the hardship entailed in human exchange, the hard-
ship that is responsible for the endurance of the oppressive forms of
capital, state, and nation.
Adam Smith did not distinguish commodity exchange from ex-
change in general. This is the same as identifying the social division
of labor by commodity exchange with the division of labor within
communities. He takes for granted the principle of the market econ-
omy as a suprahistorical principle. Those who objected to this posi-
tionPolanyi being one of themresorted to a form of exchange
other than that of commodity. Lvi-Strauss and George Bataille
interpreted exchange in a wider sense. Lvi-Strauss approached the
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The Crisis of Synthesis
structure of kinship from the vantage point of the exchange of
women. According to Bataille, gift is a form of exchange, and the
commodity economy is just a part of the general economy. Neither
of these attempts tackled the problematic inherent in commodity
exchange, even if they proved the historicity and partiality of the
market economy.
27
Notwithstanding that it is based upon consensus, commodity ex-
change produces a hierarchical relationship. This relationship, how-
ever, is not the same as the one based on plunder. The hierarchy
inherent in the capitalist economy derives from the asymmetric rela-
tionship between commodity and money. This is based upon the
fact that commodity cannot be exchanged if not mediated by the
equivalent (money). Hence Marx retrospectively inquired rst into
the form of value that nurtures commodity and money (rather than
the owner of commodity and the owner of money themselves).
Every individual can be the owner of a commodity and/or of money.
Yet the commodity/money relationshipthat between the relative
form of value and the equivalent formpersists. Capital can sustain
itself inasmuch as it self-reproduces and self-valorizes. This move-
ment must persist no matter who the agents and what they think.
This has nothing to do with individual desire and will.
28
For this pre-
cise reason, Marx said:
To prevent possible misunderstandings, let me say this. I do not by any
means depict the capitalist and landowner in rosy colors. But individuals are
dealt with here only in so far as they are the personications of economic
categories, the bearers [Trger] of particular class-relations and interests. My
standpoint, from which the development of the economic formation of soci-
ety is viewed as a process of natural history, can less than any other make the
individual responsible for relations whose creature he remains, socially
speaking, however much he may subjectively raise himself above them.
29
In this domain, individuals cannot be the subject as they are, except
that, if they can be subjective (active), it is only as an agent of the
category of money. So it is that the capitalists can be active. How-
ever, capitalists are also confronting hardship: surplus value can be
attained only by the wage workers in totality buying back what they
produce. That is to say that capital at least once has to stand in the po-
sition of buyer, being subordinated to the will of the wage workers
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Marx
who are in the position of seller. Here there is a dialectic that is differ-
ent from the Hegelian dialectic based upon the relationship between
master and slaves, based upon plunder. The neoclassical economists
overlooked this dynamic relation between categories that entails an
overturn. They assume only consumerists and corporations as the sub-
jects of economic activity and speak of the issues of the market econ-
omy as if the crux were just how corporations could respond to the
demands of the consumers. This position forms a stagnant parallelism
with the majority of Marxists who are only concerned with the class
domination that exists in the production process.
For both classical and neoclassical economists, the task is to eluci-
date how the social equilibrium can be achieved when individuals are
acting for their maximal interest (i.e., either prot or utility). This
thematic belongs to the matter of the market economy and its mech-
anism; it has nothing to do with the foundational question, What is
capitalism? These economists start from the individuals and compa-
nies who pursue their maximal interests. Yet these individuals them-
selves are the products of the commodity economy, and thus
historical. Their desire itself is already mediated. In order to shed light
on this, we have to return to the form of pre-industrial capital, rather
than focusing on the characteristics of advanced industrial capital.
Classical economics dropped money because its predecessor, the
ideology of mercantilism, had supported the accumulation of
money by trade. Money gives anyone the right to exchange directly
with anything, anytime, and therefore, everyone seeks to have it.
This is the fetish of money. Nonetheless, Marxs objective was no
longer simply to criticize the illusion of bullionism. Classical econo-
mists had already attacked the money-fetishist thinking of mercantil-
ism, and Marx acknowledged this as their great contribution; that
they opposed the money-centered stance of mercantilism and
sought to reconsider the value of commodity from the vantage point
of the process of production. Meanwhile, he himself was consistently
concerned with money qua metaphysical conundrum. He wrote
about it in A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy:
Only the conventions of everyday life make it appear commonplace and or-
dinary that social relations of production should assume the shape of
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The Crisis of Synthesis
things, so that the relations into which people enter in the course of their
work appear as the relations of things to one another and of things to peo-
ple. This mystication is still a very simple one in the case of a commodity.
Everybody understands more or less clearly that the relations of commodi-
ties as exchange values are really the relations of people to the productive
activities of one another. The semblance of simplicity disappears in more
advanced relations of production. All the illusions of the monetary system
arise from the failure to perceive that money, though a physical object with
distinct properties, represents a social relation of production. As soon as
the modern economists, who sneer at the illusions of the monetary system,
deal with the more complex economic categories, such as capital, they dis-
play the same illusions. This emerges clearly in their confession of naive as-
tonishment when the phenomenon that they have just ponderously
described as a thing reappears as a social relation and, a moment later,
having been dened as a social relation, teases them once more as a thing.
30
The magic of money was no longer the concern for classical econo-
mists. Money, for them, was just a barometer of value (labor time)
immanent in commodity, or a means of circulation. It follows that
they gave importance to the production of goods and services and
the adjustment of exchange by market. This emphasis made them
overlook the mystery of capital as self-reproducing money, or the
fundamental motive drive of capitalism. Furthermore, it made them
lose sight of the asymmetric, hierarchical relation between capital as
the buyer and wage workers as those who have to sell their labor-
power commodity; it made them fail to grasp the critical moment of
capitalthat it has to, at least once, stand in the selling position due
to its self-reproductive nature.
What Marx said with respect to circulation can be summarized
as follows: in the process of circulation C-M-C, C-M (selling) and
M-C (buying) are separate, and precisely for this reason, the sphere of
exchange is innitely expandable in both space and time. Neverthe-
less, in this process, because of the fatal leap implicit in C-M or C-M
(selling), the possibility of crises exists. If circulation is expressed
in the circuit C-M-C, this process simultaneously contains a reverse
process: M-C and C-M. That is to say, the movement of money is the
circulation of commodities, but not vice versa. Hence although the
movement of money is merely the expression of the circulation of
commodities, the situation appears to be the reverse of this, namely
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Marx
the circulation of commodities seems to be the result of the move-
ment of money.
31
Therefore, C-M-C and M-C-M seem like the
front and back of the same cycle, but are completely different be-
cause the initiative of the circulation is seized and controlled by the
possessor of money.
The movement of capital is, simply expressed, M-C-M (MM).
In vulgar economics, capital simply means funds, while to Marx capi-
tal means the whole process of metamorphosisfrom money to pro-
duction equipment/raw material, to products, and to money again.
If the metamorphosis is not complete, namely, if capital cannot
complete its self-reproduction, it is no longer capital. But, because
the metamorphosis appears as the circulation of commodity, the
movement of capital is concealed within. For this reason precisely,
in the imagination of classical and neoclassical economists the self-
reproductive movement of capital is dissolved within the circulation
of commodities, or in the process of the production and consump-
tion of goods. The ideologues of industrial capital avoid the word
capitalism, preferring market economy, which conveniently rep-
resents capitals movement as peoples free exchange of things via
money in the marketplace. This veils the fact that market exchange
is at the same time the place for capitals accumulation. When the
market economy is in turmoil, these ideologues like to criticize spec-
ulative nancial capital as being responsible for the disorder, as if
the market economy itself were innocent of capitals business.
The economic phenomenon that appears as the production and
consumption of goods contains a veiled, perverted drive which is to-
tally different from the ostensible activity. This is the will to M (M
M), the fetishism of money. But Marx saw it as the fetish of com-
modity; this was because he took as a given that classical economists
had already criticized the fetishism of money. At the same time, he
realized that the fetishism of money was still surviving, inscribed
within the stance of classical economics itself (especially the claim
that each commodity internalizes value). So it is that the fetishism of
commodity here should not be confused with the commodity fetish
in the eld of consumption, namely, that which xes consumers
eyes on advertisements in mass image or show windowsthe focus
of innumerable Marxian historians and cultural commentators
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today. This is equal to the drive to attain the right to consume any-
where and anytime, instead of consumption at this moment. It is this
drive that makes goldout of all other commoditiessublime.
What I would like to focus on here is not how capitals self-repro-
duction is possible but why capitals movement has to continue end-
lessly. Indeed this is interminable and without telos. If merchant capital
(or mercantilism) that runs after money (gold) is a perversion, then
industrial capital, that appears to be more productive, has been be-
queathed the perversion. In fact, before the advent of industrial cap-
ital, the whole apparatus of capitalism, including the credit system,
had already been complete; industrial capital began within the appa-
ratus and altered it according to its disposition. Then what is the
perversion that motivates the economic activity of capitalism? It is
the fetishism of money (commodity).
At the fountainhead of capitalism, Marx discovered the miser
(money hoarder), who lives the fetishism of money in reality. Owning
money amounts to owning social prerogative, by means of which
one can exchange anything, anytime, anywhere. A money hoarder is a
person who gives up the actual use-value in exchange for this right.
Treating money not as a medium but as an end in itself, plutolatory, or
the drive to accumulate wealth, is not motivated by material need.
Ironically, the miser is materially disinterested, just like the devotee
who is indifferent to this world in order to accumulate riches in
heaven. In a miser there is a quality akin to religious perversion. In
fact, both money saving (hoarding) and world religion appeared at
the same time, that is, when circulationwhich was rst formed in
between communities and gradually interiorized within them
achieved a certain global nature. Therefore, if one sees the sublime in
religious perversion, one should see the same in a misers perversion;
or if one sees a certain vulgar sentiment in the miser, one should see
the same in the religious perversion. It is the same sublime perversion.
The hoarder therefore sacrices the lusts of his esh to the fetish of gold.
He takes the gospel of abstinence very seriously. On the other hand, he can-
not withdraw any more from circulation, in the shape of money, than he
has thrown into it, in the shape of commodities. The more he produces, the
more he can sell. Work, thrift, and greed are therefore his three cardinal
virtues, and to sell much and buy little is the sum of his political economy.
32
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Marx
The motive for hoarding money does not come from the desire
whether or not mediated by the desire of othersfor material (use
value). It must be said that all psychological or physiological ap-
proaches to analyzing this motive are altogether more vulgar than
the miser himself, because lurking behind the motive of the miser is
a religious problem, as it were.
Because material can be purchased anytime if money is saved,
there is no need to stockpile. So it is that saving or accumulation it-
self begins in the saving of money. Saving money instead of material
is not caused by any technical limitation of saving material. Outside
the sphere of the monetary economy there is no autotelic impulse to
save in any community. As George Bataille said, in such communi-
ties, excessive products are just expended. Far from being motivated
by need or desire, saving is rooted in perversion (the opposite of
need or desire); and, in reverse, it is the saving that creates in indi-
viduals the more-than-necessary need and multifarious desire. To be
sure, the savings of the miser and the capitalist are not the same;
while the miser attempts to be left out of the circulation process by
selling much and buying little, the capitalist has to voluntarily leap
into the auto-movement M-C-M (MM).
Use-value must therefore never be treated as the immediate aim of the capi-
talist; nor must the prot on any single transaction. His aim is rather the
unceasing movement of prot-making. The boundless drive for enrich-
ment, this passionate chase after value, is common to the capitalist and the
miser; but while the miser is merely a capitalist gone mad, the capitalist is
a rational miser. The ceaseless augmentation of value, which the miser
seeks to attain by saving his money from circulation, is achieved by the
more acute capitalist by means of throwing his money again and again into
circulation.
33
What motivates the movement of merchant capital is the same as the
saving impulse (money fetishism) of a miser. Merchant capitals sav-
ing of money in consequence realizes the saving of goods, though it
appears less as an accumulation of various products from various
places than as an expansion of the process of circulation or of pro-
duction and consumption. The same can be said of industrial capi-
talit does not aim at the increase of goods (use-value), as classical
economics thought. In this sense, Max Weber was correct when he
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saw an asceticism to use-value in the motivation of industrial capital-
ism. Puritans were rational misers, as it were; however, what drives
capitalism is not their rationality but their perversion. The drive of
capitalism exists in this paradoxical nature: the rejection of goods
ends up accruing more goods, contributing to the accumulation of
property. For this reason, negation of the desire toward consump-
tion, the materialism, cannot amount to the criticism of capitalism.
As I quoted earlier, Marx posited merchant capital and interest-
bearing capital as the oldest forms of capital. But at their root are
money-hoarders. In reality, both usurer and interest can exist only
thanks to money hoarding, that which causes the shortage of money
in the circulation process. Therefore, the movement of capital, the
hoarding drive, that unwittingly has been forming the globalization
of humanity in the world, does not have a rational motivation. In
Freudian terms it is a sort of compulsion to repeat [Wiederhol-
ungszwang]. This nature comes to manifest itself in totality in the
stage of capitalist productionwherein the commodity economy
subsumes the labor-power commodity and makes merchant capital
commercial capital, merely, a division of the whole system. This
compulsion to repeat can be elucidated only by a retrospective
query to the miser.
5.4 Money and Its Theology, Its Metaphysics
Being nurtured in between communities, merchant capital or the
commodity economy has, in principle, a global nature. Capitalist
production, though only partial, can affect and transform the whole
world because this power comes from the sociality (global nature) of
the commodity economy. As money develops into world money, so
the commodity owner becomes a cosmopolitan. The cosmopolitan
relations of men to one another originally comprise only their rela-
tions as commodity owners. Commodities as such are indifferent to
all religious, political, national, and linguistic barriers. Their universal
language is price and their common bond is money.
34
For instance,
the realistic ground for Kants cosmopolitan society [Weltbrgergesell-
shaft] lies in the commodity economy. In fact, Kant, too, saw the
ground for perpetual peace in the development of commerce.
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Marx
Classical economists of the age when industrial capitalism became
dominant lost any awareness of the theological nature of the com-
modity economy. Young Marx said: For Germany the criticism of re-
ligion is in the main complete, and criticism of religion is the
premise of all criticisms. . . . Thus the criticism of heaven turns into
the criticism of the earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of
law and the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics.
35
Obvi-
ously, his target was not religious people themselves, but those en-
lightenment thinkers who sought to rationally abolish religion. But
[t]o abolish religion as the illusory happiness of the people is to de-
mand the real happiness. The demand to give up illusions about the
existing state of affairs is the demand to give up a state of affairs which
needs illusions. The criticism of religion is therefore in embryo the criti-
cism of the vale of tears, the halo of which is religion.
36
His stress is that
religion will never be abolished unless the real unhappiness of peo-
ple within which religion grows is abolished. The theoretical criti-
cism per se of religion cannot affect religion; the religious
problematic can only be solved practically.
At the same time, however, it was in the monetary economy that
Marx saw secular religion, as it were. Marxs critique of the political
economy was an extension of his critique of religion. In this respect,
there is no epistemological break as such. While appreciating the
achievements of classical economists, Marx detected the original mo-
tive of capitalism in the bullionism (monetary system) they had de-
rided. He persisted in taking seriously the situation in which the thing,
gold, is sublime. To him, the sublime quality exists not in the nature
of the object in and of itself, but in its universal exchangeability.
The bullionism that considered the objecthood of gold itself as sub-
lime was not taken seriously, while, as a point of fact, the global econ-
omy in the age of mercantilism was sustained by gold as world money.
This has also been the case since the advent of industrial capitalism; at
moments of world crises, people all of a sudden return to gold.
37
With
respect to this religious power of money-gold, Marx, of Capital in par-
ticular, would say: For [England] the criticism of mercantilism is in
the main complete, and this criticism is the premise of all criticisms.
Quoting Shakespeare in Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of
1844, Marx touches upon the mysterious power of money that
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dissolves and binds people, that dissolves communities and socially
recombines individuals:
Shakespeare stresses two properties of money especially:
(1) It is the visible divinitythe transformation of all human and natural
properties into their contraries, the universal confounding and distorting
of things: impossibilities are soldered together by it.
(2) It is the common whore, the common procurer of people and nations.
The distorting and confounding of all human and natural qualities, the
fraternization of impossibilitiesthe divine power of moneylies in its
character as mens estranged, alienating and self-disposing species-nature.
Money is the alienated ability of mankind.
That which I am unable to do as a man, and of which therefore all my in-
dividual essential powers are incapable, I am able to do by means of money.
Money thus turns each of these powers into something which in itself it is
notturns it, that is, into its contrary.
38
Common opinion says that here Marx applied Feuerbachs logic of
seeing God as the self-alienation of the humans species-being or
common essence (in The Essence of Christianity) to his account of
money. Thus there was a call to return to early Marx. On the other
hand, Althusser and others argued that the revolutionary break oc-
curred in later Marx, after he discarded his earlier alienation theory.
I am doubtful of both. In the rst place, although the Feuerbachian
critique of religion certainly employs Hegels vocabulary, its content
is different from Hegel. In Hegel self-alienation is not, like in Feuer-
bach, a perverted phenomenon wherein the essence of self comes to
be contradictory to the self, and the self kneels before it. Rather
Feuerbachs idea, it must be said, derived from the Kantian theory
of the sublime. That is to say, the feeling of sublime arises in ones
mind when facing an object which is overwhelming to ones senses;
however the feeling is not caused by the object itself but by ones in-
tuiting the innity of reason that goes beyond the nity of ones sen-
sibility. The feeling of sublime is nonetheless perceived to have come
from the object itself. In this precise sense, the sublime is the self-
alienation of a humans fundamental faculties. And, importantly, this
is similar to but different from religious awe.
Yet Feuerbach did not persist in the Kantian position. According
to Feuerbach, for humans who are sensuous and the species-being,
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Marx
religion is an alienated way of grasping the species-being; and hu-
mans must recapture the common essence. This criticism of religion
was a regression from Kant. First, Kant had already negated religions
except for their moral aspect; second, the feeling of the sublime
arose only after the religious awe to coercive nature had disap-
peared. It follows that the logic achieved in the experience of the
sublime cannot be applied to the criticism of religion. The sublime
itself already assumes the negation of religion. The Kantian sublime
must be found strictly in natural objects, because this particular feel-
ing is established only when humans are fully enlightened and
become secular beings. Therefore, even if it is true that Marx appro-
priated Feuerbachian criticism of religion to the criticism of the sec-
ular capitalist economy, his theory of money would be better
understood if it were approached via Kants theory of sublime. Fur-
thermore, unlike the Feuerbachian theory of self-alienation, Kants
theory of the sublime already contains a recognition of capitalism.
That is, Kants beauty that is discovered by dis-interestedness is al-
ready a byproduct of the commodity economy, the movement that is
disinterested in the qualitative differences of use value. Nonetheless,
in the case of beauty it is still inseparable from the use value plea-
sure principle, while the sublime appears as totally contradictory to
the principle.
By the same token, a liking for the sublime in nature is only negative
(whereas a liking for the beautiful is positive): it is a feeling that the imagina-
tion by its own action is depriving itself of its freedom, in being determined
purposively according to a law different from that of its empirical use. The
imagination thereby acquires an expansion and a might that surpasses
the one it sacrices; but the basis of this might is concealed from it; instead
the imagination feels the sacrice or deprivation and at the same time the
cause to which it is being subjugated.
39
In the sublime, a certain pleasure is attained by displeasure. Kant de-
nes it as acquir[ing] an expansion and a might that surpasses the
one it sacrices. Isnt this the problematic of surplus-value par ex-
cellence? This is evident in the following phrase from Kants Anthro-
pology from a Pragmatic Point of View.
Young man! Deny yourself satisfaction (of amusement, of debauchery, of
love, etc.), not with the Stoical intention of complete abstinence, but with
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The Crisis of Synthesis
the rened Epicurean intention of having in view an ever-growing pleasure.
This stinginess with the cash of your vital urge makes you denitely richer
through the postponement of pleasure, even if you should, for the most
part, renounce the indulgence of it until the end of your life. The aware-
ness of having pleasure under your control is, like everything idealistic,
more fruitful and more abundant than everything that satises the sense
through indulgence because it is thereby simultaneously consumed and
consequently lost from the aggregate of totality.
40
Freud conceptualized the economic problem of masochism, and
Kant conceptualized the economic problem of the sublime, as it
were. Here, according to our concerns, Kant seems to have likened
the sublime to the hoarding drive of capitalism. [T]he postpone-
ment of pleasure in Kant is not so much like that of Webers Protes-
tantism, the spirit of capitalism, but more precisely the spirit of
capitalists that Marx grasped as the rational miser, insatiably look-
ing after the pleasure of sustaining and expanding the right of di-
rect exchangeability rather than that of actual consumption. It has
been a common practice to explain modern capitalism from the
vantage point of the desire for use-value (consumption). But the in-
terminable movement of capital must be seen as the drive [Trieb],
in Freudian terms, that exists beyond the pleasure principle and the
reality principlethe death drive, more properly.
In terms of his own position with respect to the political economy,
Kant complied with Adam Smiths labor theory of value. For him,
currency was not the least an enigma, neither was it sublime. He
questioned how goods become money.
The thing to be called money must, therefore, have cost as much industry to
produce or to obtain from other men as the industry by which those goods
(natural or articial products) are acquired for which that industry is
exchanged.
. . . But how is it possible that what were at rst only goods nally become
money? This would happen if a powerful, opulent ruler who at rst used a
material for the adornment and splendor of his attendants (his court)
came to levy taxes on his subjects in this material (as goods) (e.g., gold, sil-
ver, copper, or a kind of beautiful seashell, cowries; or as in Congo a kind of
matting called makutes, in Senegal iron ingots, or on the Coast of Guinea
even black slaves), and in turn paid with this same material those his
demand moved to industry in procuring it, in accordance with exchange
regulations with them and among them (on a market or exchange).In
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Marx
this way only (so it seems to me) could a certain merchandise have become
a lawful means of exchange of the industry of subjects with one another,
and thereby also become the wealth of the nation, that is, money.
41
Money is deemed here the nominal denition of exchange between
a worker who makes a product and another worker who makes an-
other product. Kant did not question why and how different labors
come to be compared according to the same standard. Born the son
of a craftsman, Kant disdained merchant capitalism or mercantilism,
like classical economists. His idea that synthetic judgment was ex-
pansive can be interpreted in the context of economic event that
prot (surplus value) should be earned in the production process
alone, and should not be a speculation that aims at producing dif-
ference in the circulation process. What Kant had in mind as an
ideal was the association of independent small producers, and not
the labor union or the like in industrial capitalist production that
had rarely existed in Germany in Kants lifetime. In this sense,
money in Kants term was not (and should not be) that which would
turn into capital. With respect to money, however, we should refer
not to his accounts of money but to Critique of Pure Reason. The im-
plication here is, of course, that money is a transcendental illusion
that one cannot easily get rid of.
The previous notwithstanding, one has to keep in mind the fact
that Kant did not consider the problematic of morals on a subjective
level. As I have said earlier, he saw the core of morality in the imper-
ative: So act that you use humanity, whether in your own person or
in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never
merely as a means. In other words, to Kant, to use others as a means
was the major premise to begin with. This was an afrmative recog-
nition of the social life constituted upon division of labor and ex-
change. For that matter, Smiths economics was primarily a division
of ethics: upon the afrmation of egoism, he sought to go beyond
the contradictions caused by the egoism by introducing sympathy.
Even today, political economists who question the harms of the
market economy tend to resort to sympathy. Meanwhile, Kant criti-
cized Smiths moral sentiments, and sought to treat morality as an
a priori law. Kants criticism of Smith makes Kants ethics or the
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The Crisis of Synthesis
kingdom of ends look subjectivist; but this could not be the case, for
it was based upon realistic, economic ground. That Kant saw the king-
dom of ends as a regulative idea contains a critique of the capitalist
economy precisely because the capitalist economy makes it fatally im-
possible to treat humanity in the person of any other as an end.
Contrary to what people usually imagine, Marx rarely spoke of the
future. In The German Ideology, which was mostly written by Engels,
Marx made the following addendum: Communism is . . . not a state
of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will]
have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which
abolishes [aufhebt] the present state of things, the conditions of this
movement result from the premises now in existence.
42
And the po-
tency to constitute this reality comes from capitalism itself. In this
sense, communism would exist as a companion to the movement of
capitalism, yet as an oppositional movement created by capitalism it-
self. This should not be, in Kantian terms, a constitutive idea,
namely, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself, but a
regulative ide, namely, an ideal which constantly offers the ground
to criticize reality. An elucidation of capitalism is thereby an ethical
task par excellence. Here is the transcritical juncture between politi-
cal economy and morality, between Marxian critique and Kantian
critique.
5.5 Credit and Crisis
Kant rejected the metaphysics that projects what is achieved ex post
facto onto ex ante facto thinking. Yet at the same time, he acknowl-
edged as sine qua non any teleological projection into the future
calling it the transcendental illusion [transszendentalen schein],
whose function we cannot dispense with, albeit only an illusion. He
maintained that even theory requires faith. It is my contention that
what supports the capitalist economy is credit qua transcendental illu-
sion. A commodity cannot express its valueno matter how much
labor time is expended to produce itif it is not sold. Seen ex post
facto, the value of a commodity could be considered as existing in
social labor time, while in ex ante facto, there is no such guarantee.
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Marx
In order to self-reproduce, capital has to go through the ordeal of
C-M (selling). If it fails, capital loses money with unsold objects
M-C. To avoid this ordeal for now, credit is called for. According to
Marx, this is to assume the selling of C-M ideally, in advance; credit
takes the form of exchange where the actual payment is temporarily
suspended, but the counterbalancing/settling of accounts will occur
later. Of course, a bank note (or check) is credit, and, for that mat-
ter, money itself is already a kind of credit. We cannot belittle this
strange convention as just an illusory system. For instance, although
check, credit card, and digital money may appear to be inauthentic
in comparison with a gold coin, they are the same if seen from the
vantage point of credit. It is believed that it would be preferable to re-
mold gold coins (as currency) into pure gold, if the price of gold
were to go up; but in reality it cannot be the case and it is never
donethere are technical troubles as well as an inevitable loss in
weightexcept that there is the faith of credit that it could be done
when the time comes. Gold currency and gold (gold as use value)
never match, though there is a persistent faith that they would ac-
cord. That is to say that the currency itself is already credit.
As Marx observed, the institution of credit, having come into exis-
tence together with the expansion of circulation in the manner of
natural growing [Naturwchsigkeit],
43
expands circulation itself.
The credit system accelerates and eternalizes the cycle of capitals
movement, for with this system capitalists can begin new investments
without having to wait for the outcome of the cycle M-C-M. The ex-
pansion of the capitalist economy is no more and no less than the
expansion of the credit system. However, the fact that the origin of
credit is naturwchsiges means it does not have a rational ground. At
the same time, credit is not formed within a state or a community,
but in between them, in the social relationship. No political
power can design and construct a credit system at its disposal; it can
only give legal background to the credit system, because it is the po-
litical power itself that relies on the social credit system. States issue
currencies, though it is not in their power to make them circulate in
reality. Imagine if there were a currency purely institutionalized by a
state power; it would not function in international trading, there-
fore, neither would it work within the nation-state.
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The essence of credit lies in its avoidance of the critical moment
inherent in the selling positionthe postponement of the present
perplexity to the future. Though the balance must eventually be
paid with money, with credit the settlement can be deferred for
now. This postponement in time in a sense reverses capitals M-C-M
movement. The insecurity of the selling position may not surface im-
mediately, because it is the nature of credit to make it appear as if
the sale had already been made. But the danger persists; it is meta-
morphosed into the uncertainty of future money payment, while in-
volving a larger and larger nexus of creditors and debtors. Under
the credit system, the self-reproduction of capital occurs not because
of its desire for accumulation; it becomes compulsive because of its
desperate need to innitely postpone the nal settlement. It is from
the moment the credit system is set that the movement of capital
surpasses the will of individual capitalists and becomes a compul-
sion. (For instance, investment in equipment is usually nanced by a
banks advance of funds, thus capital can no longer stop its activity
in order to pay back the debt and pay off the interest.)
Credit enforces capitals movement endlessly at the same time
that it hastens capitals self-reproduction and eliminates the danger
involved in selling. Seen in aggregate, the movement of capital (for
self-reproduction and self-valorization) must endure in order to
endlessly postpone the settlement as a stopgap maneuver: If there is
an end, the credit will have to collapse. To be sure, from time to
time the moment of settlement comes as a surprise attack: this is the
crisis that appearsonly where credit is fully developedas nothing
short of a collapse of credit. Nevertheless, credit is neither a mere il-
lusion nor an ideology, even if there is a certain truth in the asser-
tion that the currency economy forms an illusory system. It is still
true that the real that people encounter, once this illusion collapses,
is nothing natural and substantial. It is money.
Such a crisis occurs only where the ongoing chain of payments has been
fully developed, along with an articial system for setting them. Whenever
there is a general disturbance of the mechanism, no matter what its cause,
money suddenly and immediately changes over from its merely nominal
shape, money of account, into hard cash. Profane commodities can no
longer replace it. The use-value of commodities becomes valueless, and
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Marx
their value vanishes in the face of their own form of value. The bourgeois,
drunk with prosperity and arrogantly certain of himself, has just declared
that money is a purely imaginary creation. Commodities alone are money,
he said. But now the opposite cry resounds over the markets of the world:
only money is a commodity. As the heart pants after fresh water, so pants
his soul after money, the only wealth. In a crisis, the antithesis between
commodities and their value-form, money, is raised to the level of an ab-
solute contradiction. Hence moneys form of appearance is here also a mat-
ter of indifference. The monetary famine remains whether payments have
to be made in gold or in credit-money, such as bank-notes.
44
In times of crisis it is not the material form of the commodity that
people cling to, but the direct exchangeability (equivalent form)
of the commoditymoney itself. Before a nancial crisis hits, there
is always an overheating of credit. Though the rate of prot falls
while the rate of interest soars, capitalists continue to invest in
competitionthere is no other way for them to behave. To say it dif-
ferently, crisis occurs when capital driven by illusion expands be-
yond its competence. Kant called all pretensions of reason
speculative, and it is crisis that criticizes capitals speculative expan-
sion in actuality. It critiques the ideology that presupposed an equi-
librium of economic development. In this sense, what impressed
Marx in writing Capital was not the theory of surplus valuethat
which had already been posed and stressed by Ricardian leftists
but the crisis as a symptom of the incurable, interminable illness of
capitalism. By way of a psychoanalytic retrospection or belated analy-
sis of deferred action [Nachtglichkeit], as it were, Marx located the
symptom in the value form, that is, the asymmetric relation that
can never be sublated. The possibility of crisis exists in the split be-
tween buying and selling, and selling and paying, though this is also
the very potentiality of capital (qua self-reproductive money) itself. In
other words, surplus value, credit, and crisis form one and the same
circuitous movement of capital.
45
(And, in order to explain the peri-
odicity of crises, to be certain, one must consider industrial capital.
And I return to this later.)
Crises nevertheless do not dissolve capitalism; rather this is a capi-
talistic solution to the problems inherent in capitalism, and part of
the whole process of the prosperity cycle (prosperity-crisis-depres-
sion-prosperity). Crisis and the depression that follows are merely
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parts of the violent (or liberalistic) reformation of capitalist produc-
tion. The same periodical crises of Marxs age are no longer exis-
tent, precisely like the victims of hysteria caused by sexual repression
that Freud encountered. Yet, so long as capitalism is a world consti-
tuted by the credit system, crises will continue to dog it.
The economic process is a religio-genic-process that continues to cre-
ate and expand the phantasmic domain of value. And the temporal-
ity of capitalism is similar to that of Judeo-Christianity in the sense
that the end is indenitely deferred. This analogy, however, does
not intend to point out a parallelism or reciprocity between eco-
nomic and religious phenomena.
46
If religion is economic, it is so in
the sense that it is rooted in the burden of debt that the living feel
toward the dead, or namely, the exchange between this world and
that world. One should not disdain the economic. Rather all the se-
rious institutions of humanity: capital, state, nation, and religion
should be scrutinized from the economic standpoint. Whether or
not we believe in religion in the narrow sense, real capitalism places
us in a structure similar to that of the religious world. What drives us
in capitalism is neither the ideal nor the real (i.e., needs and de-
sires), but the metaphysics and theology originated in exchange and
commodity form. Marx conceptualized communism out of the logic
of capitalism itselfthat which severs people from the local commu-
nities to which they are subordinated, and then recombines them so-
cially. To use the rhetoric of Matthew in The New Testament, money
as capital would say: Do not think that I have come to bring peace
to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have
come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her
mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and ones
foe will be members of ones own household. Whoever loves father
or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son
or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.
47
In the stage that industrial capital was established, namely, when
the commodity economy began to control the whole of production by
the commodication of labor power, the view to see the previous soci-
ety from the vantage point of productionhistorical materialism
finally came into existence. An elucidation of industrial capitalism is
useful in an elucidation of previous society, but not vice versa. The
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Marx
anatomy of man is a key to the anatomy of the ape.
48
The capitalist
economy cannot be explained by such concepts as power of pro-
duction and the relation of production or infrastructure and
superstructure. The crux to shed light on its mystery lies in the fact
that capital is engendered by the essential difculty of human ex-
change, and precisely for this reason, it is not easy to abolish. I
would like to add, however, that it should not be impossible.
As Marx pointed out, capital is engendered at the point where
selling (C-M) and buying (M-C) are separated spatially and tempo-
rally. The separation not only fosters surplus value, but also eventu-
ally causes a credit crisis. This separation cannot be collapsed, and it
is wrong to presume that direct exchange is ever possible. Since
Georg Lukcs, a theory of reication has been inuential which
problematized the situation in which the relation between humans
wrongly appears as the relation between things. This problematiza-
tion is, more than anything else, a construct of the consciousness of
craftsmen (or producers of simple commodities) living within the
frame of the feudal hierarchy. For them, the relation which had
been transparent and direct now appears to be reied. However, so-
cial relations between human beings in the commodity economy
have been organized, from the beginning, by capital, and appear as
the relation between things. There has been no other way. It has al-
ways already been the case that we never know with whom we are
connected. It is nevertheless this separation that socially connects
people from enclosed communities and nation-states, and could
form a cosmopolis, a world civil society. In this social relation we
cannot know how we are mutually connected, while it is this ungras-
pable spatial whole that morally forbids us to claim our mutual un-
relatedness. At this moment, more than half of the people around
the globe are starving; people in advanced countries cannot claim to
be unrelated, that is, innocent. But still the social relation cannot be
presented conspicuously. Thinking of the problematic spatiality,
one can no longer be so naive as to insist that the originally healthy
and organically connected relational world has become reied by
the intervention of capitalism. This is an ex post facto perspectival
perversion. It overlooks the most crucial fact that it is capital and
nothing else that organized social relation in the rst place.
49
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6
Value Form and Surplus Value
6.1 Value and Surplus Value
I have dealt with the nature of the drive [Trieb] of capitals self-
reproduction. Now its time to question how the self-reproduction is
made possible in the process M-C-M. Said in the most common par-
lance, it is by buying low and selling high. Classical economists ac-
cused this act as exemplifying the cunning nature of merchants, and
stressed that the prot of industrial capital, in contrast, comes from
the process of production. Their insistence on the labor theory of
value understandably comes from this viewpoint. They considered
the process of circulation to be secondary, and sought to derive in-
terest and ground rent from the prot earned in the process of pro-
duction. When capitalist production began in England, however,
the credit system had already been in place, and even stock com-
panies had already been active. It was merchant capital that had
created them. Early industrial capitalists were no other than the
merchants who began the putting-out system [Verlagssystem]. Indus-
trial capitalism and its theorists forgot their origin. The system of illu-
sion produced by the capitalist economy can never be explained
from the viewpoint of the production process alone. Marx began his
scrutiny from the process of circulation because the kernel of capital
exists in the formulation of the archi-capital M-C-M, and because
capitalist production cannot exist if not for the world market engen-
dered by this formulation.
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Marx
The justication of classical economics was that the prot of in-
dustrial capital is produced by equivalent exchange; it is achieved by
the enforcement of the power of production by the division of labor
and cooperative workthe healthy, favorable acts. Marx, too,
claimed that surplus value cannot be achieved in the process of cir-
culation. The capitalist class of a given country, taken as a whole,
cannot defraud itself. However much we twist and turn, the nal
conclusions remain the same. If equivalents are exchanged, we still
have no surplus value. Circulation, or the exchange of commodities,
creates no value.
1
Yet at the same time, he insisted that surplus
value cannot be realized in the process of production alone.
The total mass of commodities, the total product, must be sold, both that
portion which replaces constant and variable capital and that which repre-
sents surplus value. If this does not happen, or happens only partly, or only
at prices that are less than the price of production, then although the
worker is certainly exploited, his exploitation is not realized as such for the
capitalist and may even not involve any realization of the surplus-value ex-
tracted, or only a partial realization; indeed, it may even mean a partial or
complete loss of his capital. The conditions for immediate exploitation and
for the realization of that exploitation are not identical. Not only are they
separate in time and space, they are also separate in theory. The former is
restricted only by the societys productive forces, the latter by the propor-
tionality between the different branches of production and by the societys
power of consumption.
2
Marx is saying that, regardless of what happens in the process of pro-
duction, surplus value is nally realized in the process of circulation.
That makes it contradictory to the previous statementthat surplus
value cannot be achieved in the process of circulation.
Capital cannot therefore arise from circulation, and it is equally impossible
for it to arise apart from circulation. It must have its origin both in circula-
tion and not in circulation.
We therefore have a double result.
The transformation of money into capital has to be developed on the
basis of the immanent laws of the exchange of commodities, in such a way
that the starting-point is the exchange of equivalents. The money-owner,
who is as yet only a capitalist in larval form, must buy his commodities at
their value, sell them at their value, and yet at the end of the process with-
draw more value from circulation than he threw into it at the beginning.
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Value Form and Surplus Value
His emergence as a buttery must, and yet must not, take place in the sphere
of circulation. These are the conditions of the problem. Hic Rhodus, hic salta!
3
It must be noted that this antinomy is not limited to the situation
of merchant capital. The surplus value in industrial capital, too,
must, and yet must not, take place in the sphere of circulation. If
so, we should consider this rst with respect to merchant capital. As
Marx said, deriving surplus value from the division of circulation
alone within a value system is an unequal exchange, a fraud. On the
other hand, in the case of exchange between different value systems,
surplus value can be achieved even if each deal is of equal exchange
within each system. Thus the Marxian antinomy is solved by invoking
multiple value systemsand no other way. Marx continues:
On the other hand, as I have already remarked, the exchange of products
springs up at the points where different families, tribes or communities
come into contact; for at the dawn of civilization it is not private individuals
but families, tribes, etc. that meet on an independent footing. Different
communities nd different means of production and different means of
subsistence in their natural environment. Hence their modes of production
and living, as well as their products, are different. It is this spontaneously
developed difference which, when different communities come into con-
tact, calls forth the mutual exchange of products and the consequent
gradual conversion of those products into commodities. Exchange does
not create the differences between spheres of production but it does bring
the different spheres into relation, thus converting them into more or less
interdependent branches of the collective production of a whole society.
4
Taking the origin of exchange into account in this mannerlike
in Adam Smiths attemptgives us the impression that the mone-
tary exchange developed gradually out of barter. Yet the point in the
present context is that Marx retrospectively discovered the differ-
ence between communities at the fountainhead of exchange. And
that difference is the given of the natural conditions. Merchant capi-
tal came into existence in the difference, namely, between commu-
nities. Trading nations, properly so called, exist only in the
interstice of the ancient world, like the gods of Epicurus in the inter-
mundia, or Jews in the pores of Polish society.
5
It is precisely for the
nature of merchant capital that capitalism has never gone so far as
to transform the whole of conventional productions and relations of
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Marx
production. It has always remained partial, yet, by pursuing differ-
ence, produced the social and global nexus between peoples that
individual communities had never been able to organize.
The situation has not changed even since modern nation-states
have come into existence as an expansion or unication of the com-
munities. Marxs social [sozial] is pointedly distinct from not only
Gemeinschaft, but also from Gesellschaft, because even the latter is an-
other kind of community that appeared after the establishment of
the commodity economy. For the consciousness within community,
for the thinking entrapped within, it is possible to say that money is
just an index of value or the medium of exchange. In contrast,
Marxs term social should be exclusively used to describe the
exchange between different systems, and furthermore, exchange in
which one cannot know with whom the product is being exchanged.
Therefore, the social characteristics of the exchange that occurs in
between communities is more evident in foreign trade, wherein
money appears as world money [Weltgeld] qua universal commodity
in the social space.
But as coin, money loses its universal character, taking on a national, local
one. It is divided up into coinage of different sorts, according to the mater-
ial of which it consists, gold, copper, silver, etc. It acquires a political title,
and speaks, as it were, a different language in different countries. . . . Gold
and silver, like exchange itself, as already mentioned, do not initially ap-
pear within the sphere of a social community but at the point at which it
ends, at its boundaries; at its not very numerous points of contact with for-
eign communities. Gold and silver now appear posited as the commodity as
such, the universal commodity which preserves its character as a commodity
at all places.
6
Mercantilists clung to gold, not simply because of their mam-
monism, but rather because gold is the ultimate means of settlement
in international trade. And, with respect to this, Marx says, How-
ever much the modern economists consider themselves to have ad-
vanced beyond the mercantile system, in periods of general crises
gold and silver gure in precisely this determination, in the year
1857 as much as in 1600. In this character, gold and silver [play] an
important role in the creation of world market.
7
Mercantilists derived
gold from the balance of trade. Meanwhile, modern economists,
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Value Form and Surplus Value
who denied them, considered money simply as a denominator of
value and a means of circulation. This is equal to ignoring the
beings of multiple communities (qua value systems). Money trans-
forms into capital in the place of remaining a mere means of circula-
tion, mostly because of the beings of multiple systems.
The labor theory of value, that came from classical economics, was
conceptualized in a unitary system. Precisely for this reason, its fol-
lowers had to revise their theory when having to explain why the
prices of production attain average rates of prot in different
departments of production. Meanwhile, neoclassical economists
negated the labor theory of value and sought to explain value
(price) from the vantage point of utility (use-value). Employing the
concept of marginal utility, they posited the point of equilibrium
between supply and demand, without resorting to psychological ele-
ments. After all, however, classical economists too had assumed the
equilibrium of price in the market, and thus they had maintained
the value apropos labor time. They had paid attention to the mecha-
nism by which individual (anarchic) productions and exchanges
come to settleex post factoin an equilibrium. Furthermore,
since the core of marginal utility of neoclassical economics had al-
ready been pregured in Ricardos law of diminishing returns, its
invention cannot be attributed to the neoclassical school. Theories
of equilibriumno matter how mathematically rigorousare with-
out exception conceptualized within a unitary system, and thus
cannot tackle the social intercourse capital engenders.
Now that one has to take different value systems into considera-
tion, one has to suppose a value of a commodity that is different
from its equilibrium price. So long as one thinks within a unitary sys-
tem, money is likened to zero that structures the system in a mathe-
matical sense (or philosophically, nothingness or apperception in
the Kantian term). Meanwhile, only where there are heterogeneous
systems can money transform into capital that gains surplus value
from the exchange between systems. Marx appears to be more ob-
sessed with the labor theory of value than Smith and Ricardo, who -
nally abandoned or revised their theory.
8
But Marxs sense is totally
different from that of his predecessors. While for the classical econo-
mists, labor value is just a replacement of the equilibrium price that
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228
Marx
is established within a unitary system, Marx began his whole analysis
from manifold systems, and hence came to need the concepts of so-
cial and abstract labor value. Between manifold systems, a commod-
itys price naturally varies. What, then, is the value of a commodity?
Only by thinking in this manner does the value qua abstract labor
come to be proposed as distinct from the equilibrium price of a uni-
tary system. What is at stake here is that there are manifold systems;
that surplus value arises from their differences; therefore, that
money transforms into capital.
When criticizing Ricardo, Bailey already pointed out that the
value of a commodity does not exist by and for itself, but is deter-
mined by and for others, namely, in a relational system. This signi-
es that the price of the same commodity differs in another system.
Value is a relation between contemporary commodities, because
such only admit of being exchanged for each other; and if we com-
pare the value of a commodity at one time with its value at another,
it is only a comparison of the relation in which it stood at these
different times to some other commodity.
9
That is to say that
commodities form a synchronic relational system, as it were. Bailey
seems to think of the relation in time, but it can and should be
thought of in space as well. When a commodity is placed in a differ-
ent system, the equilibrium price alters. This difference is not simply
caused by the uctuation of price, but by the difference of the rela-
tional system itself. But, then, what happens when trade occurs be-
tween them? Here comes surplus value. Marx speaks of value clearly in
distinction from equilibrium price, because it is a matter of manifold
systems and, furthermore, surplus value.
6.2 The Linguistic Approach
No product can be produced without labor. Classical economics
thus posits labor as a substance of value. However, as we have seen,
what makes value of a product is the form of value, namely, the rela-
tional system of commodities. It is not that materials and labor by
themselves make value of things. It is thanks to the form of value
that materials and labor become economic objects. Classical econo-
mists conceptualized the labor value that exists beyond empirical
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Value Form and Surplus Value
prices, while neoclassical economists negated the value and sought
to remain in the sphere of empirical prices. What they both over-
looked is the fact that price as well as labor-value are derivative vari-
ants of the form of value (qua relational system). In order to solidify
our understanding of the form of value, a linguistic reference is of
great help, because value is essentially like language. As we quickly
realize, however, it is rather linguistics that was shaped by following
the model of political economy. Roman Jakobson said as much:
In the century-old history of economics and linguistics, questions of uniting
both disciplines have arisen repeatedly. One may recall that economists of
the Enlightenment period used to attack linguistic problems (see Foucault
1966: chap, 3): as, for example, Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, who compiled
a study on etymology for the Encyclopdie (1756), or Adam Smith, who wrote
on the origin of language (1770). G. Tardes inuence on Saussures
doctrine in such matters as circuit, exchange, value, output-input, and pro-
ducer-consumer is well known. Many common topics, as, for instance,
dynamic synchrony, contradictions within the system, and its contin-
ual motion, undergo similar developments in both elds. Fundamen-
tal economic concepts are repeatedly subjected to tentative semiotic
interpretation. . . .
At present, Talcott Parsons (in 1967 and 1968) systematically treats
money as a very highly specialized language, economic transactions as
certain types of conversations, the circulation of money as the sending of
messages, and the monetary system as a code in the grammatical-syntacti-
cal sense. He avowedly applies to the economic interchange the theory of
code and message developed in linguistics.
10
Saussure in fact employed a model of political economy when he
considered language as a synchronic system (i.e., Langue). The con-
cept synchronic indicates a certain state of equilibrium rather than
a tentative instant in time. The conventional linguistics had focused
on observing a certain linguistic element in its historical transforma-
tion, as detached from the whole of the system. Saussure posed an
antithesis to it: The transformation of elements in a relational sys-
tem provokes a shift of the whole system and produces a new system;
the diachronic transformation of a language must be grasped as a
change of system itself. This is nothing short of a shift from one
equilibrium to another. This idea was obviously taken from the gen-
eral equilibrium system of Vilfredo Pareto (18481923), who was
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230
Marx
teaching at the University of Laussane. But Saussure further devel-
oped this framework; he did not remain in Paretos model,
like many of Jakobsons examples, which were just rewordings of
neoclassical economics.
Saussure differentiated himself from neoclassical theory. His con-
viction was that in language there are only differences; it is a system
of pure value
11
these statements could not have been said had he
thought within a unitary system (i.e., of a Langue). He introduced
the concept of value only when he took into consideration another
system of Langue. Saussures point is that when a word is translated
into another language, it achieves the same meaning, yet at the
same time, the value of the word is altered in the new/different
system in correspondence to its different relationship with other
words. From this focal point, he explains that there is no meaning
(the signied) that is apodictically tied to the signier, in other
words, no immanent meaning. As Hjelmslev pointed out, the signi-
er and the signied cannot be conceptually separated as long as
one synchronic system is concerned. The concept of value as distinct
from meaningor price, in economicsbecomes necessary only
when manifold/different systems are at stake.
What about Marx? In general terms, he negated the idea of seeing
money and language analogically. To compare money with lan-
guage is no less incorrect. Ideas are not transformed into language
in such a way that their particular attributes are dissolved and their
social character exists alongside them in language as do prices
alongside commodities. Ideas do not exist apart from language.
Ideas which must rst be translated from their mother tongue into a
foreign language in order to circulate and to become exchangeable
would provide a better analogy; but then the analogy is not with the
language but with its foreignness.
12
That is to say that, if an analogy
between language and money becomes crucial at all, it is only where
their foreignness [Fremdheit] is at stake.
Saussure employed economic gures only when he spoke of the
value of language that is distinguished from meaning. He explained
it by using examples of different currencies.
13
If one follows this
analogy, meaning is identied with price, while value corresponds to
the difference between the relational systems that determine price.
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Value Form and Surplus Value
Within a synchronic system, a commodity is made to be related to all
other commodities. Exchanging a commodity with money is not sim-
ply an occurrence between two things (the commodity and gold),
but it is equal to placing the commodity in relationship with all
other commodities. The price of a commodity does not simply ex-
press an equivalent relationship with money, but aggregates the rela-
tionship with all other commodities. What is more, the price of a
commodity varies in different systems. And the difference inex-
orably persists, even when an equilibrium of prices in individual
systems is presupposed. If placed between different systems, an ex-
changeeven at a price that does only equal exchange within
individual systemscan generate margin (surplus value).
To repeat, Marx paid attention to value as it is distinguished from
equilibrium price, and this is because he began his thought from a
heterology of systems. He never presented value as an empirical
which is an impossibility. Empirically speaking, all we have is an equi-
librium price. This is the same as saying that empirically there is only
prot, but not surplus value. That which Marx discovers as value
the abstract, social labortakes as a premise heterogeneous systems.
Therefore, in Marxs concept of value, already conceived is the secret
as to how surplus value (or money) transforms into capital. But, even
though surplus value can be achieved between manifold systems as a
result, the whole event is invisible to each participant. This is pre-
cisely because the process of deriving surplus value M-C-M is split
into M-C and C-Mwhich occur in different times and places.
Circulation bursts through all the temporal, spatial and personal barriers im-
posed by the direct exchange of products, and it does this by splitting up the
direct identity present in this case between the exchange of ones own product
and the acquisition of someone elses into the two antithetical segments of
sale and purchase. To say that these mutually independent and antithetical
processes form an internal unity is to say also that their internal unity moves
forward through external antithesis. These two processes lack internal inde-
pendence because they complement each other. Hence, if the assertion of
their external independence [usserliche Verselbstndigung] proceeds to a cer-
tain critical point, their unity violently makes itself felt by producinga crisis.
14
Herein exists the crucial point: what produces capital also makes the
possibility and inevitability of crisis. This is the destiny of capitalism.
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Marx
As Marx says, via money, selling and buying are split both spatially
and temporarily. The owner of money can buy anything, anywhere,
anytime. Seeing this again in analogy with language, money is like
writing [criture] in contrast to speech [parole]. Written texts may be
read by anyone, anywhere, anytime, and its circulation is invisible.
What is univocally understandable to the present other in speech has
to be read differently in different languages (Langues) in writing.
The hatred of money of Ricardo or Prouhdon corresponds to the
hatred of writing. Both are hatreds of mediated communication,
going hand in hand with the fantasy of direct and transparent ex-
change. As Jacques Derrida problematized in Of Grammatology, phi-
losophy since Plato has entailed a hostility to letters, while admiring
the direct and transparent exchange-communication.
15
And the same
has been going on in the political economy as hostility toward
money. As Platos criticism of writing already took for granted the
irresolvable being of writing, the idea of barter, the starting point
of classical economistssuch as seen in the narrative of Robinson
Crusoetacitly took as a premise the irreducible being of money
(qua the general equivalent).
It must be said that those political economists or socialists who
idealistically deny the apodeicity that exchange has to be mediated
by money are falling into metaphysics. Capital reads: Value, there-
fore, does not have its description branded on its forehead; it rather
transforms every product of labor into a social hieroglyphic. Later
on, men try to decipher the hieroglyphic, to get behind the secret of
their own social product: for the characteristic which objects of util-
ity have of being value is as much mens social product as is their
language.
16
Marx saw the commodity form as social hieroglyphic,
which is in Derridas term archi-criture. This is to say that money is
not just a secondary thing; and it is already inscribed in and as the
core of commodity form.
To conclude this section, I examine a critic who approached the
problematic of artistic value from the vantage point of the opacity of
social exchange, Paul Valry.
After all, a work of art is an object, a human product, made with a view to
affecting certain individuals in a certain way. Works of art are either objects
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Value Form and Surplus Value
in the material sense of the term, or sequences of acts, as in the case of
drama or the dance, or else summations of successive impressions that are
also produced by acts, as in music. We may attempt to dene our notion of
art by an analysis based on these objects, which may be taken as the
only positive elements in our investigations: considering these objects and
progressing on the one hand to their authors and on the other hand to
those whom they affect, we nd that the phenomenon of art can be repre-
sented by two quite distinct transformations. (We have here the same
relation as that which prevails in economics between production and
consumption.)
What is extremely important is to note that these two transformations
the authors modication of the manufactured object and the change which
the object or work brings about in the consumerare quite independent.
It follows that we should always consider them separately.
Any proposition involving all three terms, an author, a work, a spectator
or listener, is meaninglessfor you will never nd all three terms united in
observation. . . .
I shall go furtherand here I come to a point you will no doubt nd
strange and paradoxical, if you have not come to that conclusion about
what I have already said: art as a value (for basically, we are studying a prob-
lem of value) depends essentially on this nonidentication, this need for an
intermediary between producer and consumer. It is essential that there
should be something irreducible between them, that there should be no di-
rect communication, and that the work, the medium, should not give the
person it affects anything that can be reduced to an idea of the authors
person and thinking.
. . . There will never be any accurate way of comparing what has hap-
pened in the two minds; and moreover, if what has happened in the one
were communicated directly to the other, all art would collapse, all the ef-
fects of art would disappear. The whole effect of art, the effort that authors
work demands of the consumer, would be impossible without the interposi-
tion, between the author and his audience, of a new and impenetrable ele-
ment capable of acting upon other mens being.
17
Thus Valry points to the ultimate ground upon which the value of
artwork arises in the separation of two processes (production and
consumption), and the impenetrability of the gap. The direct target
of his critique here is evidently Hegelian aesthetics, which stands in
the position to subsume both processes, and claims that history has
no opacity. (For that matter, so-called Marxist aesthetics is the
same.) Valry undoubtedly came to achieve this stance through his
reading of Capital.
18
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Marx
Seen from this perspective, capitalists are those who seek to
actually stand in different processes and systems. Merchant capital-
ists derive surplus value from the margin accrued between different
value systems. This is not in the least based upon the fraud of
unequal exchange. If a certain commodity is produced abun-
dantly in a certain region thanks to the natural environment, the
price within the relational system of commodities differs from
the prices in the system of regions where the commodity is scarce
or not produced at all. Merchants buy commodities where they
are cheap and sell them where they are expensive. They earn
surplus value from the balance, yet this is not fraud. Each ex-
change is executed according to the equilibrium in individual value
systems.
6.3 Merchant Capital and Industrial Capital
How then does industrial capital earn surplus value? Classical econo-
mists, who ideologically support industrial capital, emphasize the
importance of prot earned in the process of production rather
than in the process of circulation. Unlike Ricardian leftists, Ricardo
himself never thought so simply that this was an exploitation of sur-
plus labor, yet his idea contained the seeds from which this position
derived. Ricardo considered that the natural price (as distinguished
from the market price) of a commodity already contained prot
that which is then distributed to ground rent (overhead) and inter-
est.
19
As I mentioned previously, it is thought that Marxs theory of
surplus value is a successor to this, and as a result, Marxs theory has
been accused by many while defended by neo-Ricardians since Piero
Sraffa. For instance, Nobuo Okishio and Michio Morishima mathe-
matically proved the proposition: if the rate of prot is plus (positive),
the rate of surplus value is plus (positive), that is, surplus labor exists.
20
But
the problem of their predecessor, Ricardo, who began from labor
value and omitted money, still haunts. That is to say, this line of
thinking is strictly modeled within a homogenous system. What is of
fatal importance to us, however, is the fact that there are plural
value systems, and surplus value is engendered in the exchange
between them.
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Value Form and Surplus Value
Marxs unique contribution is that he sought to understand indus-
trial capital, too, within the general formula M-C-M. In other words,
Marx sought to reconsider surplus value from the vantage point of
circulation. To Marx, what distinguished industrial capital from
merchant capital was, rst and foremost, that the former discovered
a special commodity that the latter had not knownthe commod-
ity of labor power. Industrial capital purchases this most special
commodity in human historylabor powerin order to produce
products, and then sells those products to the commodity itself
laborersin order to earn surplus value. For neoclassical econo-
mists, consumers and companies are the only economic subjects. To
them, laborers are deemed just wages as part of the cost of produc-
tion. Meanwhile, the surplus value of industrial capital is attained
only in a sort of circulation process: capital purchases labor power
from living laborers, who, in consequence, buy back what they pro-
duce from capital (and at this very moment, laborers are totally equal to
consumers). It is not that individual workers buy the very same things
they produce, but that in totalityand herein the concept totality
intervenes as a sine qua nonlaborers qua consumers buy what they
produce. This further signies that surplus value cannot be consid-
ered on the level of individual capital but strictly as total social capital.
Each capitalist knows that he does not confront his own worker as a pro-
ducer confronts a consumer, and so he wants to restrict his consumption,
i.e., his ability to exchange, his wages, as much as possible. But of course, he
wants the workers of other capitalists to be the greatest possible consumers
of his commodity. Yet the relationship of each capitalist to his workers is the
general relationship of capital and labor, the essential relation. It is precisely
this which gives rise to the illusiontrue for each individual capitalist as
distinct from all the othersthat apart from his own workers, the rest of the
working class confronts him not as workers, but as consumers and
exchangersas moneyspenders. . . .
It is precisely this which distinguishes capital from the [feudal] relationship
of dominationthat the worker confronts the capitalist as consumer and one
who posits exchange value, in the form of a possessor of money, of a simple cen-
ter of circulationthat he becomes one of the innumerable centers of circu-
lation, in which his specic character as worker is extinguished.
21
Such a separation between the spheres of production and marketing
nullies the category of laborers and identies it with consumers in
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236
Marx
general. As a result, neoclassical economists and the like identify con-
sumers as the subject, and companies as suppliers to their demands
thus the illusion of the consumer subject that plays a major role in
consumer society. But this is not all. The acts of consumers against
companies such as protest and boycott are, in substance, laborers
movement, yet they are considered as distinct and even made to
oppose it.
One of the most crucial lessons of Marxs reection is that surplus
value cannot be assessed from the process of individual capitals
movements. In this fact there exist the complexity and invisibility of
capitalist system as a totality. Capital cannot realize surplus value un-
less it succeeds in selling its products, namely, unless its products
achieve value as commodity. But the problem is that the potential
buyers of the commodity are in reality either other capitals and/or
their laborers. This is the dilemma of individual capitalists. Going
after prot, capital tries to reduce wages and elongate labor-time of
its own workers to their limits. But if all capitals follow these tenets
unconditionally, surplus value wont be realized because the poten-
tial buyers of the commodities, namely, the laborers, will be worn
out and beaten. Thus the more the individual capitals seek to attain
prot, the worse the recession gets in toto. But in the Great Depres-
sion of the 1930s, the total capital managed to reverse the impetus.
This was so-called Fordism. In consequence, what we know as the
consumerist society came into existence. These incidents were how-
ever not beyond Marxs theoretical reach. Fordism or Keynesianism
signies the intervention of the total social capital to restrain the
egoism of individual capitals in order to avoid total collapse, and in
turn, secure prot for the individual capitals. It appears to be con-
trary to the conviction of Adam Smith that everyones egoistic strive
for prot is in the end benecial to everyone. Also it appears to be a
denial of the Weberian spirit of capitalism-Protestantism that en-
courages diligence and saving. But they are nothing unimagin-
able within Marxian theory. It was shocking only for the view that
detects the realization of surplus value in individual capitals alone or
in the process of production alone.
Marx made a keen distinction between absolute surplus value and
relative surplus value: The former is attained by the lengthening of the
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Value Form and Surplus Value
labor day and reinforcement of labor power; the latter is attained by
sustaining the same labor day, yet lowering the value of labor power
indirectly by way of strengthening productivity. The explanation that
the lengthening of the labor daynamely, that laborers work longer
than the necessary labor time, that is, more than their labor value
results in surplus value sounds reasonable, yet is too simplistic and
immediately encounters an impasse. According to this idea, a capi-
talist going bankrupt would indicate that he could not earn surplus
value, and therefore, that he was a conscientious capitalist who did
not cold-bloodedly exploit his laborers. This is a logical fallacy due
to some misconceptions: rst, that physical labor time equals value
substance; and second, that surplus value is earned only in the
process of production. Marx was well aware that the realization of
surplus value is completed in the process of circulation, and then
some: the process of circulation is not enough for the realization.
This is when he unleashes his antinomous cry, Hic Rhodus, hic
salta!
To solve this aporia, the being of manifold systems must be intro-
duced again. The situations of industrial capital and merchant capi-
tal are different in characteristic, yet industrial capital too gains
surplus value, precisely like merchant capital, from the difference
between manifold systems. The labor-power commodity is placed in
the value system wherein all commodities relate to and rely on each
other. And Marxs saying that the value of labor power varies accord-
ing to nation and epoch means that the value of labor power must
be taken into consideration in a synchronic relational system. Yet, if
it is considered within a unitary system, surplus value cannot occur.
In such a case, as merchant capital would be just a swindler, so
would industrial capital be just an exploiter.
The truth is that industrial capital earns surplus value by produc-
ing new value systems temporarily and continually. The surplus value
proper to industrial capital is thus relative surplus value. This is at-
tained by the following procedure: Technological innovation short-
ens labor time; this lowers the values of commodities that are
necessary for the reproduction of labor power; then, the value of
labor-power is lowered as a practical effect. Relative surplus value is
an exploitation in the double sensedevelopment to take advantage of.
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238
Marx
To classical economists, prot is supposed to be gained exclusively
by the reinforcement of productivity enabled by the division of labor
and cooperation; and because capitalists are responsible for this,
prot belongs to them. Ricardian leftists regarded it as an exploita-
tion of surplus value, and Proudhon called it theft. Exploitation
and theft occur only because the division of labor and cooperation
are organized by the hand of capital, the owner of the means of pro-
duction. Thereupon appeared the idea of producers cooperatives
where workers themselves own the means of production and orga-
nize the division of labor and cooperation. But if this prospect
works, it would be only ex post facto a prot being made, while
in reality prot may not be made. Here exists the difculty for the
producers cooperative. Capitalist corporations are constantly com-
pelled to innovate their production systems amidst competition with
others, and producers cooperatives, too, are thrown into the agon.
In order for them to be able to compete with capitalist enterprises,
producers cooperatives need not only outside funds but also an
internal management that organizes an effective division of labor
and cooperation and motivates technological innovations. Lacking
a recognition of this necessity, the majority of them disappear,
survive humbly in less competitive domains, or become capitalist
corporations.
Vis--vis this same problem, Marx inherited classical economists
thoughts on the division of labor and cooperation and called this
the new power that arises from the fusion of many forces into a sin-
gle force.
22
But that is not all there is to his idea: He goes on to
emphasize the fact that the specialized worker produces no com-
modities. It is only the common product of all the specialized work-
ers that becomes a commodity;
23
nevertheless, [a capitalist] pays
[workers] the value of 100 independent labor powers, but he does
not pay for the combined labor power of 100. Being independent of
each other, the workers are isolated. They enter into relations with
the capitalist, but not with each other.
24
And, furthermore, [labor
powers] use-value consists in the subsequent exercise of that power.
The alienation [Verusserung] of labor-power and its real manifesta-
tion [usserung], that is, the period of its existence as a use-value, do
not coincide in time.
25
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Value Form and Surplus Value
The previous phrases appear to be similar to those of classical eco-
nomics and Ricardian leftists, except that Marx introduces the tem-
porality of ex ante facto and ex post facto. Surplus value, unlike
prot, cannot be posited within the context of individual compa-
nies. Surplus value that makes possible the accumulation of capital is
engendered only in totality by workers selling their labor power and
with the money buying back the commodities they produced. And
only where there is a difference in price between value systems: A
(when they sell their labor power) and B (when they buy the com-
modities), is surplus value realized. This is so-called relative surplus
value. And this is attained only by incessant technological innova-
tion. Hence one nds that industrial capital too earns surplus value
from the interstice between two different systems. As Marx says, indi-
vidual workers cannot lay claim to what they produce as the result of
their combination prior to their production. Here is the inexorable
opacity engendered by the temporal sequence. Therefore, the sur-
plus value of industrial capital is not fraudulent, either; but this is
simply in the same sense that the surplus value of merchant capital is
not. If we accuse merchant capital of being an unequal exchange,
industrial capital has to be accused, too.
The need to produce different value systems temporally makes
the technological development of industrial capital inevitable. If,
like Joseph Alois Schumpeter, one praises the extra surplus value
earned by technological innovation as entrepreneurship, one
could consider the surplus value that merchant capital gains as a fair
share for its acumen in discovering the regional differences of val-
ues and its adventurous spirit of going to ever more remote places.
Schumpeter thought that the decline of entrepreneurship would
terminate capitalism. This only indicates that capital would end
when it can no longer exploit difference. It is only inevitable that the
entrepreneurship declines when difference is no longer produced.
But capital cannot help discovering and/or creating difference, no
matter what is at stake.
Thus, while merchant capital is engendered spatially by the differ-
ence between two value systems (that is invisible to those who exclu-
sively belong to either of the systems), industrial capital sustains
itself by continuing to produce different value systems temporally.
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Marx
The improvement of the productivity of labor enables industrial cap-
ital to produce different systems within a system. Therefore, the look
of equivalent exchange notwithstanding, it can achieve difference.
Then immediately thereafter, the difference is dissolved and a new
value system at the new level is required and produced. Capital has
to produce this difference incessantly and endlessly. It is this re-
quirement or burden that has motivated and conditioned the un-
precedentedly high speed of technological innovation in the age of
industrial capitalism. Despite both the praise and accusations sur-
rounding this phenomenon by ideologues of opposing sides, this
technological innovation is not motivated in and of itself; it is driven
by capitalism. As we have long been observing, for the expansion of
capital, a next to meaningless differentiation of technology is con-
stantly required. Capital is destined to motivate and continue tech-
nological innovation not for the sake of civilizing the world, but for
the sake of its own survival.
26
In order to avoid confusion I should clarify that the expression
the value of labor is lowered has nothing to do with lowered wages
or impoverishment. It means that the value of labor is lowered rela-
tive to the standard within the given value system. In the newly
formed value system, the lowered value of labor contemporaneously
confronts the lowered value of products. Therefore, as a result, the
living conditions of workers could be improved and even the work-
day could be shortened. This improvement does not in the least
contradict that capital nevertheless earns relative surplus value.
For the sake of denition, I have stressed the different ways by
which merchant capital and industrial capital earn surplus value
the former from spatial difference and the latter by temporal differ-
entiation. But in reality, capital does not choose either/or; it
employs both. For instance, in the nineteenth century, English in-
dustrial capitalism bought cotton from India, manufactured it into
fabric, and exported it back to India. It earned tremendous prot
from this cycle, involving the difference of the Indian value system.
In consequence, it ruined the Indian manual labor industry, while
contributing to an increase in the production of raw cotton therein.
Today the situation has not changed: Industrial capitalism looks not
only for cheap raw materials but also for cheap labor power, roving
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Value Form and Surplus Value
all over the world. When wages get high domestically, companies
transport their factories abroad to nd cheaper labor. Capital does
not choose where and how it gets surplus value. Even in economies
based upon industrial capital, the activities of merchant capital co-
exist omnipresently, including stock exchange and exchange rate. It
is this omnipresence of the activities of merchant capital that con-
stantly brings the uctuating prices closer to equilibrium. The ma-
jority of economists warn today that the speculation of global
nancial capital is detached from the substantial economy. What
they overlook, however, is that the substantial economy as such is
also driven by illusion, and that such is the nature of the capitalist
economy.
6.4 Surplus Value and Prot
In the rst volume of Capital, Marx considers capital in general, and
in the third volume, he deals, for the rst time, with individual capi-
tals, namely, capitals in various branches of production. In other
words, the rst volume deals with value and surplus value, while
the third deals with the price of production and prot. In the
beginning of the third volume, he explains the design:
It cannot be the purpose of the present, third volume simply to make gen-
eral reections on this unity [of the production and circulation processes].
Our concern is rather to discover and present the concrete forms which
grow out of the process of capitals movement considered as a whole. In their ac-
tual movement, capitals confront one another in certain concrete forms,
and, in relation to these, both the shape capital assumes in the immediate
production process and its shape in the process of circulation appear
merely as particular moments. The congurations of capital, as developed
in this volume, thus approach step by step the form in which they appear
on the surface of society, in the action of different capitals on one another,
i.e., in competition, and in the everyday consciousness of the agents of
production themselves.
27
In the everyday consciousness of the agents, namely, of industrial capi-
talists and their economists, how does the capitals movement ap-
pear? For them, there is no such thing as surplus value. Prot is
everything. Price of production minus cost price leaves prot.
6715 CH06 UG 1/29/03 8:01 PM Page 241
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Marx
Furthermore, from prot interest and ground rent are paid, and
self-consumption expenditure is excluded, then the rest is rein-
vested. For them, there is no such distinction, that is, of Marx, be-
tween variable capital (labor-power commodity) that accrues surplus
value and constant capital (means of production and raw material).
There is only the distinction between xed capital (stock) and circu-
lation capital (ow). Wages are part of the cost price; they are not
distinguished from the costs of means of production and raw mater-
ial. Prot is considered to be made by the total capital input. Every
capital attempts to earn prot by reducing the cost price.
Capitals are divided into various industrial branches, that is, from
heavy industry to agriculture. The rate of prot of each branch ap-
proaches the average rate of prot. In the branches of higher rate of
prot, investments of capital become active, while in those with
lower rates, investments are withdrawn or productions are withheld.
The world of industries appears to be formed as if by natural selec-
tion or the law of the jungle. In the state of equilibrium in which an
average rate of prot is established, the price of production in vari-
ous branches assumes the kind of price with which to achieve aver-
age prot. To be certain, within the same branch erce struggles
among capitals in search of extra prot constantly take place. This im-
proves the productivitynamely, the organic composition of capital
of each branch.
For the empirical consciousness of capitalist society, the whole
thing about economic activity appears merely in the above manner.
Required is no more than achieving the equilibrium price (price of
production) that is distinguished from market price uctuating by
the dynamic of supply and demand. Thus the insistence of neoclassi-
cal economists that the concepts of value and surplus value are false
is in total accord with the everyday consciousness of the agents. How-
ever, it is only by the reection of such everyday consciousness that the
conundrum of surplus value can be shed light on. Our task is to con-
duct a retrospective query from this everyday consciousness in the
third volume to the general reection in the rst volume, reversing,
as it were, the order of Marxs descriptive deployment. In actual
fact, the rate of prot is the historical starting point. Surplus value
and the rate of surplus value are, relative to this, the invisible
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Value Form and Surplus Value
essence to be investigated, whereas the rate of prot and hence the
form of surplus-value as prot are visible surface phenomena.
28
Marx spoke of this as the transformation of surplus-value into
prot. When the third volume was published posthumously under
Engelss editorial supervision, this shift in stance became a target of
attack. For instance, in his Karl Marx and the Close of his System, Eugen
von Bhm-Bawerk argued that the tendency in the third volume
contradicted the theory of value in the rst volume, and criticized
Marx for having given up his original design. Since then, many have
come to his defense, and this whole argumentation is known as the
transformation problem.
In my understanding, however, it is wrong to think that, in writing
the third volume, Marx gave up the design he had had in the rst
volume. In an interesting way, this discrepancy reminds me of
Kant, whose rst critique tackles the issue of subject in general, but
whose third critique engages in the issue of plural subjects. This dif-
ference is commonly understood as that between scientic recogni-
tion and aesthetic judgment. Nevertheless, it goes without saying
that the multitude of subjects is at stake in scientic recognition,
too. Why, then, didnt Kant begin his rst critique with the issue of
conicting subjects? Because he had to rst ensure the issue of the
transcendental category and from that precede the multitude of
conicting subjects. In a similar way, Marx approached capital in
general in the rst volume in order to conduct a transcendental
scrutiny of the conditions with which the accumulation of capital is
made possible. This is equal to seeing the value of a commodity in
the context of the value system, and grasping the surplus value of
capital in the difference between value systems or in the differentia-
tion itself. In the third volume, Marx deals with plural capitals, while
at the same time transcendentally asking how it is empirically possible
that they realize prot or the rate of prot.
Speaking of the transformation problem, Smith and Ricardo
had already encountered a similar question. Based upon his labor
theory of value, Smith held that every commodity contains an imma-
nent value. But if, in a state of equilibrium, every capital achieves the
same average rate of prot, the price that makes this prot possible
Smiths natural price and Marxs price of productionmust
6715 CH06 UG 1/29/03 8:01 PM Page 243
244
Marx
diverge from the original value. Confronting it, Smith had to aban-
don his labor theory of value, and switch to a position that speaks to
labor as a relatively dominant factor. The problem here is that the
price that constitutes the equal rate of prot between industries
does not parallel the amount of input labor. If, in every branch of
industry, the rate of prot comes to be equal, the price of produc-
tion of a certain product must be either higher or lower than its
original value. For this reason, Ricardo, too, partially revised his
labor theory of value and concluded that value cannot be deter-
mined only by labor input, except for those branches that have a
standard composition of capital and a standard turnover term of
capital. So it is that the transformation problem was not Marxs
invention, but an aporia that had long existed.
It is the common understanding that Marx sought to solve this
aporia at the same time as sustaining the labor theory of value. Neo-
classical economists since Bawerk claimed to have pointed out
Marxs contradiction, and sought to banish the notions of value or
surplus value altogether. Ironically, however, in the line of neo-
Ricardians since Sraffa, the correspondence between the rate of sur-
plus value and the rate of interest has been mathematically proven,
as has been touched upon earlier. But I do not think that this ex-
plains what Marx sought to do. First, Marxs labor theory of value
and that of Ricardo are fundamentally different. As I have
already explained, Marxs belief was: It is not that input labor time
determines the value, but conversely that the value form (system)
determines the social labor time. In other words, Marx sought to
transcendentally elucidate the formal system that valorizes the input-
labor. The term surplus value is of concern here. In distinction
from prot, it is a transcendental concept; it is not something that
is visible right here, empirically. Ricardo lacked this dimension, had
to resort to the labor theory of value to make up for it, and then
pulled it back when inconvenient.
In the third volume, Marx distinguishes rate of prot and rate of
surplus value in the following manner: While rate of prot is ,
the ratio of surplus value to the total social capital seen as the sum
total of variable capital (qua labor power) and constant capital (qua
raw material, means of production, etc.), the rate of surplus value is ,
_s
v
_____ s
c v
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Value Form and Surplus Value
the ratio of surplus value to the total social capital seen as variable
capital (labor power). Now if we suppose that the rate of surplus
value to the total social capital is xed, in capitals in which the ratio
of constant capital to the total social capital is large, the rate of inter-
est must be lower. Then, how, in capitals of every branch, can an
average rate of prot be guaranteed? To repeat, the aporia Ricardo
encountered was this: If in industrial branches with different ratios
of variable capital and constant capitalor different organic compo-
sition of capital in Marxs termthe same rate of prot has to be
achieved, price of production is diverged from the value qua input
labor. Ricardo thus came to posit that price of production accords
value only in capitals with standard organic composition. On the
other hand, Marxs solution to this aporia is that the total surplus
value of total capital is distributed to the price of production of the
capitals of different industrial branches so that the average rate of
prot can be established in each branch.
To this rather strange idea, it is easy to pose alternatives. For in-
stance, as Engels critically mentioned in his preface to the third vol-
ume of Capital, George C. Stiebeling posed a solution: The rise of
the organic composition of capital increases the productivity of
labor and raises the rate of surplus value; therefore, the rate of
prot of the branch, even if it has a smaller ratio of variable capital,
goes up and approaches the average rate of prot. On the other
hand, Marx, though he admits that the transformation of organic
composition of capital affects the productivity of labor, assumes that
the productivity of labor is constant, that is, the rate of surplus value
is constant. Here Marx undoubtedly premised a certain synchronic
system wherein the rate of surplus value of total social capital is con-
stant. According to our primary denition, the surplus value of in-
dustrial capital is attained by the temporal differentiation of systems,
but then, what happens if it is seen synchronically? This is what Marx
did: What we previously viewed as changes that the same capital un-
derwent in succession, we now consider as simultaneous distinctions
between capital investments that exist alongside one another in
different spheres of production.
29
This method is also used else-
where: We can now move on to apply the above equation for the
prot rate, p sv/c, to the various possible cases. We shall let the
6715 CH06 UG 1/29/03 8:01 PM Page 245
246
Marx
individual factors of sv/c vary successively in value, and establish the
effect of these changes on the rate of prot. We thus obtain various
sets of cases which we can consider either as successive changes in
circumstances for the action of one and the same capital, or, indeed,
as different capitals, existing simultaneously alongside one another,
and brought in for purposes of comparison, for example, from dif-
ferent branches of industry or from different countries.
30
Marx saw as the same that capitals with higher organic composi-
tion and those with lower organic composition spatially coexist as
different branches of industry, and that capital in general tempo-
rally succeeds from lower stage to higher stage in organic composi-
tion. In the latter case, relative surplus value is achieved. And if this
temporal succession is shifted to the spatial dimension, it can be
considered that capitals with higher organic composition absorb
(exploit) relative surplus value from those with lower organic com-
position. Imagine an extreme case: an enterprise in which every as-
pect of production is automated, performed by robots. In this
production, the ratio of variable capital (workers) is zero, and the
rate of surplus value is supposed to be zero; nevertheless, an average
rate of prot is attained. In terms of Marxs formulation, this is be-
cause the surplus value of total capital is distributed. That is to say
that highly protable companies with relatively few employees
such as, for instance, investment, information, and high-tech pro-
duction rmsmay not appear to exploit workers who work in
different individual capitals directly, but they do so indirectly.
What are the implications of Marxs idea that total surplus value is
being distributed to individual capitals? The rst is that capital at-
tains surplus value only by workersas a wholebuying back what
they produce; second that surplus value is inexorably invisible to in-
dividual capitals. In consequence, the inherent relationship between
capital and wage labor comes to be blurred. Since all sections of cap-
ital equally appear as sources of the excess value (prot), the capital
relation is mystied.
31
To the everyday consciousness of individual cap-
itals, their workers are merely a part of the price of production, and
the workers of other capitals are just consumers. Thus it has been
imperative to recapture the relationship between capital and wage
labor. But if, like a Ricardian leftist, one considers that exploitation
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Value Form and Surplus Value
occurs in the production process of individual capitals, we will face a
contradiction: that the capitals with higher organic composition gain
a rate of prot that is unfairly higher than the amount of their labor
input. It is here that Marx proposes an explanationbecause the sur-
plus value earned by other capitals is being distributed to them. In
other words, the surplus value attained by the exploitation of other
capitals workers is being distributed to the capitals with higher or-
ganic compositions. If so, it is not only insufcient but also often
harmful to stress the exploitation in the production process on the
level of individual capitals alone. This is the reason why the labor
union movement based upon the theory of Ricardian leftists,
though ourishing, came to be reactionary. In the prot that a
certain individual capital gains, what is distributed is the surplus
value exploited from the workers of different industrial branches as
well as independent small producers; in the prot that the total cap-
ital of a certain nation-state gains, what is distributed is the surplus
value exploited from the workers and peasants of foreign coun-
tries (colonies). But the difculty is that these details are always
invisible.
32
When Marx assumed that total surplus value was being distributed
to individual capitals, he conceptualized it within a synchronic, equi-
librium system, it might be said. This can be grasped only on the
transcendental level (read not on the empirical level). Rather now
the spatial coexistence of branches should be transposed back into
temporal succession once more. In reality there are superior
branches in which technological innovations and expansion of
production continue, and inferior branches which are downsized
because of their inability to achieve the average rate of prot. The
equilibrium system created by the average rate of prot in fact veils
the actual violent selection and reformation of industrial branches.
And even within the same branch, individual capitals are exposed to
constant competition with each other. To beat the competition, they
tend toward technological innovations to effectively reduce the cost
of wages. They want to sell their commodities that have been produced
at a lower cost, for a price higher than the lowered cost, yet lower than
the previous price of productionby so doing, they get extra prot.
Marx thought that technological innovation was motivated by the
6715 CH06 UG 1/29/03 8:01 PM Page 247
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Marx
activities of individual capitals seeking extra prot. Schumpeter
wrote about this, calling the essence of capitalism an incessant cre-
ative destruction.
33
But creative destruction does not occur con-
tinuously because once companies invest in new equipment, they
cannot discard it and ret so easily. In reality, the selection shows it-
self dramatically when the average rate of prot goes down, during
times of depression. I have stressed that the movement of capital is
in principle based upon relative surplus value attained by technolog-
ical innovation, but this process is never a smooth one; it always ap-
pears as the trade cycle. What Marx sought to do in the third volume
was to elucidate this mechanism.
The trade cycle is inevitable in the capitalist economyno matter
how individual capitals behave. This is sheerly due to the behavior of
the total surplus value of total capitalthe invisible whole. Trade cy-
cles in capitalist economies take the following path: During times of
prosperity, more laborers are hired, and wages rise; this causes a fall
of the rate of prot; despite the fall of the rate of prot, individual
capitals cannot so easily reduce production after having invested a
certain amount of constant capital; and especially when credit is
overheated, as it is during times of prosperity, it is difcult to antici-
pate (and sense) falls in the rate of prot; then, all of a sudden, cri-
sis hits, revealing the reality of the situation; many companies go
bankrupt, and many laborers are red. With the continued falling
rate of prot, capitals tend toward the investment of constant capital
(qua the introduction of technological innovation); it is at this mo-
ment that the organic composition of capital improves across the
board; when the time of prosperity comes again, the labor power
that has been excessive is now absorbed, and wages rise; this lowers
the rate of prot; despite the fall of the rate of prot, capitals have
to continue to expand because of the swelling of credit; and crisis
hits again.
This is the (short-term) trade cycle that Marx observed during his
lifetime, called the Juglar cycle. Throughout the cycle, capital in gen-
eral advances its organic composition. As becomes clearer in this con-
text, the prolongation of labor time (absolute surplus value) is the
typical phenomenon of prosperity, an attempt to increase produc-
tion or to quickly collect on the investment in equipment without
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Value Form and Surplus Value
improving the organic composition. The value of the xed capital,
moreover, is now reproduced in a shorter series of turnover periods,
and the time for which it has to be advanced in order to make a cer-
tain prot is reduced. The prolongation of the working day thus
raises prots even if overtime is paid, and up to a certain point this is
true even if overtime is paid at a higher rate than normal working
hours.
34
The prolongation of the working day (the source of absolute sur-
plus value) is a common phenomenon in times of prosperity even
today when working hours are much shorter than during Marxs
time. But working longer is not necessarily compelled by the em-
ployer: Workers sometimes want overtime pay. If a longer working
day is made compulsory, the workers living conditions are threat-
ened, namely, the reproduction of labor powerworkers being
healthy enough to bear and raise childrenis affected. Certainly
workers would resist, and even the bourgeois nation-state would in-
terfere (as exemplied in the factory act of nineteenth-century Eng-
land). The idea of Ricardian leftists that workers are made to work
longer than necessary, an idea that is often mistaken as Marxs, be-
came the theoretical ground for the labor movement and con-
tributed to the shortening of working hours. In fact, working hours
have been gradually and constantly shortened throughout history.
Meanwhile, capitals continue to seek the intensication of labor.
35
But
the concept of absolute surplus valuedened as the surplus value
earned by the prolongation of working hours and intensication of
labordoes nothing to reveal the secret of capitalist production that
expands endlessly. (There is a strong tendency to centralize absolute
surplus value. Marx, for instance, began with absolute surplus value.
But in his case, it was just for the sake of description, and not anything
more signicant. Therefore, one need not think of it as central.)
On the other hand, relative surplus value can only be earned by
creating new value systems through technological innovation. It is
during depressionwhen the rate of interest goes downthat capi-
tals raise their organic composition all at once. Technological inno-
vations, including those that have been rendered previously, are
fully employed at this moment. In short, the two kinds of surplus
valueabsolute and relativethat Marx explained successively must
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Marx
be understood as two moments of capitals circuitous movement in
the process of its accumulation. What is crucial here is that the rise
of capitals organic compositionwhat earns total capital its relative
surplus valuecan be made only via depression. Hence, the trade
cycle is destiny.
In order to capture surplus value, capital in sum has to constantly
create a new value system in which the value of labor power is consis-
tently lowered. But this cannot be realized at its convenience, but
only via the trade cycle, which is not caused by the anarchic nature
of capitalist production itself. As Kozo Uno stressed, in the nal
analysis, it derives from the fact that the capitalist production relies
on a special commodity (labor-power commodity). It is humans,
who cannot be discarded when they are excessive, who cannot be
readily reproduced when scarce. Nevertheless, what we have to keep
in mind here is that crisis or trade cycle cannot be properly under-
stood if not for an examination of the credit system. The trade
cycle is shaped by the conict and reciprocity between usurers capi-
tal (money capital) and industrial capital (real capital), namely, the
conict and reciprocity between rate of interest and rate of prot.
And, as a result of the swelling of credit, the fall of the rate of prot,
that is already ongoing, does not affect businesses immediately.
(Overproduction is just one of the effects of this.) This whole makes
an invisible bind, both spatially and temporally, to our everyday,
empirical consciousness.
Here I would add that there are two kinds of trade cycle: short and
long. Marx observed the shorter.
36
In contrast, there is Kondratieffs
wave, a trade cycle of fty to sixty years. It is said that this longer
cycle cannot be explained simply by the economic process per se;
yet it is still concerned with the fall of the general rate of interest
and the employment of radical technological innovations. This
trade cycle involved a world crisis (i.e., the Great Depression) as well
as the alteration of a key commodity (the world commodity) of capi-
talist productionfrom cotton manufacturing to heavy industry to
durable consumer goods to the information industry. It inexorably
led to a reorganization of the whole society. As a result, it has been
stressed that the longer trade cycle, because of its structural causal-
ity, cannot be explained on the economic level alone. But it is
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Value Form and Surplus Value
essentially the same as the shorter cycle. It, too, should be seen as a
part of the process to drastically improve the organic composition of
capital. Certainly, the advent of the longer cycle might be said to indi-
cate that the capitalist economy had begun a new stage. Nevertheless,
this new stage is nothing that goes beyond the recognition of capital-
ism presented in Capital, namely, the limit of the capitalist economy.
6.5 The Global Nature of Capitalism
Industrial capital, as Marx says, subordinates other kinds of capital,
and reorganizes them as parts of itself. The varieties of capital
which appeared previously, within past or declining conditions of
social production, are not only subordinated to [industrial capital]
and correspondingly altered in the mechanism of their functioning,
but they now move only on its basis, thus live and die, stand and fall
together with this basis. Money capital and commodity capital, in so
far as they appear and function as bearers of their own peculiar
branches of business alongside industrial capital, are now only
modes of existence of the various functional forms that industrial
capital constantly assumes and discards within the circulation sphere,
forms which have been rendered independent and one-sidedly ex-
tended through social division of labor.
37
In consequence, mer-
chant capital becomes commercial capital that takes partial charge
of industrial capitals activities. It was this phenomenon that made
classical economists belittle merchant capital.
Industrial capital supersedes other capitals, because [i]ndustrial
capital is the only mode of existence of capital in which not only the
appropriation of surplus-value or surplus-product, but also its cre-
ation, is a function of capital. It thus requires production to be capi-
talist in character . . .
38
The movement of industrial capital drives
capitalist society to incessant technological innovation. Yet this does
not prevent industrial capital from striving for earning surplus value
from spatial difference as well. In fact industrial capital has always
been doing this; and without it, cannot survive. Industrial capital is a
variant of merchant capital that earns surplus value from the differ-
ence of the spatial systems it creates. For instance, capitals today
travel around the world looking for cheaper labor power.
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Marx
I insist on seeing industrial capital as a variant of merchant capi-
tal, rather than elaborating its distinction from merchant capital.
Capitalno matter what kindgains surplus value from the dif-
ference of value systems, yet this essential nature is theoretically
repressed. Industrial capital as well as the theorists who support it re-
pressed their essential sameness by marginalizing merchant capital
and mercantilism.
39
Industrial capital or the capitalist mode of pro-
duction was begun by those merchant capitalists who were compet-
ing in the mercantilist international trade; by that time, commercial
credit, bank credit, and stock companies had already been estab-
lished.
Industrial capitals reformation of the world notwithstanding,
however, the capitalist mode of commodity productionin distinc-
tion from commodity production in generalwas and is only par-
tial, and its percentage within the whole of production is small. The
majority of production, be it commodity production or noncom-
modity production, is still noncapitalist. In the future, too, it is
impossible that all production becomes capitalist through and
through. Why then could this partial capitalist mode of production
overpower the globe? Only thanks to the global nature of the com-
modity economy that interconnects the whole of products and
production, namely, the global nature of money.
Marx saw the historical premise for modern capitalism in the ad-
vent of the world market. The circulation of commodities is the start-
ing point of capital. The production of commodities and their
circulation in its developed form, namely trade, form the historic pre-
suppositions under which capital arises. World trade and the world
market date from the sixteenth century, and from then on the mod-
ern history of capital starts to unfold.
40
The formation of the world
market really means that the spheres of the commodity economy that
had existed as fragments in different parts of the world came to be
connected. In the concrete, this means that the world currency system
was established by gold and silver; thereupon grounded was the mer-
cantilism that accumulated gold and silver as the means of interna-
tional liquidation. World money [Weltgelt] encompassed communities,
which had been isolated in autarky. Since then, no matter what peo-
ple of communities the world over wanted, or, in other words, even
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Value Form and Surplus Value
though their lives were not always carried on within the commodity
economy, their products came to be virtually and forcibly posited in the
chain of the global commodity economy. For world money, there was
no longer any exteriority that went beyond it. It is at this moment that
capitalism was established as world capitalism.
41
What Immanuel Wallerstein calls the modern world system
began, in reality, within the international credit system of merchant
capital. Even absolutist monarchical states had no choice but to op-
erate in and with it; it was rather engendered by its compelling pres-
ence. So-called primitive accumulationwhich separated labor
power from means of production and commodied landwas ren-
dered by the absolutist monarchical state; but this whole thing oc-
curred within and was provoked by the competition for international
trade. The capitalist mode of commodity production in England was
commenced by merchant capital ghting the international trade
war in order to compete with foreign noncapitalist commodity pro-
ductions. But this particular mode of production has not decom-
posed all conventional forms of production and will not. It simply
provides a ctitious institution to noncapitalist modes of production
as if they were fully capitalist enterprisesand marginalizes them. In
consequence, capitalist modes of production, though partial, seem
to be omnipotent.
Seeing capitalism from the specicity of industrial capitalism
alone often results in repressing the premises of capitals historicity,
and equally crucially, the total picture of how the capitalist mode of
production coexists with the noncapitalist mode of production in
mutual reciprocity. As I said in chapter 5, Marx reected upon the
establishment of the average rate of prot from the vantage point of
how total surplus value is distributed to unequally developing indus-
trial branches. But, to be more precise and thorough, the branches
of noncapitalist production must be included in this scheme. First,
thinking about the situation within a nation-state, the businesses of
many branches of self-employed farmers and independent small
producers do not achieve an average rate of prot; they have little
consciousness of the rate of prot as such. They sustain their sim-
ple reproduction by introducing their own and their family mem-
bers labor power. They own their means of production and are not
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Marx
proletariat; thus they even have pride of a petit-bourgeois kind. Nev-
ertheless they are the kind of people who are, though indirectly, ex-
ploited even more than the proletariat. Also these branches play the
role of storing the relative surplus population (qua the industrial re-
serve army) that increases in number as the organic composition of
capital rises. During times of prosperity, the necessary labor power is
mobilized from them.
Notwithstanding the persisting signs that the capitalist mode of
production is about to decompose all other modes of production, it
is not and never will be the case. Rather the capitalist mode of pro-
duction seeks to conserve and make use of them, and the proletariat
is no exception. Wallerstein says: I do not tell you anything novel to
say that, in historical capitalism, there has been increasing proletari-
anization of the workforce. The statement is not only not novel; it is
in the least surprising. The advantages to producers of the process
of proletarianization have been amply documented. What is surpris-
ing is not that there has been so much proletarianization, but that
there has been so little. Four hundred years at least into the exis-
tence of a historical social system, the amount of fully proletarian-
ized labor in the capitalist world-economy today cannot be said to
total even fty per cent.
42
The majority of wage workers are not
those fully dened proletariats who are, as Marx claims, [f]ree
workers in the double sense,
43
(the double sense means that they
do not own any means of production, and they are free from various
traditional binds derived from the precapitalist means of production,
as would be the case with slaves, serfs, etc.) but semi-proletariats who
belong to households whose members share incomes from the vari-
ous jobs they get whenever possible. In the households of the semi-
proletariat, everyone shares everybody elses income. This kind of
mutual aid is not exchange, but based upon the same compelled
reciprocity of gift and return that I observed before. Which also
means that they are bound by the traditions and orders of commu-
nity (more than an urban population). And if I think about it, an
element of noncapitalist reciprocity remains even in the most ad-
vanced sectors of capitalist development. Even after the traditional
communities have for the most part decomposed, remnants of them
still exist in family relationships.
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Value Form and Surplus Value
Why on earth are premodern production and relations of produc-
tion preserved in advanced capitalist countries? This is an in-
tractable problem the world over (outside the most advanced sectors
of England and North America). In prewar Japan, there was a fa-
mous uproar called the Japan Capitalism Debate or the Feudal
System Debate, which involved quite a few scholars of the time. The
title specifying Japan notwithstanding, this problem is not peculiar
to Japan, it is universal. (The same type of problematicas to
whether or not the societies in Latin America are feudalreap-
peared in the argument between Ernst Laclau and Immanuel
Wallerstein in the 1970s.) In the Japan Capitalism Debate, one
school Koza-ha maintained that in Japanese society, where (extra-
economic) feudal domination presided over by the emperor
[Tenno] system remained deeply embedded, the primary task was a
bourgeois revolution against feudalism. The opposition school Rono-
ha insisted that Japanese society was already amidst a fully developed
capitalist economy; what appeared to be feudal dominion in agricul-
tural districts was in fact already a form of modern landholding
wherein the farm rent overheated because of competition between
the overpopulation of tenant farmers coming from cities as relative
surplus population. In such a situation, the hierarchy in rural areas
appeared to be even more feudal, which however was really a prod-
uct of the capitalist economy; and even that phenomenon would
eventually disappear.
44
At a glance, the latter position seems to be more realistic. This,
however, contained the problematic determinism that all underde-
veloped capitalist nation-states would repeat the same developmen-
tal pattern as Britain, the model of Capitaland overlooked the
crucial fact that both developed and underdeveloped nation-states
coexisted in the synchronic relation of world capitalism. Meanwhile,
stressing the feudal remnants, the former school at least conceived
of a theoretical stance that could question the simplistic economic de-
terminism and objectify the formation of political and mythological
powerthe so-called superstructure. The problematic of analyzing
the Japanese specicity was then succeeded in the postwar climate by
some leftist critics (such as Masao Maruyama and Takaaki Yoshi-
moto) as, most eminently, the enigma of Emperor fascism: Why
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Marx
primeval, mythological elements function in highly advanced indus-
trial capitalist societies. For this endeavor, they introduced methods
of political science and anthropology, and so forth, domains outside
conventional Marxist doctrines. This somewhat corresponded to
the agendas of the Western Marxists who struggled under Fascism
during the 1930s; Gramsci, for instance, who came to pay utmost at-
tention to cultural hegemony, and the Frankfurt School, which in-
troduced psychoanalysis into its analysis of power. As a general
tendency, Marxists paid attention to the relative autonomy of super-
structure because of their belief that this intervention would nally
compensate Marxs theoretical shortcomings. As I mentioned ear-
lier, however, Marxs Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte had al-
ready revealed the mechanism of Bonapartism (qua the prototype
of fascism)how it came into existence out of the complex of coex-
isting advanced industrial capitalism and conventional relations of
production and class structureby way of analyzing the every mech-
anism of the representation [Darstellung] and representative system
[Vertretung]. Thus the idea that the advent of Fascism in the 1930s
brought something novelagainst which Marxs analysis was
obsoletewas nally wrong. The idea only proved that Marx had
not been read closely enough.
It is now necessary to shift our problematic: the issue of why
primeval, mythological elements function in highly advanced indus-
trial capitalist societies should be graspednot as the relative auton-
omy of superstructurebut in the framework of why high industrial
capitalization does not entirely decompose the conventional rela-
tions of production, and rather conserves them for its own use;
namely, it should be grasped as an immanent problem of capitalism.
For instance, in 1935 Kozo Uno made an important observation
when criticizing both sides of the Japan Capitalism Debate. The
following is a rough summary of his point. The process of capitalist
development in underdeveloped countries that had begun capital-
ization in the stage of imperialism was inexorably different from the
process of British development. Forced to undertake a quick capital-
ist development by the pressure of advanced strong states, they had
to proceed with the concentration of capital by adopting state pro-
tectionist policies and the stock system. They sought to shape up the
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Value Form and Surplus Value
institutions of nancial capitalism while importing the form of large
mechanical industry. Since the new state-supported heavy industries
did not absorb much labor population, however, a large amount of
relative surplus population went back to or remained in agricultural
districts. This invited an overheating of farm rent, and resulted in
preserving various institutions that kept feudal features. So it was
that this was the result of a development of industrial capitalism
rather than backwardness. Thus, it was possible that, while heavy in-
dustrialization was going on, feudal remnants were reinforced and
premodern representations were created. In short, countries did not
follow the course that Great Britain had gone through. Therefore,
both developed and underdeveloped countries have to be seen in
the synchronic structure of world capitalism.
45
Also, as we shall see
later, here one must recognize the autonomous being of the state,
independent from capital.
The Marx of Capital did not tackle this problem head-on, but his
account of the price of production implied the answer. He began
this account from the fact that industrial branches with different
productivities coexist. Concerning the average rate of prot and the
price of production, Marx stressed that, when these industrial
branches with difference coexist in equilibrium, the more produc-
tive branches are depriving others of surplus value. Herein exists the
reason why the capitalist mode of production, albeit partial, be-
comes dominant. And this is the crux of what is called exploitation.
The surplus value in the capitalist mode of production is attained by
technological innovation (or improvement of the productivity of
labor); but this is via the difference that is made not only from the
extra prot within the same branches, but also from the gap with
other branches of production.
These considerations have been made exclusively within the
model of a nation-state, yet the whole scheme can and should be
applied to the world market. So now I will take up the case of world
trading, which has so far been bracketed, for [c]apitalist produc-
tion never exists without foreign trade.
46
The industrial revolution
centered on cotton manufacturing in England occurred not because
of an impetus of the domestic market, but due to the mercantilist
struggle over international hegemony. In this climate, Ricardo
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258
Marx
objected to mercantilist prot making from foreign trade and the
protective tariff constituted for it, with the conviction that free trade
would result in mutual prot. This was based upon his theory of
comparative costs: In the total production cost in each country, the
production branches of which productivity is comparatively high,
namely, of which commodities are produced with less labor input,
are naturally specialized into exportation branches; and the interna-
tional relation of specialization is formed between these branches.
This was, however, little more than an ideology of Great Britain-as-
factory-of-the-world, that made all other countries suppliers of raw
material. Ricardo explained the mutual benet of world specializa-
tion citing examples of England (cotton fabric) and Portugal
(wine). But he was wrong. It is a historical fact that, thanks to this
very structure, Portugal turned into an agricultural country subordi-
nated to English industrial capitalism. What is more, consider the
England/India relation. Up until the end of the eighteenth century,
Indian cotton products had been overpowering English textile in-
dustries. As a countermeasure, Great Britain began to raise tariffs
against Indian products to protect national manufacturers. Then,
after the success of the industrial revolution, at the point when the
price of English products got cheaper, she began to advocate free
trade.
47
The result was the destruction of traditional Indian manual
labor industries. This was far from the result of free trade; it was a di-
rect result of the politico-military colonial domination that forbade
India from claiming her own tariff rights. The lesson from this his-
tory is that liberalism was, despite its appearance to the contrary, a
variant of mercantilism. The liberalism of classical economics took
for granted Great Britain as the factory of the world, while forcing
all other countries to be suppliers of raw material. It was only a mat-
ter of course that the other regions of the world had to reform
themselves as modern nation-stateswith the claim that sovereignty
is equal to the right to impose tariffsand promoted state-owned
industrial production. And those nation-states that succeeded with
heavy industrialization managed to escape colonial domination. It
follows that the origin of nationalism was economic, par excellence.
Both Smith and Ricardo were against colonialismbut less be-
cause of their opposition to the robbing of colonies than because
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Value Form and Surplus Value
they represented the interests of Great Britain, the factory of the
world, to which the enclosure of colonies by other strong European
states was the only obstacle. Still today, Ricardos concepts of com-
parative advantage and international specialization are popular
among neoliberal economists. As opposed to this, Arghiri Emmanuel
argued that the exchange between the core and colonies on the
world market inexorably renders unequal exchange, and once this
begins, the result is cumulative. Samir Amin attributed the cause of
underdeveloped countries remaining underdeveloped to the un-
equal exchange and dependency practiced in the guise of comparative
advantage and international specialization. Surprisingly, before the
industrial revolution in England, there had not been so much differ-
ence in economic and technological advancement between Europe
and non-Europe (especially Asia). The underdevelopment of the lat-
ter was produced, quite recently, after the advent of industrial capi-
talism. In the rough, their claims are right. Nonetheless, to my
position, they are too much based upon the substantial labor theory
of value. Their position is like insisting: la proprit, cest le vol,
without tackling the question of how surplus value (unequal
exchange) occurs in equal exchanges.
Wallerstein inherited a certain aspect of the dependency theory
that capitalism should always be analyzed as a world economy,
instead of a national economy, because the national economy or na-
tion-state itself was engendered in the world market. However, the
standpoint of world capitalism was already given logically in Capital.
As opposed to Ricardos theory of international specialization, when
Marx tackled the nature of industrial capitalism with the problem-
atic views of world market and merchant capitalism, he already had
in mind what is referred to today as world capitalism. That is, in Cap-
ital, Marx dealt with not the English national economy but with
world capitalism. Here again Marx employed an antinomy: he once
said, Capitalist production never exists without foreign trade, but
soon after he said, Bringing foreign trade into an analysis of the
value of the product annually reproduced can therefore only confuse
things, without supplying any new factor either to the problem or to
its solution. We therefore completely abstract from it here . . .
48
This
contradiction can be solved if and only if we consider that Marx
6715 CH06 UG 1/29/03 8:01 PM Page 259
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Marx
conceptually and methodologically internalized the world economy
within the national economy.
49
Capital took England as a model
thus came the debate as to whether it could be applied to the other
more underdeveloped nations. Yet what Marx saw in and through
England was no less than the world economy. Marx carefully made
clear the way a national economy is formed by global forces.
In explaining the tendential fall in the rate of prot by the rise of
capitals organic composition, Marx pointed out that it is prevented
by foreign trade:
In so far as foreign trade cheapens on the one hand the elements of con-
stant capital and on the other the necessary means of subsistence into
which variable capital is converted, it acts to raise the rate of prot by rais-
ing the rate of surplus-value and reducing the value of constant capital. It
has a general effect in this direction in as much as it permits the scale of
production to be expanded. In this way it accelerates accumulation, while it
also accelerates the fall in the variable capital as against the constant, and
hence the fall in the rate of prot. And whereas the expansion of foreign
trade was the basis of capitalist production in its infancy, it becomes the spe-
cic product of the capitalist mode of production as this progresses,
through the inner necessity of this mode of production and its need for
an ever extended market. Here again we can see the same duality of effect.
(Ricardo completely overlooked this aspect of foreign trade.)
There is a further question, whose specic analysis lies beyond the limits
of our investigation: is the general rate of prot raised by the higher
prot rate made by capital invested in foreign trade, and colonial trade in
particular?
Capital invested in foreign trade can yield a higher rate of prot, rstly,
because it competes with commodities produced by other countries with
less developed production facilities, so that the more advanced country sells
its goods above their value, even though still more cheaply than its competi-
tors. In so far as the labor of the more advanced country is valorized here as
labor of a higher specic weight, the prot rate rises, since labor that is not
paid as qualitatively higher is nevertheless sold as such. The relationship
may hold towards the country to which goods are exported and from which
goods are imported: i.e. such a country gives more objectied labor in kind
than it receives, even though it still receives the goods in question more
cheaply than it could produce them itself. In the same way, a manufacturer
who makes use of a new discovery before this has become general sells
more cheaply than his competitors and yet still sells above the individual
value of his commodity, valorizing the specically higher productivity of the
labor he employs as surplus labor. He thus realizes a surplus prot. As far as
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Value Form and Surplus Value
capital invested in colonies, etc. is concerned, however, the reason why this
can yield higher rates of prot is that the prot rate is generally higher
there on account of the lower degree of development, and so too is the
exploitation of labor, through the use of slaves and coolies, etc. . . .
But this same foreign trade develops the capitalist mode of production at
home, and hence promotes a decline in variable capital as against constant,
though it also produces overproduction in relation to the foreign country,
so that it again has the opposite effect in the further course of development.
We have shown in general, therefore, how the same causes that bring
about a fall in general rate of prot provoke counter-effects that inhibit this
fall, delay it and in part even paralyze it. These do not annul the law, but
they weaken its effect. If this were not the case, it would not be the fall in
the general rate of prot that was incomprehensible, but rather the relative
slowness of this fall.
50
Here Marx shows us that the tendential fall in the rate of prot is
inevitable within a system (a nation-state). The tendential fall in the
rate of prot is not a problem that arose anew in the stage of imperi-
alism that developed heavy industry. From the beginning, [c]apital-
ist production never exists without foreign trade. Marx thought,
from early on, that industrial capitalism did not exist without the
world market. Why then did he take the trouble of such a detour
enfolding the world economy into the English economyinstead of
directly tackling the world economy? To this day this remains one of
the most troubling enigmas of Capital. I believe it was because he
had to negate the stereotypical view that grasps world capitalism just
as an aggregate of individual national economies. The point is that
no single national economy could be autonomous; no matter how
hard it resists, it is inexorably combined into the system of world
specialization.
Now seen from the paradoxical view of nation-world, wherein the
products of various countries are internalized, the issue of unequal
exchange by foreign trade can be transposed back to the branches
within a national economy that have different organic compositions.
As I have already mentioned, total surplus value is distributed to
the capitals with the higher organic compositionas the average
rate of prot or the price of production. Only in this manner is it
possible to see that under the free trade that Ricardo advocated
namely, specialization by comparative advantage and international
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Marx
specializationsurplus value is transferred (exploited) from the
margin to the center via the fair trade at the price of production.
Facing the problem as to why and how the general rate of prot can
be established among different branches of production, it must be
said, Marx was already dealing with it on the level of world capital-
ism. With respect to the uneven development, Wallerstein says:
Core and periphery, then, are simply phrased to locate one crucial part of
the system of surplus appropriation by the bourgeoisie. To oversimplify,
capitalism is a system in which the surplus-value of the proletarian is appro-
priated by the bourgeois. When this proletarian is located in a different
country from this bourgeois, one of the mechanisms that has affected the
process of appropriation is the manipulation of controlling ows over state
boundaries. This results in patterns of uneven development which are
summarized in the concepts of core, semiperiphery and periphery. This is an
intellectual tool to help analyze the multiple forms of class conict in the
capitalist world-economy.
51
However, in this unequal exchange, is there any one particularly
insidious operation? There is no conundrum here. It appears enig-
matic only because one considers industrial capital to be different
from merchant capital. As I mentioned, merchant capital practices
equal exchange in individual systems, yet the difference between sys-
tems itself earns the surplus value; and industrial capital, too, earns
surplus value from the difference between systemsby temporally
differentiating systems. In the stage of merchant capital, the uneven
development between regions was conditioned sheerly by the nat-
ural environment. But the intervention of industrial capital changed
the condition: With the exchange of industrial products, the prod-
ucts of nonindustrial nations were forced to specializenamely, in
raw materialswhich brought about unevenness. Ever since, this
unevenness has been reproduced every day.
Since as early as the late nineteenth century, Marxs prospects
the tendential fall in the rate of prot, the impoverishment of the
proletariat, and the polarization of classeshave been questioned
and criticized as unrealistic. It was true that British workers achieved
a certain leeway counter to Marxs law of impoverishment. But this
does not disprove his analysis, because British capital gained surplus
value from foreign trade, which was redistributed to the compatriot
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Value Form and Surplus Value
workers to a certain extent. That is to say that the impoverishment
occurred less within one nation-state, namely, Great Britain, than to
people abroad. And, of course, this is still going on: More than half
the population of earth is experiencing famine. Previously, I said
that surplus value can be detected on the level of total social capital
rather than on the level of individual capitals; and in this context,
the level should be further upgraded from that of a nation-state to
total world capital. Capital is truly A Critique of Political Economy
because it sought to grasp capitalism from the stance of world
capitalism beyond a polis (nation-state).
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7
Toward Transcritical Counteractions
7.1 The State, Capital, and Nation
My emphasis on Marxs retrospective query into merchant capital
(M-C-M) does not suggest that the development of capitalism since
the nineteenth century can be ignored. It is totally the opposite. In
order to see the development clearly, the retrospective query was im-
perative. Rather it was the ideology of industrial capitalismupon
which classical Marxism was basedthat was the very obstacle to our
seeing the peculiarity of the development of contemporary capital-
ism. And the retrospective or belated query was the method of undo-
ing this bind. Capital has been rebuked as having become obsolete in
the epoch since it was written, while efforts to renovate it creatively
have been ongoing among Marxists. My attempt in writing this book
is unrelated to those efforts: It is a return to Capital once more to
read in it the potential that has been overlooked. By no means could
Marx have taken into consideration such recent events as imperial-
ism, joint stock companies (apropos separation between capital and
management), nancial capital, and Keynesianism. But, was their
novelty so fundamental that Marx could not even have imagined
them? I would say noas precisely presented in Capital, they had al-
ready existed as form, if not substance, even before the advent of in-
dustrial capitalism. Lenin maintained that imperialism had begun in
the late nineteenth century, the age of nancial capital that was epit-
omized by the exportation of capital. But nancial capital, the type
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Marx
that assumes adhesion between usurers capital or loan capital
(i.e., a bank) and monopolistic industrial capital, had already ex-
isted as form at the stage of mercantilism. And imperialism sensu
strictu had existed since the age of mercantilism= absolute monar-
chy. In contrast to the imperialism of ancient and medieval empires,
it was already based upon the principles of the commodity economy.
All in all, British liberalism was established upon the spoils of impe-
rialism of the age of mercantilism. If so, the stage of imperialism
should be seen not as a development of the stage of liberalism, but
as a return of the repressed (by the atmosphere of liberalism) of
mercantilism.
To nineteenth-century Marxists, such phenomena as the domina-
tion of nancial capital and imperialism appeared as drastically novel,
because they were deeply affected by classical economics qua an ideol-
ogy of industrial capitalism (despite their stress on Marx as a critic of
classical economics). Along with the establishment of industrial capi-
talism and with the thoughts of classical economics, the preceding
forms were deeply buried. The ideology of industrial capitalism
namely, that which Max Weber highly appreciated as The Protestant
Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalismis still living today. When something
occurs to counter them, it is represented as a drastic shift. For instance,
situations such as the recent casino capitalism or the e-trade phenome-
non seem to indicate that people no longer believe in the rewards of
diligent production and fair exchange, but rush toward difference by
way of merchant capitalist investment. As is evident, this is not a major
change in capitalism. Marx had already observed it in his lifetime: All
nations characterized by the capitalist mode of production are periodi-
cally seized by ts of giddiness in which they try to accomplish the
money-making without the mediation of the production process.
1
Marxs Capital is much more adequate to todays situation, often
called neoliberalist, than the innumerable theories developed in
tandem with the new situations that have arisen since it was writ-
ten. But this foresight is owed less to Marxs intention to see the
future than to his return to the archi-form of capitalism that had al-
ready existed before the establishment of industrial capitalism.
The capitalist economy is customarily subdivided along historical
stages: mercantilism, liberalism, imperialism, and late capitalism.
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Toward Transcritical Counteractions
This view appears to be correct in terms of articulating the
dominant tendencies, nevertheless it is wrong to think that some fun-
damental shift occurred between the stages. For instance, the fact
that the bulk of the labor market has moved from hard to soft labor
from physical to service and sales departmentsor that intellectual
labor such as information administration has become more crucial
to the whole operation is considered a marker of late capitalism.
Meanwhile, returning to Marxs rhetoric, one immediately discovers
that he employed the term industrial in a much broader manner.
[I]ndustrial [is used] here in the sense that it encompasses every branch of
production that is pursued on a capitalist basis. . . . There are however par-
ticular branches of industry in which the product of the production process
is not a new objective product, a commodity. The only one of these that is
economically important is the communication industry, both the transport
industry proper, for moving commodities and people, and the transmission
of mere informationletters, telegrams, etc. . . . The useful effect pro-
duced is inseparably connected with the transport process, i.e., the produc-
tion process specic to the transport industry.
2
In this sense, capital does not care whether it gets surplus value from
solid object or uid information. So it is that the nature of capital is
consistent even before and after its dominant production branch
shifted from heavy industry to the information industry. It lives on
by the difference. And as the father of cybernetics, Norbert Wiener,
suggested, information is originally nothing but difference.
3
The most crucial point of distinction for Marx is the one between
production in general and value production; value productivity is
not determined by what it produces, but by whether or not it pro-
duces difference. Accordingly, it is incorrect to say that the shift of the
main labor types is parallel to the shift of the forms of capitalist pro-
duction. Mark Poster posed the concept of the mode of informa-
tion as opposed to Marxs mode of production in his Foucault,
Marxism, and History.
4
This is another attempt to revise historical mate-
rialism that persistently sees history from the vantage point of produc-
tion; it cannot be a critical comment on Capital, which is originally an
inquiry into the forces with which capitalist production qua the pro-
duction of information (difference) organizes society. Another
group of Marxists has paid utmost attention to the diversication of
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Marx
commodity production in consumer society and especially its fasci-
nating effects, as if they were the cornerstones to revising the world-
view of Capital. In reference to Walter Benjamins phrase [n]ovelty
is a quality independent of the intrinsic value of the commodity,
5
for instance, they seek to discover an autonomous domain in cul-
tural production. From my stance, however, novelty is little more
than a synonym for information qua difference. What capital has to
produce from the beginning are not products in and of themselves,
but, more crucially, value (and surplus value). From the vantage
point that surplus value is attained by the production of difference,
the drive for novelty does not offer any new recognition. To tackle
capital, hence, one always has to think from the formula of mer-
chant capital: M-C-M. This approach would reveal that the so-called
development of industrial capitalism in stages is nothing but the re-
turn of the repressed of the archi-form of capitalism.
Wallersteins theory of the modern world system is important
insofar as it posed an alternative to the view that sees the world econ-
omy simply as the relationality and aggregate of national economies.
Yet at the same time, it appears epoch-making only because main-
stream Marxism has interpreted Marxs thought as if it were an ex-
tension of national economics (the economics of polis) and not as
its critic that he was. Classical economists (liberalists) have been dis-
avowing their own originthe amalgamation of mercantilists and
absolutist monarchyand insisting on the separation of economy
from state power. This is a repression of the historical origin in a
double sense. As I have already mentioned, the capitalist mode of
production commenced within the mercantilist state thanks to its in-
vestment and protection. In the latecomer capitalist states (such as
Germany, France, and Japan) in the nineteenth century, there was
state intervention in the economy; however, even in England, the in-
dustrial revolution took place thanks to the backup of the state as it
sought to grasp world hegemony. The liberalists forgot this fact and
described the world as if the capitalist economy had come into exis-
tence sui generis, independent from the state, and continued to
exist as such. Wallersteins concept of the modern world system thus
indicates, in our context, that at the fountainhead of modernity
there existed the absolutist-mercantilist state qua economic system,
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Toward Transcritical Counteractions
and this has not changed since. Nation-states, no matter how democratic
and industrial-capitalist-like to insiders, are absolutist-mercantilist
par excellence to outsiders. What is called liberalism is also a form of
the absolutist-mercantilist agenda, an economic policy that hege-
monic states always adopt.
In Capital, Marx bracketed the matter of state, which however
does not mean that he overlooked the existence of the state. The
primary task of Capital was to grasp the principles of capitals move-
ment, counter to and as a critique of German mercantilist state
economists (those whom Marx called the vulgar economists).
Thereby Marx bracketed the existence of the state methodologi-
cally, because state interventionespecially since the absolutist
stateis bound by the principles of the capitalist economy; because
extra-economic compulsion does not work in this context. In this re-
spect, the absolutist state diverged from the feudal state, where the
economic and the political had not been separated. Nonetheless,
saying this does not deny the fact that the state is based on a different
principle of exchange (plunder/redistribution) from that of the cap-
italist market economy; therefore, one has to acknowledge its auton-
omy to a large extentand this in a different sense from the relative
autonomy of superstructure that derived from historical materialism.
The fact that Capital lacks a theory of state has made Marxists ei-
ther gloss over it or return to pre-Capital accounts of it. It is generally
understood that early Marx grasped the state as an imagined com-
munity, while middle Marx considered it as a device for class domi-
nation. But in his The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, there is a
deeper understanding vis--vis the state than in either of these exam-
ples. Then, how did the Marx of Capital think of the state? The an-
swer to this question is not found by collecting bits and pieces of his
account of state in Capital, nor in his theories of state in his earlier
work. That is, we have to construct a new theory of state by applying
Marxs method in Capital. In order to tackle the capitalist economy,
Marx returned from liberalism to mercantilism, from industrial capi-
tal to merchant capital. In order for us to tackle the state, we have to
return to the previous stage of the bourgeois constitution.
In this retrospective approach, however, we must be wary of not
returning to a past too distant, namely, feudal states and Asiatic
6715 CH07 UG 1/29/03 8:02 PM Page 269
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Marx
despotic states.
6
We should return as far as the modern absolutist
monarchical states. It is said that in absolutist monarchies, the eco-
nomic and the political merged. But, to be more precise, in this
stage, they were rst split and then recombined, whereas in the
feudal state, they had been one and the same. This separation/
combination signies in the concrete that the absolutist monarchy
supported the activities of merchant bourgeoisie, and at the same
time was ensured a source of tax from them. This is mercantilism
as economic policy, and bullionisminasmuch as the policy relied
on gold qua world money [Weltgeld]as the means of interna-
tional settlement. The absolutist monarchy lifted the feudal extra-
economic compulsion, and transformed feudal dominion into
private property, by suppressing the innumerable feudal lords stand-
ing in a row waiting their turns. Furthermore, it imposed the com-
modity economy onto the agrarian community by way of monetary
taxing. By these measures, the absolutist monarchy accelerated the
bourgeois reform of the feudal economy. It is this process, called
primitive accumulation, that was nurtured amid the competition
among states within world capitalism.
Thus the amalgamation of absolutist state and mercantilism. In
England, at the point in time when the absolutist monarchy was
overthrown and industrial capitalism/liberalism was established,
economy and state were represented as two separate things. But in
fact, their deep bondage did not disappear. Liberalists insisted that
state and government should be smaller; but, as I have said, this was
a pretext to promote the temporary economic policy of the British
Empire, which was, from the beginning, an unrealistic, ostentatious
propaganda of an empire with immense foreign colonies. At the
same time, outside England, the tight bondage between state and
economy was (and continues to be) omnipresently observed among
latecomers to capitalism. The state is essentially mercantilist; Marxs
reections on mercantilism conversely shed light on what the state
is. Marx pointed to the fact that in bullionism the fetishism of
money appeared symptomatically, while, elsewhere, he commented
that classical economists suddenly went back to bullionism in times
of crisis. This account can transcritically be applied to the theory
of state.
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In the bourgeois democratic state, it is so dened that sovereignty
is in the people, and the government is their representative; here
the idea that an absolutist monarch equals sovereignty is already ob-
solete. But nally this may not be the case. For instance, Carl
Schmitt, the thinker of the Weimar Republic, questioned this, claim-
ing that while it seems that there is no sovereign ruler when we
think within the state, the sovereignty as the ultimate decision maker
is revealed in extreme cases: that is, during wars.
7
This same theory
later made Schmitt a supporter of Hitler, a sovereign ruler who
made extreme decisions. But Schmitts account contains an unde-
niably important issue. In The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte,
what Marx tackled was the same problem; he analyzed the process
by which Bonaparte could appear as a sovereign who made deci-
sions. What he elucidated here is the conjuncture where the state it-
self appears in the crises of representative parliament and capitalist
economy.
The monarch/king as sovereign in the absolutist monarchy was al-
ready different in nature from the feudal king. In this system, the
monarch/king could technically be anyone who sat in the place.
What Marx called fetishism was the obsessive idea that confuses gold
itself with currency, even though gold becomes money only
inasmuch as it is posited in general equivalent form. He spoke of it
in a striking manner, using metaphors of king and subjects. Deter-
minations of reection [Reexionsbestimmungen] of this kind are alto-
gether very curious. For instance, one man is king only because
other men stand in relation of subjects to him. They, on the other
hand, imagine that they are subjects because he is king.
8
These
metaphors are in a strange way more than metaphors, and perfectly
appropriate to absolutist monarchy. In the same way that bullionism
was denounced as illusion by classical economists, the absolutist
monarchy was denounced by democratic ideologues. After absolutist
monarchy as a system disappeared, however, the place remained as
an empty lot. The bourgeois revolution guillotined the king, but the
place of the king itself could not be erased. In the normal situation
and/or within the nation-state, this is invisible. But in extreme cases,
that is, crises or wars, the topos itself is manifest, gulping various
agents: military dictators, liberalists, socialists, and so on.
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Marx
Enter Thomas Hobbes (whom Schmitt reveres). In order to dene
sovereign, Hobbes conceptualized a process by which everyman trans-
fers his Right of Nature to a single man (Leviathan). This is isomor-
phic to the process by which every commodity establishes a mutual
relationship via money qua a commodity placed in the position of
equivalent form. Hobbes in a sense took in advance Marxs descrip-
tion: Finally, the last form, C, gives to the world of commodities
a general social relative form of value, because, and in so far as, all
commodities except one are thereby excluded from the equivalent
form.
9
So it might be said that Hobbes thought of the principle of
state from the vantage point of the commodity economy. He was the
rst person who discovered the fact that the sovereignlike money
exists in its form (position) rather than in its person/substance.
Hobbes wrote Leviathan in the midst of the Puritan Revolution. So
it was not in the least that he sought to ground the absolutist monar-
chy of the previous age. The absolutist monarch was ideally based
upon the divine rights of kings; this is equal to the idea that a king
rules his subjects because he is a king. On the other hand, Hobbess
position of social contract was not proper for the absolutist monar-
chy; his theory in fact worked well with the assembly of constitu-
tional monarchy after the Glorious Revolution. Why then does he
seem like a theorist of the absolutist state? Because he stressed the
concept of sovereign. Yet, as a point of fact, I should acknowledge
that he stressed not the existence of the person of the sovereign
but the fact that the place of the sovereign (qua state) remains inso-
far as there can be no social contract among states that transcends it.
Even though absolutist monarchical kings disappeared thanks to the
Puritan Revolution, the position of sovereign remained. That was
the corresponding fact. After all, the sovereignty of state is a sheer
position, and the one who is placed in it is the sovereign. After the
Glorious Revolution, the constitutional monarchy came into exis-
tence. Nevertheless, the position of the sovereign has remained,
even under the republican system. The position of the sovereign, or
the state itself, should be distinguished from the particular king or
president who occupies it.
Those thinkers who came after the constitutional monarchy,
namely, John Locke and David Hume, tended to identify the state
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Toward Transcritical Counteractions
with the governmentthat which consists of members of parliament
who are elected by the people. This collapse is similar to that made by
classical economists, who reduced money to the labor-value internal-
ized in commodities. Notwithstanding these respective identications
sovereignty with nations representatives and money with an index of
valuein exceptionally critical situations such as economic crises and
wars, the bare features of money and sovereignty are exposed.
Hegel spoke of StndeEstates (as parliamentary institutions)in
the constitutional monarchy system as follows:
. . . For the highest ofcials with the state necessarily have a more profound
and comprehensive insight into the nature of the states institutions and
needs, and are more familiar with its functions and more skilled in dealing
with them, so that they are able to do what is best even without the Estates, just
as they must continue to do what is best when the Estates are in session. . . .
10
. . . At the same time, this position means that they share the mediating
function of the organized power of the executive, ensuring on the one
hand that the power of the sovereign does not appear as an isolated
extremeand hence simply as an arbitrary power of dominationand on
the other, that the particular interests of communities, corporations, and
individuals [Individuen] do not become isolated either. Or more important
still, they ensure that individuals do not present themselves as a crowd or
aggregate, unorganized in their opinions and volition, and do not become
a massive power in opposition to the organic state.
11
The determination of the Estates as an institution does not require them to
achieve optimum results in their deliberations and decisions on the busi-
ness of the state in itself, for their role in this respect is purely accessory. . . .
On the contrary, they have the distinctive function [Bestimmung] of ensur-
ing that, through their participation in [the governments] knowledge, de-
liberations, and decisions on matters of universal concern, the moment of
formal freedom attains its right in relation to those members of civil society
who have no share in the government. In this way, it is rst and foremost
the moment of universal knowledge [Kenntnis] which is extended by the
publicity with which the precedings of the Estates are conducted.
12
The provision of this opportunity of [acquiring] knowledge [Kenntnissen]
has the more universal aspect of permitting public opinion to arrive for the
rst time at true thoughts and insight with regard to the condition and con-
cept of the state and its affairs, thereby enabling it to form more rational judge-
ments on the latter. In this way, the public also becomes familiar with, and
learns to respect, the functions, abilities, virtues, and skills of the ofcial bod-
ies and civil servants. And just as such publicity provides a signal opportunity
6715 CH07 UG 1/29/03 8:02 PM Page 273
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Marx
for these abilities to develop, and offers them a platform on which they may
attain high honours, so also does it constitute a remedy for the self-conceit
of individuals and of the mass, and a meansindeed one of the most im-
portant meansof educating them.
13
To Hegel, the task of Estates is to rule civil society politically and
reinforce peoples knowledge of and respect for the government, at
the same time as achieving a consensus of civil society. But this posi-
tion cannot be attributed to Hegels negligence of parliamentary
democracy and the expression of the underdevelopment of Prussian
democracy. For the development of democracy is nothing but
the development of educating [/ruling] them. The idea of peo-
ples sovereignty was established along with the advent of universal
suffrage, though the people were no other than those who had
been educated/ruled by the state. As Stirner said, under these con-
ditions, individuals are not egoists (read sovereign). To see the par-
liamentary democracybe it the constitutional monarchy or
republican systemas a process through which peoples opinions
are more fully represented is misleading. It is de facto little more
than the procedure by which to make what the bureaucrats deter-
mined appear to be the nations own decision. This is consistent or
even more persistent in the government of social democracy.
Young Marx criticized Hegels position. It was his belief that the
base was civil society (social state) and the political state was just a
self-alienated form of it. Nonetheless, what Marx called civil society
here was already that which had been articulated and reorganized
by the warring states. The citizens were already nations. Therefore,
even if the aspect of the political state were minimized or even elimi-
nated, the state would continue to remain within the civil society it-
self. The point of Stirners critique lay here. In this period, Marx
thought of state without taking into consideration the existence of
other states. For this reason, he could not see the autonomy of the
state that could not be reduced to civil society. In fact, when he criti-
cized Hegels Philosophy of Right, he overlooked a crucial point that
Hegel raised: that the state (sovereignty) exists toward other states.
Hegel said:
This is internal sovereignty. The second aspect is external sovereignty (see
below)In the feudal monarchy of earlier times, the state certainly had
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Toward Transcritical Counteractions
external sovereignty, but internally, neither the monarch himself nor the
state was sovereign. On the one hand . . . the particular functions and pow-
ers of the state and civil society were vested in independent corporations
and communities, so that the whole was more of an aggregate than an or-
ganism; and on the other hand, they [i.e. these functions and powers] were
the private property of individuals, so that what the latter had to do in rela-
tion to the whole was left to their own opinion and discretion. . . .
14
Swerving away from the Feuerbachian paradigm, Marx also swerved
away from his own earlier account of the state. This is evident in The
Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, where he reconsidered the
matter of the state from the aspects of monarchy, representative sys-
tem, bureaucratic system, and so forth. But in the end this book was
not written to address the theory of state, nor did Marx, even there-
after, ever tackle the issue of the state in its own right. Because of
this missing element, later Marxists had to resort to early Marx
and/or Engels, to reference the state issue.
Among them, and counter to Engelss idea that a state is a violent
device for class domination, Antonio Gramsci emphasized the as-
pect that it is also an ideological apparatus. This is trying to say that
civil society itself is equal to a state (qua power apparatus) and at the
same time an apparatus of cultural hegemony. This was really a cri-
tique of the position that divides the state and civil society. I have to
claim, however, that his stance saw the state only from within,
thereby reducing it to civil society. In order to grasp the state as an
autonomous entity, we have to see it as existing in relationship with
other states. After Gramsci, the stance that sees the state in terms of
cultural hegemony was widespread; then, after Foucault the perspec-
tive that locates power omnipresently rather than in the center was
widespread. If we think of the state only within the state, there is no
visible center for power; and we can easily reduce state power to the
network of powers in the state qua civil society. But the truth is that
absolutist states appeared amid the competition with each other in
world capitalism, and are still amid the same competition. No matter
how social democratic the state appears within itself, it is hegemonic
to its exterioritynamely, even under the slogan of humanitarian
intervention.
I have already opposed the view that sees state and nation as super-
structure (in the architectonic duality with the base-economic
6715 CH07 UG 1/29/03 8:02 PM Page 275
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Marx
domain) and points out that they are two different types of
exchange (see section 5.3). According to my scheme, there are in
the strict sense four relations of exchange in the world. First, there is
reciprocity of gift and return (within agrarian communities). Sec-
ond, there are robbery and redistribution (between state and agrar-
ian communities). Third is commodity exchange. And the fourth is
association. Association is based on mutual aid like that found in tra-
ditional communities, yet it is not as closed. It is a network of volun-
tary exchange organized by those who have once left traditional
communities via the commodity economy. The four types of ex-
change can be illustrated as follows:
a plunder and redistribution b reciprocity of gift and return
c exchange by money d association
a feudal state b agrarian community
c city d association
a state b nation
c capital (market economy) d association
a equality b fraternity
c liberty d association
Lenin thought that nations were formed by unied markets in con-
sequence of the development of the capitalist economy. This obser-
vation is as confused as the prospect that the globalization of
capitalism will eventually terminate nations. Yet this confusion is not
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due to economic reductionism; it is due to overlooking the fact that
the nation is based on principles of exchange different from those
of state and capital. As opposed to the common Marxist view, an-
thropological and psychoanalytic approaches intervened later on,
cherishing as they did nation-as-superstructure. This tendency is
summarized by Benedict Andersons famous concept of imagined
communities. But it is impossible to posit, so simplistically, eco-
nomic domain as reality and nation as the imagined. The effect of
the enlightenment of such a thesis cannot go beyond the closure of
academics. The nation qua representation is certainly intensied by
education as well as by literature, but it cannot be annulled by the
critique of representation, for it does not exist in and by representa-
tion alone. Marx famously criticized those enlightened intellectuals
who disdained religion, claiming that there was a reality that re-
quired religion and that religion could not be abolished unless the
reality were changed. In the same way, there are nations and the re-
ality that requires nations. The nations would last unless those reali-
ties are solved.
Benedict Anderson said that the nation-state is a marriage of na-
tion and state that are originally different in kind.
15
This was
certainly an important suggestion. Yet it should not be forgotten
that there was previously another marriage of two entities that were
totally heterogeneousthat of state and capital. In the feudal ages,
state, capital, and nation were clearly separated. They existed dis-
tinctively as feudal states (lords, kings, and emperors), cities, and
agrarian communities, all based upon different principles of ex-
change. States were based upon the principles of plunder and redistri-
bution. The agrarian communities that were mutually disconnected
and isolated were dominated by states; but, within themselves, they
were autonomous, based upon the principles of mutual aid and reci-
procal exchange. Between these communities, markets or cities
grew; these were based on monetary exchange relying on mutual
consent. What crumbled the feudal system was the permeation of
the capitalist market economy. On the one hand, this engendered
absolutist monarchical states that conspired with the merchant class,
monopolized the means of violence by toppling feudal lords (aris-
tocracy), and nally abolished feudal domination (extra-economic
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Marx
domination) entirely. This was the story of the wedding of state and
capital.
Feudal ground rent became national tax, while bureaucracy and
standing army became state apparatuses. Those who had belonged
to certain tribes, in certain clans, now became subjects under the ab-
solutist monarchy, grounding what would later be national identity.
Protected by the absolutist state, merchant capital (bourgeoisie)
grew up and nurtured the identity of the nation for the sake of cre-
ating a unied market. Yet this was not all in terms of the formation
of the nation. Agrarian communities that were decomposed along
with the permeation of market economy and by the urbanized cul-
ture of enlightenment always existed on the foundation of the na-
tion. While individual agrarian communities that had been autarkic
and autonomous were decomposed by the osmosis of money, their
communalitiesmutual aid and reciprocitythemselves were re-
covered imaginarily within the nation.
Anderson points out that, after the decline of religion that used to
make sense of individuals death, the nation plays the proxy for it. In
this situation, what is important is the fact that religion had existed
as and in the agrarian community. The decline of religion is equal to
the decline of community. In contrast to what Hegel called the state
of understanding (lacking spirit), or the Hobbesian state, the nation
is grounded upon the empathy of mutual aid descending from
agrarian communities. And this emotion is awakened by national-
ism: belonging to the same nation and helping each otherthe
emotion of mutual aid. And this nation is exclusive to other nations.
(My intention is not to understand nationalism from an emotional
viewpoint, though. For emotion is nally produced by the relation
of exchange. According to Nietzsche, the consciousness of Schuld
[guilt] derived from an economic principalSchuld [debt]. The in-
debtedness is the kind that one feels toward gifts. Beneath emotion
lies the relation of exchange.) This is the so-called marriage of state
and nation.
It was amid the bourgeois revolution that these three were of-
cially married. As in the trinity intoned in the French Revolution
liberty, equality, and fraternitycapital, state, and nation copulated
and amalgamated themselves into a force that was inseparable ever
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after. Hence the modern state must be called, sensu stricto, the capi-
talist nation-state.
16
They were made to be mutually complementary,
reinforcing each other. When economic liberty becomes excessive
and class conict is sharpened, the state intervenes to redistribute
wealth and regulate the economy, and at the same time, the emo-
tion of national unity (mutual aid) lls up the cracks. When facing
this fearless trinity, undermining one or the other does not work.
The French Revolution extolled liberty, equality, and fraternity.
The equality here was not limited to the equal right to liberty, but
practically meant the equality of wealth. In 1791, the Convention
Nationale interpreted equality as equality of wealth, and sought to
bring it about. This policy was terminated by Thermidor in 1793.
But the idea of the redistribution of wealth by the state remained.
This took hold as Saint-Simonism. Meanwhile, the fraternity signi-
ed the solidarity of citizens beyond nation and language. But then,
at the time of Napoleon, it came to mean the French nation. In this
manner, the ideal of liberty, equality, and fraternity turned into
the capitalist nation-state.
It was Hegel who grasped this collapse theoretically as the triad
system of philosophy [Dreieinigkeit]. On the one hand, he afrmed
the liberty of civil society as the system of desire, while, on the other
hand, he posited the state-bureaucratic system as reason that recti-
es the inequality of the distribution of wealth. Furthermore, frater-
nity, to him, was equal to a nation that overcomes the contradiction
between liberty and equality. Finally, the state for Hegel was the po-
litical expression of the nation. Thus Hegels Philosophy of Right was
the most complete expression of the trinity of capitalist nation-state.
From this, one can draw everything else: liberalism, nationalism, the
accounts on the welfare state, Schmitts theory of sovereignty, and even
criticisms against them. Hence it is necessary to retackle the book in
order to grasp the crux to supersede the capitalist nation-state.
17
Marxs critical work began with his accounts of Hegels Philosophy
of Right. Instead of being prematurely dropped, this concern was re-
ally raised to its completion in Capital. Employing the dialectic
method of description that he had once denied, Marx sought to illu-
minate the whole of the capitalist economy. Although in Capital one
nds no accounts of nation and state, there is a framework to grasp
6715 CH07 UG 1/29/03 8:02 PM Page 279
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Marx
everything (not only capital but also nation and state) as an eco-
nomic structure, namely, a form of exchange. Therefore, it is imper-
ative to reconsider Hegels Philosophy of Right from the vantage point
of Capital. It must be there that the escape from the trinity is found.
In Philosophy of Right, Hegel dialectically grasps the reciprocity of
capitalist nation-state that was already in place. Though he did not
describe the historical formation of the trinity, his model was evi-
dently taken from the actually existing example: Great Britain. In
this sense, the book could function as a critique of the state in
Germany. That is to say, what is described in the book is a model to
be realized in the future in all places other than the pioneers of the
trinity: Great Britain, France, and The Netherlands. In fact, even
today, the formation of the trinity is the main objective in many
countries of the world. The formation of the capitalist nation-state is
never an easy task.
Gramsci spoke of revolutionary movements using gures of mili-
tary tactics: the war of maneuver (frontal attack) and the war of posi-
tion. The war of maneuver signies a confrontational and direct
ght with the state government, while the war of position indicates a
struggle within and against the hegemonic apparatuses of civil soci-
ety, residing behind the state governmental apparatus. In this con-
text, he clearly stated that what had worked in the Russian
Revolution would not work for Western civil societies. In Russia, the
State was everything, civil society was primordial and gelatinous; in
the West, there was a proper relation between the State and civil so-
ciety, and when the state trembled a sturdy structure of civil society
was at once revealed. The State was only an outer ditch, behind
which there stood a powerful system of fortresses and earthworks.
18
A mature civil society is established only where the wedding of Capital-
Nation-State is well established. In Italy, fascists smashed the Leninist
struggle that was led by Gramsci and centered on the occupation of
factories. Its weakness was due to its reliance on nationalism. Mean-
while, in Russia, where the wedding of Capital-State-Nation had not
been completed, wars were fought on behalf of the tsar himself and
not for the nation; therefore, the socialist revolution had been able
to, or had to, resort to nationalism. Since then, many socialist revo-
lutions have borne national independence movements; in those
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regions where state apparatuses and capitals conspired with colo-
nialist powers, it was the socialists who informed and realized nation-
alism. The success of the revolutions unfortunately does not teach
us anything further concerning the struggle where the Capital-
Nation-State trinity is well established.
One often hears the prediction that, thanks to the globalization of
capital, the nation-state will disappear. It is certain that economic
policies within nation-states do not work as effectively as before, be-
cause of the growing network of international economic reliance on
foreign trade. But, no matter how international relations are reorga-
nized and intensied, the state and nation wont disappear. When
individual national economies are threatened by the global market
(neoliberalism), they demand the protection (redistribution) of the
state and/or bloc economy, at the same time as appealing to na-
tional cultural identity. So it is that any counteraction to capital must
also be one targeted against the state and nation (community). The
capitalist nation-state is fearless because of its trinity. The denial of
one ends up being reabsorbed in the ring of the trinity by the power
of the other two. This is because each of them, though appearing to
be illusory, is based upon different principles of exchange. There-
fore, when we take capitalism into consideration, we always have to
include nation and state. And the counteraction against capitalism
also has to be against nation-state. In this light, social democracy
does nothing to overcome the capitalist economy but is the last re-
sort for the capitalist nation-states survival.
The capitalist economy has an autonomous power. But it also has
its own limits. No matter how much the capitalist commodity econ-
omy affects the whole production, it is partial and parasitic. Further-
more, it has an exteriority that it cannot treat at its disposalland
(the natural environment in the broad sense) and humans as agents
of labor-power commodity.
19
For the capitalist market economy to
reproduce humans and nature, the intervention of the nation-state
is imperative. Kozo Uno saw the ultimate bounds of capitalism in the
fact that capital by itself cannot produce labor-power commodity.
Labor-power commodity is certainly not a simple commodity, since
it cannot be reproduced because of a shortage, nor discarded be-
cause of an excess. A shortage of labor power lowers the prot rate
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Marx
because of the rise of wages it necessitates. Although this conjuncture
makes the trade cycle inevitable, it can never deliver the fatal blow
to the capitalist economy. Capital deals with the surplus and short-
age of labor power by calling on its industrial reserve army, drawn
from the agricultural heartland and small businesses as well as un-
derdeveloped countries. The capitals of developed countries import
foreign workers when internal wages rise or export production
abroad. If so, this limit indicates only that the accumulation of capi-
tal can continue by way of the very crisis and the trade cycle, and this
is the way capital is perpetuated.
Now environmental problemseven the most severecannot
deal capitalism the fatal blow. During the past century, capitalist
production has destroyed the self-sustaining recycling system of the
natural environment, with which humans had worked in harmony
for a long time as agricultural producers. Thus one now sees environ-
mental pollution on a global scale. But to see it as an evil of the re-
cent progressivism of modern industrialization is one-dimensional. It
has been observed for quite a long time. Marx, of course, had
thought about it. The Marx of Capital assumed the stance that sees
history from the vantage point of human/nature relations, namely,
in the context of the environment in the broad sense.
Capitalist production collects the population together in great centers, and
causes the urban population to achieve an ever-growing preponderance.
This has two results. On the one hand it concentrates the historical motive
power of society; on the other hand, it disturbs the metabolic interaction
between man and the earth, i.e., it prevents the return to the soil of its con-
stituent elements consumed by man in the form of food and clothing;
hence it hinders the operation of the eternal natural condition for the last-
ing fertility of the soil. Thus it destroys at the same time the physical health
of the urban worker, and the intellectual life of the rural worker.
20
Notwithstanding this insight, what is crucial in Capital is less the dis-
tinction between industry and agriculture than that between the
capitalist mode of production and production in general, or be-
tween the world organized by value form and not. Commodication
and industrialization are related, yet different matters altogether.
Vis--vis the environmental problem, increasing numbers of people
advocate symbiosis with nature rather than dominance, after the
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model of underdeveloped societies, that is, of precapitalist modes of
production or agrarian communities. This is another romantic
dream of people who mainly reside in advanced industrial nations.
Ironically and tragically, environmental pollution expresses itself
most cruelly in those underdeveloped nations which had until very
recently enjoyed symbiosis with nature.
The environmental problem alone cannot be the motive to termi-
nate industrial capitalism. In reality, the most efcient way to elimi-
nate environmental pollution would be to include the cost of
recycling waste materials into the cost of production, that is, a green
tax. This requires seeing what has been deemed a free good as a
commodity. The things that have, since Adam Smith, been consid-
ered to have use value but not exchange value, for example, air and
water, are now becoming objects of commodity production. My
point here is that the environmental problem will result in further
and further commodication and privatization of the world, rather
than the reverse. In consequence, environmental and food crises
have the very real potential to invite new imperialist conicts be-
tween states. Therein capitals and states will risk anything for their
survival, and peoples of all nations, despite their wishes, will be en-
gulfed in their acts. And all those acts will be executed as public
consensus. Facing World War I, the social democrats who repre-
sented many nations at the Second International came to support
the intervention of the war. Todays disaster caused by environmen-
tal pollution is becoming more and more urgent to the extent of re-
minding people of their war intervention. No one can deny any
longer that this is due to industrial capitalism, and if it is not re-
strained, major catastrophes will be inevitable. However, to act against
it is difcult because we are living as part of the capitalist nation-state.
Therefore, if we cannot nd a way out of the circuit, there is no hope
for us. I believe that the way out is only through association.
7.2 A Possible Communism
Herein nally intervenes the fourth type of exchange: association. The
principle of association that was established by the anarchist Proudhon
is totally different from the other three. It is an ethico-economic form
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Marx
of exchange. And, as I said before, Marx also speculated that an
association of associations would replace the capitalist nation-state.
This prospect quickly dissipated, however, not because the Paris
Commune was crushed, nor because Marx kicked Bakunins sup-
porters out of the First International. It was due to the heavy indus-
trialization that began in Germany, France, and America in the
1860s. Around the same time, Marx was writing the third volume of
Capital, with the idea that the cooperative productions could com-
pete with corporations, though in reality they never prospered. In
the stage of the industrial development centered on textiles, the co-
operatives could contend with corporations, but not after. (They
were defeated not only by British corporations, but by a larger force:
the mammoth German state capitalism. In fact, even English corpo-
rations declined during the process of heavy industrialization, de-
feated by the same force. It also occurred to the association of Swiss
watchmakers upon which Bakunin relied; it was visited on them by
the force of American and German mechanical production.)
Observing this, Engels as well as the German Social Democratic
Party came to appreciate mammoth corporations and conceived
that socialization (state ownership) of them would necessarily lead
to socialism, ignoring cooperative production. But this enlargement
itself was found not to be an irreversible sort of development. Begin-
ning in the 1990s, the general composition of world commodity has
been changing from one based on durable consumer goods to one
dominated by the information industry. It is accompanied by the
tendency of mammoth-sized companies supported by the statist cor-
poratism to decompose, and new types of monopolies and oligopo-
lies by international capitals to ourish; meanwhile the outstanding
growth has been in the network of small- to mid-sized companies
(i.e., venture businesses). Interestingly, there is a possibility that the
latterin contrast to the mammoth corporationscould be trans-
formed into cooperative productions. In this sense, todays situation
is becoming similar to the climate in the age when Marx was thinking
of associations of cooperatives. So it is that we should read Capital not
as a classic written before the time of heavy industry and state capi-
tal, but as a text that can be revived in our age of neoliberalism and
global capitalism.
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After 1848, revolutionary movements based upon street uprisings
became obsolete on the European continentespecially in Great
Britain, where the Chartist movement peaked and then declined.
21
Then, in the 1850s, universal suffrage was realized, and the so-called
labor aristocrats appeared. Therefore, when we read Capital now, we
should no longer look for the glorious prospect of revolution, but
pay attention to Marxs search for a counteraction to the capitalist
commodity economy within which even the labor movement was to-
tally engulfed. One has to be cautious, especially about surplus value
theory. This is commonly ascribed to Marx, but it derived from the
Left Ricardians. That is to say that Marxs critique of classical eco-
nomics implied the critique of the surplus value theory, which consid-
ers the production process as the only place where the exploitation of
surplus value takes place. Meanwhile, it was this theory that dramati-
cally delivered the Chartist movement and then the Establishment
labor unionism. British capital attained surplus value widely from its
colonies such as Ireland and India; so it was deceitful to consider the
production process as the only source of surplus value. This theoriza-
tion went hand in hand with the labor union tacitly demanding its
share of surplus value from the colonies. In other words, the capital
and the labor movements of one nationGreat Britaincame to
share an interest at the expense of the colonies. The nationalization
of interest later became common in more or less all other advanced
capitalist nation-states. (It was epitomized by an event in the late
nineteenth century, when a disciple of Engels, Edouard Bernstein
(18501932), approved the imperialism of the German Empire led
by Prussia from his social democratic position.)
There have been repeated attempts to re-revolutionalize against
the labor movements conservative tendency. But, these, too, were
based upon the theory that attributes the secret of capitals accumula-
tion only to the production process. Thus the strategy to revolutionize
the consciousness of workers only from without, namely, by the van-
guard party, with the conviction that the occupation of factoriesthat
is, a general strikewould cripple capitalism. This idea basically
failed because, in the rst place, it is fundamentally difcult to make
the workers the subject of struggle on the production front. When
general strikes were realized in reality, it was often at the time when
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Marx
the state and capital were already weakened by external causes such
as defeat.
Another reason for the failure to revolutionize the labor move-
ment was that the real capitalism itself surpassed the visions of classi-
cal and neoclassical economics. In such a climate, Keynes came to
believe that chronic depression (or the crisis of capitalism) could be
overcome by producing effective demand. This not only implied the
mercantilist intervention of state, but more important that the total
social capital would come into existence in the form of the state. As
Marx explained, capitalists are willing to pay as little as possible to
their own workers (the production cost), while they hope other cap-
italists pay as much as possible to their own workers (the potential
consumers). But, if all capitalists followed this drive, depression
would endure, unemployment would be rampant, and the capitalist
system itself would be in a state of serious malfunction. Thus total so-
cial capital appeared to regulate the selshness of individual capi-
tals. And then Fordism intervened with mass production, high
wages, and mass consumption, and produced a so-called consumer
society. Herein the labor movement became totally subsumed in the
capitalist system, encouraged rather than oppressed. Now the work-
ers economic struggle has come to support the up cycles of the cap-
italist economy in, for example, an increase of consumption (and
capitals accumulation). Accordingly, it seems harder and harder to
nd a moment in the production process to overthrow capitalism.
But it was always impossible.
In his later years, Engels, too, came to think that parliamentalist
revolution was possible. Though Karl Kautsky (18541938) attacked
Bernstein as a revisionist, if one considers the fact that he was the
legal heir of Engelss copyright, it must be that Engels shared a simi-
lar position. And Kautsky, too, succeeded the policy of later Engels.
The idea of social democracy based upon redistribution of wealth by
the state unwittingly reinforces the nationalist impetus. As has been
stated, surplus value is nally realized in transnational intercourse;
in the redistribution, both capital and wage workers share the inter-
est in one nation-state. After the outbreak of World War I, both social
democrats and workers in the nations involved turned to support the
war, and the Second International collapsed as a consequence. Thus
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Lenin rightfully accused Kautsky as an apostate. But his Third Inter-
national (or Comintern) also came to be subordinated to the national
interest of the Soviet Union. These failures were not necessarily due
to Marxists indifference to the problematics of nation, as might be
considered widely, but, to their ignorance of the problematics of
state. Inasmuch as one sees only the production process as the prob-
lematic place of exploitation and resort to state power to resolve it,
the rise of nationalism that unequivocally pursues prot of its own is
inevitable.
At the end of the twentieth century, the victory of Bernsteinism
became evident. Edouard Bernstein constructed his position from
his experience of British society and socialist movements in the late
nineteenth century. In Britain, after the 1850s, the working class
began to enjoy a certain richness and consumerist lifestyle. So it was
that a social democrat like John Stuart Mill became prominent.
It was in such a situation that Marx wrote Capital. Today, some
Marxists advocate a return to Mill. They do not think about the fact
that Marx wrote Capital in an age when Mill was in fashion. Begin-
ning from such a paradigm, it is clear that one can no longer think
in terms of the dialectic of master and slave: The dialectic that iden-
ties wage-labor as a version of slave or serf and concludes with the
victory of the laborers is obsolete. And Marx sought to think of the
capitalist economy and its sublation [Auf heben] totally differently.
In Capital, as Marx clearly stated in his preface, both capitalists
and workers are deemed only agents of economic categories: capital
(money) and labor power (commodity). Although Marxists refer to
Capital often, generally speaking, Marxists are somehow unsatised
and perplexed by it. This is because it is difcult to nd a moment
for the subjective practice therein. But this is not a shortcoming of
the book. Capital looks at the capitalist economy from the vantage
point of natural history, namely, a theoretical stance; it is only
natural that the dimension of subjective intervention is absent.
Thus, Uno Kozo is correct when he said that Capital only presents
the necessity of crisis and not of revolution, and that revolution is a
practical problem. And this practical, I insist, must be interpreted
in the Kantian sense: that the movement against capitalism is an eth-
ical and moral one. All the counteractionsagainst exploitation,
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Marx
alienation, inequality, environmental destruction, discrimination,
and so forthare ethical and moral through and through. Mean-
while, although Marx bracketed the individuals responsibility in
Capital, this does not mean that he denied the ethical dimension.
22
It is evident that socialism is motivated by morality and Marx himself
was soexcept that he pointed out that the ethical movement that
ignored the economic category would inexorably fail. And his eco-
nomic category was equal to the value form that makes various prod-
ucts commodities and money.
To repeat, Capital is a structurally determined topos where subjec-
tivity cannot freely intervenethis nevertheless with an exception
that capitalists are active agents insofar as they are in the position of
money form. This is the activity of moneythe position to buy
(equivalent form). But those who sell their labor-power commodity
have no other choice but to be passive; yet again there is an excep-
tion in the structure: this is a topos where workers appear to be the
subjectthe place where the products of capitalist production
are sold. This is the place of consumption. This is the only position
where workers can stand as buyers, with their own money. In Grun-
drisse, Marx described this place: What precisely distinguishes capi-
tal from the master-servant relation is that the worker confronts him
as a consumer and possessor of exchange values, and that in the
form of the possessor of money, in the form of money he becomes a
simple center of circulationone of its innitely many centers, in
which his specicity as worker is extinguished.
23
For capital, con-
sumption is the place where surplus value is nally realized, thus the
only place where it is subordinated to the will of the other, that is,
workers qua consumers.
Neoclassical economists consider consumers to be one of the two
subjects of economic activity (along with corporations). But in this
formulation, the consumer-subjects who are assigned to realize
effective demand maximally are not truly subjective. Simply being
an element of demand in the market economy, they are passive be-
ings, motivated only by the desire of consumption (or differentia-
tion). Furthermore, since the category of consumers includes
everyone: capitalists, independent producers, and workers, it ob-
scures the crucial relationality of capital versus wage labor. When
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separated from the relationalitycapital vs. wage laborthe subjec-
tivity of consumers can only be an abstract category. It is for this rea-
son that for Marxists, the place of consumption has appeared to be
false and deceitful (at least, before the advent of the postmodern
scene). A multitude of negative accounts of consumer society have
tacitly conceived this position (and the positive accounts as well).
With respect to our position, however, the consumer position is
something that should be rediscovered and redened. All in all, sur-
plus value that sustains industrial capital can exist, in principle, only
thanks to this mechanism that workers in totality buy back what they
produce. Surplus value is nally realized on the consumption point,
the place where capital is confronted by alterity and compelled into
a salto mortale as a seller of commodities.
In the monetary economy, buying and selling as well as production
and consumption are separated. This splits workers subject into
halflabor-power = seller subject and consumer subjectand margin-
alizes the former, making it seem as if corporations and consumers
were the only subjects of economic activities. In consequence, it also
segregates the labor and consumers movements. In recent history,
while labor movements have been brought down to skeletons, con-
sumers movements have ourished, often incorporating issues of en-
vironmental protection, feminism, and minorities. Generally, they
take the form of civil action and are not connected to, or are some-
times even antagonistic to, the labor movement. After all, though,
consumers movements are virtually laborers movements transposed,
and are important only inasmuch as they are so. Conversely, the labor
movement could go beyond the bounds of its specicity inasmuch
as it self-consciously adopts the potency of consumers positionality.
For, in fact, the process of consumption as a reproduction of labor-
power commodity covers a whole range of fronts of our life-world, in-
cluding child care, education, leisure, and community activities.
Here let us reconsider the meaning of the fact that industrial capi-
tal is based upon labor-power commodity. This implies not only that
industrial capital hires workers to make them work, but also, and
more important, that surplus value is attained only by workers, who
in totality buy back what they produce. (Although what workers buy
are consumer goods, if they were not sold, neither could producers
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Marx
goods be sold.) That is to repeat that the accumulation of capital is
realized not only in the production process, but also, and ultimately,
in the circulation process. The most signicant distinction between
Capital and the work of classical economists is this stress on the cir-
culation process. Classical economists could not care less about it,
because they were dependent upon Says Law of Marketthat sup-
ply (or production) creates its own demand (or consumption).
Keynes derided Marx for relying on Says Law of Market, but it only
proves his ignorant as well as willful misunderstanding. In Capital,
Marx negated both Says Law and classical economists misconcep-
tion that prot is attained only by the production process (by labor).
But that stressing of the production process has persisted in
Marxists (as well as anarcho-syndicalists), who mainly protested
against the exploitation of surplus labor in the production process
as well as alienation by mechanical production; and who presumed
that the struggle within the production process would terminate
capitals movement of accumulation. The production process in a
capitalist economy, however, is little more than the place where
labor-power commodities sold to capital actually work, therefore the
struggle is inexorably focused on improving the terms of labor con-
tracts. As Marx stated, the labor union movement is limited to the
economic struggle. But there is no other way for the movement but
to focus on the economic struggle, and its importance should not be
disdained because of this. This movement has contributed to the
rise of wages, the shortened labor week, and improvement of work-
ing conditions. But now these struggles have become a given in the
capitalist economy. Keynes pompously spelled out his own way of in-
terpreting the historical achievement of the labor unionnamely,
the law of the rigidity or inexibility of wages in a downward direction
as opposed to that of economists of the classical school.
It was Antonio Negri who radically challenged the Marxist conven-
tion that the proletariat becomes an autonomous subject in the
process of production. Returning to Grundrisse from Capital, he
sought the moment for the proletariats subjectivity. In my dis-
course, this corresponds to the moment that the workers stand in
the buying position, in the process of circulation. Finally, it means
that if workers can become subjects at all, it is only as consumers.
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The split between production and consumption constitutes capital,
while it is also this moment that can terminate capital. But it seems
to me that Negri misreads Capital. That is, he still follows the con-
vention that surplus value, being detached from circulation, exists
only in the process of production. In Marx beyond Marx, he empha-
sizes that the theory of surplus value introduces the fact of exploita-
tion into the theory of political economy, while the Marxian theory
of circulation introduces class struggle. (Thus he proposes the need
of shifting our focus from surplus value theoryCapitalto circula-
tion theoryGrundrisse.)
24
In our context, we rather have to nd the
moment for class struggle in the theory of value form in Capital.
After the failure of the struggles centered on workers occupation
of factories, Gramsci, in his prison cell, came to realize that it was
due to the states and capitals control of the reproduction process
of labor power, and he found it imperative to render the struggle in
institutionssuch as in the family, school, and churchover cul-
tural hegemony. This might be deemed the very initiation of the
cultural turn (Fredric Jameson) of Marxism. This tendency is still
based on the base and superstructure metaphor: that the produc-
tion process is where substantial exploitation takes place, while the
circulation process is its representation. Its goal is to liberate work-
ers from reication by focusing on the critique of cultural represen-
tation (cultural ideological apparati). Its focus on the reproduction
processwhere cultural representation forms hegemonyis tacitly
taking its production process centrism for granted. In contrast, in
our view, the process of reproduction of labor power is nothing but
the circulation process that capital has to go through in order to
complete its circuitous movement. It is true that in Capital, workers
consumption is considered a passive process for the reproduction of
labor power, and just a given of capitals movement. At the same
time, however, Marx also stresses that value (surplus value) is fully
realized only in the process of circulation. Therefore, it is only here
that the moment for workers to be subject exists.
Here I would like to point out one crucial aspect of Gramscis con-
cepts of war of maneuver and war of position. According to his
analysis, the shift from the former to the latter had already begun in
the late nineteenth century: The problem of the political struggles
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Marx
transition from a war of maneuver to a war of position certainly
needs to be considered at this juncture. In Europe this transition
took place after 1848, and was not understood by Mazzini and his
followers, as it was on the contrary by certain others: the same transi-
tion took place after 1871, etc.
25
In this context, the war of posi-
tion should be interpreted as much more than just the struggle of
hegemony. This becomes clear if we are aware of his understanding
of Gandhis agenda: Gandhis passive resistance is a war of position,
which at certain moments becomes a war of movement, and at oth-
ers underground warfare. Boycotts are a form of war of position,
strikes of war of movement, the secret preparation of weapons and
combat troops belongs to underground warfare.
26
He evidently
sought the crux of the war of position in the boycott movement.
If one reads this passage in combination with his analysis that after
the revolution of 1848 there was a transition from a war of maneuver
to a war of position, it implies that at the time Capital was being writ-
ten, in the late nineteenth century, the struggle of the proletariat
had already been shifted to acts of boycott, namely, acts that affected
the process of circulation; nevertheless the shift was not thoroughly
registered. The political struggles transition from a war of maneu-
ver to a war of position was conspicuous, more than anywhere, in
Britain at the point in time when the Chartist Movement by the Ri-
cardian Socialists ran out. Thus my project is to read Capital as that
which provides the logic of the war of position.
Surplus value cannot be realized in the process of production
alone, because it can be realized only as total social capital. Here is
a vitally important implication: Inasmuch as surplus value can only
be realized globally, the movement to terminate it must be transna-
tional. Struggles within individual enterprises or even within individ-
ual total national capitals would be no more than a part of the
capitalist economy. Workers are divided according to the enterprises
and the nation-states to which they belong. In this situation, their in-
terests cannot be detached from those of individual capitals or indi-
vidual nation-states. The fact stands that workers and farmers of
advanced states are exploited, but at the same time compensated, by
the various redistributions of the states (or the total social capital);
and because of this redistribution by which they live, they are
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exploiting foreign workers and farmers, though indirectly. As long
as our concerns are focused on the production point, labor move-
ments remain divided by states, and always end up requiring more
powerful control of state power.
While capital organizes social relations globally, the moment to over-
turn capitalinexorably at the same time as following itis folded
within, namely, in the process of circulation. According to Hegels
dialectic of master and slave, when the master recognizes that he is
relying on his slaves labor, the master ceases to be the master, and
the slave is no longer the slave. This logic, based upon feudal domi-
nation, namely, plunder/redistribution, cannot be applied to the re-
lationship between capitalist and wage worker. Because, as Marx
emphasizes, the relationship between capitalist and wage worker is
not one between selfconsciousnesses, but one which is based upon
the relationship between capital and the commodity of labor power
or, if we return further back, upon the relationship (the value form)
between money and commodity. It is only in the relationship based
upon lootingover which hovers the fear of deaththat the dialec-
tic of master and slave functions. Meanwhile, in the relationship of
exchange, there is only the fear of being unsold, including both the
fear of the labor commodity to be discharged, and the fear of the
capitalist whose products may not be sold. There were and are enter-
prises in which the relationship between capitalist and workers are
like that between master and slave. The labor movement in such a
workplace requires a life-and-death struggle. Yet, even after the rela-
tionship is democratized, it is not that the relationship between capi-
tal and wage labor (or labor-power commodity) withers away.
However, the relational structure beyond subjective consciousness
does not nullify subjectivity entirely. Those who are in the position
of capital are subjective (active), while those who are in the position
of having to sell their labor power are inevitably passive. Therefore,
it is only a matter of inevitability that workers can only engage in the
economic struggle where they negotiate with capitalists over their
commodity value. In Capital, the moment for workers to be subjects
is found when the shift of workers position in the categories
commodity-moneytakes place: from being the labor-power com-
modity to being the money en masse that buys commodities. That is
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Marx
to say that workers as the otherthe one who capital can never
subsumeappear as consumers. It follows that the class struggle
against capitalism must be a transnational movement of workers qua
consumers or consumers qua workers. Consumers civil acts, includ-
ing the problematization of environmental and minority issues, are
moral, but the reason they have achieved a certain success is that
a consumers boycott is the most dreadful thing capital can imagine.
In other words, the success of the moralist intervention is guaran-
teed not only by the power of morality in itself, but more crucially,
because it is the embodiment of the asymmetric relation between
commodity and money. Therefore, in order to begin an opposi-
tional movement against capital, it is imperative to discover a new
context where labor movements and consumers movements meet,
and this not as a political coalition between existing movements but
as a totally new movement itself.
Mainstream Marxists, who inherited classical economics, have
been prioritizing labor movements on the production front, while
considering anything else as secondary and subordinate. One has to
keep in mind another implication of thisthat production process
centrism entails male centrism. As a point of fact, until the recent
past, labor movements have been conducted mainly by men, while
consumer movements have been led mainly by women. This has
been based on the division of labor between men and women, com-
pelled by industrial capitalism and the modern state. The produc-
tion process centrism of classical economics is a view that stresses
value-productive labor and thus considers household work to be
unproductive. The discrimination between value-productive and
non-value-productive labors began with industrial capitalism and
quickly became gendered. It is now clear that the male-centrist rev-
olutionary movement, which lacks a countermeasure to this gen-
dered division of labor, cannot be a real oppositional movement
against the state-capital amalgamation.
27
Meanwhile, in advanced capitalist nation-states, civil acts have
been central as a repulsion against the male centrism of the labor
movement. They involve issues of discrimination against women and
other minorities as well as the environment. Unfortunately, civil
acts here, in reverse, tend to abstract the matters of process of
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production and relation of production; in consequence, the
relationality with the people in the Third World becomes ab-
stracted. Accordingly, this tends to be nally subsumed into social
democracy. The central lesson from this is that so long as our beings
and minds are split between process of production and process of
circulation, it is impossible to resist capitals accumulation and the
relation of production inherent in capitalism. The opposition to a
capitalist nation-state should be neither a workers movement nor
a consumers movement; this should be a movement of workers qua
consumers, and consumers qua workers. The movement has to be a
transnational association of consumers/workers.
In the past, developing countries were categorized as the Third
World, based upon the politico-economic world system of the Cold
War. The socialist bloc sought to make these countries secede from
the world market and draw them into their fold, with the prospect of
collapsing world capitalism. And the leading capitalist states had
their own countermeasures. In 1989, the strategy of the socialist bloc
was reduced to nil. Since then, the globalization of capitalism has
begun in earnest. There is no longer any ideal that can group devel-
oping countries as a Third World, and, at various stages of develop-
ment, they are too divided for unication. But most of them are
equally extremely impoverished; their traditional primary industries
were reduced to rubble by the pressures of overwhelming interna-
tional and transnational capitals. This is a creation of the world mar-
ket of capitalism, and will be reproduced endlessly. There is no
longer a possibility for those who are in the developing regions to
detach themselves from the world market and develop their
economies autonomously. But I still believe there is a way.
I think the possibility lies in associationism: to develop a circulation
system using local currency, and thereby to nurture producers/
consumers cooperatives and connect them to those in the First World.
This would be noncapitalist trade and could form a network without
the mediation of states. The counteraction to the capitalist nation-state
cannot be limited within the boundaries of one nation-state. Facing
global warming, the movement should be no less than global.
The shift from the labor movement to the consumer movement
is by itself not the Copernican turn in the full Kantian sense.
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Marx
As I pointed out in the part on Kant, the Copernican turn was a new
stance to see the earth and sun as terms in a relational structure, ir-
respective of those empirically observed objects. The introduction of
this stance was more revolutionary than the overturn of the helio-
centric view. I would say that the same is true with the movement of
workers qua consumers. The movements of consumers boycotts
have long existed empirically, but they attain a radical implication
comparable to the Copernican turn only when they are posited in
the context of the theory of value form and seen as a transposition
from relative value form to equivalent value form (from seller of
labor-power commodity to buyer of commodities); and further
in the context of the capitals metamorphosis: M-C-M. If not for the
theoretical position, consumers acts or civil acts would be subsumed
into social democracy.
The movement of consumers qua workers is crucial, however, not
because workers movements are in decline. The exploitation of sur-
plus value takes place in an invisible whole. If so, the resistancethe
countermovement against the exploitationmust also take place
within the black box, namely, in the domain of the circulation
process in which neither capital nor state can ever take control. The
concept workers qua consumers becomes crucial in this struggle in
the dark. This principle could be applied to past history as well.
Imagine! Should this have intervened in the conict between parlia-
mentarianism versus Leninism in the late nineteenth century, things
would have been different. Against the parliamentarianism posed by
Bernstein and Kautsky, Rosa Luxemburg and Lenin famously in-
sisted upon a strategy centered on workers general strikes.
And anarcho-syndicalists were the same in this aspect. And neither
side could stop the imperialist wars. But, if I allow a subjunctive
mood here: suppose that, in the place of political general strike ex-
ecuted at the risk of workers lives, internationally united workers
conducted a general boycott, a campaign of refusing to buy major
capitalist products (whatever the national origin) under the leader-
ship of the Second International while working normally, states and
capitals would have been powerless, because all of these acts are
legal and nonviolent, at the same time as being most damaging to
capital.
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This movement does not require a forged, strong, class consciousness
that is always willing to sacrice. From the beginning, such political
organizations that demands others sacrice are themselves nothing
other than that which generates statist power. Summarizing the
Marxist movements since the late nineteenth century, one has to
conclude that their severe failures have been due to their ignorance
of the capitalist economy and state. Only by learning from this can a
new transnational associationist movement be conceptualized.
The self-reproductive movement of capital will never end by itself;
it will continue, no matter what kind of crises it entails. Then, in
what way can one stop it? I would propose an idea of combining two
endeavors. The rst one is to create a form of production and con-
sumption that exists outside the circuit of M-C-Mthe consumers/
producers cooperative. In this association of free and equal pro-
ducers, there is no wage labor (labor-power commodity). In order
to make this entity grow and expand, one ought to establish a nan-
cial system (or a system of payment/settlement) based on a currency
that does not turn to capital, namely, that does not involve interest.
And this is the most crucial task.
Marxs Capital is in essence a scrutiny of capital, namely, the money
that characteristically transforms into capital. Capitalist society is con-
stantly organized and reorganized by way of the self-multiplication
of money. Marxs task was to elucidate the enigma of money. But,
what kind of countermeasure can come out of his scrutiny? Both En-
gels and Lenin thought that capitalism could be abolished by state
regulation and planned economy. This nonetheless makes in-
eluctable the abolition of the market economy itself where individu-
als can trade freely, and nally the abolition of freedom itself. This
idea derived from the labor theory of value of classical economics,
and was inexorably unable to go beyond the law of value inherent in
the capitalist economy. This can at best draw the idea of a society
where individuals can get what they work for; this can by no means
lead to communism where individuals can get what they need. Nei-
ther of them saw the problematically unique phase of money.
Money is not simply an index of value, but a mediating force that or-
ganizes exchange and regulates the value-relation of all products.
Thus money exists as the organ of the relational structure of all
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Marx
commodities, namely, transcendental apperception X. This, in the
operations of the real market, is hypostatized; thereby the fetishism
of money or the movement of capital qua moneys self-multiplication
occurs. And bourgeois economists advocate the superiority of mar-
ket economy, covering up the fact that it is nothing but the autotelic
movement of capital. Nevertheless, for this goal, the market econ-
omy of money itself should not be simplemindedly abandoned. Nei-
ther is there any hope in the compromise plan of social democracy:
the acceptance of the market with state control. All these stances try
to neutralize money but do not seek to sublate it.
The ultimate moment that one can draw from Capital is this antin-
omy: Money should exist; money should not exist. To abolish (or
sublate) money is equal to creating a currency that would fulll
these conicting conditions. Marx did not say anything about the
money that would be a solution. All he did was critique Proudhons
ideas of labor money and exchange bank. Proudhons idea, too, was
based upon the labor theory of value; he sought to make a currency
that purely valorizes labor time. Here there was a blind spot: Labor
value is conditioned by the social exchanges via money; it is formed
as value only after the fact of the exchange. That is to say, the social
labor time qua substance of value is formed via money, which thus
cannot replace money. Labor money tacitly relies on the existing
monetary economy; even if it tries to challenge the system, it could
at best be exchanged with existing money for the difference in mar-
ket value. It is extremely difcult to sublate money; saying this, how-
ever, does not mean that Marx gave up the possibility of a currency
that does not transform into capital.
Having the antinomy in mind, the most exciting example to me is
LETS (Local Exchange Trading System), conceptualized and prac-
ticed by Michael Linton since 1982.
28
It is a multifaceted system of
settlement, where participants have their own accounts, register the
wealth and service that they can offer in the inventory, and conduct
exchanges freely, and then the results are recorded in the accounts.
In contrast to the currency of the state central bank, the currency of
LETS is issued each time by those who are to receive goods or ser-
vices from other participants. And it is so organized that the sum
total of the gains and losses of everyone be zero. In this simple
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systemthat should be further developed technically in the future
exists a clue to solving the antinomy of money.
When compared with the exchange of mutual aid in traditional
communities and that of the capitalist commodity economy, the na-
ture of LETS becomes clearer. It is, on the one hand, similar to the
system of mutual aid in the aspect that it does not impose high price
with interest, but, on the other hand, closer to the market in that
the exchange can occur between those who are mutually far apart
and strangers. In contrast to the capitalist market economy, in
LETS, money does not transform into capital; but it is not simply be-
cause there is no interest, but because it is based upon the zero sum
principle (the principle of offsetting earnings and expenses in sum
total). It is so organized that, although the exchanges occur actively,
money does not exist as a result. Therefore, the antinomymoney
should exist and money should not existis deemed solved. Speak-
ing in the context of Marxs theory of value form, the currency of
LETS is a general equivalent, which however just connects all the
goods and services and does not become an autonomous, autotelic
drive. The fetish of money would not occur here. In the domain of
LETS, not only is there no sense in accumulating money as the po-
tency of exchange, but neither is there a need to worry about an in-
crease or loss. While the system of value relation among goods and
services is organized via the currency of LETS, it would not become
unconditionally commensurable like state currencies. Finally, in
LETS money, labor value as the common essence would not be es-
tablished ex post facto.
29
Most important, LETS totally accords with the principles of associ-
ation. It is not simply economic but ethical. It is an ethico-economic
association. While the mutual aid in traditional communities com-
pels delity to them, and the market economies compel the belong-
ing to communities (states) of currencies, the social contract in
LETS is precisely like the association Proudhon dreamt of. Individ-
uals can quit a particular LETS anytime and/or belong to other
LETS at the same time. Unlike the currency of a state, the currency
of LETS is really currencies, they are pluralistic and exist as a multi-
plicity. More important, in contrast to other local currencies, LETS
offers each participant the right to issue his or her own currency
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Marx
(just in the act of registering/recording in the account). If one
aspect of the sovereignty of the state exists in its right to issue the
currency, one can say that LETS actually offers sovereignties to the
multitudes, going far beyond the specious motto Sovereignty rests
with the people. So it is that LETS is more than another local cur-
rency: The problematic it addresses is more than economic in the
narrow sense. As I have said, capital, state, and nation are all based
upon their own principles of exchange that is nally economic in the
broad sense. Therefore, only with the association based on LETS as
a new principle of exchange is it possible to replace the trinity.
The last aspect of LETS is that it is formed in the circulation
process, where consumers hold the initiative. While conventional co-
operatives of producers and consumers are quickly driven into
hopeless competition with full-hearted capitalist enterprises, LETS
can nurture the free, autonomous subjectivity of consumers-as-
workers. Only when LETS and the nancial system based upon it ex-
pand can the noncapitalist producers and consumers cooperatives
autonomously exist. But, in terms of strategy, the extracapitalist
mode of practice alone cannot terminate capitals auto-replicating
movement. It would remain as partial and complementary to the mar-
ket economy, no matter how popular it became. For this reason, re-
quired are not only the extracapitalist movement, but also the struggle
remaining within capitalist economy. Then, where can they interact?
It goes without saying that it is in the transcritical position where work-
ers appear as consumers, namely, at the front of circulation.
In capitals movement M-C-M, there are two critical moments:
buying labor-power commodity and selling products to workers. Fail-
ure in either moment disables capital from achieving surplus value.
In other words, it fails to be capital. That is to say that in these mo-
ments workers can counter capital. The rst moment is expressed by
Antonio Negri as Dont Work! This really signies, in this context,
Dont Sell Your Labor-Power Commodity! or Dont Work as a
Wage Laborer! The second moment says, Dont Buy Capitalist
Products! Both of them can occur in the topos where workers can
be the subjects. These are the countermovements within. But in
order for workers/consumers to be able not to work and not to
buy, there must be a safety net whereupon they can still work and
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buy to live. This is nothing but an association such as producers and
consumers cooperatives armed with LETS. Thus the noncapitalist
cooperatives as well as local currency would support the struggles
within the capitalist economy. The dont sell/dont buy boycott
movements within capitalist production would accelerate the reorga-
nization of capitalist corporation into cooperative entity. Therefore,
the immanent and ex-scendent struggles against capitalism can
interact and be connected only in the circulation process, namely,
the topos for consumers qua workers, workers qua consumers. This
is the only place where there is a moment for individuals to be sub-
jects. Association is strictly based on the subjectivity of individuals; it
is possible only by having the circulation process as an axis.
The annihilation of the capitalist market economy is not the same
as the annihilation of the market economy in toto. And the death of
the political state is not equal to the coming of the anarchic state.
The controversial thinker Carl Schmitt made an insightful comment
on the death of the state vis--vis consumers/producers coopera-
tive. According to him, who stressed the autonomous dimension of
state and politics, the League of Nations idea could never decom-
pose states; it would only result in hegemony of a strong state or a
group of states. Were a world state to embrace the entire globe and
humanity, then it would be no political entity and could only be
loosely called a state. If in fact, all humanity and the entire world
were to become a unied entity based exclusively on economics and
on technically regulating trafc . . . [s]hould that interest group also
want to become cultural, ideological, or otherwise more ambitious,
and yet remain strictly nonpolitical, then it would be a neutral con-
sumer or producer co-operative moving between the poles of ethics
and economics. It would know neither state nor kingdom nor em-
pire, neither republic nor monarchy, neither aristocracy nor democ-
racy, neither protection nor obedience, and would lose its political
character.
30
In other words, Schmitt also implies that there is no
other way but to nurture the association of consumers/producers
cooperatives in order to sublate the state. In this situation, the state
would remain, but no longer as a political entity. In addition, one
can say that the abolition of the capitalist economy would not abolish
money itself; the coming global network of consumers/producers
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Marx
cooperatives would not be a retrogression to self-sufcient, self-
enclosed communities, but an open market economy; and it would
not be like the market economy as we know it.
The counteraction to the capitalist nation-state should be nonviolent
through and through. But here a redenition of nonviolent is neces-
sary; the parliamentary systemas opposed to a military uprisingis
always dened as the nonviolent way of changing the political
state. But it is not the case that it is veritably nonviolent. I argue that
parliamentarianism, too, wills to state power. According to Max
Weber, the state is equal to a human community that demands an
actual monopolization of the means of executing physical violence
within a limited domain. Whether by compulsion or by agreement,
the execution of might is violent through and through. Therefore,
all those who are involved in politics are irting with the demonic
power lurking in violence, it might be said.
31
In this sense of Weber,
social democracy is in the least nonviolent, albeit less violent. Social
democracy seizes state power by resorting to the majority vote in the
parliamentary system and seeks to redistribute the wealth extorted
from capital (as tax) to workers. If so (as seen from the stance of the
radical libertarian Hayek), the difference between Bernstein and
Lenin is not as large as it seems. Both resort to state power, that is,
violence. One is a soft statism, while the other a hard statism. From
our vantage point, neither seeks the abolition of the labor-power
commodity, namely, wage labor. And the social democracy is the last
resort for the capitalist nation-state to survive.
What we call nonviolence is exemplied by the strategy of
Mahatma Gandhi. But it cannot be reduced to so-called civil disobe-
dience. Mahatma Gandhis principle of nonviolent resistance is well
known, but less known are his resistances of boycotting English
products and nurturing consumers/producers cooperatives.
32
If
not for this nurturing, the boycott could not be what Gramsci called
the war of position. If not for the will to noncapitalist cooperatives,
the boycott would be a nationalist movement that cared only for the
well-being of national capitals.
Karl Polanyi likened capitalism (the market economy) to cancer.
Coming into existence in the interstice between agrarian commu-
nities and feudal states, capitalism invaded the internal cells and
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Toward Transcritical Counteractions
transformed their predispositions according to its own physiology.
It is still parasitic. If so, the transnational network of workers qua
consumers and consumers qua workers is a culture of anticancer
cells, as it were. In order to eliminate it, capital and state would have
to eliminate the conditions by which they were produced in the rst
place. The immanent and ex-scendent counteraction that is based
upon the circulation front is totally legal and nonviolent, therefore,
no capitalist nation-state can meddle with it.
According to my reading, Marxs Capital offers a logical ground
for the creation of this culture. That is, the asymmetric relationship
inherent in the value form (between commodity and money) pro-
duces capital, while it is here where the transpositional moment that
terminates capital can be grasped. To utilize it in the most effective
way is the task of transcritique.
Finally, we have to question what conditions are necessary for the
counteraction to truly function like the anticancer cells? The idea of
usurping or overthrowing the state always causes the act itself to be-
come similar to the state. In other words, the movement always
becomes a centrist, tree-structured organization. Not only Bolshe-
vism but also Bakuninism were so. The path of such a movement is
evident: either it is crushed by the state or, after the victory, it be-
comes the state (and thereby makes the state itself endure). But, on
the other hand, even if we destroy the state and welcome sheer dis-
order, as certain anarchists envision, the state would conversely re-
vive in a more forceful manner.
Meanwhile, the social democratic strategyto transform society
by intervening in state power through parliamentis very much wel-
comed by the state. This is part of the contemporary state apparatus.
In contrast, a countermovement against the capitalist nation-state
would gradually construct the association as the principle of ex-
change as an alternative to those of the capitalist nation-state, and
an association of those associations. This movement should by itself
be an embodiment of its goal. For the association is not something
that is realized after the state-power is seized, but that should re-
place the state entirely.
Sublating the state is equal to forming a certain state (read social
state). In this sense, it should be similar to the state in one aspect.
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Marx
That is, it has to have a certain center. If not, it cannot organize an
association of associations, and it would be merely a minor move-
ment that partially resists within the capitalist nation-state, or else
merely an aesthetic movement. Since the collapse of the Soviet
Union in the 1990s, there has been a broad tendency toward partial
resistances. Already after 1968, the idea of revolutionary movements
led by a central party had been radically questioned. What came out
of this were the multitudes of minor movements: ethnic, feminist, les-
bian, gay, consumerist, environmentalthose that had been deemed
secondary in the centralist labor movement. Immanuel Wallerstein
called them antisystemic movements. We could call them molecu-
lar movements in contradistinction to the centrist molar organiza-
tion, after Deleuze and Guattari. In my opinion, these movements
basically signal a return of anarchism and also subsume the problem-
atic anarchism entailed. That is, they are too wary of centralization,
and remain divided and scattered, to be nally subsumed into a social
democratic party. In the early 1980s, Frederic Jameson already
pointed this out. While appreciating the signicance of this tendency,
he claimed that in America the opposite tendency is necessary.
We must add a nal comment about the coded political resonance of this
debate, which the critics of totalization have so often construed as an at-
tack on a monolithic or totalitarian ideology. Such instant ideological
analysis may protably be juxtaposed with a social reading of the debate, as
a symbolic index of the distinct situations faced by the Left in the struc-
turally different national contexts of France and the United States. The cri-
tique of totalization in France goes hand in hand with a call for a
molecular or local, nonglobal, nonparty politics: and this repudiation of
the traditional forms of class and party action evidently reects the historic
weight of French centralization (at work both in the institutions and in the
forces that oppose them), as well as the belated emergence of what can very
loosely be called a countercultural movement, with the breakup of the
old cellular family apparatus and a proliferation of subgroups and alternate
life-styles. In the United States, on the other hand, it is precisely the inten-
sity of social fragmentation of this latter kind that has made it historically
difcult to unify Left or antisystemic forces in any durable and effective
organizational way. Ethnic groups, neighborhood movements, feminism,
various countercultural or alternative life-style groups, rank-and-le
labor dissidence, student movements, single-issue movementsall have in
the United States seemed to project demands and strategies which were
6715 CH07 UG 1/29/03 8:02 PM Page 304
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Toward Transcritical Counteractions
theoretically incompatible with each other and impossible to coordinate on
any practical political basis. The privileged form in which the American Left
can develop today must therefore necessarily be that of an alliance politics;
and such a politics is the strict practical equivalent of the concept of totaliza-
tion on the theoretical level. In practice, then, the attack on the concept of
totality in the American framework means the undermining and the repu-
diation of the only realistic perspective in which a genuine Left could come
into being in this country. There is therefore a real problem about the im-
portation and translation of theoretical polemics which have a quite differ-
ent semantic content in the national situation in which they originate, as in
that of France, where the various nascent movements for regional auton-
omy, womens liberation and neighborhood organization are perceived as
being repressed, or at least hampered in their development, by the global or
molar perspectives of the traditional Left mass parties.
33
In contrast to Lukcs theory of totality, this is a transcritical recogni-
tion. And the tendency Jameson commented on here is no longer
limited to the United States of America. In the climate following the
1990s, it has become the same world over. Antisystemic movements
are ourishing in the advanced capitalist states. But, being too
afraid of totalization and the representative system, these move-
ments are isolated from each other. The reason is clear: They are
gathered under single thematic frames, respectivelyfeminism, ho-
mosexuality, ethnicity, environmental concerns, and so on. The im-
portance of these movements lies in the fact that they take up the
existential dimension that cannot be reduced to the previous move-
ments centered on the relation of production and/or class relation.
But my point is that individuals are living in plural dimensions of so-
cial relations. Hence, the movements that are grounded upon a one-
dimensional identity come to face internal conicts by way of the
return of the differences in the bracketed dimensions.
34
For in-
stance, as I have mentioned, consumers movements are opposing
labor movements in many regions. But then, again, it is likely that
social democracy would subsume the mutually isolated, molecular
movements. Thus, the movements that refuse centralization and
representation have only two choices: being represented by a party
that participates in the state power or remaining local. The choice is
whether to be subsumed into the capitalist nation-state or left un-
touched and fragmented.
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306
Marx
The starting point of the counteraction is each individual. But this
is not an abstract individual, but an individual who is placed in the
nexus of social relations. Every individual lives in multidimensions.
Therefore, the counteraction should organize a semi-lattice system
that loosely synthesizes the multidimensionality, acknowledging the
independence of each dimension and therefore acknowledging an
individuals belonging to multidimensions.
35
The association of asso-
ciations is far from the organization of the tree structure, while at
the same time it would remain isolated, dispersed, and conicting, if
it did not have a center. So it needs a center, but the center should
exist as a function just like transcendental apperception X and not
something substantial. The association of associations should be
equipped with a mechanism that avoids the reication of a substan-
tial center. In the concrete, the associations would be united by a
central committee consisting of a representative of each dimension.
In this case, not only the normal vote but also the lottery must be in-
troduced at the nal stage. In this way, an organization with and
without a center can be realized. It is evident that if the counter
movement against capital and state does not itself embody the prin-
ciples that go beyond them, there is no way for it to sublate them in
the future.
36
To conclude, I emphasize that the two types of strugglesthe im-
manent and ex-scendentagainst capital and state can be united
only in the circulation process, that is, the place where workers ap-
pear as consumers en masse. Only here is the moment that individu-
als can become subjects. Association is nally the form based on
individuals subjectivity. In the organization of the semi-lattice struc-
ture I described earlier, the multidimensional social relation that is
beyond individuals will and conditions individuals beings is never
abstracted.
37
6715 CH07 UG 1/29/03 8:02 PM Page 306
Notes
Preface
1. Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. and ed. Mary Gre-
gor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 38, 4:429.
2. See Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics [1783], trans. and ed.
Gary Hateld (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 10. Kant says: The
remembrance of David Hume was the very thing that many years ago rst inter-
rupted [the] dogmatic slumber.
3. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason [1781/1787], trans. and ed. Paul Guyer
and Allen W. Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), p. 99, Aix.
4. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, p. 117, Bxxx.
5. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology, in Karl Marx and Friedrich
Engels, Collected Works, vol. 5 (New York: International Publishers, 1976), p. 49.
6. Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Hegels Philosophy of Law: Intro-
duction [1844], in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Collected Works, vol. 3 (New York:
International Publishers, 1976), p. 182.
Introduction
1. Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Hegels Philosophy of Law: Intro-
duction [1844], in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Collected Works, vol. 3 (New York:
International Publishers, 1976), p. 175.
2. Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, vol. 1, trans. Ben Fowkes (Har-
mondsworth: Penguin Books, 1976), p. 163.
3. Marx, Capital, vol. 1, pp. 102103.
6715 NOTES UG 1/29/03 8:03 PM Page 307
308
Notes
4. See Kozo Uno, Principles of Political Economy, trans. Thomas T. Sekine (Atlantic
Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1980).
5. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London: Verso, 1983).
6. Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p. 176.
7. Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p. 182.
8. Antonio Gramsci, Selections from Prison Notebooks, ed. and trans. Quintin Hoare and
Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New York: International Publishers, 1971), p. 283.
9. Karl Marx, The Civil War in France, in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Collected
Works, vol. 22 (New York: International Publishers, 1976), p. 335.
10. See Marx, Capital, vol. 3, p. 567.
11. Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme, in Karl Marx and Friedrich
Engels, Collected Works, vol. 24 (New York: International Publishers, 1976), pp. 9394.
12. Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p. 92.
13. Karl Marx, Grundrisse, Notebook IV, trans. Martin Nicolaus (Harmondworth:
Penguin Books, 1993), pp. 420421.
14. Ex-scendent is a compound deriving from the translation of the Japanese term
cho-shutsu, which means exiting and transcending.
15. See Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1944).
1 The Kantian Turn
1. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason [1781/1787], trans. and ed. Paul Guyer
and Allen W. Wood, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 512513,
A494/B523.
2. Thomas Kuhn, The Copernican Revolution (New York: Vintage Books, 1957), p. 4.
3. C. G. Jung, Symbols of Transformation: An Analysis of the Prelude to a Case of Schizophre-
nia, translated by R. F. C. Hull (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967),
pp. 45. The sentence within the brackets was translated from the German original
by Geoffe Waite to emphasize the nuance lacking in the published English transla-
tion, the sense of achieving an externalized stance comparable to the Copernican
Turn (C. G. Jung, Gesammelte Werke, ed. Lilly Jung-Merker and Elisabeth Rf, vol. 5:
Symbole der Wandlung: Analyse des Vorspiels zu einer Schizophrenie [Freiburg: Walter-
Verlag, 1973], p. 23).
4. See The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XX: Encore 19721973 [1975], ed. Jacques-
Alain Miller, trans. Bruce Fink (New York: Norton, 1998), pp. 123136.
5. Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics [1783], trans. and ed. Gary
Hateld (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 10.
6715 NOTES UG 1/29/03 8:03 PM Page 308
309
Notes
6. Kants Introduction to Logic, trans. Thomas Kingsmill Abbott (London: Thoemmes
Press, 1992; reprint of the 1885 edition), p. 5.
7. Immanuel Kant, Nachricht von der Einrichtung seiner Vorlesungen in dem
Winterhalbjahre von 17651766, in Immanuel Kants Werke, vol. 2 (Berlin: Bruno
Cassirer, 1922), p. 325.
8. I learned much from Yoshifumi Hamadas close readings on Kant. For further
reference concerning Homes role in Kants critique, see Hamada Yoshifumi, Kant
Rinrigaku no Seiritsu [The Establishment of Kants Ethics] (Tokyo: Keiso Shobo,
1981).
9. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment [1790], trans. Werner S. Pluhar (Indianapolis:
Hackett, 1987), p. 56. Translation slightly modied.
10. Kant, Critique of Judgment, p. 59.
11. Kant, Critique of Judgment, p. 60.
12. The New Science of Giambattista Vico [1725], trans. and ed. Thomas Goddard
Bergin and Max Harold Fisch, bk. I, XII (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1976),
p. 63.
13. Kant, Critique of Judgment, p. 177.
14. See Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations [1945], 3d ed., trans. G. E. M.
Anscombe (New York: Macmillan, 1958), e.g., props. 261275.
15. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, pp. 484485, A444/B472-A445/B473.
16. See Hannah Arendt, Lectures on Kants Political Philosophy (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1982).
17. Jean-Franois Lyotard, Lenthousiasme: La critique kantienne de lhistoire (Paris: Edi-
tions Galilee, 1986), esp. pp. 105113.
18. See Karl Popper, The Logic of Scientic Discovery (London: Hutchinson & Co.,
1959; rst published in German in 1934).
19. See Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientic Revolutions [1962], 2d enlarged
ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), esp. chap 5: The Priority of
Paradigms.
20. For Paul Feyerabends rst argument to this effect, see Against Method: Outline of
an Anarchist Theory of Knowledge [1975] (London: Verso, 1978); for compressed sum-
maries of his critique of Kuhn, see Killing Time: The Autobiography of Paul Feyerabend
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), esp. pp. 67, 128129, 142, 154.
21. For part of Poppers critique of Kuhn in this regard, see Objective Knowledge: An
Evolutionary Approach (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972), esp. pp. 182, 216.
22. Other important, related literary responses to the Lisbon Earthquake include
Goethes depiction of it in the rst book of Dichtung und Wahrheit [Poetry and Truth,
6715 NOTES UG 1/29/03 8:03 PM Page 309
310
Notes
18111835], which chronicles his life up to precisely 1755, and Heinrich von Kleists
transnational restaging of the signicance of the event in South America, in his
short story Das Erdbeben in Chili [The Earthquake in Chile, 1806].
23. See his letter, An Frulein Charlotte von Knobloch. 10 August 1763?, in Im-
manuel Kants Werke, vol. 9 (Berlin: Bruno Cassirer, 1922), pp. 3439.
24. Not incidentally, Kants thesis about vision is close to one of Lacans basic deni-
tions of psychotic paranoia. Lacan also noted that the history of paranoia . . . made its
rst appearance with a psychiatrist disciple of Kant at the beginning of the nine-
teenth century, specically that R. A. Vogel is generally credited with having intro-
duced the term into modern usage in 1764 (The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book III:
The Psychoses 19551956 [1981], ed. Jacques-Alain Miller, trans. Russell Grigg [New
York: Norton, 1993], p. 4).
25. Immanuel Kant, Trume eines Geistersehers, erlutert durch Trume der
Metaphysik, in Immanuel Kants Werke, vol. 2 (Berlin: Bruno Cassirer, 1992),
pp. 363364: Daher verdenke ich es dem Leser keinesweges, wenn er, anstatt die Geis-
terseher vor Halbbrger der andern Welt anzusehen, sie kurz und gut als Kandidaten
des Hospitals abfertigt und sich dadurch alles weiteren Nachforschens berhebt. For a
partial translation, see Dreams of a Visionary Explained by Dreams of Metaphysics,
trans. Carl J. Friedrich, in The Philosophy of Kant (New York: Modern Library, 1993).
26. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, p. 99, Aviii, Aix.
27. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, p. 100, Ax, Axi.
28. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, p. 99, Avii.
29. A book by the Japanese philosopher, Megumi Sakabe, Risei no Fuan [Anxiety of
Reason] (Tokyo: Keiso Shobo, 1982) informed me of the approach to reading Cri-
tique of Pure Reason via Dreams of Visionary. In his book, Sakabe holds that the dy-
namism of self-critique (of undecidability) in Dreams is lost in Critique, while I
believe that it is made full use of in the transcendental method developed therein.
30. Immanuel Kant, Dreams of a Visionary, in The Philosophy of Kant, p. 15.
31. Jacques Derrida, Speech and Phenomena [1967], trans. David B. Allison (Evanston,
IL: Northwestern University Press, 1973), p. 79.
32. See Immanuel Kant, Philosophical Correspondence 17591799, ed. and trans. Arnulf
Zweig (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), p. 96. In the letter written to
Mercus Hertz (about May 11, 1781), right before the publication of the rst edition
of Critique of Judgment, Kant confessed that he had an alternative plan in mind. That
is, he should have started with The Antinomy of Pure Reason, which could have
been done in colorful essays and would have given the reader a desire to get at the
sources of the thing-in-itself. In Kants published version, the thing-in-itself is expli-
cated as if it were ontologically premised, whereas in fact it would more properly in-
tervene skeptically by way of the antinomy or dialectic in the Kantian sense. The same
is true of transcendental subjectivity.
33. Kant himself warned against nding mystical implications in the thing-in-itself:
Idealism consists in the claim that there are none other than thinking beings; the
6715 NOTES UG 1/29/03 8:03 PM Page 310
311
Notes
other things that we believe we perceive in intuition are only representations in
thinking beings, to which in fact no object existing outside these beings corre-
sponds. I say in opposition: There are things given to us as objects of our senses ex-
isting outside us, yet we know nothing of them as they may be in themselves, but are
acquainted only with their appearances, i.e., with the representations that they pro-
duce in us because they affect our senses. Accordingly, I by all means avow that there
are bodies outside us (Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, ed. and trans. Gary
Hateld [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997], pp. 4041). Kant thus ac-
knowledges that both the world and other selves are not our products; they exist and
become, irrespective of our being; in other terms, we are beings-in-the world. He
uses the thing-in-itself in order to stress the passivity of the subject. As I argued previ-
ously vis--vis the Marxian turn, a proper materialism that is neither rationalist nor
empiricist can come into existence only out of such a stance.
34. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, p. 687, A825826, B853854.
2 The Problematic of Synthetic Judgment
1. Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics [1783], trans. and ed. Gary
Hateld (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 20, 4:2724:273.
2. See Gottfried Martin, Immanuel Kant-Ontologie und Wissenschaftstheorie (Cologne:
Klner Universittsverlag, 1960).
3. In this regard, see Kants remark in his Critique of Pure Reason [1781/1787]: But
where the public holds that subtle sophists are after nothing less than to shake the
foundation of the public welfare, then it seems not only prudent but also permissible
and even credible to come to the aid of the good cause with spurious grounds rather
than to give its putative enemies even the advantage of lowering our voice to the
modesty of a merely practical conviction and necessitating us to admit the lack of
speculative and apodictic certainty. I should think, however, that there is nothing in
the world less compatible with the aim of maintaining a good cause than duplicity,
misrepresentation, and treachery (trans. and ed. Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood
[Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997], pp. 648649, A749750 B777778).
4. Diesen zufolge halte ich davor, da die Substanzen in der existierenden Welt,
woven wir ein Teil sind, wesentliche Krfte von der Art haben, da sie in Vereini-
gung miteinander nach der doppelten umgekehrten Verhltnis der Weiten ihre
Wirkungen von sich ausbreiten; zweitens, da das Ganze, was daher dreifachen Di-
mension habe; drittens, da dieses Gesetze willkrlich sei, und da Gott davor ein
anderes, zum Exempel der umgekehrten dreifachen Verhltnis, htte whlen kn-
nen; da endlich viertens aus einem andern Gesetze auch eine Ausdehnung von an-
dern Eigenschaften und Abmessungen geossen wre. Eine Wissenschaft von allen
diesen mglichen Raumesarten wre ohnfehlbar die hchste Geometrie, die ein
eindlicher Verstand unternehmen knnte. Die Unmglichkeit, die wir bei uns be-
merken, einen Raum von mehr als drei Abmessungen uns vorzustellen, scheinet mir
daher zu rhren, weil unsere Seele ebenfalls nach dem Gesetze der umgekehrten
doppelten Verhltnis der Weiten die Eindrcke von drauen empfngt, und weil
ihre Natur selber dazu gemacht ist, nicht allein so zu leiden, sondern auch auf diese
Weise auer sich zu wirken (Immanuel Kant, Gedanken von der wahren
Schtzung der lebendigen Krfte und Beurteilung der Beweise, in Immanuel Kants
Werke, vol. 1 [Berlin: Bruno Cassirer, 1922], p. 23).
6715 NOTES UG 1/29/03 8:03 PM Page 311
312
Notes
5. Bertrand Russell, Mysticism and Logic (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor,
1957), p. 91.
6. Wenn wir von hier aus Kants Erklrungen ber den konstruktiven Charakter der
Mathematik zu verstehen versuchen, dann sind wir uns darber klar, da wir
Sachverhalte benutzen, die Kant in dieser przisen Weise noch nicht gekannt hat.
Eine solche Erklrung Kants von unseren heutigen Einsichten heraus scheint uns
aber mglich zu sein, weil die Intuitionisten selbst diesen Zusammenhang mit den
kantischen Anstgen bejahen. Dann bedeutet also die kantische These vom an-
schaulichen Charakter der Mathematik die Einschrnkung der Mathematik auf
solche Gegenstnde, die konstruierbar sind.
Von hier aus lt sich auch die Stellung Kants zur euklidischen Geometrie deut-
lich machen. Wir sagten schon, da auch viele Kantianer die Mglichkeit der nicht-
euklidischen Geometrie lebhaft bestritten haben. Sicherlich hat dieser Protest eine
gewisse Begrndung in den Aufstellungen Kants gehabt, aber die Dinge liegen weit
schwieriger, als man zunchst angenommen hat. Sie werden noch dadurch erschw-
ert, da Kantebenso wie spter Gausses vermieden hat, von nichteuklidischen
Geometrien zu reden, und wenn wir die Kmpfe betrachten, die Einfhrung der
nichteuklidischen Geometrien entfacht hat, dann mssen wir wohl sagen, da Kant
mit gutem Recht vorsichtig gewesen ist. Es kann aber kein Zweifel sein, da Kant
sich darber klar gewewen ist, da auch in der Geometrie das logisch Mgliche ber
den Bereich der euklidischen Geometrie weit hinausgeht. Aber Kant hieltwenn
auch vermutlich irrtmlicherweisean einer These fest. Was ber die euklidische
Geometrie hinausgeht, ist zwar logisch mglich, es ist aber nicht konstruierbar, das
heit, es ist nicht anschaulich konstruierbar, und dies heit nun wiederum fr Kant,
es existiert mathematisch nicht, es ist ein bloes Gedankending. Nur die euklidische
Geometrie existiert in Mathematischen Sinne, whrend alle nicht-euklidischen
Geometrien bloe Gedankendinge sind (Martin, Immanuel KantOntologie und
Wissenschaftstheorie, p. 32).
7. Gdels incompleteness theorems are well known, and I have dealt with them ex-
tensively in Architecture as Metaphor: Language, Number, Money, trans. Sabu Kohso
(Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1995).
8. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, rev. ed., ed. G. H.
von Wright, R. Rhees, G. E. M. Anscombe, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (Cambridge,
MA: The MIT Press, 1991), p. 383.
9. In Architecture as Metaphor, I pointed out that Gdels method pregured so-called
deconstruction, and that Wittgenstein exemplied a related, yet also fundamentally
different orientation.
10. Karatani, Architecture as Metaphor, 176177; pt. 3, 49.
11. Karatani, Architecture as Metaphor, p. 143; pt. 3, 1.
12. Karatani, Architecture as Metaphor, p. 143; pt. 3, 2.
13. Karatani, Architecture as Metaphor, p. 173; pt. 3, 42.
14. Karatani, Architecture as Metaphor, p. 176; pt. 3, 46.
15. Karatani, Architecture as Metaphor, p. 99; pt. 1, 166.
6715 NOTES UG 1/29/03 8:03 PM Page 312
313
Notes
16. Karatani, Architecture as Metaphor, p. 111; pt. 2, 2.
17. Karatani, Architecture as Metaphor, p. 176; pt. 3, 46.
18. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations [1945], 3d edition, trans. G. E. M.
Anscombe (New York: Macmillan, 1958), sec. 32e.
19. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, sec. 31e.
20. Plato, Meno, in The Collected Dialogues of Plato, Including the Letters, ed. Edith
Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, Bollingen Series LXXI (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1961), p. 366.
21. See Nicholas Rescher, Dialectics: A Controversy-Oriented Approach to the Theory of
Knowledge (Albany: SUNY Press, 1977).
22. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, sec. 9e.
23. Saul Kripke, Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language: An Elementary Exposition
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 21. See my Architecture as Metaphor
for a more detailed discussion.
24. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], trans. C. K. Ogden
(London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1992), p. 189. In Worber man nicht sprechen
kann, darber mu man schweigen, schweigen is an unreexive intransitive verb that
does not require the English be.
25. Allan Janik and Stephen Toulmin, Wittgensteins Vienna (New York: Simon &
Schuster, 1973), p. 169.
26. Plato, Meno, in The Collected Dialogues of Plato, p. 364.
27. Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, trans. Wade Baskin (New
York: McGraw-Hill, 1959), p. 120.
28. Roman Jakobson, Six Lectures on Sound and Meaning, trans. John Mepham
(Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1978), p. 74.
29. R. Jakobson and J. Lotz, Notes on the French Phonemic Pattern, in Roman
Jakobson, Selected Writings, vol. 1: Phonological Studies, 2d ed. (Paris: Gallimard, 1951),
p. 872.
30. Claude Lvi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology, vol. 1, trans. Claire Jacobson and
Brooke Grundfest Schoepf (New York: Basic Books, 1963), p. 33.
31. Translated into Arabic, sunya became sifr, meaning at once zero and sign or
symbol, similar to the English cipher. And one possible contributing origin of the
mathematical symbol o is that it is the rst letter of the Greek word ouden, meaning
nothing.
32. Gilles Deleuze, A quoi reconnait-on le structuralisme?, in Histoire de la philoso-
phie, vol. 8: Le XXe Sicle, ed. Franois Chtelet (Paris: Hachette, 1972), p. 300.
6715 NOTES UG 1/29/03 8:03 PM Page 313
314
Notes
3 Transcritique
1. Ren Descartes, Discourse on Method [1637], ed. and trans. George Heffernan
(South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), p. 33; pt. 2, sec. 4.
2. Descartes, Discourse on Method, p. 47; pt. 3, sec. 6.
3. Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote: Logic is not a theory but a reexion of the world.
Logic is transcendental (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, with an introduction by
Bertrand Russell, [London: Routledge, 1981], p. 163, 6:13.) This transcendental is
commonly deemed synonymous to a priori. But, according to my reading, what
Wittgenstein calls logic is our act of transcendentally scrutinizing the form of
language that grasps the world in which we are.
4. Claude Lvi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology, vol. 2, trans. Monique Layton
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), p. 36.
5. Descartes, Discourse on Method, pp. 2325; pt. 1, sec. 15.
6. Claude Lvi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques, trans. John and Doreen Weightman (New
York, Modern Library, 1955), p. 3.
7. Michel Serrs, Hermes 1, La communication (Paris: dition de Minuit, 1968), p. 38:
Ds lors, sur un contenu culturel donn, quil soit Dieu, table ou cuvette, une
analyse est structurale (et nest structurele que) lorsquelle fait apparaitre ce con-
tenu comme un modle au sens prcis plus haut, cest--dire lorsquelle sait isoler
un ensemble formel dlments et des relations, sur lequel il est possible de raison-
ner sans faire appel la signication du contenu donn.
8. Ren Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy [1641], in Discourse on Method
and The Meditations, trans. F. E. Sutcliffe (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1968),
pp. 106107; second meditation.
9. Descartes, Discourse on Method, p. 51; pt. 4, sec. 1.
10. See Benedict de Spinoza, Parts I and II of Descartes Principles of Philosophy
[1663], in The Collected Works of Spinoza, vol. 1, trans. Edwin Curley (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1985), p. 234; and Ethics [1675], in The Collected Works of
Spinoza, vol. 1, trans. Edwin Curley (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985),
p. 448 (2EA2).
11. Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditations [1931], trans. Dorion Cairns (The
Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1960), p. 43.
12. Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, p. 35.
13. Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, p. 37.
14. Edmund Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology
[1936], trans. David Carr (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1970),
pp. 179180.
15. Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences, p. 202.
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Notes
16. Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, p. 115.
17. Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, p. 100.
18. Descartes, Discourse on Method, p. 53; pt. 4, sec. 4.
19. David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. Ernest C. Mossner (Harmondsworth:
Penguin Books, 1969), p. 315.
20. Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, p. 316.
21. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason [1781/1787], trans. and ed. Paul Guyer
and Allen W. Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 8, Axii.
22. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment [1790], trans. Werner S. Pluhar, (Indianapolis:
Hackett, 1987), p.15.
23. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time [1927], trans. John Macquarrie and Edward
Robinson (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), p. 254.
24. Marx often cited Epicurus term intermundia. For example: Trading nations,
properly so called, exist only in the interstices of the ancient world, like the gods of
Epicurus in the intermundia (Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy
[1867], vol. 1, trans. Ben Fowkes [Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1976], p. 172).
25. Jos Ortega y Gasset, The Origin of Philosophy [1957], trans. Toby Talbot (New
York: Norton, 1967), p. 112.
26. Ortega y Gasset, The Origin of Philosophy, p. 111.
27. Martin Heidegger, An Introduction to Metaphysics [1935/1953], trans. Ralph
Manheim (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959), p. 136.
28. See Heidegger, An Introduction to Metaphysics, pp. 127138.
29. Immanuel Kant, What Is Enlightenment?, in Political Writings, ed. Hans Reiss,
trans. H. B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), pp. 5556.
30. See Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition [1968], trans. Paul Patton (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1994), p. 1.
31. G. W. F. Hegel, Science of Logic [18121816], trans. A. V. Miller (New York:
Humanities Press International, 1969), p. 620.
32. Gyrgy Lukcs, Uber die Besonderheit als Kategorie der sthetik (Neuwied: Luchter-
hand, 1967), pp. 209210: Whrend nmlich beim theoretischen Erkennen diese
Bewegung in beiden Richtungen wirklich von einem Extrem zum anderen geht und
die Mitte, die Besonderheit, in beiden Fllen eine Vermittlungsrolle spielt, wird
in der knstlerischen Widerspiegelung die Mitte wrtlich zur Mitte, zum
Sammelpunkt, wo die Bewegungen sich zentrieren. Es gibt dabei also sowohl eine
Bewegung von der Besonderheit zur Allgemeinheit (und zurck), wie von der
Besonderheit zur Einzelheit (und ebenfalls zurck), wobei in beiden Fllen die
Bewegung zur Besonderheit die abschlieende ist. . . . Die Besonderheit erhlt eine
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Notes
nunmehr unaufhebbare Fixierung: auf ihr baut sich die Formenwelt der Kunstwerke
auf. Das gegenseitige Umschlagen und Ineinanderbergehen der Kategorien ndert
sich: sowohl Einzelheit als auch Allgemeinheit erscheinen stets als in der Besonder-
heit aufgehoben.
33. As cited from uvres compltes de Joseph de Maistre, in A Dictionary of Philosophical
Quotations, ed. A. J. Ayer and Jane OGrady (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1992), p. 280.
34. Kant said the following about Herders book: This attempt is a bold one, yet it
is natural that the inquiring spirit of human reason should make it, and it is not dis-
creditable for it to do so, even if it does not entirely succeed in practice. But it is all
the more essential that, in the next installment of his work, in which he will have
rm ground beneath his feet, our resourceful author should curb his lively genius
somewhat, and that philosophy, which is more concerned with pruning luxuriant
growths than with propagating them, should guide him towards the completion of
his enterprise. It should do so not through his hints but through precise concepts,
not through laws based on conjecture but through laws derived from observation,
and not by means of an imagination inspired by metaphysics or emotions, but by
means of a reason which, while committed to broad objectivities, exercises caution
in pursuing them (Immanuel Kant, Reviews of Herders Ideas on the Philosophy of
the History of Mankind, in Kant: Political Writings, trans. H. B. Nisbet [Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1970], p. 211). In this reserved criticism, it is
evident that Kant detected in Herder a pretension of reason or metaphysics.
Kant wrote about Fichte as follows: What do you think of Mr. Fichtes Wis-
senschaftstlehre? He sent it to me long ago, but I put it aside, nding the book too
long winded and not wanting to interrupt my own work with it. All I know of it is
what the review in the Allgemeine Literaturzeitung said. At present I have no inclination
to take it up, but the review (which shows the reviewers great partiality for Fichte)
makes it look to me like a sort of ghost that, when you think youve grasped it, you
nd that you havent got hold of any object at all but have only caught yourself and
in fact only grasped the hand that tried to grasp the ghost. The mere self-conscious-
ness, indeed, the mere form of thinking, void of content, therefore, of such a na-
ture that reection upon it has nothing to reect about, nothing to which it could
be applied, and this is even supposed to transcend logicwhat a marvelous impres-
sion this idea makes on the reader! The title itself arouses little expectation of any-
thing valuableTheory of Sciencesince every systematic inquiry is science, and
theory of science suggests a science of science, which leads to an innite regress (Im-
manuel Kant to J. H. Tieftrunk, April 5, 1798, in Immanuel KantPhilosophical Corre-
spondence, 175999, ed. and trans. Arnulf Zweig [Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1967], p. 250). It was thus Kant who rst called Fichtes selfthat which was
reiterated as spirit and man in German Idealismghost.
35. In a letter to Karl Marx, criticizing the idealist tendency of Stirner, Engels wrote:
This egoism is taken to such a pitch, it is so absurd and at the same time so self-
aware, that it cannot maintain itself even for an instant in its one-sidedness, but must
immediately change into communism. Engels continued: But we must also adopt
such truth as there is in the principle. And it is certainly true that we must rst make
a cause our own, egoistic cause, before we can do anything to further itand hence
that in this sense, irrespective of any eventual material aspirations, we are commu-
nists out of egoism also, and it is out of egoism that we wish to be human beings, not
mere individuals. Or to put it another way, Stirner is right in rejecting Feuerbachs
man, or at least man of Das Wesen des Christentums (The Essence of Christianity).
Feuerbach deduces his man from God, it is from God that he arrives at man, and
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Notes
hence man is crowded with a theological halo of abstraction. The true way to arrive
at man is the other way about. We must take our departure from the Ego, the em-
pirical, esh-and-blood individual, if we are not, like Stirner, to remain stuck at this
point but rather proceed to raise ourselves to man. Man will always remain a
wraith so long as his basis is not empirical man. In short we must take our departure
from empiricism and materialism if our concepts, and notably our man, are to be
something real: we must deduce the general from the particular, not from itself or, a
la Hegel, from thin air (A Letter from Engels to Marx, 19 November 1844, in Karl
Marx and Friedrich Engels, Collected Works, various translators [New York: Interna-
tional Publishers, 1982], p. 38:1112). But it is hard to think that Engelss letter
properly grasped the issue raised by Stirner. Concerning this, see section 4.5.
36. Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, vol. 1, trans. Ben Fowkes
(Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1976), p. 166.
37. See Sren Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto Death [1849], trans. Alastair Hannay
(Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1989).
38. See Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1989).
39. G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit [1807], trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 62.
40. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, p. 66.
41. Ian Hacking, Gengo wa Naze Tetsugaku-no-Mondai Ni Narunoka? (Tokyo: Keiso
Shobo, 1989).
42. Hannah Arendt sought to posit the political process of public consensus in
Kants Critique of Judgment. Meanwhile, Kant was not in the least satised with the no-
tion of common sense that works within only regional and historical connements.
For him, judgment of taste calls or a universality far beyond them. Insofar as public
consensus (common sense) omits the call of universality, it retreats into a private
matter. On the other hand, Habermas sought to reconceptualize Kants reason as a
dialogic reason (i.e., intersubjectivity), overlooking the signicance of Kants thing-
in-itself. Intersubjectivity is just anotherif largersubjectivity, and does not surpass
it. Such a notion tends to ignore the otherness of others. And such shortcomings of
theory reveal themselves more dreadfully in the actual events of the world.
What is called public consensus among people like Arendt and Habermas tends to
be the consensus within communities, among specic groups of people who share
common sense. For instance, Habermas dares to say that his consensus would not be
pertinent to non-Western worlds. He supported the German participation in the air
raids on Kosovo, claiming that it was based upon public consensus. It was not even
the consensus of the United Nations, but just within the European nations. In this
sense, the European Community, though beyond the scale of conventional nation-
states, is just another superstate that is deemed public when convenient.
43. Saul Kripke, Naming and Necessity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1972), p. 18.
44. See Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy [1962], trans. Hugh Tomlinson (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1983), esp. the section Critique.
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318
Notes
45. In dening modernism, Clement Greenberg resorted to Kant, calling him the rst
modernist critic. See Modernist Painting [1960], in Clement Greenberg, Collected Essays
and Criticism, vol. 4, ed. John OBrien (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993).
46. For a detailed account on the Kant/Duchamp effect on contemporary art and
aesthetics, see Thierry de Duve, Kant after Duchamp (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press,
1996).
47. In Uses of AestheticsAfter Orientalism (Boundary 2, Edward W. Said, vol. 25,
no. 2, summer 1998), I argued that the position of interests cannot be ignored in con-
sideration of our responses to various matters. Albert O. Hirschman points out that
the position of interests came to exceed that of passions in the eighteenth century;
see his The Passions and the Interests (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977). It
was thanks to this shift that the theses on passion, which had been ourishing up
until the seventeenth century, disappeared in the succeeding era. This was of course
the deed of the commercialism of civil society. The commodity economy brackets all
the differences of use value and thus reduces everything to exchange value. Disin-
terestedness as a key function of an aesthetic context certainly signies an act of
bracketing economic as well as utilitarian interests. However, aesthetic function does
not prevent aesthetic value from transferring itself to commodity value. In this case,
the value perversely goes up to the extent that it reaches a heavenly perch from
which to look down on other commodities. In fact, art worship by the masses is often
addressed to the heavenly (or perversely) expensive commodity itself. In his critique
of utilitarianism, Kant regarded happiness as a matter of affection, which was in real-
ity a matter of interest. For instance, eudemonism (or utilitarianism) is very much
that which reduces morality to interest. Henceforth, contemporary ethics, based as it
is upon utilitarianism, is essentially economy centered (in the sense of neoclassical
economics), because its goal is how to realize, as Jeremy Bentham said, the greatest
happiness of the greatest number of people. It follows that the function of Kants
critique of eudemonism lies in making us confront morality directly, once more, by
bracketing interest.
48. What Russian formalists called ostranenie or defamilialization was nothing but a
bracketing of the familiar objects. This kind of operation is not, however, limited to
the arts.
49. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. and ed. Paul Guyer and Allen W.
Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 484485, A444/B472
A445/B473.
50. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, trans. and ed. Mary Gregor, with an
introduction by Andrews Reath (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997),
p. 80, 5:94.
51. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, p. 544, A554/B582A555/B583.
52. Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. and ed. Mary
Gregor, with an introduction by Christine M. Korsgaard (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1998), p. 31, 4:421.
53. The critique of Kantian ethics as subjectivist has been widespread ever since
Hegel. And Max Weber was one of those critics. In his Politik als Beruf (1919), he dis-
tinguished ethics of responsibility [Verantwortungsethik] from ethics of mind
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Notes
[Gesinnungsethik]. Ethics of mind implies an attitude that considers the selfs convic-
tion of justice as essential, and the failure of ones action as attributable to others or
to situations beyond ones control. Ethics of responsibility signies an attitude that
takes responsibility for the results of ones action. Weber understood Kants ethics as
ethics of mind, based on a misunderstanding. The seminal point of Kant was that
thinking of oneself as moralistically sound and acting upon the conviction does not
mean one is so in reality, precisely like the $100 in the imagination is not the same as
the real $100 bill. Kants morality exists in the attitude to ascribe all the results of
ones deeds to oneself, instead of others.
54. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations [1945], trans. by G. E. M.
Anscombe (New York: Macmillan, 1953), sec. 81e.
55. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, pp. 470471, A426/B454A427/B455.
56. Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, pp. 2728, 5:30.
57. Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, p. 38, 4:429.
58. Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p. 92.
59. It seems that from Capital the subjectivity to change the economic social struc-
ture of capitalism hardly appears. But, as I detail in the conclusion to part II, Marx
discovered the moment to overturn the hierarchical structure within itself.
60. Notwithstanding its remarkable intellectual revolution, structuralism was also
celebrated by those who sought to escape from the questions of subjectivity and re-
sponsibility. One should pay attention to the fact that most of these followers used
this occasion to attack Sartre. But, in fact, Sartres early stance was shared by the
structuralists. Sartre never simplemindedly and unconditionally claimed the impor-
tance of subject. He stressed human freedom, that is, being-for-itself, as a negation
of a hypostatized, bourgeois subject. He posited a structural determination, as it
were, in the place where people believed they were free, on the condition that he in-
sisted on determination by way of an original choosing (of prereective cogito).
In Being and Nothingness, Sartre maintained that all human doings were destined
to fail, and then, after World War II, he began to advocate humanism and attempted
to write ethics, because of his experience under the Nazi occupation. Sartre ac-
knowledged that there was no resistance except for the communist party and that he
was not worthy of being called a member of the Resistance. Furthermore, he tackled
head-on the issues of the French colonialist past before and after World War II,
which other intellectuals, including communists, ignored. In this sense, anti-
Sartrean structuralism functioned to dissolve responsibility for the past, bringing
about the advent of Nouveau Philosophes, the self-deceiving and mediocre group
proud of the French tradition of freedom and human rights.
61. Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, p. 33, 5:36.
62. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power [1888], trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J.
Hollingdale (New York: Vintage Books), 1968, p. 536, #1041.
63. Theodor W. Adorno, Negative Dialectics, trans. E. B. Ashton (New York: Continuum,
1973), p. 272.
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Notes
64. Freud confronted a case where a child who was brought up indulgently came to
develop a very intense superego or a strict conscientiousness; he sought to solve this
riddle by assuming the death drive as a primary factor. In other words, he posited
that what generates conscientiousness is not a stern superior other (or external
world) but a giving up of ones own aggression drive (i.e., the psychic energy is trans-
ferred to the superego and then directed to the ego). But Freud insisted that this
new idea was not contradictory to his previous one.
Which of these two views is correct? The earlier one, which genetically seemed
so unassailable, or the newer one, which rounds off the theory in such a welcome
fashion? Clearly, and by the evidence, too, of direct observations, both are justied.
They do not contradict each other, and they even coincide at one point, for the
childs revengeful aggressiveness will in part be determined by the amount of puni-
tive aggression that he expects from his father. Experience shows, however, that the
severity of the superego that a child develops in no way corresponds to the severity of
treatment with which he himself has met. The severity of the former seems to be in-
dependent of that of the latter. A child who has been brought up very leniently can
acquire a strict conscience. But it would also be wrong to exaggerate this indepen-
dence; it is not difcult to convince oneself that severity of upbringing does
also exert a strong inuence on the formation of the childs superego. (Sigmund
Freud, Civilization and Its Discontent, trans. and ed. James Strachey [New York:
Norton], p. 92).
So it is that in Freud the superego is ambiguous. And the novelty of Freud after
Beyond the Pleasure Principle exists in his attempt to elucidate the riddle of superego
without resorting to communitys norms. What began to happen with Beyond the Plea-
sure Principle was the transformation not only of the framework of psychoanalysis but
also of his cultural theorythey are indeed inseparable. This was an overturning of
the romanticist convention that culture is an external, social fetter; and this over-
turning would not have been possible if not for an assumption of the death drive. I
have scrutinized this subject in my essay Death and NationalismKant and Freud
(Hihyo Kukan [Critical Space], no. 1516 [Tokyo: Ohta Press, 19971998]).
65. Adorno, Negative Dialectics, pp. 362363.
66. In a lecture soon after World War II, Karl Jaspers divided German guilt into four
categories: criminal, political, moral, and metaphysical. (The Question of German
Guilt, trans. by F. B. Ashton [New York: The Dial Press, 1947]). The rst indicates
crimes of warthe violations of international law that were being tried in Nurem-
berg. The second, political guilt, is a concern of the entire nationno German is in-
nocent. Politically everyone acts in the modern state, at least by voting, or failing
to vote, in elections. The sense of political liability lets no man dodge . . . If things go
wrong the politically active tend to justify themselves; but such defences carry no
weight in politics (p. 62). According to Jaspers, the responsibility for this guilt
affects every citizen of the state, not only those who supported fascism but also even
those who did not. The third category, moral guilt, is applied to moral responsibility
and not legal responsibility: namely, where one did not help someone even if one
could have or one did not object to an evil though one should have. In this case, one
is not legally but morally guilty because one did not act for Sollen [oughtness]. The
last is metaphysical guilt, which is very close to Adornos problematic. For instance,
those who survived the concentration camps have had a feeling of guilt toward those
who died, almost as if they themselves had killed them. Because this sentiment is
almost unfounded both legally and politically, it is deemed metaphysical. Jaspers
little-known lecture dened the way Germans should act toward the responsibilities
of war. Now the distinction is a sine qua non for all ethical thinking.
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Notes
However, there are a few problems. Jaspers gives us the impression that Nazism
was mainly due to a fault of the mind, such that philosophical self-examination
could solve it. He neglects to question social, economic, and political causes of
Nazism. That is to say that Jaspers considers Kantian morality on the level of moral
guilt, while treating metaphysical guilt as lofty. But Kants morality is essentially
metaphysical, yet consistent with the stance to examine the natural causes by swerv-
ing away from individual responsibility.
67. Derridas account was forwarded to those who question Paul de Mans responsibil-
ity as a Nazi collaborator. See Like the Sound of the Sea Deep within a Shell: Paul de
Mans War, in Responses: On Paul de Mans Wartime Journalism, ed. Werner Hamacher,
Neil Hertz, and Thomas Keenan (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989).
68. Sren Kierkegaard, Works of Love, trans. Howard and Edna Hong (New York:
Harper & Row, 1962), p. 328.
69. Immanuel Kant, Conjectures on the Beginning of Human History, in Kant,
Political Writings, ed. Hans Reiss, trans. H. B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1970), p. 234.
70. Kants critical oscillation took place not only between Hume and Leibnitz but
also between Epicurean contingency and Aristotelian teleology: Whether we should
rstly expect that the states, by an Epicurean concourse of efcient causes, should
enter by random collisions (like those of small material particles) into all kinds of for-
mations which are again destroyed by new collisions, until they arrive by chance at a
formation that can survive in its existing form (a lucky accident which is hardly likely
ever to occur); or whether we should assume as a second possibility that nature in this
case follows a regular course in leading our species gradually upwards from the lower
level of animality to the highest level of humanity through forcing man to employ an
art which is nonetheless his own, and hence that nature develops mans original ca-
pacities by a perfectly regular process within this apparently disorderly arrangement
(Immanuel Kant, Idea for a Universal History, in Kant, Political Writings, ed. Hans
Reiss, trans. H. B. Nisbet [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970] p. 48).
Standing in an Epicurean position, Kant avoided seeing history teleologically, yet at
the same time he posed the idea that the teleology of history is permitted as a biologi-
cal (organic) one and as a regulative idea (qua transcendental semblance).
71. Kant, Idea for a Universal History, p. 44.
72. Concerning this account, I received suggestions from Tetsuo Watujis essay,
Kant ni-okeru Jinkaku to Jinruisei [Personality and Humanity in Kant], 1931.
73. See Herman Cohen (18421918), Einleitung mit Kritischen Nachtrag, zur Geschichte
des Materialismus von Lange, S. 112ff; and Ethik des reinen Willens, S. 217ff. See John
Rawlss preface to the French version of A Theory of Justice [1987]. Belknap Revised
Edition 1999.
74. Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Hegels Philosophy of Law: Intro-
duction [1844], in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Collected Works, vol. 3 (New York:
International Publishers, 1976), p. 182.
75. Ernst Bloch, On Karl Marx, trans. John Maxwell (New York: Herder and Herder,
1971).
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Notes
4 Transposition and Critique
1. Ren Descartes, Discourse on Method [1637], ed. and trans. George Heffernan
(South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), p. 49; pt. 3 sec. 7.
2. Immanuel Kant, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, trans. Victor Lyle
Dowdell (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1978), pp. 45n.
3. See For Marx, trans. Ben Brewster (London: Verso, 1990), and Reading Capital,
trans. Ben Brewster (London: Verso, 1979).
4. In his Reply to John Lewis (Self-Criticism) in Marxism Today (October 1972),
Althusser admitted there was a tendency in his previous work to suggest that there
was only one epistemological break in Marx, though he did not mean it.
5. Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Hegels Philosophy of Law: Intro-
duction [1844], in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Collected Works, vol. 3 (New York:
International Publishers, 1976), pp. 175187, here p. 175.
6. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique, p. 176.
7. Karl Marx, Theses on Feuerbach [1845], in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels,
Collected Works, vol. 5 [New York: International Publishers, 1976], 68, here p. 5;
translation slightly modied. This very ambiguity of Marx with respect to his appreci-
ation of subject and its exterior, of active and passive moments, resurfaced as the
conict between materialists and formalists in the context of later Marxism. Con-
trary to what is commonly believed, formalists are not necessarily idealists through
and through. Far from it, many sought out the active agent that constitutes phenom-
ena and grasped linguistic form as its material. Thus this, too, is a kind of material-
ism. Indeed, if one overlooked this aspect, even Marxism would be a mere
empiricism. Meanwhile, when formalism rejects the externality that offers the con-
tent of experience, it becomes idealism. This entire problematic formation was al-
ready pregured in the Kantian Turn. Kant not only criticized rationalism as
thought that lacks experience, but also warned that the starting point of empiricism,
sense-datum, was always already constituted by a certain form. Emphasizing the pri-
macy of the form of sensibility as well as the category of understanding, it might be
said that Kant already had spoken to the materiality of language. At the same time,
however, he insisted on the existence of the thing (in-itself) that persists no matter
how one might think of and represent the world. Thus, in his Materialism and Em-
pirio-Criticism (1909), Lenin pointed out that Marxism as well as neo-Kantianism had
lost sight of the existence of things themselves by stressing the activity of form, and
that Kant was to this extent more materialist than either of them (see V. I. Lenin,
Collected Works, vol. 14 [Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1971]). Nonetheless, whereas
Marx had pointed to the materiality of the symbolic form (under the concept of
value form) that had been repressed in classical economics, Lenin ignored the for-
malist materiality entirely, thus rendering his own materialism into an unnecessarily
impoverished empiricism.
On the subject of the Kantian turn, I cannot ignore another example that has ap-
peared recentlywithout even mentioning Kantin the context of contemporary
theory: Judith Butlers Bodies That Matter (New York: Routledge, 1993). In her previ-
ous work, Gender Trouble (New York: Routledge, 1990), Butler had emphasized the
precedence of gender as a social, cultural category over sex as a biological category.
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Notes
There it became necessary to cast doubt on the sexual difference considered to be a
biological given. But this, in turn, risks being idealistic: If gender is a social con-
struction of sex, and if there is no access to this sex except by means of its construc-
tion, then it appears not only that sex is absorbed by gender, but that sex becomes
something like a ction, perhaps a fantasy, retroactively installed at a prelinguistic
site to which there is no direct access (Bodies That Matter, p. 5). Because there is
something in sex (apropos the body) that cannot be dealt with by simply shifting cat-
egories, Butler turns from a linguistic idealism to a materialism. In other words, she
reintroduces sex (qua body) as an exteriority that gender (qua category) cannot ab-
sorb. In so doing, it is certainly not that Butler returns simply to a biological body
(qua senses) insofar as she discovers the biological body itself to be a construct of
the body (qua sensuous form)which nonetheless always appears to social cate-
gories as a given. In other words, Butler adapts a position that criticizes both idealist
and empiricist concepts, calling it materialism. The crux here is that this material-
ism could not be attained if not for critique as transpositionthe transcritique.
8. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology, in Karl Marx and Friedrich
Engels, Collected Works, vol. 5 (New York: International Publishers, 1976), p. 28.
9. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology, trans. and ed. Wataru Hiro-
matsu (Tokyo: Kawade Shobo, 1974).
10. In The German Ideology, Marx and Engels wrote:
The premises from which we begin are not arbitrary ones, not dogmas, but real
premises from which abstraction can only be made in the imagination. They are
the real individuals, their activity and the material conditions of their life, both
those which they nd already existing and those produced by their activity. These
premises can thus be veried in a purely empirical way.
The rst premise of all human history is, of course, the existence of living
human individuals. Thus the rst fact to be established is the physical organization
of these individuals and their consequent relation to the rest of nature. Of course,
we cannot here go either into the actual physical nature of man, or into the nat-
ural conditions in which man nds himselfgeographical, oro-hydrographical,
climatic and so on. All historical writing must set out from these natural bases and
their modication in the course of history through the action of men (p. 31).
In place of composing history by a purely empirical way, historical materialists
nevertheless relied mainly on dogmas. Rather it was precisely the Annales School
historians who sought to describe history by setting out from the kind of founda-
tional domain from which Marx said, could not here go into. There is no reason
for Marxists to reject this attempt; yet neither is it a project that goes beyond Marx. It
is in a sense a radicalization of historical materialism. But their foundational domain
itself has come to be distinct from the one that Marx assumed in Capitalthat which
involves both the logical and the empirical in a transcritical manner.
11. I shall in another discourse endeavor to give an account of the general princi-
ples of law and government, and of the different revolutions they have undergone in
the different ages and periods of society, not only in what concerns justice but in
what concerns police, revenue and arms, and whatever else is the object of law. I
shall not, therefore, at present enter into any further detail concerning the history
of jurisprudence (Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments [London: A. Miller, in
the Strand, 1759], p. 551).
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Notes
12. Marx and Engels, The German Ideology, p. 30.
13. Karl Marx, The Holy Family, trans. Richard Dixon and Clements Dutt, in Karl
Marx and Fredrich Engels, Collected Works, vol. 4 (New York: International Publish-
ers, 1976), p. 185.
14. Marx, The German Ideology, in Collected Works, vol. 5, p. 62.
15. Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, trans. Clements Dutt, in
Collected Works, vol. 11 (New York: International Publishers, 1976), pp. 103104.
16. Hans Kelsen, Vom Wesen und Wert der Demokratie (Tbingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1929),
p. 30: Anderseits aber wollte man den Schein erwecken, als ob auch im Parlamen-
tarismus die Idee der demokratischen Freiheit, und nur diese Idee, ungebrochen
zum Ausdrucke kme. Diesem Zwecke dient die Fiktion der Reprsentation, der
Gedanke, da das Parlament nur Stellvertreter des Volks sei, da das Volk seinen
Willen nur im Parlament, nur durch das Parlament uern knne, obgleich das par-
lamentarische Prinzip in allen Verfassuungen ausnahmslos mit der Bestimmung ver-
bunden ist, da die Abgeordneten von ihren Whlern keine bindenden
Instruktionen anzunehmen haben, da somit das Parlament in seiner Funktion vom
Volke rechtlich unabhngig ist. Ja, mit dieser Unabhngigkeitserklrung des Parla-
mentes gegenber dem Volke entsteht berhaupt erst das moderne Parlament, lst
es sich deutlich von der alten Stndeversammlung ab, deren Mitglieder bekanntlich
durch imperative Mandate ihrer Whlergruppen gebunden und diesen verant-
wortlich waren.
17. Kenneth Burke, A Grammar of Motives (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1969), p. 212n8.
18. Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire, pp. 130131.
19. Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire, pp. 169170.
20. Karl Marx, Preface to the Second Edition of The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis
Bonaparte, in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Collected Works, vol. 21 (New York:
International Publishers, 1976), p. 56.
21. Friedrich Engels, Preface to the Third Edition of The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis
Bonaparte, in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (New York: International
Publishers, 1963), p. 14.
22. In texts such as The Reasoning of Marxism [Marukusu-Shugi no Riro] and On Engels
[Engels Ron], Wataru Hiromatsu stresses that he who played the rst violin in con-
structing historical materialism was Engels. I agree with this opinion, except that my
standpoint comes from the opposite direction from that of Hiromatsu, who speaks to
the importance of Engels. I want to emphasize that Marxs power as well as concern
lay much less in conceptualizing historic materialism than often believed. Around the
same time as The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte was published, Engels wrote
Peasant War, in which what he called the law of history was already present. But this
book cannot rival The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, because of its lack of con-
cern for the system of representation/representatives, if not to say Marxs genius.
23. Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire, pp. 187188.
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325
Notes
24. I propose to approach the political form that appeared out of the overall crisis of
capitalism in the 1930s from the vantage point of Bonapartism. So-called fascism or
the collapse of representation was not a phenomenon limited to Germany, Italy, and
Japan. For instance, the American president Franklin Delano Roosevelt was sup-
ported by all classes: from workers, peasants in the South, and even minorities, to cap-
italists, to the extent that the role of the party system became obsolete. Perhaps such a
phenomenon occurred only once, not before and not after. He famously conducted
the New Deal and, furthermore, shifted American foreign policy from isolationism to
active interventionism: the engagement in war and imperialist world policy.
25. Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism (New York: Orgone Institute Press,
1946).
26. Sigmund Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, trans. James Strachey
(New York: Norton, 1965), p. 14.
27. Carl Schmitt, The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy [1923], trans. Ellen Kennedy
(Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1988), p. 16.
28. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, trans. Maurice Cranston (Har-
mondsworth: Penguin Books, 1968), pp. 7071.
29. See Heideggers lecture Declaration of Support for Adolf Hitler and the Na-
tional Socialist State (November 11, 1933): German Volksgenossen and Volksgenossin-
nen! The German people have been summoned by the Fhrer to vote; the Fhrer,
however, is asking nothing from the people. Rather, he is giving the people the pos-
sibility of making, directly, the highest free decision of all: whether the entire people
wants its own existence [Dasein] or whether it does not want it (Richard Wolin, ed.,
The Heidegger Controversy [Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1993], p. 49).
30. Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire, p. 185.
31. Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire, p. 186.
32. David Ricardo, On The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, 3d ed.
(London: John Murray, 1821), p. 341.
33. Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, vol. 1, trans. Ben Fowkes
(Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1976), pp. 236237.
34. Crises occurred often during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Hol-
land and England, including the famous Tulip Crisis, that stormed across Holland
between 1634 and 1637. They were most certainly nancial crises provoked by specu-
lation; one cannot determine, however, whether they were supercial and inciden-
tal. Even the cyclic crises in the age of industrial capitalism that began in 1819 rst
appeared as nancial crises and were then considered incidental. For industrial capi-
tal, credit and speculation are not merely secondary elements. Furthermore, it must
be noted that the seventeenth-century crises in Holland and England were already
world crises.
35. Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, vol. 2, trans. Ben Fowkes
(Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1976), p. 137.
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326
Notes
36. Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, in Karl Marx
and Friedrich Engels, Collected Works, vol. 29 (New York: International Publishers,
1976), p. 390.
37. In the beginning of Capital, Marx wrote: The wealth of societies in which the capi-
talist mode of production prevails appears as an immense collection of commodi-
ties. Here, importantly, capital (stock) itself is included in the commodities. If so, the
original commodity must be one that includes not merely various objects and services
but capital itself. In this respect, the composition of Capital, which ends with the chap-
ter Classes, is not consistent. In Principles of Political Economics [Keizaigaku Genri]
(1962), the Japanese political economist Koichiro Suzuki problematized this point and
recomposed Capital logically, presenting the completion of capitals self-recursive de-
velopment wherein commodity nally becomes share capital (the capital commodity).
38. Karl Marx to Ferdinand Lassalle, May 31, 1858, in Collected Works, vol. 40, p. 316.
39. Karl Marx, Difference between Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Na-
ture, in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Collected Works, vol. 1 (New York: Interna-
tional Publishers, 1976), p. 36.
40. See Marx, Difference between Democritean, pt. 2, chap. 1.
41. Kants transcritique was conducted not only in the interstice between Hume and
Leibnitz, but also between Epicurean contingency and Aristotelian teleology. He
said: Whether we should rstly expect that the states, by an Epicurean concourse of
efcient causes, should enter by random collisions (like those of small material parti-
cles) into all kinds of formations which are again destroyed by new collisions, until
they arrive by chance at a formation which can survive in its existing form (a lucky ac-
cident which is hardly likely ever to occur); or whether we should assume as a second
possibility that nature in this case follows a regular course in leading our species
gradually upwards from the lower level of animality to the highest level of humanity
through forcing man to employ an art which is nonetheless his own, and hence that
nature develops mans original capacities by a perfectly regular process within this
apparently disorderly arrangement; or whether we should rather accept the third
possibility that nothing at all, or at least nothing rational, will anywhere emerge from
all these actions and counter-actions among men as a whole, that things will remain
as they have always been, and that it would thus be impossible to predict whether the
discord which is so natural to our species is not preparing the way for a hell of evils
to overtake us, however civilized our condition, in that nature, by barbaric devasta-
tion, might perhaps again destroy this civilized state and all the cultural progress
hitherto achieved (a fate against which it would be impossible to guard under a rule
of blind chance, with which the state of lawless freedom is in fact identical, unless we
assume that the latter is secretly guided by the wisdom of nature)these three possi-
bilities boil down to the question of whether it is rational to assume that the order of
nature is purposive in its parts but purposeless as a whole (Immanuel Kant, Idea for a
Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose, in Kant, Political Writings, trans.
H. B. Nisbet [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970], p. 48). On the one
hand Kant, from the Epicurean stance, rejected the teleology of history, while on the
other hand he thought it could be accepted as a regulative idea (or transcendental
illusion)namely as the teleological hypothesis with respect to life (organism). This
acceptance of teleology is shared by Marxs view of history.
42. Marx, Capital, vol. 1, pp. 8990.
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327
Notes
43. Karl Marx, Justication of the Correspondent from the Mosel, in Karl Marx
and Friedrich Engels, Collected Works, vol. 1 (New York: International Publishers,
1976), p. 335.
44. Michael Bakunin, Statism and Anarchy, trans. Marshall S. Shatz (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 176.
45. Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme, in Karl Marx and Friedrich
Engel, Collected Works, vol. 24 (New York: International Publishers, 1976), pp. 9394.
46. Karl Marx, The Civil War in France, in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Collected
Works, vol. 22 (New York: International Publishers, 1976), p. 335.
47. Marx, Capital, vol. 3, p. 567.
48. Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p. 929.
49. Lorenz von Stein, Der socialismus und communismus des heutigen Frankreichs. Ein
beitrag zur zeitgeschichte (Leipzig: Otto Wigand, 1842).
50. Max Stirner, The Ego and Its Own, trans. David Leopold (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1995), p. 47.
51. Stirner, The Ego and Its Own, p. 46.
52. Stirner, The Ego and Its Own, p. 148.
53. As an example of the ego, Stirner named an artist, Raffaello Santi, instead of a
common person. That was somewhat misleading. What is noteworthy in this respect
is that in The German Ideology Marx stressed that Raffaello could not have created his
masterpieces without the preceding historical context as well as social division of
labor. In todays discourse, this corresponds to the claim that the author is dead or
that work is no less than the texta textile of quotations. Nonetheless we still
have to index a certain work by way of the authors name. Why? It is not because
it belongs to the author, but because the work as a singular eventthis (deictic) way
of weaving various textscan be pointed to only by a proper name. The Marx that I
am dealing with at this moment is also the proper name as an index. The work of
Marx could not have existed without the precedents and contemporary context.
And, with this way of assembling the external resources, the singularity of Marx
remains.
54. Stirner, The Ego and Its Own, p. 42.
55. The socialism of Proudhon was ethico-economic. He said: Instead of a million
laws, a single law will sufce. What shall this law be? Do not to others what you would
not they should do to you: do to others as you would they should do to you. That is
the law and the prophets. . . . But it is evident that this is not a law; it is the elemen-
tary formula of justice, the rule of all transactions (P.-J. Proudhon, General Idea of the
Revolution in the Nineteenth Century, trans. John Beverley Robinson [New York: Haskell
House, 1969], p. 215).
Yet this rule is no other than Kants law of morals. Proudhon did not speak of
it as an abstract category as it may seem; he envisioned an association wherein ex-
change itself was the ethics. And Kant, too, was interested in the economic system
6715 NOTES UG 1/29/03 8:03 PM Page 327
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Notes
where the law of morals was realized. Seen from this vantage point, it is possible to
say that Stirners critique of Proudhon sought to radicalize the ethical, while Marxs
critique of Proudhon pushed the aspect of economy to the limit. All in all, however,
these two aspects cannot be considered separately. Thus it is crucial for our scrutiny
of the issues of socialism to return to Kant.
56. P.-J. Proudhon, The Principle of Federation, trans. Richard Vernon (Toronto: Uni-
versity of Toronto Press, 1979), p. 43.
57. What Stirner called Eigentrichkeit is the same as what Kierkegaard called Einzel-
heit. They both point to singularity. Stirner maintained that only egoists could form
unions (associations); this perfectly corresponds to Kierkegaards claim that only sin-
gular persons [Einzelheiten] could be Christian. Kierkegaard stressed that Christianity
did not exist in the churches; to him, Christianity existed in what he called the
ethics b, which was distinct from the ethics a of the churches (Philosophical Frag-
ments). There was a difference in their stance toward Christianity: Stirner attacked it,
while Kierkegaard protected it. But the sameness in their stance toward singularity is
what is more crucial. Kierkegaard published Either/Or in 1843, which showed his
contemporaneity with Stirner. Independently and separately, they sought to exceed
the circuit of the individual-genus of Hegelian philosophy. Meanwhile, criticizing
Hegelian idealism, the Young Hegelians nevertheless remained in the Hegelian
framework of thought. In Marx, nally, one sees a thinker who broke out of the cir-
cuit: individual-genus at the same time as persisting in materialism.
58. Stirner, The Ego and Its Own, p. 277.
59. Marx, Theses on Feuerbach, in Collected Works, vol. 5, p. 4.
60. Marx and Engels, The German Ideology, in Collected Works, vol. 5, p. 30.
61. Concluding The Ego and Its Own, Stirner wrote, Ich have meine Sache auf Nichts
gestellt [I have posited my affairs on nothing]. This was in fact a parody of Arnold
Ruges words: to posit everything over history. Stirners position is to take off
from the existence of the I qua nothingness, which is not determined by historical
relations.
62. In Communists Like Us (New York: Semiotext(e), 1990), Antonio Negri and Flix
Guattari stated that communism is a liberation of singularity. I understand that this
also presents the direction to synthesize, rather than oppose, the positions of Marx
and Stirner.
63. Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Collected
Works, vol. 6 (New York: International Publishers, 1976), pp. 123124.
63. Proudhon, The Principle of Federation, pp. 1617.
64. Proudhon, The Principle of Federation, pp. 1617.
65. Instructions for Delegates to the Geneva Congress, Karl Marx: The First Interna-
tional and After. Political Writings, vol. 3, ed. David Fernbach (Harmondsworth:
Penguin Books, 1992), p. 90.
66. Proudhon, The Principle of Federation, p. 11.
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329
Notes
67. Proudhon, The Principle of Federation, p. 66.
68. Proudhon, The Principle of Federation, p. 4.
69. Karl Marx, konomische Manuskripte 18631867 (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1992),
p. 331.
70. Karl Marx Friedrich Engels Werke, vol. 25. (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1973), p. 267.
71. Marx, Capital, vol. 3, p. 365.
72. These reections owe much to Minoru Tabatas book Marx and Association
(Tokyo: Shinsen sha, 1994).
73. Karl Marx, The Draft of The Civil War in France, in Karl Marx and Friedrich
Engels, Collected Works, vol. 22 (New York: International Publishers, 1976), p. 491.
74. Today the conict between Bolshevism and anarchism is expressed less politi-
cally than philosophically. For instance, Deleuzes work can be read as an anarchism.
But Deleuze wrote closely on not only Hume and Bergson but also Spinoza and
Leibnitz. I believe that Deleuze tacitly criticized both tendencies by way of afrming
both. In this sense, what he did was a Kantian-Marxian transcritique. In Nietzsche and
Philosophy, he read Nietzsches work as the sequel to Kants third critique; in Anti-
Oedipus, he recognized the works of Marx and Freud as transcendental critique. Gen-
erally speaking, however, Deleuze became the darling of todays aestheticized
anarchists. The majority of Deleuzians ignore the fact that in his last interview, he
professed himself to be completely Marxist, and in consequence, they regress to
Bergsonism.
75. Bakunin insisted that revolution should be realized by the free association of
workers themselves. But he could not do away with the leadership of reason or intel-
lectuals. Though denying centralist power, he sought to organize a secret society
(party) formed in the strict hierarchy of a tree-structure. In this sense, he was not so
far from Branqui, according to whom revolution was of and by the masses them-
selves, but doomed to fail without the orientation of the awakening vanguards (i.e.,
party).
In his The Catechism of the Revolutionist, Bakunin wrote that each comrade should
have several second- or third-level activists, not fully engaged in the revolution,
who help them out now and then; and these comrade-revolutionaries should con-
sider the activists as part of their revolutionary capital. Nechaev acted on it. It is un-
deniable that this derived from Bakunins theory of organization. The Russian
socialist movement that began in the 1840s was inuenced by Feuerbach. Young
Dostoevski committed himself to it and was deported to Siberia. It was there he
wrote The Possessed. In any event, it is noteworthy that Dostoevskis discernment
of the revolutionary politics owed to the anarchist movement rather than to the
Marxists.
Anarchists deny the domination of reason. One should not forget, however, the
paradox: Only reason can criticize reason. Even Bergsons critique of intellect is a
critique of reason by reason. Forgetting this paradox, one can easily and simple-
mindedly assert the predominance of intuition and life. That is a disguised arro-
gance of reason. For instance, Georges Sorel called state-power forceread
oppressive intellectand the general strike of workers violenceread pulse of
lifebased on Bergsonian philosophy. And it was not a coincidence that his theory
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Notes
came to fruition under the fascism of Mussolini. Anarchists reject the leadership of
intellectuals and deny the party system; anarcho-syndicalists in particular professed
themselves to be an autonomous movement of workers. But these workers are
nothing if not intellectuals; the group is nothing but a party. Trotsky pointed out the
deception in this idea: Above all in France, for French syndicalismwe must repeat
thiswas and is, in its organization and theory, likewise a party. This is also why it ar-
rived, during its classical period (1905-07), at the theory of the active minority, and
not at the theory of the collective proletariat. For what else is an active minority,
held together by the unity of their ideas, if not a party? And on the other hand,
would not a trade union mass organization, not containing a class-conscious active
minority, be a purely formal and meaningless organization? (Leon Trotsky, On the
Trade Unions [New York: Pathnder Press, 1969]).
But I am not saying that the centralist party idea of Lenin and Trotsky was just.
What I doubt is the choice whether to accept or reject the centralist party. This is ba-
sically the same as the fatalistic idea about revolutionary politics: whether to accept
or reject the bureaucratic system. What is necessary is to discover a system that can
prevent the xation of hierarchy, after once adopting the leadership of intellectuals,
the representative system, and the bureaucratic system.
76. In his introduction to the third version of Marxs The Civil War in France,
published in 1891 in Germany, Engels degraded Proudhon in various ways. (See
Friedrich Engels, Introduction to Karl Marxs The Civil War in France, in Karl
Marx and Friedrich Engels, Collected Works, vol. 27 [New York: International Publish-
ers, 1976]) As he said negatively, Proudhonists were certainly minorities in the Paris
Commune. But, calling themselves minorities afrmatively, they protested against
the centralist rule by the majorities. The majorities were Branquists and Jacobins,
while the minorities consisted of the members of the International Working
Mens Association (for whom Marx wrote the essays). The leading ideal of the
Paris Commune was evidently that of the IWAnamely, of Proudhonists. And
Marx praised them. Meanwhile, Engels intended to degrade them by calling them
minorities as if majorities were just. The Commune was shattered in two months.
If it had lasted longer, it would have been dominated by Branquists and Jacobins.
In the Russian Revolution, Lenin associated his party with the majorities [Bolshevik],
and repeated the same thing. I contest that it was due to Engelss distortion of
history.
Furthermore, Engels attacked the Commune that it left the central bank alone. In
fact, capitalism at the time would have been damaged more severely had the central
bank been dissolved. On the other hand, however, Engelss idea of state ownership
of the economy, too, would have made the state endure. According to Charles
Longuet, the husband of one of Marxs daughters, Proudhonists such as Charles
Besley intended, after the victory of the Commune, to organize la Banque nationale
that would need neither stockholders nor stocks, but still issue bank notes guaran-
teed only by securities, following the Proudhonist agenda. It requires further
scrutiny to determine whether this idea could truly be an alternative to the currency
and credit system of the capitalist state, but the point is that any association that
would abolish the capitalist economy would still involve currency and a credit system
of its own. I shall argue this point at the conclusion of the book. (See A Few Com-
ments on Engels Introduction [Engels no jobun no jakkan no ten ni tsuite], in The
Civil War in France [France no Nairan] [Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten].)
77. In Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics for a New Age (Berkeley: University of Cali-
fornia Press, 1984), Benjamin Barber proposed a system that enables the participa-
tory democracy (including lottery). Nevertheless, his strong democracy idea does
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Notes
not consider the aspect of Proudhons industrial democracynamely, the partici-
patory democracy within corporations or workplace in general. If not for this aspect,
the result would inevitably be a weak democracy.
5 The Crisis of Synthesis
1. Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, vol. 3, trans. Ben Fowkes (Har-
mondsworth: Penguin Books, 1976), p. 744.
2. Marx, Capital, vol. 2, p. 137.
3. Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p. 163.
4. In the New Testament, the monetary economy appears as despised and denied,
and yet it is used as a metaphor time and again. In Greek philosophy since Plato, this
has also been the case. Both had to confront the theologico-metaphysical nature
of money. Marc Schell offers a fascinating reection on this topic in The Economy of
Literature (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978).
5. Christendom has abolished Christianity without really knowing it itself. As a re-
sult, if something must be done, one must attempt again to introduce Christianity
into Christendom, wrote Kierkegaard (Sren Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity,
trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong [Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1991], p. 36). Political economists consider currency merely as a means of indicating
the value of a commodity, though people inevitably repeat the salto mortale in order
to grab it. Thus what Marx sought to do was to conceptually recapture the crisis or
asymmetric relation that cannot be sublated in C-M (selling): [The Political econ-
omy] has abolished [Currency] without really knowing it itself. As a result, if some-
thing must be done, one must attempt again to introduce [Currency] into [the
political economy].
6. Marx, Capital, vol. 1, pp. 179180.
7. Marx, Capital, vol. 1, pp. 200201.
8. Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p. 131.
9. Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, in Karl Marx
and Friedrich Engels, Collected Works, vol. 29 (New York: International Publishers,
1976), pp. 275276.
10. Marx, Capital, vol. 1, pp. 166167.
11. Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p. 174n34.
12. Marx appreciated that classical economists considered production as signicant,
counter to mercantilists and bullionists. Nevertheless, they could not see the value
form that makes products either commodity or money. It was the physiocrat,
Franois Quesnay (16941774), who rst negated mercantilism in his Tableau
conomique. He attributed the source of prot to the natural power of the land. In
other words, he denied the autonomy of a world organized by value form and attrib-
uted the source of wealth to the productive power of naturemore specically, to
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Notes
the gifts of nature. Classical economists basically followed this line, except that they
replaced the productive power of nature with human division of labor. Here arose
the conviction that value is formed only by human labor. In Critique of the Gotha Pro-
gramme, Marx criticized the classical economist stance of Ferdinand Lassalle
(18251864) and emphasized that not only humans but also nature produce. This
critique was not merely uttered for the sake of rebuking Lassalles tacit defense of
the landowner class, but represented his consistent position throughout Capital:
When man engages in production, he can only proceed as nature does herself, that
is, he can only change the form of the materials. Furthermore, even in this work of
modication he is constantly helped by natural forces. Labor is therefore not the
only source of material wealth, i.e., of the use-value it produces. As William Petty
says, labor is the father of material wealth, the earth is its mother. (Marx, Capital,
vol. 1, pp. 133134)
In other words, labor and land are the very things that capital cannot produce, al-
though it relies on them, even lives off of them. But still the crux is that all products,
whether man-made or natural, are organized by value form, and both physiocrats
and classical economists disregarded this dimension. They considered value produc-
tion and object production as one and the same thing. This stance also solidied the
identication of the capitalist economy with industrial civilization. Therefrom de-
rived the permeating fallacy that the problems of industrial capitalism are equal to
those of modern industry and technology.
Classical economists emphasis on labor was certainly an epoch-making turn if one
thinks about it. Nonetheless, it not only resulted in the widespread neglect of the
dimension of money and creditengendered by the difculty and crisis of
exchangebut also fostered the illusion that social exchange could be grasped
transparently. This stance came to see the social division of labor that is constantly
organized and reorganized by money, and the division of labor inside a factory, as
one and the same. From this emerged the socialism (qua statism) that plans
and controls the whole of society like a factory. History has proven that this works
only locally and temporarily. In many cases, its failure has appeared most conspicu-
ously in the agricultural sectorwhich is half based upon the production by na-
ture. From a larger perspective, however, the failure comes from a naivet vis--vis
the essential difculty of exchange. Today it is crucial for us to note that the ten-
dency of mainstream Marxism since Engelsto rule the natural and anarchic ele-
ments and design a totally controlled societystemmed from the ideology of
classical economics.
The idea of planning an economy by means of a centralized power is not solely de-
rivative of classical economics, but of neoclassical economics that belittled the labor
theory of value. They share the same stance in regarding money just as index of
value or a means of exchange. For instance, Oskar Lange, who advocated market so-
cialism, sought to present the possibility of a rational distribution of resources by a
planned economy. Being a follower of Walrass theory of general equilibrium, he
held that it would be realized more suitably in the socialist than in the capitalist
economy. In this idea, the central bureau of economic planning would play the role
of overseeing the stock market, introducing the computerized informatic system.
The market socialists, who appeared after the collapse of the Soviet Union, more or
less think the same way. On the other hand, Marx never believed in a planned econ-
omy or the state control of economy. His point was not to neutralize money but to
sublate it. For further discussion, see section 5.2.
13. Samuel Bailey, A Critical Dissertation on the Nature, Measure, and Causes of Value:
Chiey in Reference to the Writings of Mr. Ricardo and His Followers. By the Author of Essays
on the Formation, etc., of Opinions (London: R. Hunter, 1825), pp. 4, 5, 8.
6715 NOTES UG 1/29/03 8:03 PM Page 332
333
Notes
14. The Quantitative Determinancy of the Relative Form of Value, in Marx, Capi-
tal, vol. 1, p. 146.
15. Bailey, A Critical Dissertation, p. 72.
16. Classical economists and their critics, neoclassical economists, overlooked the
enigma as to why exchanges could occur only by way of money. For they took money
either as a measure of value or as a means of exchange. Under such a belief in the
neutrality of money, Walrass theory of general equilibrium was established.
Neoclassical economists consider the market to be a place where prices of commodi-
ties are adjusted under the auspices of an auctioneer. But, in the real market, selling
and buying do not take place at the same time. As Marx said, selling and buying are
split by money being accumulated. The theory of general equilibrium is just an
hypothesis, established by neutralizing (nullifying) money. Only Johan Dustaf
Knut Wicksell among the neoclassical economists suspected the neutrality of money;
see Vorlesungen ber Nationalkonomie auf Grundlage des Marginalprinzipes, Bd, I, 1913,
Bd, II, 1922; English translation: Lectures on Political Economy, 2 vols., 19341935.
He said that the discrepancy between the market or money rate of interest and
the natural or real rate of interest cumulatively invites the fall of valuein other
words, that the monetary economy is originally disequilibrate. Hayek saw the market
as a disperse and competitive place where the theory of general equilibrium was
inapplicable.
Meanwhile, this problem was already touched upon by Marx. In the rst edition of
Capital, Marx made an important suggestion concerning this. In the theory of value
form, he explained the advent of the general equivalent form in form III as follows:
In form III . . . linen appears as the generic form of the equivalent for all other
commodities. It is as if, along with and aside from lions, tigers, rabbits and all other
real animals that group together and make up the different genus, species, sub-
species, families etc. of the animal world, there was also the animal, the incarnation of
the entire animal world. Such a particular that comprises in itself all existing species
of the same sort is a general, as animal, God and so on. (In der Form III, welche
die rckbezogene zweite Form und also in ihr eingeschlossen ist, erscheint die Lein-
wand dagegen als die Gattungsform des Aequivalents fr alle audern Waaren. Es ist
als ob neben und ausser Lwen, Tigern, Hasen und allen andern wirklichen
Thieren, die gruppirt die verschiednen Geschlechter, Arten, Unterarten, Familien
u.s.w. des Thierreichs bilden, auch noch das Thier existirte, die individuelle Incarna-
tion des ganzen Thierreichs. Ein solches Eizelne, das in sich selbst alle wirklich
vorhandenen Arten derselben Sache einbegreift, ist ein Allgemeines, wie Thier, Gott
u.s.w.Das Kapital: Kritik der politischen Oekonomie, vol. 1, Hamburg: O. Meissner;
New York: L. W. Schmidt, 18671894, p. 27). This suggests a self-referential paradox
akin to that of the theory of sets. The stance of classical and neoclassical economics
regarding money just as medium-signies positing money on the meta-level and dis-
tinguishing it from commodities on the object-level. But such logical typing cannot
be sustained. For, as shown by the uctuation of the rate of interest, it so happens
that money also becomes a commodity; that is to say that it so happens that what is in
the meta-level (i.e., a class) at some point falls to the object-level and becomes a
member.
Notwithstanding the neutralization of money by classcial and neoclassical eco-
nomics, however, money sustains itself. But more contemporary economists who crit-
icize them consider Marx as an epigone of the Classical school, ignoring his theory
of value form. In this aspect, Marxists think in the same way.
17. Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p. 126.
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334
Notes
18. Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p. 1015.
19. Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p. 147.
20. Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p. 140.
21. Marx, Capital, vol. 1, pp. 139140.
22. Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p. 187.
23. Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations [1776], ed. Andrew Skinner (Har-
mondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1970).
24. Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p. 182.
25. Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation (New York: Farrar & Reinhart, 1944).
26. Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p. 178.
27. The capitalist economy cannot be overcome by the previously existing princi-
ples. Many antitheses that appear to counter the principles of the market economy
are just reconrming particular phases of the capitalist economy. For instance,
Georges Bataille saw the postwar American economic policy, the Marshall Plan, as
expenditure. His general economics appears to have been conceptualized in
order to ground the Keynesian intervention of the state, rather than primitive soci-
eties. Meanwhile, the anthropologist, Marcel Mauss, who contributed revolutionary
insights into the system of gifting in primitive societies, sought to draw a principle of
cooperative society.
28. Marxs stance that saw capitalists as personications of capital is even more
apropos when applied to this stage, when stock companies have become dominant.
In this system, a split occurs between capital and management, between capitalists
(stock holders) and executives. In consequence, executives come to consider them-
selves as workers with complicated tasks. No matter what they think subjectively, they
have to work effectively toward the self-reproduction of capital so that they are not
red. This situation is also true for the bureaucrats of socialist states, who subjec-
tively negate prot making and exploitation.
29. Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p. 92.
30. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, p. 276.
31. Marx, Capital, vol. 1, pp. 211212.
32. Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p. 231.
33. Marx, Capital, vol. 1, pp. 254255.
34. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, p. 384.
35. Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Hegels Philosophy of Law, in
Karl Marx and Friedrich Hegel, Collected Works, vol. 3 (New York: International
Publishers, 1976), pp. 175176.
6715 NOTES UG 1/29/03 8:03 PM Page 334
335
Notes
36. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Hegels Philosophy of Law, p. 176.
37. In The Coiners of Language (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994), Jean
Joseph Goux compares the gold standard with literary realism, and suggests a rap-
port between the collapse of the former and the decline of the latter, in reference to
Andr Gides Faux-monnayeurs. But the termination of the conversion system in Eng-
land and France came as a result of World War I and the weakening of the interna-
tional hegemony of these nation-states. Thus the event was represented as the fall of
the father. The fact was that at that time, gold (as world money) again became nec-
essary for international liquidation, and the American dollar became the key cur-
rency convertible to gold. That is to say that the gold standard was not terminated at
that time, but in 1972, when the conversion system of the dollar was terminated.
Since then, international nancial trading has been more volatile. According to
Goux, Gides Faux-monnayeurs pioneered the presentation of a world in which lan-
guage (qua currency) is independent from referents and ideas. But Gide and other
high modernists of that period were working in the sphere of modernism precisely
corresponding to the Keynesian currency management of that time that tacitly re-
lied on the gold standard for international settlement. If one continues the line of
economic referents, it can be said that it was when America stopped the gold stan-
dard that the state of affairs called postmodernismepitomized by the phrase the
original itself is copybegan to emerge. It is impossible, however, for this situation
to last forever.
38. Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, in Karl Marx and
Friedrich Engels, Collected Works, vol. 3 (New York: International Publishers, 1976),
p. 325.
39. Kant, Critique of Judgment, trans. Werner S. Pluhar (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987),
p. 129.
40. Kant, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, trans. Victor Lyle Dowdell
(Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1978), p. 54.
41. Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysic of Morals, trans. Mary Gregor (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 6970, 6:2876:288.
42. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology (New York: International
Publishers, 1989), pp. 5657.
43. As I discussed in Architecture as Metaphor (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1995),
Marx used the term Naturwchsigkeit [grown-by-nature-ness] often, beginning with
The German Ideology. This indicates the force that forms human history as pure
natural becoming, the force of which no planning and control are possible.
The fact that Marx retained the term was important especially in contrast to the lin-
eage of Marxism (historical materialism) that has sought to plan the whole course of
history.
44. Marx, Capital, vol. 1, pp. 236237.
45. With respect to the credit system, Marx wrote; If the credit system appears as
the principle lever of overproduction and excessive speculation in commerce, this is
simply because the reproduction process, which is elastic by nature, is now forced to
its most extreme limit; and this is because a great part of the social capital is applied
6715 NOTES UG 1/29/03 8:03 PM Page 335
336
Notes
by those who are not its owners, and who therefore proceed quite unlike owners
who, when they function themselves, anxiously weigh the limits of their private capi-
tal. This only goes to show how the valorization of capital founded on the antitheti-
cal character of capitalist production permits actual free development only up to a
certain point, which is constantly broken through by the credit system. The credit
system hence accelerates the material development of the productive forces and the
creation of the world market, which it is the historical task of the capitalist mode of
production to bring to a certain level of development, as material foundations for
the new form of production. At the same time, credit accelerates the violent out-
breaks of this contradiction, crises, and with these the elements of dissolution of the
old mode of production (Marx, Capital, vol. 3, p. 572).
46. In fact there are many biblical references in Capital. It might be possible even to
say that Marx saw industrial capital as the New Testament, and merchant capital or
usurers capital as the Old Testament. Although the New Testament needs the Old
inasmuch as it is the realization of the latter, it, as a new revision, also has to be a
negation of the latter. The stance that classical economists took toward the previous
economics was interestingly the same as this.
47. Matthew 34 in The New Oxford Annotated Bible, Bruce M. Metzger and Roland E.
Murphy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).
48. Marx, Economic Manuscripts of 185758, a.k.a. Grundrisse der Kritik der poli-
tischen konomie, in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Collected Works, vol. 28 (New
York: International Publishers, 1976), p. 42. Marx developed his notion of the precapi-
talist forms of production based on his reections on the capitalist economy in Grun-
drisse. But this account does nothing to explain world history. It is rather a device to
understand the historical peculiarity of capitalist production itself. So it is that there is
no possible way to lay out a certain course or order of development as historical neces-
sity, starting from the primitive communityand this was never Marxs intention.
The multifariousness of the production systems should be understood as varia-
tions of composite elements, and not as historical necessity. For this reason, Maxime
Rodinson proposed to call them pre-capitalist systems of exploitation. See his Islam
et Capitalism (Paris: Edition du Seuil, 1966); English translation, Islam and Capitalism
trans. Brian Pearce (London: Allen Lane, 1974). As I said in section 5.3, the precapi-
talist system is based on the reciprocity between robbery (qua redistribution) and
gift. And even in capitalist society, these have not been abolished but rather trans-
formed into the form of the modern nation-state. Considerations of the precapital-
ist systems of exploitation are necessary, only because this persists today in
metamorphosed form.
49. The theory of reication tacitly takes for granted a stance from which it is possi-
ble to grasp the whole relation of production. It follows that, counter to its inten-
tion, the theory would result in centralist power control.
6 Value Form and Surplus Value
1. Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, vol. 1, trans. Ben Fowkes (Har-
mondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1976), p. 266.
2. Marx, Capital, vol. 3, p. 352.
6715 NOTES UG 1/29/03 8:03 PM Page 336
337
Notes
3. Marx, Capital, vol. 1, pp. 268269.
4. Marx, Capital, vol. 3, p. 472.
5. Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p. 172.
6. Karl Marx, Economic Manuscripts of 185758, in Karl Marx and Friedrich
Engels, Collected Works, vol. 28 (New York: International Publishers, 1976).
7. Economic Manuscripts of 185758, in Collected Works, vol. 28, p. 159.
8. In a sense, it is correct to say that Marx sought to push the Ricardian labor theory
of value even further than Ricardo. On the other hand, facing an impasse, Ricardo
partly revised his theory and had it that value is not determined solely by invested
labor, except for within those departments that have a standard composition of capi-
tal and a standard turnover term. As I have already said in the context of Baileys
criticism of Ricardo, however, Marx was no longer of the opinion that each com-
modity internalizes its own value. The value of each commodity is given only when
the relationship between commodities forms a system; if so, even if the value sub-
stance of a commodity is the invested labor, it would be the labor value that has been
reposited and adjusted in the exchange with money. In other words, it is the social
labor-time or the abstract labor-time, as Marx put it. Marxs social labor time is
distinct from the actual labor time expended to produce individual commodities; it
is rather the labor time that is discovered belatedly within products after being socially
constituted via the exchange with money. The value vis--vis labor timeeither via
commodity exchange or capitalist productioncannot be measured quantitatively
by any means whatsoever. What we can know is only price. And what is certain is that
capital is deadly serious about the reinforcement of productivity; that this is realized
only by shortening the necessary labor time; and that the difference of productivity
determines the hierarchy of value systems of world nations.
Also in Capital, Marx says he assumes simple labor; this is for convenience sake
and the simple has nothing to do with the kind of labor. The diversity and com-
plexity of labor as use-value cannot be measured quantitatively. But it is in reality
quantiedas the amount of wagesonly after being socialized by the commodity
exchange. Therefore, intellectual labor comes to be quantitatively compared with
simpler labors. It is not that the labor time expended for the production of commodi-
ties places them in equivalency, but that placing them in equivalency determines the
social labor time expended for the production. The quality of labor does not matter
in this. And there is no need to revise the previous analysis; even in the face of a shift
of major labor forms from, for instance, the second industry (manufacturing) to the
third industry (service).
Kozo Uno argued that Marx made a mistake in posing labor time as value-
substance in the stage of the theory of value form, and that it rather should have ap-
peared in the stage of the process of production in industrial capitalism, wherein
labor power becomes commodity, and labor time is objectied to a certain degree
because of mechanical production. This precisely points to the fact that a thing such
as labor time is very much particular to the economy of industrial capital. Which is
to say that the concept should not be applied to the noncapitalist economy, and fur-
thermore, to an economy that is beyond capitalism. In this aspect, the idea of Owen
and Proudhon, of labor money in particular, that was supposed to be beyond capital-
ism, was dependent upon and conned within the paradigm of the capitalist com-
modity economy. To sublate the capitalist economy is equal to sublating labor-value.
Communism, according to Marxs vision, is supposed to be a society where everyone
6715 NOTES UG 1/29/03 8:03 PM Page 337
338
Notes
is given according to their need, and not a society where everyone is given according
to the amount of their labor. In other words, a society must abolish the determina-
tion (law) of value according to labor itself. Marx acknowledges the labor theory of
value only for the sake of abolishing the economic system that imposes it. On the
other hand, those ideologues who tend to disavow the labor theory of value are
those who wish for the permanence of capitalism. In order to totally nullify labor
value, it is imperative to have another form of exchange and money.
9. Samuel Bailey, A Critical Dissertation on the Nature, Measure, and Causes of Value:
Chiey in Reference to the Writings of Mr. Ricardo and His Followers. By the Author of Essays
on the Formation, etc., of Opinions (London: R. Hunter, 1825), p. 72.
10. Roman Jakobson, On Language (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990), p. 462.
11. See Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, trans. Roy Harris (La
Salle, IL: Open Court, 1972).
12. Karl Marx, Economic Manuscripts of 185758, in Collected Works, vol. 28, p. 99.
13. In answering this question, it is relevant to point out that even in non-linguistic
cases values of any kind seem to be governed by a paradoxical principle. Value al-
ways involves:
(1) something dissimilar which can be exchanged for the item whose value is under
consideration, and
(2) similar things which can be compared with the item whose value is under
consideration.
These two features are necessary for the existence of any value. To determine the
value of a ve-franc coin, e.g. what must be known is: (1) that the coin can be ex-
changed for a certain quantity of something different, e.g. bread, and (2) that its
value can be compared with another value in the same system, for example, that of a
one-franc coin, or a coin belonging to another system (e.g. a dollar). Similarly, a
word can be substituted for something dissimilar: an idea. At the same time, it can
be compared to something of like nature: another word. Its value is therefore not
determined merely by that concept or meaning for which it is a token (Saussure,
Course in General Linguistics, pp. 113114). Thus Saussures linguistics is not
that of a unitary system; it takes as a premise the exchange (translation) with other
languages.
14. Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p. 209.
15. Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chacravorty Spivak (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976).
16. Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p. 167.
17. Paul Valry, Reections on Art, in Paul Valry, Aesthetics, trans. Ralph Manheim
(New York: Pantheon, 1964), pp. 142143.
18. Valry wrote on Capital: Hier soir relu . . . (un peu) Das Kapital. Je suis un des
rares hommes qui laient lu. Il parait que Jaurs lui-mme . . .
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339
Notes
Quant au Kapital, ce gros book contient des choses trs remarquables. Il ny a qu
les y trouver. Cest dun orgueil assez pais. Souvent trs insufsant comme rigueur,
ou trs pdant pour des prunes, mais certaines analyses sont patantes. Je veux dire
que la manire de saisir les choses resemble cell dont juse assez souvent, et je puis
assez souvent traduire son langage dans le mien. Lobjet ne fait rien, et au fond cest
le mme! (A. Gide-P. Valry, Correspondence 18901942 [Paris: Gallimard, 1955], pp.
472473)
Last night, I read Capital a little. I am one of the few who actually read it. It seems
that even Jaurs himself [has not read it]. . . .
Speaking of Capital, this big book includes quite remarkable things. All we have
to do is nd them. This is a product of tremendous condence. Often insufcient in
terms of scholastic rigor and pedantic for no reason, but certain analyses are bril-
liant. I want to say that the method of grasping things resembles the one I use quite
often, and in many cases I can translate his language into mine. The object does not
matter, and ultimately it is the same!
19. The rst person to draw the theory of surplus value from Ricardo was Charles
Wentworth Dilke; he wrote a pamphlet The Source and Remedy of the National Difcul-
ties (1821). Then, Thomas Hodgskin wrote Labour Defended against the Claims of Capi-
tal (1825). Ricardos The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation was published in
1817. So their responses were rather quick. Their work offered the theoretical
ground for the British labor movement beginning in the 1820s. It is evident that the
position of surplus value exploitation was not Marxs discovery. Marx himself ad-
mitted as much, and commented on Dilkes pamphlet: This scarcely known pam-
phlet (about 40 pages) . . . contains an important advance on Ricardo. It bluntly
describes surplus valueor prot, as Ricardo calls it (often also surplus produce),
or interest, as the author of the pamphlet terms itas surplus labor, the labor which
the worker performs gratis, the labor he performs over and above the quantity of
labor by which the value of his labor capacity is replaced, i.e. by which he produces
an equivalent for his wages. Important as it was to reduce value to labor, it was equally
important to present surplus value, which manifests itself in surplus produce, as surplus
labor. This was in fact already stated by Adam Smith and constitutes one of the main
elements in Ricardos argumentation. But nowhere did he clearly express it and
record it in an absolute form (Karl Marx, Economic Manuscripts of 186163Theories
of Surplus Value, in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Collected Works, vol. 32 [New
York: International Publishers, 1976], p. 374.).
20. Around 1960, Nobuo Okishio suggested that the proposition: if the rate of
prot is plus, surplus labor is necessarily involved can be proven either in considera-
tion of production price or more general price (Marx Keizai-gakuKachi to kakaku no
Riron [Marxian Political Economythe Theory of Value and Price] [Tokyo:
Chikuma Shobo, 1977]).
21. Marx, Economic Manuscripts of 185758, in Collected Works, vol. 28,
pp. 348349.
22. Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p. 443.
23. Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p. 475.
24. Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p. 451.
25. Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p. 277.
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340
Notes
26. It is certain that technological innovation is motivated by capitals need to
achieve relative surplus-value. Nevertheless, one should not forget the following:
even when a great technology is discovered, there is a chance that it will not be em-
ployed by capital immediately and buried for a long time. If it does not accrue prot
or if there is a chance of losing vested interests, capital may not use it. As a recent ex-
ample, take the oil crisis of the 1970s. The possibility of switching from gas to solar
power was seriously considered, and the technological development was undertaken.
But the project was crushed by international oil capitals. In consequence, global
warming has worsened to this critical extent. Furthermore, as we all know, the
greater part of technological innovation is made for unnecessary and even harmful
things for our livesas in military technology.
27. Marx, Capital, vol. 3, p. 117.
28. Marx, Capital, vol. 3, p. 134.
29. Marx, Capital, vol. 3, p. 243.
30. Marx, Capital, vol. 3, p. 145.
31. Marx, Capital, vol. 3, p. 136.
32. Marx said, Each individual capital forms only a fraction of the total social capi-
tal (Capital, vol. 2, p. 427). And I suggest that total social capital be divided into two
categories: national total-social-capital and global total-social-capital. Global
total-social-capital treats individual national total-social-capitals in the same way that
the national total-social-capital treats individual capitals. The advent of global total-
social-capital was exemplied by the U.S. postwar foreign aid program, the
Marshall Plan, and the establishment of the International Monetary Fund in 1944.
33. See Joseph Alois Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (New York:
Harper & Bros., 1942).
34. Marx, Capital, vol. 3, p. 170.
35. A typical example of labor reinforcement in America is Fordism (based upon
Taylorism). By dividing work into small partitions and making production auto-
mated (i.e., assembly production), workers are deprived of their skills and the alien-
ation of labor is pushed to the extreme. In contrast, the Japanese Toyota method
began its own system for producing various products in response to uctuating de-
mand, and nurturing workers with various skills. Recently, the French school of
Marxist economists, rgulation, praised Toyota-ism as post-Fordism. I disagree with
this. I believe Toyota-ism is just a cleverer version of Fordism, taking advantage of
workers self-motivation. The success of Toyota-ism was really achieved by squeezing
and exploiting the small to medium-sized enterprises that belong to Toyotas keiretsu.
The idea of rgulation that denes the historical stage of capitalism by the style of
labor reinforcement in mechanical production is one dimensional. It is an extension
of the theoretical tendency that centralizes absolute surplus value.
36. At the time Marx was writing Capital, world crises occurred in approximately ten-
year cycles. This so-called Jugler cycle was in synch with technological innovationthe
improvement of capitals organic compositionin cotton manufacturing. That is,
cotton machines lasted about ten years. As Marx said, A machine also undergoes
6715 NOTES UG 1/29/03 8:03 PM Page 340
341
Notes
what we might call a moral depreciation (Capital, vol. 1, p. 528). But, as Engels
pointed out (Marx, Capital, vol. 3, p. 620 n 8), beginning in the 1870s, turning points
came to be marked by great crises. The acute form of the periodic process with its
former ten-year cycle seems to have given way to a more chronic and drawn-out alter-
nation, affecting the various industrial countries at different times, between a relative
short and weak improvement in trade and a relatively long and indecisive depres-
sion. Nikolai D. Kondratieffs theory of the long wave was an answer to this problem.
But whether or not this accompanies a crisis is a problem of the world credit system.
37. Marx, Capital, vol. 2, p. 136.
38. Marx, Capital, vol. 2, pp. 135136.
39. For instance, those who praise the adjustment mechanism of the market econ-
omy tend to blame its malfunction on speculators, who are the merchant capitalists
who earn surplus value from the difference of value systemsof capital commodities
and money commodities in the stock and exchange markets. Herein persists the ide-
ology of industrial capitalism-classical economics, claiming that manufacturers are
healthy while speculators are not. This blurs capitals own merchant-capitalist
natureearning surplus value by differentiationby shifting it exclusively to the os-
tensible merchant capital. It is important to note that this ideologythe hatred of
merchantshas been inuential beyond the boundaries of economy; before
World War II, it was heard as anti-Semitism. Against such a tendency, Marx says: all
nations characterized by the capitalist mode of production are periodically seized by
ts of giddiness in which they try to accomplish the money-making without the medi-
ation of the production process (Capital, vol. 2, p. 137).
40. Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p. 247.
41. In Aristotles cosmology, there is an indenitely expanding chaos outside com-
munity. This idea was dominant throughout medieval Europe and more or less
everywhere, including non-European communities, which did not know Aristotle. It
was Giordano Bruno who overturned the idea and was burnt at the stake. Going far
beyond the Copernican heliocentric theory, he conceptualized an innite universe
whose center was far beyond the sun. In his On the Innite Universe and Worlds,
he distinguished the world from the universe, according to his recognition that if
the universe is one innity, it must include worlds. To Bruno, the universe is one, an
innite space that envelops worlds. See Giordano Bruno, On the Innite Universe
and Worlds, in Milton K. Munitz, ed., Theories of Universe (New York: Free Press,
1957). Tzvetan Todorov pointed out that Brunos idea was inspired by the fact that
the world had been enclosed into one whole by the discovery and invasion of a new
continent, as observed and recorded by Las Casas. See his The Conquest of America:
The Question of the Other (New York: Harper & Row, 1984). That is to say that only
when the indenite exteriority came to disappear was innity conceptualized. In our
epistemology, world refers to community, while universe refers to society. Seen in this
context, it might be said, Brunos concept of the innite universal space that en-
velops worlds came from the real advent of the world market.
42. Immanuel Wallerstein, Historical Capitalism (London: Verso, 1983), pp. 2223.
43. Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p. 874.
44. The Japan Capitalism Debate is also called the Feudal System Debate. The
background of this debate was that the group associated with the Japan Communist
6715 NOTES UG 1/29/03 8:03 PM Page 341
342
Notes
Party (Koza-ha) determined that the overthrow of the Emperor [Tenno] system
namely, a bourgeois revolutionwas to be their primary task, for they attributed the
backwardness of Japanese society to the remaining strength of feudal landlords. This
agenda was in fact based upon the programs of Comintern. In opposition, Rono-ha
the Laborers-peasants Sectinsisted that these feudal remnants were, conversely, de-
rivatives of the capitalist commodity economy, and that the primary task was a social
democratic revolution backed up by universal suffrage and the constitutional monar-
chy that was, though weak, already established in Japan. In this manner, the harsh
conict vis--vis the political program was deeply etched in this long-lasting debate.
Nonetheless, because this debate took place lawfully in public journals, it came to in-
volve a number of scholars and intellectuals outside the parties, and raised many im-
portant issues, that of literary criticism included, concerning Japanese modernity.
Without reecting on this debate, one cannot speak of the intellectual problematic
of modern Japan. Concerning this, see Germaine A. Hoston, Marxism and the Crisis
of Development in Prewar Japan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986).
45. Uno Kozo, Shihonshugi no Seiritsu to Noson-bunkai no Katei [The Establishment of
Capitalism vis--vis the process of decomposition of agricultural villages], in Uno Kozo
Chosakushu, vol. 8 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1974).
46. Marx, Capital, vol. 2, p. 546.
47. Since the beginning of the eighteenth century, the importation of Indian cotton
fabric into Great Britain had been restricted by mercantilist protectionism. While
British products were sold to India with only a 2.5 percent duty, by 1812, Indian
products were severely taxedmuslin at 27 percent and calico at 71 percent. In
1823, duties were lowered to 10 percent, but only because, by this time, the Indian
cotton industries had collapsed and the high tariff was no longer necessary. See
Sakae Kakuyama, The Development of English Cotton Manufacture and the Advent
of World Capitalism, in The Formation of World Capitalism [Sekai-shihonshugi no Seir-
itsu] (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1967).
48. Marx, Capital, vol. 2, p. 546.
49. In the early 1960s, the Japanese Marxian political economist, Hiroshi Iwata, elu-
cidated the fact that the object of Capital is really world capitalism, except that it is
internalized within the national economy of England. See his The Formation of World
Capitalism (1964).
50. Marx, Capital, vol. 3, pp. 345346.
51. Etienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein, Race, Nation, Class (London: Verso,
1991), pp. 123124.
7 Toward Transcritical Counteractions
1. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, vol. 2, trans. Ben Fowkes (Harmondsworth:
Penguin Books, 1976), p. 137.
2. Capital, vol. 2, pp. 133135.
6715 NOTES UG 1/29/03 8:03 PM Page 342
343
Notes
3. Norbert Weiner, Cybernetics: or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Ma-
chine (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1961).
4. Mark Poster, Foucault, Marxism, and History: Mode of Production versus Mode of Infor-
mation (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1984).
5. Walter Benjamin, Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth Century, in Reections, trans.
Edmund Jephcott (New York: Schocken Books, 1986), p. 158.
6. The ideologues of the nation-state speak as if there were a nation and its home-
land from the beginning, which then developed a feudal system and then abso-
lutism, and nally became a modern nation-state. But, both the nation and its
homeland were articulated at the time of the absolutist monarchy as its subject and
domain. It was the absolutist monarchy that gathered people who had been divided
in tribes and efdoms in the feudal ages, and made them into a nation. People of
modern nations, however, imagine their one continuous historical origin from an
ancient dynasty when there was nothing like a nation. Nonetheless, the enduring
power of nationalism is not solely due to the fact of representation. Representation
persists in being strong inasmuch as it functions to ll in the gap left by the absence
of the reciprocal community; it even becomes the ground to overcome, though
temporarily and illusorily, the class conict delivered by the industrial capitalism.
7. Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, trans. George Schwab (Chicago: Univer-
sity of Chicago Press, 1996), p. 57.
8. Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p. 149 n 22.
9. Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p. 161.
10. G. W. F. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, trans. H. B. Nisbet (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1991), #301, p. 341.
11. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, #302, p. 342.
12. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, #314, pp. 351352.
13. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, #315, p. 352.
14. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, #278, p. 315.
15. See Benedict Anderson, Gengo to Kokka [Language and State] published in the
Japanese literary magazine, Bungaku-kai, September 2000. In this essay, Anderson
maintained that in Indonesia, the identity of the nation was provoked and organized
by the state, and that it was initiated by The Netherlands colonialist state apparatus.
This proves the point that the absolutist state apparatus preceded the nation. The
form of the absolutist states, which appeared in the West in the fth to sixth cen-
turies, is not obsolete today. The role they played has been repeated in various
forms, in other regions, all over the world, and even today. Dictatorships in develop-
ing countries can be seen in this light. When a centralist state is being established in
regions where different tribes, nations, and religious groups form a complex, it
adopts the form of the absolutist state, be it monarchy or socialism. In this sense
what they think and say and what they actually do are two different things.
6715 NOTES UG 1/29/03 8:03 PM Page 343
344
Notes
In addition, the agents of a bourgeois revolution are not always bourgeoisie them-
selves. As Marx said, bourgeois thinkers and bourgeoisie are two different things.
For instance, vis--vis the Japanese modern revolution called the Meiji Restoration
(1868), many Marxist thinkers in Japan claimed that it was acted upon by lower class
Samurais and intellectuals, so it was not a bourgeois revolution. If we take a look at
modern revolutions in France and Great Britain, however, the actual bearers were
also intellectuals, landowners, and independent producers. So revolutions that suf-
ciently realize the conditions of capitalist economies are bourgeois revolutions, no
matter who the players.
16. The trinity of Capital-Nation-State consists of three mutually complementary
forms of exchange. Corporatism, the welfare state, and social democracy, for exam-
ple, are all end forms of the trinity, and do nothing to abolish it. The globalization
of capitalism wont decompose it either. Look at the European Community. To the
nations within Europe, it might be considered an overcoming of the nation-state,
but from the outside, it exists just as a gigantic superstate.
17. According to Bob Jessop, from the 1970s on, Marxists have come to realize that the
state is not just a reection of an economic class structure, but has its own autonomy
and functions as a regulator among various interests in civil society. See his State Theory
(University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1990). But this interpretation is
not new; it was stressed already by Hegel. One must tackle Hegels Philosophy of Right
again. If not, the previous recognition would give way to the idea of regulation in the
sense of social democracy, omitting the scheme of abolishing the capitalist nation-state.
18. Antonio Gramsci, Selections from Prison Notebooks, ed. and trans. Quintin Hoare
and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New York: International Publishers, 1971), p. 283.
19. The reproduction of people and land is made possible by the production of na-
ture, as it were, that is, the gift of nature. From this position, famously or infamously,
anticapitalist nationalists stress blood and land. Because they are gifts [Geschenk] of
nature, they are also destiny [Schicksal]. Heideggers ontology grasps Being in
terms of the German expression es gibt [there is], which literally says it gives, im-
plying that existence as destiny is equal to the gift of nature. In this manner, his
thinking has been connected to the agriculture-rst principle beginning at Ques-
nay. Yet he was not simply a man of the forest. Heidegger supported the National
Socialist Labor Party a.k.a. the Nazi Party, because he believed that the party would
solve the labor problems rooted in industrial capitalism. Heideggers brand of anti-
Semitism, which denied the Nazis biological theory of race, was rooted, in essence,
in antimerchant capitalism (or anti-international nancial capitalism), and a deriva-
tive of the theory of classical economics. His ideal was based upon the principles of a
production-centered rather than circulation-centered stance, and he sought to real-
ize it in harmony with nature. The crux of fascist movements, as opposed to its
stereotypical image, lies in offering alienated workers a surplus of life by recovering
the authenticity [Eigentrichkeit] of the natural environment. It is not the case that fas-
cism always takes the form of jingoism; it is not always involved in the militaristic
state. So it is that fascism is not obsolete. It is omnipresent; today its essence can also
be found in certain radical ecologists.
20. Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p. 637.
21. Since the Puritan Revolution, bourgeois revolutions have always involved violent
acts. Even some socialist revolutions have been violent, however, that is only because
6715 NOTES UG 1/29/03 8:03 PM Page 344
345
Notes
they occurred in countries where the bourgeois revolution (read sweeping of feudal
remnants) or the formation of nation-state had not yet been completed. Still there
are many regions on earth where violent revolution is necessary. It is unjust and
pointless for bourgeois ideologues to criticize this type of revolution. They are oblivi-
ous to their own pasts. But the point I want to make is that what abolishesnot
just regulatesthe bourgeois state (capital/state amalgamation) is no longer the
violent revolution. I would call this other movement a counteraction rather than a
revolution.
22. To be precise, socialism was rooted not only in the ethical but also the aesthetic
stance. This is exemplied by John Ruskin, who impeached the loss of the pleasure
of work in capitalist production. Approaching Marxism from the aesthetic aspect,
William Morris conceived communism as a utopia where labor is art. In this case, art
must not be taken in a narrow sense. For instance, every labor can become play and
similar to artistic activityeven if not institutionalized as artwhen the interest in
its purpose is bracketed. In The German Ideology Marx wrote, While in communist so-
ciety, where nobody has one exclusive activity but each can become accomplished in
any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it
possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morn-
ing, sh in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I
have in mind, without ever becoming hunter, sherman, shepherd or critic (p. 53).
But this is not totally the story of an unreal dream world. In what is called volunteer
activity, people can do anything they want, and sometimes they would rather do the
kinds of work which have been deemed inferior and dirty in terms of the conven-
tional value hierarchy, namely, in that system which holds brain work to be greater
than physical work. In their volunteer or leisure time they can do hard, dirty, and in-
ferior work with a sense of purpose, only because it is not their subsistence. This
proves that what makes labor anguishing does not come from its inherent character-
istics, but the economic interest that subordinates every labor to exchange value.
23. Karl Marx, Grundrisse, trans. Martin Nicolaus (Harmondsworth, England:
Penguin Books, 1973), pp. 420421.
24. See Antonio Negri, Marx Beyond Marx: Lessons on the Grundrisse, trans. Harry
Cleaver, Michael Ryan, and Maurizio Viano (Brooklyn: Autonomedia, 1991).
25. Gramsci, Selections from Prison Notebooks, p. 110.
26. Gramsci, Selections from Prison Notebooks, pp. 229230.
27. In societies that existed previous to the stage of state, there was a division of
labor between men and women, but not patriarchy. It is since the early stage of state,
namely, when the type of exchange that is based upon robbery and redistribution by
violence became dominant that patriarchy came into existence. In contrast, com-
modity exchange realized the equality between men and women, but it also con-
cretized the hierarchical division between value productive labor and nonvalue
productive labor. In the modern capitalist nation-state, while there is no longer a
conspicuous patriarchy, it is reinforced in the modern family with its masks of equal-
ity. As opposed to this, there is a movement that encourages women to launch into
value productive work. Notwithstanding the importance of this idea, I have to point
out that it simply follows the logic of capitalism. The true struggle against patriarchy
should be the struggle against capitalism as a whole. Ivan Illich famously claims that
capitalism destroyed the reciprocity and equality between mens and womens labor
6715 NOTES UG 1/29/03 8:03 PM Page 345
346
Notes
observed in agrarian communities. Notwithstanding its correctness, one must also
acknowledge the moment of the capitalist economy that released the bounds of the
premodern community to make people individuals. And it is impossible to overcome
the masked patriarchy by returning to an agrarian community. This task can be
achieved only by realizing the trade (exchange) as individuals association.
28. Concerning this kind of credit system, LETS (Local Exchange Trading System),
started in the 1980s by Michael Linton, deserves mention. Beginning with Proud-
hons mutualismfree credit and exchange banksthere have been many at-
tempts similar to this. LETS is not an anarchist project; it was formulated in order to
protect regional economies from the forces of global capital. After examining local
currencies that were tried during the Depression of the 1930sincluding the stamp
money conceptualized by Silvio Gesell (18621930)Linton solidied his idea of
exchange. This has been widely practiced in Canada, England, France, Argentina,
and Japan. In most cases, it has been practiced to protect the local economy from
global capitalism. However, LETS turned out to carry more revolutionary potential
to counteract capital and state than Linton had expected. It is far beyond the local
money, especially when it is combined with Internet.
29. In his afterword to Communists Like Us, Antonio Negri strictly distinguishes be-
tween socialism and communism. Socialism is the social system whereby individuals
are compensated according to what they work for, while communism is the social
system whereby individuals are compensated according to their needs. In Marxism
in general, socialism is deemed a transitional stage toward communism. In other
words, it is supposed that by an increase of productivity, socialist society be shifted to
a society where individuals work according to their abilities and get what they need.
Negri denies this. His point is that socialism is a form of capitalism that can never be
shifted to communism. I totally agree with this. We both hold that the objective is
communism and not socialism. However, in terms of the prospect, what Negri says is
obscure to me. My conviction is that only by having LETS (which abolishes labor
value itself) as a ground can communism be approached.
30. Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, trans. George Schwab (Chicago: Univer-
sity of Chicago Press, 1996), p. 57.
31. Max Weber, Politik als Beruf (Berlin: Dunker & Humbolt, 1968), p. 8: Heute dage-
gen werden wir sagen mssen: Staat ist diejenige menschliche Gemeinschaft, welche
innerhalb eines bestimmten Gebietesdies: das Gebiet, gehrt zum Merkmaldas
Monopol legitimer physischer Gewaltsamkeit fr sich (mit Erfolg) beansprucht.
32. For individual capitals, nothing is more damaging than boycotts. The most pow-
erful campaign in the Civil Rights movement of the late 1950s was initiated by the
boycotting of the segregated bus services in Montgomery, Alabama. It is said that the
leader, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., learned the spirit of nonviolent resistance from
Gandhi. But what needs to be stressed here is that nonviolent resistance was done as
a boycott. Without referring to Gandhi, Malcolm X, later in his life, sought to do
what Gandhi did in his own context: He was trying to organize consumers/produc-
ers cooperatives by and for the African American community. It was a tacit boycott
against capitalist economy. Since his death, the social welfare system has begun to
support many more impoverished, including African Americans; but it does not help
their independence. What is imperative here is also not the social democracy that or-
ganizes the states redistribution of wealth, but the autonomous movement to create
consumers/producers cooperatives.
6715 NOTES UG 1/29/03 8:03 PM Page 346
347
Notes
33. Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
1981), p. 51 n 31.
34. Anarcho-syndicalists denied intellectuals representation and insisted on work-
ers autonomous movements: Workers themselves should represent workers. The de-
nial of representation results in the denial of political interventions other than those
of workers. But what about the anarcho-syndicalists themselves? They were a small
group of people and, after all, representing workers. Similar things can be said
about minority movements. The persistent stance that minority liberation should be
undertaken by minorities themselves is denitely correct in one aspect; but it also re-
sults in rejecting those who are not minor in the same category. So it is that the
movement tends to be closed. Individuals are living in various dimensions; if one is
minor in one category, he or she is not in another category. This further splits the
minorities movements.
35. The multitude of associations that would be organized by LETS would have the
same semi-lattice structure. About this structural characteristic, see my Architecture as
Metaphor: Language, Number, Money, trans. Sabu Kohso (Cambridge, MA: The MIT
Press, 1995).
36. It is impossible to assure that the bureaucratic system wont appear in the associ-
ation of producers/consumers cooperatives; the division of labor and entrench-
ment of representative positions will inevitably occur due to the difference of
individual potency. To avoid this, it is necessary to employ both election and lottery.
37. As one example, I would like to mention the New Associationist Movement
(NAM), which was launched in Japan in the year 2000.
6715 NOTES UG 1/29/03 8:03 PM Page 347
Index
Absolute Other, 126127
Adorno, Theodor, 123125
Aesthetics, 3739, 133, 318n47
freedom and, 113115
pleasure and, 4041
socialism and, 345n22
Alienation theory
dened, 192
money and, 213214
self, 136137, 169, 213214
surplus value and, 238
Althusser, Louis, 4, 120, 136,
147148, 161
Analytic judgment, 188189
Anarchism, 17
administrative power and, 183
antinomy and, 177178
Bakunin and, 165, 178, 180181
Bolshevism and, 329n74
Chartist movement and, 168, 292
democracy and, 182184
economic issues and, 157
Hegel and, 168169, 171172
Lassalle and, 165
Marx and, 165184
Paris Commune and, 182
principle of association and, 283284
production process and, 165166,
177184
proper names and, 171172
property and, 166167, 170
Proudhon and, 165, 173184
self-alienation and, 169
Stirner and, 165, 169, 172173
universal suffrage and, 183
Utopians and, 176177
Anderson, Benedict, 1314, 277278
Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of
View (Kant), 214215
Antinomy, 61, 310n32
anarchism and, 177178
capitalism and, 225
ego and, 9091
LETS and, 298301
Proudhon and, 177178
money and, 298
value form theory and, 189190
Apodictic judgment, 55
Apperception, 7680
Arendt, Hannah, 42, 317n42
Art, 113115
Associations, 1718
Bakunin and, 284
Capital and, 284285, 287288,
290292, 297298
centralization and, 304305
communism and, 283306 (see also
Communism)
consumers and, 293296
Copernican turn and, 295296
counteraction and, 298306
Engels and, 286
First International, 284
Gandhi and, 292, 302
globalism and, 293
Gramsci and, 291292
industrial capital and, 289290
Kautsky and, 286
6715 IND UG 1/29/03 8:04 PM Page 349
350
Index
Associations (cont.)
labor and, 288290
LETS and, 298301
M-C-M formula and, 296297
Mill and, 287
money structure and, 297298
Negri and, 290291
nonviolence and, 302
Paris Commune, 284
revolutionizing of, 285286
Ricardo and, 285
Says Law of Market and, 290
Second International, 283, 286287, 296
subjectivism and, 288, 290291,
293294
surplus value and, 291
Third International, 287
Third World and, 295
total social capital and, 292293
Assozierter Verstand (associated
understanding), 178, 180, 183
Bacon, Francis, 42
Bahktin, 70
Bailey, Samuel, 57
surplus value and, 228
value form theory and, 193196
Bakunin, Mikhail, 1718, 329n75
anarchism and, 180181
Marx and, 178
principle of association and, 284
Barter, 200201, 232
Bataille, George, 204, 210
Beauty, 4142
Being, 97100
Benjamin, Walter, 268
Bernstein, Edouard, 16, 287, 302
Beyond Good and Evil (Nietzsche),
122123
Beyond the Pleasure Principle (Freud),
123124
Blankenburg, W., 9293
Bonaparte, Louis, 145146, 150
Bonaparte, Napoleon, 143
Bourbaki, Nicolas, 78
Bourgeois, 145, 150
Boycotts, 346n32
Bracketing, 117120, 160161
Bullionists, 67
Burke, Kenneth, 144
Candide (Voltaire), 45
Cantor, Georg, 6162
Capitalism, 5, 165
anarchic crises and, 157
antideluvian form of, 186
antinomy and, 225
archi-form of, 266268
associations and, 283306
autonomous power of, 281282
barter and, 200201
boycotts and, 346n32
Capital-Nation-State and, 265283
circulation process and, 11, 207208,
224225 (see also Circulation process)
commodity and, 915, 200211 (see also
Commodity)
cosmopolitanism and, 211212
counteraction to, 298306
credit and, 156, 217222, 335n45,
346n28
crisis in, 231232
depression and, 220221
driving mechanisms of, 200211
ethics and, 216217
exchange issues and, 200211
foreign trade and, 260261
French Revolution and, 1415
globalism and, 1112, 1516, 251263
historical materialism and, 140
imagined communities and, 1214
imperialism and, 266
individual distribution and, 246247
individual subordination and, 171
industrial capital and, 234241,
251283, 289290
interest and, 156
LETS and, 2325, 298301
linguistic approach and, 228234
M-C-M formula and, 910, 20 (see also
M-C-M formula)
merchant capital and, 234241,
262, 266
metaphysics and, 211217
miser analogy and, 7
moral issues and, 1819
natural environment and, 282283
nonviolence and, 302
origin and, 223
parallax and, 152161
plunder and, 202203
Polanyi and, 302303
production control and, 166
prot and, 168, 241251
putting-out system and, 223
reciprocity and, 202203
6715 IND UG 1/29/03 8:04 PM Page 350
351
Index
redistribution and, 202
religion and, 221, 266
representation systems and, 150151
revolution and, 1617
self-realization and, 21
speculation and, 156
state regulation and, 1112
surplus value and, 223251
value form and, 712, 185211
Wallerstein and, 268
Capital (Marx), 36, 303
associations and, 284292, 297298
Capital-Nation-State and, 265283
Democritus and, 161162
Epicurus and, 161162
freedom and, 119120
globalism and, 259260, 263
Hegel and, 157159
individuality and, 105106
landowner personication and, 164
logic and, 160
money and, 2123
moral issues and, 1819
Proudhon and, 175
representation systems and, 150151
revolution and, 1617
state regulation and, 1112
surplus value and, 241
transcritique and, 163
value form and, 712, 185 (see also
Value form theory)
Capital-Nation-State, 17
Anderson and, 277278
associations and, 283306
counteraction to, 298306
economic issues and, 221 (see also
Economic issues)
exchange forms and, 276277, 344n16
fetishism and, 271
feudalism and, 278
French Revolution and, 278279
globalism and, 281
Gramsci and, 275, 280281
Hegel and, 273275, 279280
Hobbes and, 272
imperialism and, 266
Lenin and, 265266, 276277
loans and, 266
M-C-M formula and, 265
monarchical states and, 270275
natural environment and, 282283
nonviolence and, 302
primitive accumulation and, 270
Schmitt and, 271
transcritique of, 265283
value form theory and, 203204, 221
Wallerstein and, 268269
Cartesian method. See Descartes, Rene
Cassirer, Ernst, 102
Causality, 139
Chartist movement, 168, 285, 292
Circulation process, 8, 11, 215216.
See also Money
cosmopolitanism and, 211212
LETS and, 2325, 298301
M-C-M formula and, 910, 20, 154156,
207208
prot and, 241251
stockpiling and, 210
surplus value and, 223228, 241251
value form theory and, 185211
Civil War in France, The (Marx), 17,
330n76
Class struggle
anarchism and, 165184 (see also
Anarchism)
associations and, 283306
bourgeois and, 145, 150
Capital and, 150151
Capital-Nation-State and, 265283
capitals drive and, 200211
commodity and, 145146
economic issues and, 152161
globalism and, 251263
individual property and, 166167
landowners and, 150151
M-C-M formula and, 910, 20, 154156
overdetermination and, 147148
production process and, 177184
(see also Production process)
prot and, 168, 241251
representation systems and, 145152
state embodiment and, 150
surplus value and, 223228, 241251
transformation problem and, 243244
value form theory and, 185211
wage workers and, 150151 (see also
Labor)
Clifford, James, 84
Cogito, 8385
God and, 9192
Marx and, 134
skepticism and, 9598 (see also
Skepticism)
thinking/doubting and, 8688
understanding and, 102103
6715 IND UG 1/29/03 8:04 PM Page 351
352
Index
Cognition. See Judgment
Cohen, Hermann, 128
Colonialism, 258259
Commodity, 910, 1213. See also
Capitalism
accumulation and, 211
agent consciousness and, 241243
aggregation and, 231
alienation theory and, 192
associations and, 283306
Capital-Nation-State and, 265283
colonialism and, 258259
equivalency and, 191193
e-trade and, 266
exchange and, 198211, 225226,
276277, 344n16
ex post facto observation and,
191193, 222
fetishism and, 6, 196, 208209,
271, 298
as ctitious institution, 197198
foreign trade and, 260261
French Revolution and, 1415
generalism and, 205
globalism and, 251263
hierarchical structures and, 205206
historical materialism and, 48, 133,
139140, 163, 322n7
Hobbes and, 272
illusion and, 219220
industrial capital and, 234241
intrinsic value of, 268
LETS and, 2325, 298301
manifold system analysis and, 228
mercantilism and, 153
merchant capital and, 234241
metamorphosis of, 190
metaphysics of, 211217
money and, 145 (see also Economic
issues)
moral issues and, 216217
natural environment and, 282283
plunder and, 206
position and, 199200
price and, 241244
principle of association and, 276277,
283306
prot and, 241251
reciprocity and, 202203
religion and, 139, 212
social equilibrium and, 206
as social hieroglyphic, 232
surplus value and, 223251
synthesis of, 189190
trade cycles and, 247251
transformation problem and, 243244
value form theory and, 185211,
215216
Common sense, 44
aesthetics and, 3940, 113115
daydreams and, 4547
Kantian turn and, 3839
reection and, 4753
synthesis and, 189
Communism
associationism and, 1718, 283306
economic issues and, 8, 1719
freedom and, 129130
future and, 217
Left Hegelians and, 168169
moral issues and, 129130
production process and, 165166, 177
Community
aesthetics and, 113115
associations and, 283306
Being and, 97100
capitals drive and, 200211
class struggle and, 145152
cosmopolitanism and, 211212
enlightenment and, 100103
exchange and, 225226, 276277
ex post facto observation and, 191193,
217218
fantasy and, 169
freedom and, 112130, 118
globalism and, 251263
imagined, 1214
individuality and, 100112, 171
intermundia of, 201202
isolation and, 140141
Kripke and, 109111
LETS and, 2325, 298301
levels of, 202
nation-states and, 101
plunder and, 202203, 206
proper names and, 109112
redistribution and, 202
religion and, 171
representation systems and, 142152
responsibility and, 126
social equilibrium and, 206
sociality and, 100112
Socrates and, 9899
Constitutability, 6263
Constructivism, 129130
Consumers, 2021, 235236, 293296
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353
Index
Contingency, Irony and Solidarity (Rorty),
106
Contribution to the Critique of Political
Economy, A (Marx), 5, 163, 193,
206207
Copernican turn, 136
Freud and, 3235
Jung and, 3235
Kant and, 2935, 42, 295296
Marx and, 137138
Corporatism, 16
Cosmopolitanism, 211212
Creative destruction, 248
Critique of Judgment (Kant), 2
freedom and, 127
reection and, 49
transcritique and, 3544
value form theory and, 187188
Critique of Practical Reason (Kant)
freedom and, 117118
thing-in-itself and, 5052
transcritique and, 3544
Critique of Pure Reason (Kant), 2
aesthetics and, 115
apperception and, 76
Copernican turn and, 2935
freedom and, 117118, 121
parallax and, 4453
transcritique and, 3544
value form theory and, 188
Darstellung (ideological
representations), 142152
Darwin, Charles, 3132
Daydreams, 4547, 129
Deleuze, Gilles, 101102, 112113
Democracy, 182184
Democritus, 161162
Derrida, Jacques, 48, 91, 232
Der Verlust der natrlichen
Selbstverstndlichkeit (Blankenburg),
9293
Descartes, Rene, 42
Amsterdam and, 134
cogito and, 8388, 9192, 96, 134
ego and, 56, 8188, 9192
God and, 9192
Hume and, 93
Kant and, 8188, 9192
Lvi-Strauss and, 8385
methodology of, 42, 8188, 9192, 96
representation systems and, 149
skepticism and, 134
solipsism and, 82
Spinoza and, 9596
thinking/doubting and, 8688, 9192,
9598 (see also Skepticism)
unconscious structure and, 8586
Determinism, 162
Dialectics, 133
Dictatorships, 182
Diderot, Denis, 148
Difference and Repetition (Deleuze),
101102
Difference between the Democritean
and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature
in General (Marx), 161
Discourse on Method (Descartes), 42,
8183, 8688, 96
Doctrinal faiths. See Religion
Doubting. See Skepticism
Dreams
daydreams, 4547, 129
dreamwork and, 147
Freud and, 147
Kant and, 4547
Marx and, 147
representation systems and, 147
Dreams of a Visionary Explained by Dreams
of Metaphysics (Kant), 14, 4546
Drive (Trieb), 6, 215
surplus value and, 223228, 241251
Duchamp, Marcel, 113, 119
Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts
(Marx), 136, 161, 163, 212213
Economic issues
agent consciousness and, 241243
alienation theory and, 192
associations and, 283306
autoadjustment and, 155
barter and, 200201
capitalism and, 200211 (see also
Capitalism)
Capital-Nation-State and, 265283
categorization and, 1819
circulation process and, 11 (see also
Circulation process)
classical economics and, 153154, 193,
200, 268, 331n12, 333n16
class struggle and, 145152
colonialism and, 258259
communism and, 1719
cosmopolitanism and, 211212
crisis and, 231232, 325n34
depression and, 220221
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Index
Economic issues (cont.)
determinism and, 139
domain and, 186187, 203, 205206
exchange and, 1213, 185, 276277
(see also Commodity)
ex post facto observation and,
191193, 222
fetishism and, 6, 196, 208209,
271, 298
foreign trade and, 260261
French Revolution and, 1415
globalism and, 1112, 1516, 251263
Great Depression, 236, 250
Hegel and, 158160
hierarchical structures and, 205206
Hobbes and, 272
illusion and, 219220
imagined communities and, 1214 (see
also Community)
individuality and, 106
labor value and, 6 (see also Labor)
LETS and, 2325, 298301
linguistic approach and, 228234
logic and, 157159
market economy and, 186
masochism and, 215
M-C-M formula and, 910, 20 (see also
M-C-M formula)
miser and, 7
natural environment and, 282283
overdetermination and, 147148
parallax and, 152161
plunder and, 202203, 206
political issues and, 221
price and, 243244
problem of sublime and, 215
prot and, 241251
reciprocity and, 202203
redistribution and, 202
religion and, 221
representation systems and, 145
revolution and, 1417
Ricardian socialism and, 152161
Says Law of Market and, 290
social equilibrium and, 206
spirit development and, 158
state regulation and, 1112
stockpiling and, 210
surplus value and, 223251
synthetic judgment and, 185193
trade cycle and, 247251
value form theory and, 712,
185211
Ego, 169, 236. See also Individuality
antinomy and, 9091
Being and, 97100
Cartesian method and, 56, 8188,
9192
community subordination and, 171
freedom and, 112130
God and, 9192
Hume and, 94
Husserl and, 8891
intentionalism and, 89
intuitionism and, 9091
M-C-M formula and, 155
plural, 195196
property and, 170
schizophrenia and, 9293
singularity and, 100112
specter and, 172173
Stirner and, 327n53, 328n57
superego, 123124
synthesis and, 189
value form theory and, 189190,
195196
Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte,
The (Marx), 175, 256
Capital-Nation-State and, 269, 271, 275
representation systems and, 142143,
147151
Element of Criticism (Home), 37
Elements (Euclid), 5859
Emmanuel, Arghiri, 259
Empiricism, 4, 139
Encyclopedia Logic, The (Hegel), 121, 158
Engels, Friedrich, 3, 8
anarchism and, 179
class struggle and, 145146
Germany and, 138139
materialism and, 133
socialism and, 16
systemizing of Marx and, 133, 139140
Enlightenment, 100103
Epicurus, 98, 161162, 215, 225
Ethics. See also Moral issues
aesthetics and, 113115
counteraction to capitalism, 298306
Kantian, 112130
LETS and, 298301
money and, 216217
nature/freedom and, 112130
Stirner and, 171
E-trade, 266
Euclid, 3235, 58
Eudemonism, 121
6715 IND UG 1/29/03 8:04 PM Page 354
355
Index
Evolution, 3132
Exchange. See Commodity
Existentialism, 105
Experience
aesthetic judgment and, 3738
singularity and, 100112
Externalization, 4849
Faith. See Religion
Fascism, 146147, 255256
Fetishism, 6, 196, 271, 208209, 298
Feudalism, 222, 255, 278
Feudal System Debate, 255
Feuerbach, Ludwig, 105
alienation theory and, 213214
anarchism and, 171
Left Hegelians and, 168169
religion and, 213
Feyerabend, Paul, 43
Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 155
Fordism, 236, 286, 340n35
Formalism, 6061, 68
Foucault, Marxism, and History (Poster),
267
Foundations of Geometry (Hilbert),
6364
France, 152, 280
Freedom, 112116
Adorno and, 123125
antinomy and, 177178
bracketing and, 117120
communism and, 129130
community subordination and, 171
constructivism and, 129130
cross-generational issues and, 127128
Hegel and, 121
Kierkegaard and, 126
Marx and, 119
Nietzsche and, 122123
production process and, 128129
religion and, 120
theoretical, 120121
thing-in-itself and, 122
Frege, Gottlob, 60
French Revolution, 1415, 278
representation systems and, 142146
Saint-Simonism and, 279
universal suffrage and, 143144
Freud, Sigmund, 157158
consciousness and, 33
Copernican turn and, 3235
dreams and, 147
language and, 7374
masochism and, 215
superego and, 123124
Galileo, 42
Gandhi, Mahatma, 292, 302
Gauss, Carl Friedrich, 57
Generality, 38, 4243
commodity and, 205
community and, 12, 100112
Deleuze and, 101102
freedom and, 112130
individuality and, 100112
understanding and, 102103
Geocentrism, 42
Copernican turn and, 2935
Geometry, 3235, 57
proof and, 5859, 6165
German-French Annual Journal (Marx and
Ruge), 138
German Idealism, 141
M-C-M formula and, 155
representation system and, 142152
German Ideology, The (Marx and Engels),
34, 105, 217, 323n10
Althusser and, 161
anarchism and, 167
Hiromatsu and, 139
historical materialism and, 140
proper names and, 172
transposition and, 136, 138139
Germany, 320n66
associations and, 284
economic issues and, 152
Engels and, 138139
Idealism and, 141142
Marx and, 138
political issues and, 142152
religion and, 212
representation systems and, 142152
socialism and, 1617
World War I, 146147
Gemeinschaft, 226
Gesellschaft, 226
Globalism, 1112, 1516, 304305
associations and, 293
capitalism and, 251263
Capital-Nation-State and, 281
colonialism and, 258259
foreign trade and, 260261
four commodity exchanges and,
276277
Glorious Revolution, 272
God. See Religion
6715 IND UG 1/29/03 8:04 PM Page 355
356
Index
Gdel, Kurt, 6468
Gold, 195197, 209, 218, 226227
Gotha Programme, 17
Grammar of Motives (Burke), 144
Gramsci, Antonio, 256, 275, 280281,
291292
Great Britain, 1617, 280
colonialism and, 258259
globalism and, 256, 260, 262263
Great Depression, 236, 250
Great Transformation, The (Polanyi), 202
Grundrisse (Marx), 5, 159, 163, 193
Gunzo (literary magazine), xiii
Habermas, 180
Hacking, Ian, 108
Hamann, J. G., 108
Hegel, Georg, 3, 9, 99
alienation theory and, 213
anarchism and, 168169, 171172,
180181
Capital and, 157
community and, 101
economic issues and, 157160
Estates and, 273274
freedom and, 121
imagination-power and, 36
individuality and, 107108, 111
Left Hegelians and, 168169
monarchical states and, 273274
proper names and, 111112
religion and, 189
representation systems and, 142143
singularity and, 107
system of, 133, 279
understanding and, 103
value form theory and, 188189
Heidegger, Martin, 50
imagination-power and, 36
representation systems and, 149
skepticism and, 9798
Heliocentrism, 2935, 42
Heraclitus, 9899
Herder, Johann Gottfried, 103, 316n34
Hess, Moses, 136
Hilbert, David, 6364
Hippasos, 57
Hiromatsu, Wataru, 139, 145146,
324n22
Historical materialism, 322n7. See also
Economic issues
Engels and, 139140
historical, 48
Marx and, 133, 139140, 163
miser and, 7
value form and, 7
Hitler, Adolf, 146148
Hobbes, Thomas, 272
Hodgskin, Thomas, 168
Holy Family (Marx), 136, 140141
Home, Henry, 3738
Hugo, Victor, 145
Humanism, 1
Hume, David, 5, 272273
ego and, 9394
Kantian turn and, 3637
mathematics and, 5657, 60
Husserl, Edmund
antinomy and, 91
ego and, 8891
Kant and, 8891
skepticism and, 95
Idealism, 141142
Illusion, 195196, 219220
Imagination
individuality and, 100112
Kant and, 102103
Imagination-power, 3536
Imagined communities. See Community
Imagined Communities (Anderson),
1314
Incompleteness Theorem, 66
India, 258
Individual capitals, 246247
Individuality, 169. See also Subjectivism
alienation theory and, 192
bracketing and, 117118
class struggle and, 145152
economic determinism and, 139
Hegel and, 107108, 111
Kripke and, 109111
language and, 108109
LETS and, 2325, 298301
Marxian representation and, 142152
nature/freedom and, 112130
perverted form and, 192
proper names and, 109111, 171172
property and, 166167, 170
representation systems and, 142152
Russell and, 109110
self-alienation and, 213214
singularity and, 100112
social equilibrium and, 206
specter and, 172173
subordination of, 171
6715 IND UG 1/29/03 8:04 PM Page 356
357
Index
surplus value and, 236
will and, 164
Industrial bourgeoisie, 145
Industrial capital
associations and, 289290
Capital-Nation-State and, 265283
globalism and, 251263
value form theory and, 234241
Inquiry into the Principles of the Distribution
of Wealth, An (Thompson), 168
Interpretation of Dreams, The (Freud), 147
Introspection, 24
Intuitionism, 6063, 9091
Jakobson, Roman, 77, 79, 229230
Jameson, Fredric, 21, 291, 304305
Janik, Allan, 73
Japan, 146
Japan Capitalism Debate, 255257
Jaspers, Karl, 124, 320n66
Judgment
aesthetics and, 3741, 113115
analytic, 188189
apodictic, 55
Cartesian method and, 8188, 9192
determinative, 187188
expansive, 65
Husserl and, 8891
Kantian ethics and, 112130
linguistic turn and, 6576
mathematical foundations of, 5565
M-C-M formula and, 154156
pedagogy and, 6870
reductionism and, 56
reection and, 187188 (see also
Reection)
speculation and, 5152
synthetic, 51, 5580, 185193
thing-in-itself and, 4453
thinking/doubting and, 8688, 9192
(see also Skepticism)
transcendental apperception and,
7680
unconscious structure and, 86
undecidability and, 6467
understanding and, 102103
value form theory and, 185193
Juglar cycle, 248249
Jung, Carl, 3235
Kant, Immanuel
aesthetics and, 113115
alienation theory and, 213214
anarchism and, 180
antinomy and, 61, 9091 (see also
Antinomy)
apperception and, 7680
bracketing and, 117120
Cartesian method and, 8188, 9192
constructivism and, 129130
Copernican turn and, 2935, 295296
cosmopolitanism and, 4, 211212
ego and, 56, 8192
enlightenment and, 100103
Epicurean contingency and, 326n41
ethics and, 112130, 216217
Husserl and, 8891
imagination scheme and, 102103
individuality and, 100112
judgment and, 5580, 187188
language and, 6580
literary criticism and, 3544
Marx and, 163
mathematics and, 5565
metaphysics and, ixx
nature/freedom and, 112130
reection and, 24, 4753
singularity and, 100112
skepticism and, 94
sociality and, 100112
subjectivism and, 1, 3, 8192
surplus value and, 227228
throwness and, 30
transcendentalism and, 1, 56
transversalism and, 92100
travel and, 135
understanding and, 102103
universality/generality and, 100112
value form theory and, 187188, 216
Kantian turn, 136
aesthestics and, 3738
common sense and, 3839, 44
Copernican turn and, 2935
daydreams and, 4547
imagination-power and, 3536
Lisbon earthquake and, 45
literary criticism and, 3544
metaphysics and, 4453
parallax and, 4453
pleasure and, 4041
reection and, 4753
regulative Idea and, 51
speculation and, 5152
transcendental critique and, 3544
transcendental structures and, 3132
universality/generality and, 38, 4243
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Index
Karl Marx and the Close of his System
(von BhmBawerk), 243
Kautsky, Karl Johann, 286287
Kelsen, Hans, 144
Keynsianism, 236
Kierkegaard, Sren, 8
freedom and, 126
individuality and, 104105
religion and, 331n5
value form theory and, 189
Knowledge
Cartesian method and, 8188, 9192
individuality and, 100112
judgment and, 112 (see also Judgment)
Kantian ethics and, 112130
manifold system analysis and, 237238
nature/freedom and, 112130
Nietzsche and, 112113
Kommentar zu Kants Kritik der reinen
Vernunft (Vaihinger), 3637
Kondratieffs wave, 250
Knigsberg, 135
Koza-ha school of thought, 255
Kripke, Saul, 72, 109111
Kuhn, Thomas, 3032
Labor, 6, 17
alienation theory and, 192
anarchism and, 165184 (see also
Anarchism)
associations and, 283306
capitalism and, 1920
Capital-Nation-State and, 265283
capitals drive and, 200211
consumers and commodity, 235236
(see also Commodity)
Copernican turn and, 295296
Gandhi and, 302
gender and, 345n27
globalism and, 251263
individuality and, 105106
industrial capitalism and, 234241
language and, 228234
LETS and, 2325, 298301
Marxian representation and, 142152
M-C-M formula and, 910, 20, 154156
merchant capital and, 234241
prot and, 168, 241251
prolonged workday and, 249
representation systems and, 142152,
347n34
revolutionizing of, 285286
state control of, 165
surplus value and, 223251
transformation problem and, 243244
transposition and, 2021
value form theory and, 185211,
215216
wages and, 150151
Labor theory, 215216, 337n8
Lacanian theory, 148
Lambert, Johann Heinrich, 57
Landowners, 164
class struggle and, 150151
value form theory and, 197198
Language, 335n37
apperception and, 7680
Cartesian method and, 8283
Freud and, 7374
games of, 71, 73, 8283
Gdel and, 6567
grammar and, 7475, 82
individuality and, 108
linguistic turn and, 6576
Marx and, 138
Menos paradox and, 6869
origin theories and, 200201
parental training and, 7172
pedagogy and, 6872, 7576
phonemes and, 7778
political issues and, 143
proper names and, 109112, 171172
realists and, 108109
representation systems and, 142152
Saussure and, 7980
singularity and, 107
solipsism and, 7374
structure and, 7680
undecidability and, 6567
understanding and, 103
Valry and, 232233
value form theory and, 197200,
228234
Wittgenstein and, 6574, 8283
Lassalle, Ferdinand, 17, 159
Lectures on Kants Political Philosophy
(Arendt), x
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 56, 188
Lenin, Vladimir, 287, 302
anarchism and, 181182
Capital-Nation-State and, 265266,
276277
dictatorships and, 182
Lenthousiasme: La critique kantienne de
lhistoire (Lyotard), x
Leviathan (Hobbes), 272
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Index
Lvi-Strauss, 8385, 204205
Liberalism, 270
Linton, Michael, 23
Lisbon earthquake, 45
Local Exchange Trading System
(LETS), 2325, 298301
Locke, John, 272273
Logic, 213
apperception and, 7680
Capital and, 160
economic issues and, 157159
Gdel and, 6466
language and, 6576
mathematics and, 5565
pedagogy and, 6870
unconscious structure and, 86
universality-generality and, 12, 100112
Love, 202
Lukcs, Georg, 102103, 222, 305
Lyotard, Jean-Franois, x, 42
Maistre, Joseph Marie Compte de, 103
Manifesto of the Communist Party (Marx),
165
Manifold system analysis, 228, 237238
Market economy, 186
Marruyama, Masao, 255
Martin, Gottfried, 5759, 62
Marx, Karl
alienation theory and, 161, 169
anarchism and, 165184
antinomy and, 298 (see also Antinomy)
associations and, 1718, 283306
Bakunin and, 1718, 178
bracketing and, 160161
Brussels and, 136
capitalism and, 200211 (see also
Capitalism)
Capital-Nation-State and, 265283
circulation process and, 8, 11
class struggle and, 145152
communism and, 1719 (see also
Communism)
as critic, 161165
Democritus and, 161162
doubt and, 134
dreams and, 147
economic issues and, 34, 152161
ego and, 56
Epicurus and, 161162
exchange theory and, 72
fetishism and, 6, 196, 208209, 271, 298
Feuerbachian theory and, 136
foreign trade and, 260261
France and, 136, 142144
freedom and, 119120, 129130
German-French Annual Journal and, 138
German Idealism and, 141142
globalism and, 251263
individuality and, 105106
industrial capital and, 234241
isolation and, 140141
Kant and, 163 (see also Kant,
Immanuel)
labor theory and, 215216, 337n8
LETS and, 2325, 298301
linguistic approach and, 228234
London and, 135136
manifold system analysis and, 228,
237238
materialism and, 133, 136, 163, 322n7
M-C-M formula and, 910, 20 (see also
M-C-M formula)
merchant capital and, 234241
miser and, 7
overdetermination and, 148
parallax and, 152161
Paris Commune and, 182
production process and, 177 (see also
Production process)
prot and, 241251
proper names and, 172
property and, 166167
Proudhon and, 173180, 183
religion and, 45, 137
Ricardo and, 174175
skepticism and, 98, 134
socialism and, 1617
stance change of, 161165
Stirner and, 172173
surplus value and, 223228, 241251
synthetic judgment and, 185193
system of representation and, 142152
transformation problem and, 243244
transposition and, 133142
unconscious structure and, 86
value form theory and, 710, 185211
Marxian turn, 5, 136
Copernican turn and, 137138
Engels and, 138139
Masochism, 215
Mass production, 236, 286. See also
Production process
Mathematics
antinomy and, 61
axiomatic system and, 6365
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Index
Mathematics (cont.)
as basis of truth, 5657
constitutability and, 6263
formalism and, 6061, 68
geometry and, 3235, 5759, 6165
Gdel and, 6467
Hilbert and, 6364
Hume and, 5657, 60
intuitionism and, 6063
judgment and, 5565
Kant and, 5565
lingustic turn and, 6576
Menos paradox and, 6869
non-Euclidean geometry and, 5759
parallel postulate and, 5960, 6364
phonemes and, 7778
proof and, 5859, 6168
reductionism and, 56
set theory and, 57, 6062, 67
spatial expansion and, 5859
undecidability and, 6467
Mazzini, Giuseppe, 292
M-C-M formula, 910, 20, 268
associations and, 296297
Capital-Nation-State and, 265
circulation process and, 207208
commodity metamorphosis and, 190
credit and, 218219
industrial capital and, 235
linguistic approach and, 231
parallax and, 154156, 159160
surplus value and, 223
value form theory and, 186, 210
Mechanical determinism, 162
Meditations on the First Philosophy
(Descartes), 9192
Menos paradox, 6869
Mercantilism, 67, 153. See also
Economic issues
Capital-Nation-State and, 265283
drive and, 206
money and, 212, 216
surplus value and, 223228, 241251
Merchant capital
e-trade and, 266
globalism and, 262 (see also Globalism)
value form theory and, 234241
Meta-mathematical critique, 6465
Metamorphosis, 142
M-C-M formula and, 910, 20, 154156
Metaphysics
acceptance of, 4647
analytic judgment and, 188189
capitalism and, 211217
daydreams and, 4547
ego and, 56 (see also Ego)
ex post facto observation and, 191193,
217218
freedom and, 112130
money and, 211217, 232
parallax and, 4453
value form theory and, 185193
Mill, John Stuart, 287
Misers, 7
Money, 297. See also Economic issues
alienation theory and, 213214
antinomy and, 298
barter origin of, 200201
capitalist crisis and, 231232
Capital-Nation-State and, 265283
classical economics and, 153154,
333n16
class struggle and, 145152
as commodity, 145 (see also
Commodity)
credit and, 217222
exchange issues and, 200211, 276277
ex post facto observation and, 222
fetishism and, 6, 196, 271, 208209, 298
as ctitious institution, 197198
globalism and, 251263
gold, 195197, 209, 218, 226227
hierarchical structures and, 205206
Hobbes and, 272
as illusion, 195196, 219220
LETS and, 2325, 298301
magic of, 207
M-C-M formula and, 910, 20, 154156
(see also M-C-M formula)
metaphysics and, 211217, 232
origin theories of, 200201
plunder and, 206
position and, 199200
power of, 212213
prot and, 241251
reciprocity and, 202203
Ricardian socialism and, 153
social equilibrium and, 206
stockpiling and, 210
value form theory and, 185211
Moral issues
aesthetics and, 113115
capitalism and, 1819, 298306
commodity and, 216217
communism and, 129130
eudemonism and, 121
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361
Index
freedom and, 112130
Kant and, 112130
nature/freedom and, 112130
Nietzsche and, 122123
Morishima, Michio, 234
Mortality, 61
Multiple language games, 71, 73,
8283
Nazism, 146147
Negri, Antonio, 290291, 300
Netherlands, 280
New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis
(Freud), 147
Newtonian physics, 3235
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 112113
freedom and, 122123
value form theory and, 188189
Non-Euclidean geometry, 57
proof and, 5859, 6165
Objectivism, 13
Okoshio, Nobuo, 234
On the Genealogy of Morals (Nietzsche),
122123
Ontology, 9798
Ortega Y Gasset, Joshosa, 98
Overdetermination, 147148
Owen, Robert, 17, 156, 176177
Parallax, 24
economic issues and, 152161
Kantian turn and, 4453
M-C-M formula and, 154156
skepticism and, 95
Parallel postulate, 5960, 6365
Pareto, Vilfredo, 229230
Paris Commune, 165166, 182
Pedagogy, 6872, 75
Phenomenology
reductionism and, 9293
transcendentalism and, 92100 (see also
Transcendentalism)
Philosophical Investigations
(Wittgenstein), 73
Philosophy. See also Kant, Immanuel;
Marx, Karl
aesthetics and, 3839
apperception and, 7680
Being and, 97100
bracketing and, 117120
Cartesian method and, 8188, 9192
causality and, 139
common sense and, 3839
community and, 12, 100112 (see also
Community)
ego and, 8192 (see also Ego)
Frankfurt School and, 147
Gdel and, 6465
imagination-power and, 3536
judgment and, 5580 (see also
Judgment)
mathematics and, 5565
Menos paradox and, 6869
overdetermination and, 147148
pedagogy and, 6872, 75
philosophia scholastica and, 82
pleasure and, 4041
plurality and, 4142
reection and, 24, 4753
skepticism and, 8688, 9192, 9698
(see also Skepticism)
speculation and, 5152
thinking/doubting and, 9192
triad system of, 279
understanding and, 102103
universality-generality and, 38, 4243
Philosophy of Right (Hegel), 181, 279, 280
Philosophy of Spirit (Hegel), 157158
Phonemes, 7778
Platonism, 66
linguistic approach and, 232
pedagogy and, 6872, 75
recollection and, 75
skepticism and, 9899
Pleasure, 4041, 214215
aesthetics and, 113115
freedom and, 112130
Plunder, 13, 202203, 206
Polanyi, Karl, 202, 204, 302303
Political Economy (Hodgskin), 168
Political issues
anarchism and, 165184, 283284,
329n74
associations and, 283306
Bolshevism and, 329n74 (see also
Communism)
Capital-Nation-State and, 1316,
265283
capital regulation and, 1112, 298306
class struggle and, 145152 (see also
Class struggle)
dictatorships and, 182
economic issues and, 221 (see also
Economic issues)
as exchange, 185
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Index
Political issues (cont.)
feudalism and, 222, 255, 278
French Revolution and, 1415,
142146, 278279
globalism and, 1112, 1516, 251263,
276277, 281, 293
Hegel and, 133, 142143
imagined communities and, 1214
(see also Community)
labor theory and, 215216
language and, 143
LETS and, 2325, 298301
Marx and, 137, 142152 (see also
Marx, Karl)
metamorphosis and, 142
monarchical states and, 270275
Nazism, 146147
representation systems and, 142152
self-alienation and, 136
state embodiment and, 150
value form theory and, 185211
World War I, 146147
Politik als Beruf (Weber), 182
Popper, Karl, 4243
Portugal, 258
Poster, Mark, 267
Poverty of Philosophy, The (Marx),
173175
Price, 241244
Principle of Federation, The (Proudhon),
171, 175
Principles of Political Economy and
Taxation, The (Ricardo), 153154
Private property, 166167
Problems of Dostoevskys Poetics (Bahktin), 70
Production process, 11, 17, 128129,
222, 331n12
agent consciousness and, 241243
anarchism and, 165184
associations and, 283306
autonomous power and, 281282
Capital-Nation-State and, 265283
communism and, 177
difference and, 267268
Fordism and, 236, 286, 340n35
foreign trade and, 260261
globalism and, 251263
individual property and, 166167
industrial capital and, 234241
LETS and, 2325, 298301
M-C-M formula and, 910, 20, 154156
(see also M-C-M formula)
merchant capital and, 234241
natural environment and, 282283
prot and, 168, 241251
putting-out system and, 223
specialization and, 261262
state control of, 165166
surplus value and, 223228, 241251
trade cycles and, 247251
transformation problem and, 243244
value form theory and, 208 (see also
Value form theory)
Prot
agent consciousness and, 241243
classical economics and, 223224
creative destruction and, 248
extra, 247248
foreign trade and, 260261
globalism and, 251263
price and, 241242
prolonged workday and, 249
rate of, 244246
surplus value and, 223251
technological innovation and,
247248
theft, 168
Proof
Gdel and, 6468
language and, 6576
mathematics and, 5868
pedagogy and, 6872, 75
Proper names, 171172
Property, 166167, 170
Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of
Capitalism, The (Weber), 139, 266
Proudhon, Pierre Joseph, 5, 17,
327n55
anarchism and, 169170, 180181,
183184
democracy and, 183184
economic parallax and, 156
freedom and, 129
individual property and, 167
individual subordination and, 171
linguistic approach and, 232
Marx and, 173180, 183
money and, 2223
prot-theft and, 168
religion and, 179180
surplus value and, 238
value form theory and, 196
Psychoanalysis. See Freud, Sigmund
Ptolemy, 3031
Puritan Revolution, 272
Putting-out system, 223
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Index
Qua essence, 32
aesthetics, 133
associationism, 129
Capital-Nation-State and, 265283
German Idealism and, 141142
specter and, 172173
surplus value and, 223228, 241251
value form theory and, 185211
world money and, 226
Rawls, John, 129
Realism, 108109
Reason, 316n34. See also Kant,
Immanuel
Cartesian method and, 8188, 9192
cogito, 8388, 9192, 9598,
102103, 134
ego and, 8188, 9192 (see also Ego)
Husserl and, 8891
judgment and, 4453, 5580 (see also
Judgment)
Menos paradox and, 6869
pedagogy and, 6872, 75
rationalism, 4, 7
recollection and, 6869
speculation and, 5152
thinking/doubting and, 8688, 9192
(see also Skepticism)
unconscious structure and, 86
Reciprocity, 202203
Recollection, 6869
Redistribution, 13, 202
Reductionism, 56, 9294
Reection, 24
judgment and, 187188
Kantian turn and, 4753
origin theories and, 200201
Reich, Wilhelm, 146147
Religion, 45, 70
abolishment of Christianity and,
331n5
alienation theory and, 137, 213214
capitalism and, 266
commodity and, 212
criticism of, 212
Descartes and, 9192
divinity and, 169
economic issues and, 221
as exhange, 185
freedom and, 116, 118, 120
Hegel and, 104, 168169, 189
as illusion, 212
Kant and, 115116
Lisbon earthquake and, 45
love and, 169
Proudhon and, 179180
Reformation and, 139
Spinoza and, 96
surplus value and, 236
thing-in-itself and, 53
value form theory and, 189
Representation systems
arbitrary relations in, 144145
Capital and, 150151
Cartesian method and, 149
dreams and, 147
Engels and, 151
four commodity exchanges and,
276277
French Revolution and, 142146
globalism and, 251263
Heidegger and, 149
industrial bourgeoisie and, 145
labor and, 347n34
money and, 145
overdetermination and, 147148
political issues and, 142152
Rousseau and, 148149
state embodiment and, 150
Rescher, Nicholas, 69
Ricardo, David, 57, 10
anarchism and, 167168
associations and, 285
Capital and, 162
capitalism and, 234
colonialism and, 258259
economic parallax and, 152161
labor theory and, 337n8
linguistic approach and, 232
Marx and, 174175
M-C-M formula and, 154156
specialization and, 261262
surplus value and, 227228, 238
transformation problem and,
243244
value form theory and, 193194, 196
Romanticism, 3334, 102104
Rono-ha school of thought, 255
Rorty, Richard, 106
Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 86, 148149
Ruge, Arnold, 138
Russell, Bertrand, 60, 73
individuality and, 109110
linguistic turn and, 6567
proper names and, 109
realists and, 109
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Index
Saint-Simonism, 279
Sartre, JeanPaul, 120
Saussure, Ferdinand de, 74
linguistic approach and, 229231
transcendentalism and, 77, 7980
unconscious structure and, 86
Says Law of Market, 290
Schizophrenia, 9293
Schmitt, Carl, 148, 271, 301
Schopenhauer, Arthur, 30
Schumpeter, Joseph Alois, 239, 248
Science
Copernican turn and, 2935
Kantian turn and, 3544
nature/freedom and, 112130
Self-alienation, 136137, 169, 213214
Set theory, 57, 6062, 67
Shakespeare, William, 212213
Skepticism. See also Judgment
Cartesian method and, 8688, 9192
cogito and, 9596
Descartes and, 9598, 134
Heidegger and, 9798
Hume and, 94
Husserl and, 95
Kant and, 94 (see also Kant, Immanuel)
Marx and, 98, 134 (see also Marx, Karl)
ontology and, 9798
reductionism and, 9394
Socrates and, 9495, 9899
Spinoza and, 9596
Wittgenstein and, 6571, 74, 8283
Smith, Adam, 4, 139, 236
capitalism and, 154, 200
colonialism and, 258259
ethics and, 216217
exchange origin and, 225226
labor theory and, 215216
lingusitic approach and, 229
M-C-M formula and, 154156
money origins and, 200201
prot-theft and, 168
surplus value and, 227228
transformation problem and,
243244
value form theory and, 193, 204
Social capital, 292293
Social democracy, 16
Socialism, 10, 16
aesthetics and, 345n22
economic issues and, 152161
Marx and, 1617
prot-theft and, 168
representation systems and, 151
Ricardian, 152161
Socialism and Communism in France Today
(von Stein), 168
Socialism: Utopian and Scientic (Engels),
151
Socrates, 61, 6869
skepticism and, 9495, 9899
Solipsism, 7374, 82
Soviet Union, 304
Specter, 172173
Speculation, 5152
Speech and Phenomenon (Derrida), 91
Spinoza, Baruch, 9596, 100, 115, 120
Spirit
development of, 158
M-C-M formula and, 155156
value form theory and, 188
Sraffa, Piero, 234
State-in-itself, 150
Stiebeling, George C., 245
Stirner, Max, 104106, 165, 169,
316n35
ego and, 327n53, 328n57
ethics and, 171
individual subordination and, 171
Marx and, 172173
proper names and, 172
religion and, 170171
specter and, 172173
Stoicism, 214215
Structuralism, 7680
Subjectivism, 13, 319n60
aesthetics and, 113115
associations and, 288, 290291,
293294
Cartesian method and, 8188, 9192
common sense and, 3840
Copernican turn and, 2935
ego and, 8188, 9192
externalization and, 4849
Husserl and, 8891
individuality and, 100112
mathematics and, 5565
pleasure and, 4041
plurality and, 4142
proper names and, 109112
reductionism and, 56
reection and, 4753
self-alienation and, 136137
singularity and, 100112
synthetic judgment and, 5580
understanding and, 102103
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Index
universality-generality and, 12, 38,
4243, 100112
Surplus value, 339n19
absolute/relative, 236237, 249250
agent consciousness and, 241243
alienation theory and, 238
associations and, 291
Capital and, 241
capturing of, 250
globalism and, 251263
industrial capital and, 234241
linguistic approach and, 228234
manifold system analysis and, 228,
237238
margin and, 234
M-C-M formula and, 223
merchant capital and, 234241
price and, 243244
prot and, 241251
transformation problem and, 243244
value form and, 223228 (see also Value
form theory)
Synthetic judgment, 51
expansive, 65
language and, 6576
linguistic turn and, 6576
mathematical foundation of, 5565
pedagogy and, 6872, 75
transcendental apperception and,
7680
undecidability and, 6467
value form theory and, 185193
Tabata, Minoru, 179
Teaching
domain and, 101
enlightenment and, 100103
Platonic pedagogy and, 6872, 75
sociality and, 100112
Technology, 162, 247248
Theory of Moral Sentiments, The (Smith), 139
Theses on Feuerbach (Marx), 136, 140
Thing-in-itself
absolute Other and, 126127
Copernican turn and, 2935
daydreams and, 4547
freedom and, 122
generality and, 38, 4142
judgment and, 4453
literary criticism and, 3544
parallax and, 4453
universality and, 38, 4243
Thompson, William, 168
Throwness (Geworfenheit), 30
Total social capital, 292293
Toulmin, Stephen, 73
Trade cycle, 247251
Transcendentalism, 1
apperception and, 7680
Blankenburg and, 9293
bracketing and, 117120, 160161
Cartesian method and, 8188, 9192
Copernican turn and, 2935
ego and, 8188, 9192 (see also Ego)
ex post facto observation and, 191193
freedom and, 112130
Husserl and, 8891
Kantian ethics and, 3132, 112130
language structure and, 7680
pedagogy and, 6872, 75
skepticism and, 9698 (see also
Skepticism)
thing-in-itself and, 4453
thinking/doubting and, 8688
transformation problem and, 243244
transversalism and, 92100
value form theory and, 185211
Transcritique
aesthestics and, 3738
Capital-Nation-State and, 1316,
265283
circulation and, 8 (see also Circulation
process)
communism and, 283306
economic issues and, 614, 1725
ego and, 56 (see also Ego)
exchange and, 1213 (see also
Commodity)
German Idealism and, 141142
historical materialism and, 48, 133,
139140, 163, 322n7
Kantian turn and, 3544 (see also
Kant, Immanuel)
language and, 6580
LETS and, 2325, 298301
literary criticism and, 3544
Marx and, 1517, 161165 (see also
Marx, Karl)
mathematics and, 6575
nature/freedom and, 112130
pronounced parallax and, 24
reection and, 14, 4753, 187188,
200201
representation systems and, 142152
singularity and, 100112
sociality and, 100112
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Index
Transcritique (cont.)
subjectivism and, 8192 (see also
Subjectivism)
transversalism and, 92100
Transformation problem, 243244
Treatise of Human Nature, A (Hume), 36
Tristes tropiques (Lvi-Strauss), 8485
Truth
Cartesian method and, 8188, 9192
enlightenment and, 100103
God and, 9192
Husserl and, 8891
Lvi-Strauss and, 8485
pedagogy and, 6869
reductionism and, 56
skepticism and, 6571, 74, 8283,
8688, 9192
thinking/doubting and, 9192
Turgot, Anne-Robert-Jacques, 229
Undecidability, 6467
United States, 304305
Universality, 38, 4243
community and, 12, 100112
Deleuze and, 101102
freedom and, 112130
individuality and, 100112
proper names and, 109112
singularity and, 100112
suffrage and, 143144, 183
understanding and, 102103
Uno, Kozo, 11, 250, 256
Utopians, 176177
Vaihinger, Hans, 3637
Valry, Paul, 232233
Value form theory, 711
alienation theory and, 192
analytic judgment and, 188189
antinomy and, 189190
Bailey and, 193196
capitals drive and, 200211
equivalency and, 191193, 197
exchange and, 198200
expanded form and, 198
ex post facto observation and, 191193,
217218, 222
ctitious institution and, 197198
illusion and, 219220
Kant and, 187188
labor theory and, 215216
language and, 197200, 228234
LETS and, 2325, 298301
linguistic approach and, 228234
manifold system analysis and, 228
margin and, 234
M-C-M formula and, 186
natural form and, 198199
position and, 199200
prot and, 241251
realization and, 197198
reciprocity and, 202203
Ricardo and, 196
state regulation and, 1112
stockpiling and, 210
surplus value and, 223228, 241251
synthetic judgment and, 185193
Vertretung. See Representation systems
Voltaire, 45
von Bhm-Bawerk, Eugen, 243
von Stein, Lorenz, 168
Wallerstein, Immanuel, 253, 268269
Weber, Max, 139, 182, 266
Weil, Andr, 78
Welfare society, 16
What Is Property? (Proudhon), 170
Why Does Language Matter to Philosophy?
(Hacking), 108
Wiener, Norbert, 52, 267
Wittgenstein, Ludwig
judgment and, 74
language and, 6574, 8283
Wittgensteinss Vienna (Janik &
Toulmin), 73
Workers. See Labor
World War I, 146147
Yoshimoto, Takaaki, 255
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