逃离黑格尔（四）
本篇文章由我翻译，全文共63页，本篇为节选的第四部分约8.5页内容，原文为英文并附于末尾，全文已翻译完毕。红色标注为原文附带的注释，蓝色标注为我添加的补充和注释。文章中引用部分若已有汉译本，则一概使用汉译本的翻译，并补充标注汉译本的引用文献。由于专栏编辑器中不能设置斜体，我用加粗来代替斜体。 为了方便，我会在正文中加入页码，表示方法如【288】。
五、逃离与新的开始
马克思在《政治经济学批判大纲》里对资本进行了注定失败的“辩证推导”的尝试之后最终领悟到，只有克服采取类似研究方法的吸引力，并在信念开始动摇时从危险的悬崖边退却，才能在研究中取得真正的进步。这场戏剧中许多不寻常的情节。例如，马克思在一段文本中使用了一个典型的黑格尔主义习语，他说，资本—价值在生产过程中的各种存在形式，首先是作为生产的条件，最后则是作为产品，是“纯粹的假象”(reiner Schein)，价值本身在这一过程中维持其“始终不变的本质”。根据这一观察，马克思得出结论，“被看作价值的产品并不是产品，而是始终如一的、不变的价值”。(Marx, 1993, 312-3/MEW, Vol. 42, 233)(24)这反过来迫使他（在这里，对价值质与量的混淆再一次产生了关键性的倒错结果）事实上地排除了生产剩余价值的可能性！马克思一直坚持着这一观点，甚至花费了几页来提供数值例作为支撑，然后才意识到，如果这一观点是正确的话，那么从负责进行生产性投资行为——实际上是资本主义生产过程本身——的资本家或企业的角度来看，这一行为将是“无目的的”[16]。“好吧”，他沉思道。
幸好，马克思明智地决定放下这团乱麻。在接下来的几页里，在一系列关于各种主题的括号之后，马克思重新开始分析，从一般的经济事实——剩余价值的实现出发，而这一点在马克思的黑格尔主义论证中遭到了忽视：
资本在生产过程结束时具有的剩余价值，——这种剩余价值作为产品的更高的价格，只有在流通中才得到实现，但是，它同一切价格一样，它们在流通中得到实现，是由于它们在进入流通以前，已经在观念上成为流通的前提……——按照交换价值的一般概念来说，表示对象化在产品中的劳动时间或者说劳动量……大于资本原有各组成部分所包含的劳动量。而这种情况只有当对象化在劳动价格中的劳动小于用这种对象化劳动所购买的活劳动时间时才是可能的。(Marx, 1973, 321/MEW, Vol, 42, 240)(25)
马克思不再试图从货币“概念”和/或更遥远的价值本身的“概念”中“推导出”资本流通中的剩余价值。相反，他将利润，即投资的正收益，视为一种特定的经济形式，并接着提问，它的可能性条件是什么。他认识到，如果“劳动”的报酬，即雇佣劳动者的报酬，等于劳动在生产过程中“创造”的价值量的话，那么作为典型的资本主义收入形式的利润实际上就不可能存在；因为在这种情况下，工人会拥有生产过程中创造的全部“新”价值（即产品价值超过生产过程中所使用的生产资料的价值的部分）的货币等价物，就像他们在简单商品生产的条件下那样。因此，实际上就不会有任何“剩余价值”留给投资者。在认识到这一点之后——在马克思的完成作中，他用“劳动力价值”与劳动力在使用中所创造出来的价值之间的差额这一更准确的术语来表述这一点——马克思取得了通往经济科学的关键，他不在执着于早期对资本家收入的神秘化“推导”，而是转向对这一收入形式进行科学解释。
这一解释的细节及其遵循的逻辑规范将是另一篇论文的主题。然而，学过哲学史的学生们可能已经注意到了，我在前面使用“可能性条件”这一表述时间接指向了康德。最后，我将提供一些必然只是示意性的观察，以表明在这一背景下提及康德是合适的。
六、先验经济学：康德的建议
《政治经济学批判大纲》可以被解读为一部马克思努力打破他对黑格尔主义论证依赖的戏剧，同时马克思具有理论独立性的成熟产物则是《资本论》。尽管在《资本论》中，尤其是如列宁著名的格言所表明的，在它的第一章中，存在着大量典型的黑格尔主义公式，甚至可以称为某种典型的黑格尔主义语法。如马克思他自己所说，他“卖弄起”黑格尔“特有的表达方式”的合理理由已在前文中阐明。但是，与《政治经济学批判大纲》截然不同的是，在《资本论》中马克思不再“卖弄”那些黑格尔主义论证风格。确实有证据表明马克思有时会倒退回黑格尔主义：当马克思难以提供合理解释时，通常是在马克思研究主要问题时所附带的一些问题时，他才会运用黑格尔主义方法以快速且暂时性地绕开它。但《资本论》中显然不存在《政治经济学批判大纲》中特有的黑格尔主义方法的“概念辩证法”的系统性实验。
事实上，如果说《资本论》中的分析方法类似于哲学史上的某部著作的话，与其说类似于黑格尔的《逻辑学》，不如说是更像黑格尔的《逻辑学》所回应的另一部著作：即康德的《纯粹理性批判》。我建议，马克思应当被看作经济科学领域的康德：《资本论》，或至少《资本论》的第一卷，对于经济学的意义就像康德的第一“批判”对于物理学的意义一样。尽管一代又一代的马克思主义者已经习惯于否定这样的建议并对其抱有敌意，但我依然认为这是一种高度赞扬。在这里，我只能简要地尝试将这一建议合理化。顺便说一句，我并没有认为马克思曾经以某种途径受到过第一“批判”的影响。实际上，几乎可以肯定的是，马克思从未读过后者。
我指的是，马克思的论证最好理解为康德意义上的“先验”论证。因此，正如康德的第一“批判”中所谓“先验分析”的逻辑起点是感性经验的给定性一样[17]，《资本论》中马克思对价值分析的起点既不是对人的行为的随意规定（就像新古典经济学所做的那样），也不是“概念”或范畴“规定”（就像黑格尔主义的“哲学科学”那样），而是经济现象的纯粹给定性，或更准确地讲，就是商品流通领域中所特有的那些经济现象。很明显，马克思拒绝将他的方法归为一种黑格尔主义方法，他自己在1879-80年的《评阿・瓦格纳的〈政治经济学教科书〉》中所强调的这一点可能就是他在《资本论》中最重要的方法论反思：“……我不是从‘概念’出发，因而也不是从‘价值概念’出发，所以没有任何必要把它‘分割开来’。我的出发点是劳动产品在现代社会所表现的最简单的社会形式，这就是‘商品’。” (Marx, 1975, 198/MEW, Vol. 19, 368-9)(26)。在《资本论》中，马克思在引入他对所谓“价值形式”的分析并在对价值的所谓“实体”进行了简洁明了的论证后写道：“我们实际上也是从商品的交换价值或交换关系出发，才探索到隐藏在其中的商品价值。现在我们必须回到价值的这种表现形式。” (Marx, 1976, 139/MEW, Vol. 23, 62)(27)现在，摆在眼前的商品流通的最基本现象，即与作为“使用价值”的商品的特殊物质存在形式相对的作为“交换价值”的商品的一般经济“表现形式”，就是价格。
必须指出的一点是，马克思通过优先考虑（在论证价值的“实体”和审视它的“形式”时）所谓的“基本”价值关系，即两种特殊种类商品的交换比例，掩盖了价值代表其所分析的现象领域这一事实。在这样一种商品交换体系中，交换比例通常是不可观察到的（因为无论如何，商品之间不直接发生交换是这样一种体系的典型特征），但总是可以从商品的价格中推断出来，后者实际上就是经济经验的“原始资料”。尽管如此，随着马克思分析的发展，任何特定种类商品的价值形式无非就是其价格这一点表现得越来越明显，即商品的价值体现在一定量的货币中[18]。就这一现象领域，我想指出，马克思在《资本论》第一章中研究的实际上同样也是“可能性条件”：我们可以继康德之后将之称为“一般经济经验的可能性条件”。然而，这里需要强调的是，这些经济经验的可能性条件同时也是那些产生经济经验中特定对象的社会实践的可能性条件。这一实践就是商品交换自身。
经济经验的第一个可能性条件是，有一个统一的中介，使商品的相对价值可以在其中得到表达并实际上存在于其中。商品的价值与其作为“使用价值”的特定物理化身之间的现实可分离性是其可交换性的必要条件；只要商品的可交换性这一现实条件得到满足，那么商品价格表达的认识论条件也就同样得到满足。履行这两种职能的实在的“价值形式”，即商品作为交换价值所实有的“普遍性”，正如我们看到的那样，就是货币。若没有货币，那么价格既不能确定也不能被支付，所有更具体的价值现象（工资、利润、利息、租金等等）也同样缺乏其存在的唯一中介。因此，用马克思的话来说，货币就是一般经济经验中“可感觉而又超感觉”的“物”，马克思所谓的“价值理论”的首要任务就是论证其必要性（即对交换体系运作的必要性和对市场现象的“感觉”的必要性）并阐明其性质。单就“经济经验”而言，这一任务可以被粗糙地看作与康德的所谓“超验感性论”所实现的任务相类似的东西，即就感性经验来将空间和时间解读为直觉的先验形式——尽管这种类比确实很粗糙，并且在我们能够正确认识其理论意义之前，还需要进行更多的分析。此外，如果没有“价值形式”，那么即使是对价值现象的孤立的和/或杂乱的感觉也是不可能存在的，因此，在对所谓价值“实体”进行任何讨论之前，对“价值形式”的阐述都应当以严格先验的方式用康德的方法按照论证的顺序呈现。我怀疑，正是由于马克思对其价值分析的叙述并非如此，才导致了对其价值分析的传统误解，即其仅仅只是一个价格决定理论，一个以解释价格量为目的的理论。
马克思的理论不仅仅是一个价格决定理论。但作为一个关于经济客观性的理论，价格决定理论也是必要的。正如感性产生了直觉这一点不足以得到感性经验，相反，这些直觉还必须通过规律结合在一起，成为一个统一的整体，因此同样的，货币提供了价值现象存在的中介这一点也不足以得到经济经验，而这些现象——最基本的就是价格——必须表现出某种系统性的内在联系与规律性。事实上，既然价格属于某种商品而且只属于特殊商品，因为它们是这些种类的样本，因此严谨地说，对商品价格的孤立“感觉”也是以它们的规律性为前提。从这个意义上来说，对“价值形式”的考察必然会引出一种马克思在某种程度上将之不恰当地称为价值“实体”的思考：或者用不那么形而上学的术语来说，对商品的相对价值是如何具有可公度性（Franz Petry将这一问题称为价值“质”问题）的研究，必然会引出是什么调节了相对价值的问题（Petry将这一问题称为价值“量”问题）(Petry, 1916)或者再换一种说法：对“外在”的价值尺度即货币的阐述，要求我们寻找一个在前者中得到表达的“内在”的价值尺度，即价格量的调节原理。（参见Rosenthal, 1998, ch.14, sec. 14.2）
价格体系的一致性及其变化的规律性不仅是经济经验可能性的认识论条件，也同时是交换体系稳定性的现实条件。因果律将感性材料结合为一个统一的整体，所谓的“价值规律”则在价格方面执行相同的职能。简而言之，这一“价值规律”指的是商品应当按照与为生产其所需的“社会劳动”相等的比例交换：或正如其实际上所表达的那样，通常情况下作为商品可交换性指标的价格，从长期来看，应当由生产这一商品所需的社会必要劳动时间来调节。[19]我在这里提出的是，这条规律可以以类似于康德对因果律进行先验论证的方式进行先验论证，因为如果不运用这种先验论证，价格体系就会变得不连贯，交换体系就会崩溃。我不打算在这里重复这样的论证。但马克思主义“价值理论”——即在当代经济辩论中这一术语所通常具有的含义——的坚定支持者们应当认真对待对其进行先验论证的可能性。正如康德所指出的，只有那些能够被证明是先验成立的主张，才能够被无一例外地认为是必然成立的。试图在经验的基础上捍卫马克思的理论，无论其所提供的证据多么令人信服，都不可避免地将“价值规律”的地位贬低为一个具有或多或少合理性的预设。现在，与前文一样，当马克思在《资本论》第一卷中面对资本时，他再一次的从一开始就将其视为一种给定的经济形式，即商品流通领域中的另一种现象。换句话说，马克思从资本在流通领域中的“表现形式”开始了他的分析，也可以说，从它的直观可感觉方面开始。资本的这一直观可感觉方面就是投资后的正货币收益，若资本主义的生产条件实际上已经存在，且没有受到任何异常的干扰的话，那它就在那里。它不必须是“推导”而来的，就像黑格尔主义阐述中的资本“概念”那样。因此，与马克思在《政治经济学批判大纲》中阐述的从货币到资本的曲折“辩证过渡”形成鲜明对比的是，他现在仅仅用一个简单的观察来引入对资本的讨论，“商品流通的直接形式，”他写道，
“是W—G—W，商品转化为货币，货币再转化为商品，为买而卖。但除这一形式外，我们还看到具有不同特点的另一形式G—W—G，货币转化为商品，商品再转化为货币，为卖而买。在运动中通过这后一种流通的货币转化为资本，成为资本，而且按它的使命来说，已经是资本。” (Marx, 1976, 247-8/MEW, Vol. 23, 162,) (28)
马克思进一步指出，为了使第二种流通形式具有合理的内容，并使与之相关的社会活动具有合理的意义，其终点所代表的货币数量必须大于其起点所代表的货币数量。否则，由于货币本质上是同质的，作为资本的货币的流通将是“毫无意义的”。因此，这一流通必须更准确地用G-W-G’来表示[20]。简而言之，资本的现象形式就是利润，与前文引用过的马克思在《政治经济学批判大纲》中的试探性说明相反，利润并不是一个价格，而是两组价格之和的差额：首先是由给定的经济主体，无论是个人还是合伙公司所花费的“成本价格”，接着是由其收取的“销售价格”。
值得一提的是，在《政治经济学批判大纲》中，马克思曾试图从价值“概念”或更准确地说是利润以货币形式实现的“普遍性”与任何给定数额的货币所具有的“有限特殊性”之间所谓的矛盾推导出利润的“必然性”。资本，作为一种充满“动力”以克服其数量限制的价值，被误认为是对这一矛盾的“扬弃”。马克思并没有在《资本论》尝试进行任何类似的“推导”，而是注意到了“价值规律”与利润之间表面上的不一致——利润不是“必然的”，它仅仅只是在经验上可被观察的——正是这一点引起了马克思对这一不一致的具体的可能性条件的研究。这正是马克思在所谓“资本总公式的矛盾”中讨论的关键所在，只有“辩证法”水平非常高超的学者才会没能察觉到这一点。
如果商品应当以与相等价值相对应的特定比例进行交换，且这就是支配其流通的“直接形式”(W-G-W)的“规律”，那么在一定量的货币而非商品构成其两极的相反形式的流通(G-W-G)中，如何系统性地出现“剩余价值”？如前所述，既然“价值规律”是交换体系本身稳定性的必要条件，那么在使所有价值现象不至于消失的情况下，就这一规律就必须发挥作用。马克思将分析的重点转移到了资本主义生产过程上，更准确地说，转移到了由资本/雇佣劳动的合同所确定的特定的法律条件上，而资本主义生产过程就发生在这些条件下。马克思的成就正是在“价值规律”持续发挥作用的基础上揭示了那些使盈利成为可能的条件。
哲学系
科罗拉多大学
14 East Cache La Poudre Street
Colorado Springs, Co 80903
jrosenthal@cc.colorado.edu
注释：
[16] Marx, 1973, 316/MEW, Vol. 42, 236.（《马克思恩格斯全集》第二版第30卷第276页） 在这之后，马克思也意识到，由于资本家必须用通过销售商品所取得的收益来满足他们自己的消费需求，因此仅仅是以后者的形式进行的生产要素价值的再生产就会导致总投资的不断减少——直到初始资本的价值完全消失。
[17] 这确实是康德分析的起点，并在一定程度上被康德在纯粹理性范畴的“先验”推导之前插入的所谓“形而上学”推导所掩盖，见Rosenthal, 1993.
[18] 这一点在初版《资本论》(1867)第一卷第一章中得到了更明确的阐述。马克思写道：“价格已经确定的商品具有双重形式……它的现实形态是一种使用物品的形态……它的作为一定量同种人类劳动的化身的表现形式，就是它的价格，就是一定量的金。” (MEGA, Zweite Abteilung, Band 5, 60)（《马克思恩格斯全集》第二版第44卷第78页）（马克思在这里假定黄金就是货币商品）
[19] 在马克思1858年4月2日写给恩格斯的一封信中，他简要介绍了目前为止的经济学研究。有趣的是，他在这里将价值规律与价值形式的思考直接联系在了一起，正如我们所看到的那样，这种联系在《资本论》中的叙述略有模糊。因此，马克思写道：“转变为货币的商品价值，就是商品的价格，这种价格暂时只是在同价值这种纯粹形式上的区别中表现出来。根据一般的价值规律，一定数量的货币只表现一定数量的对象化劳动。” (见MEW, Vol 29, 31) （《马克思恩格斯全集》第二版第50卷第363页）
[20] 实际上，马克思在这方面的论述仍不准确。G-W-G这一流通仅仅表明净收入得到了保证，而资本主义利润只是净收入的一种特定形式。见上文注释[15]。然而，对于我们的目的来说，更重要的是，马克思是从利润现象开始——即使他未能充分描述这一现象——以便研究它的可能性条件。
译者注：
(24) 《马克思恩格斯全集》第二版第30卷第272页。
(25) 《马克思恩格斯全集》第二版第30卷第281页。
(26) 《马克思恩格斯全集》第一版第19卷第412页。
(27) 《马克思恩格斯全集》第二版第44卷第61页。
(28) 《马克思恩格斯全集》第二版第44卷第172页。
参考文献
Arthur, Christopher J. 1991. Review Article. Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Great Britaim 23/24, 79-90.
--------. 1993. "Hegel’s Logic and Marx’s Capital." In Fred Moseley, ed., Marx’s Method in Capital: A Re-examination. Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey: Humanities Press.
Backhaus, Hans-Georg. 1997. Dialektik der Wertform. Freiburg: Ça ira Verlag.
Banaji, Jairus. 1979. "From the Commodity to Capital: Hegel's Dialectic in Marx's Capital. "In Diane Elson, ed., Value: The Representation of Labour in Capitalism. London: CSE Books.
Brentel, Helmut. 1989. Soziale Form und Ökonomisches Objekt: Studien zum Gegenstandsund Methodenverständnis der Kritik der politischen Ökonomie. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag.
Eldred, M. and M. Hanion. 1981. "Reconstructing Value-Form Analysis." Capital and Class, 13 (Spring), 24-60.
Hegel, G. W. F. 1969. The Science of Logic. Trans. A. V. Miller. London: Allen & Unwin.
--------. 1970. Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften, Erster Teil. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Marx, Karl. 1970. A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. New York: International.
--------. 1973. Grundrisse. Middlesex: Penguin.
--------. 1975. Texts on Method, ed. Terrel Carver. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
--------. 1976. Capital, Vol. I. Middlesex: Penguin.
Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe. 1972-. Berlin: Die tz Verlag.
Marx-Engels Werke. 1956-. Berlin: Dietz Verlag.
Petry, Franz. 1916. Der soziale Gehalt derMarxschen Werttheorie. Jena: Verlag von Gustav Fischer.
Rosenthal, John. 1991. "Freedom's Devices: The Place of the Individual in Hegel's Philosophy of Right." Radical Philosophy, 59, 27-32.
--------. 1993. "A Transcendental Deduction of the Categories without the Categories." International Philosophical Quarterly, XXXIII: 4, 449-64.
--------. 1998. The Myth of Dialectics: Re-interpreting the Marx-Hegel Relation. New York: St. Martins.
Schweickart, David. 1988. "Reflections on Anti-Marxism: Elster on Marx's Functionalism and Labor Theory of Value." Praxis International, 8:1, 109-22.
Shamsavari, Ali. 1991 . Dialectics and Sodai Theory: The Logic o/Capital. London: Merlin.
Smith, Tony. 1990. The Logic of Marx's Capital. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press.
Escape and New Beginning
It is indeed precisely this last insight that Marx struggles to acquire in the pages of the Grundrisse following his ill-fated attempt at a "dialectical derivation" of capital, and he is only able to prevail in this struggle precisely by resisting the temptation to embark on similar adventures and pulling back from the brink on those occasions when his resolve temporarily falters. This drama includes many curious episodes. For example, there is the passage in which Marx comments in a distinctly Hegelian idiom that the diverse forms in which capital-value exists through the production process, first as conditions of production and finally as product, are "pure semblance" (reiner Schein) and that it is value itself that remains throughout this process the "self-identical essence." From this observation, Marx is then led to conclude that "the product, considered as value, is in this respect not product, but rather value which has remained identical and unchanged" (Marx, 1993, 312-3/MEW, Vol. 42, 233). This compels him in turn (and here again the confusion of the qualitative and quantitative aspects of value plays a crucial paralogical role) actually to exclude the possibility of surplus-value being generated! Marx insists upon the point, even offering numerical examples in its support, for several pages of text, before realizing that if it were correct the act of productive investment and indeed the capitalist production process itself, considered from the point of view of the capitalist or firm as the juridical subject which undertakes it, would be "purposeless". [16] "Well," he muses.
Thankfully, Marx shows the wisdom simply to abandon this tangled thread. Some few pages further on, following a series of parentheses on various topics, he begins his analysis anew, setting out from just that mundane economic datum, the realization of surplus-value, of which he had temporarily lost sight during his bout of Hegeloid high-flying:
The surplus value which capital has at the end of the production process - a surplus value which, as a higher price of the product, is realized only in circulation, but like all prices, is realized in it by already being ideally presupposed to it ... - signifies, expressed in accord with the general concept of exchange value, that the labour time objectified in the product ... is greater than that which was present in the original components of capital. This in turn is possible only if the labour objectified in the price of labour is smaller than the living labour time purchased with it. (Marx, 1973, 321/MEW, Vol, 42, 240).
Marx does not attempt any more to "derive" the appearance of surplus-value in the circuit of capital from the "concept" of money and/or, more remotely, from the "concept" of value itself. Rather he takes profit, viz. a positive return upon investment, as a given economic form and then asks after its conditions of possibility. He recognizes that if the remuneration of "labor," viz. of wage-laborers, were deter mined by the amount of value which labor "creates" in the production process, then profit as a distinctly capitalist form of revenue would not in fact be possible at all; since under this condition, workers would lay claim to a monetary equivalent for the entirety of the "new" value created in the production process (i.e., the excess of the value of the product over the value of the means of production employed in producing it) , exactly as they would under conditions of simple-commodity production. Hence there would not in fact be any "surplus-value" left over for the investor. With this recognition - which in his finished presentation gets formulated more precisely in terms of the difference between the "value of labor-power" and the value which labor-power creates in use - Marx has acquired the key to what will become, in contrast to his earlier mystical "derivation" of capitalist revenue, his scientific explanation of the same.
The details of this explanation and the logical norms it obeys, is the subject for another paper. Students of the history of philosophy will, however, have noticed an allusion to in my use of the expression "conditions of possibility" in the previous paragraph. In closing, I would like to offer just a few, necessarily schematic, observations suggesting the aptness of the allusion to Kant in this context.
A Priori Economics: A Kantian Proposal
Whereas the Grundrisse can be read as the drama of Marx's struggle to break his dependency on Hegelian argumentation, the mature product of his theoretical autonomy is Capital This is so notwithstanding the abundant presence in Capital, and especially indeed, as Lenin's famous aphorism suggests, in its first chapter, of characteristically Hegelian formulae and even what might be called a certain characteristically Hegelian syntax. The rational grounds for this, as Marx himself put it, "coquetting" with Hegel's "peculiar mode of expression" have been clarified above. But, in marked contrast to the Grundrisse, Marx does not anymore in Capital "coquet" with Hegelian styles of argumentation. There is evidence of the occasional Hegeloid relapse: a grabbing for the quick Hegelian fix when rational explanation fails and typically as regards matters that are incidental to the main lines of Marx's inquiry. But the methodical experimentation in "conceptual dialectics" on the Hegelian pattern, which is so characteristic of the Grundrisse, is notably absent from Capital.
In fact, if the analytical procedure displayed in Capital resembles that of any text in the history of philosophy, it is not so much Hegel's Logic as the text to which Hegel's Logic is essentially a rejoinder: viz. Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. I would suggest that Marx should be regarded as the Kant of economic science: that Capital, or at least Volume 1 of Capital, is to economics what Kant's first Critique is to physics. Though generations of Marxists will have been conditioned to respond with horror to such a suggestion, I regard it as a very great compliment. Here I can do no more than to try briefly to make this suggestion plausible. I do not, by the way, mean to be implying that Marx was in any way influenced by the first Critique. Indeed, he almost certainly never read the latter.
I do mean to be implying, however, that Marx's arguments are best understood as "transcendental" arguments in the Kantian sense. Thus, just as the logical starting point of Kant's so-called "transcendental analytic" in the first Critique is the givenness of sensible experience, [17]so the starting point for Marx's value analysis in Capital is neither arbitrary stipulates concerning human behavior (per the conventions of neoclassical economics), nor "concepts" or conceptual "determinations" (per those of Hegelian "philosophical science"), but rather the sheer givenness of economic phenomena or, more exactly, such economic phenomena as are proper to the sphere of commodity circulation. Clearly rejecting the attribution to him of a Hegelian procedure, Marx himself emphasizes this point in what is likely his most important ex post methodological reflection upon Capital, his 1879-80 "Marginal Notes on Adolph Wagner." "... I do not start out from 'concepts,'" Marx writes, "hence I do not start out from 'the concept of value,' and I do not have 'to divide' these in anyway. What I start out from is the simplest social form in which the labour-product is presented in contemporary society, and this is the commodity" (Marx, 1975, 198/MEW, Vol. 19, 368-9). In Capital itself, introducing his analysis of the so-called "value-form" and after having already provided a notably laconic demonstration of the so-called "substance" of value, Marx writes: "We in fact started out from exchange-value or the exchange-relation of commodities, in order then to arrive at the value hidden in it. We have now to return to this form of appearance of value (Marx, 1976, 139/MEW, Vol. 23, 62). Now, the most fundamental phenomena of commodity circulation, the general economic "form of appearance" of commodities as "exchange-values" in contrast to their particular material forms of existence as "use-values," are prices.
It must be said that Marx's presentation, by giving priority (both in the demonstration of the "substance" of value and the examination of its "form") to the so-called "elementary" value-relation, viz. the exchange-ratio obtaining between two particular sorts of commodity, obscures the fact that prices represent the phenomenal domain of his analysis. Exchange-ratios are not typically observable as such in a system of commodity exchange (since it is in any case a defining feature of such a system that goods do not exchange directly), but are always deducible from commodity-prices, which latter are, in effect, the "raw data" of economic experience. Nonetheless, as Marx's analysis progresses it becomes increasingly evident that the "value-form" of any particular sort of commodity is nothing other than its price, viz. its value as embodied in so many units of money. [18] With regard to this phenomenal domain, I want to suggest that what Marx investigates in chapter 1 of Capital is, in effect, the "conditions of possibility" of the same: what we could call, following Kant, the "conditions of possibility of economic experience in general." It needs to be stressed, however, that these conditions of possibility of economic experience are at once conditions of possibility of the social practice which gives rise to the specific object of economic experience. This practice is, namely, commodity-exchange itself.
A first such condition of possibility of economic experience is that there be a uniform medium in which the relative values of commodities can gain expression and indeed existence. The real separability of the value of commodities from their particular physical incarnations as "use-values" is a necessary condition for their exchangeability; inasmuch as this practical condition for the exchangeability of commodities is fulfilled, so too is the epistemological condition for the expression of commodity-prices likewise fulfilled. The real "form of value" which discharges both functions, the existent "universality" of commodities as exchange-values, is, namely and as we have seen, money. Apart from money, prices could be neither determined nor paid and all more specific value-phenomena (wages, profit, interest, rent, etc.) would likewise lack the very medium of their existence. Money is, then, to paraphrase Marx, the "sensate-suprasensate" "matter" of economic experience in general and it is the primary task of Marx's so-called "value theory" to demonstrate its necessity (viz. both for the functioning of an exchange system and for the "perception" of market phenomena) and to clarify its nature. This task could be regarded as roughly analogous as concerns "economic experience" to that fulfilled by Kant's so-called "transcendental aesthetic," viz. the interpretation of space and time as a priori forms of intuition, with regard to sensible experience - though the analogy is indeed rough and much more would have to be said before we could properly assess its theoretical significance. Since, furthermore, even isolated and/or disorderly perceptions of value phenomena would be impossible were there not a "value-form," the clarification of this "value-form" ought in a strictly transcendental presentation on the Kantian pattern to precede any discussion of the so-called "substance" of value in the order of demonstration. That this is not the case in Marx's presentation of his value analysis, has, I suspect, contributed to the conventional misinterpretation of the latter as merely a theory of price determination: i.e., a theory which has as its objective the explanation of price quantities.
Marx's theory is not merely that. But as a theory of economic objectivity, it is of necessity also that. For just as it is not sufficient that sensibility yield intuitions in order for sensate experience to obtain, but rather these punctual intuitions must in addition be bound together by rules into a cohesive whole, so too in order for economic experience to obtain it is not sufficient that money provide the medium of existence of value-phenomena, but rather such phenomena - most fundamentally, prices - must exhibit a certain systematic interconnection and regularity. Indeed, since prices pertain to sorts of commodity and only to particular commodities inasmuch as they are specimens of such sorts, even the isolated "perception" of commodity prices strictly speaking presupposes the assumption of their regularity. In this sense, the examination of the "value-form" leads immanently to a consideration of what Marx somewhat infelicitously describes as the "substance" of value: or, in less metaphysical terms, examination of the issue of how the relative values of commodities are made commensurable (what Franz Petry called the "qualitative" value problem) leads immanently to a consideration of the issue of what regulates their relative values (what Petry called the "quantitative" value problem) (Petry, 1916). Or again: the clarification of the "extrinsic" measure of value, viz. money, requires us to seek an "intrinsic" measure of value which gains expression in the former, to seek, namely, the regulating principle of price quantities (cf. Rosenthal, 1998, ch.14, sec. 14.2).
The coherence of the price-system and the rule-governedness of changes in it are not only epistemological conditions of the possibility of economic experience, but simultaneously practical conditions for the stability of the system of exchange. Whereas it is the principle of causality that binds together sense-data into a cohesive whole, it is the so-called "law of value" that discharges the same function with regard to prices. This "law of value" is, in short, that commodities should tend to exchange in such proportions as require equal allocations of "social labor" to produce: or expressed, as indeed it ought to be, in relation to prices as indices of the exchangeability of commodities in general, that these should in the long run be regulated by the labor-time socially necessary for the production of the commodities to which they pertain. [19] What I am proposing here is that this law can be demonstrated transcendentally, in a manner analogous to Kant's transcendental demonstration of the principle of causality, inasmuch as were it not to apply the system of prices would become incoherent and the system of exchange would collapse. I will not attempt to rehearse this demonstration here. But partisans of the Marxian "theory of value" - viz. in the sense which this expression is typically given in contemporary economic debates - should take seriously the possibility of a transcendental proof of it. As Kant pointed out, only such claims as can be shown to hold a priori can be taken to hold necessarily and without exception. Attempts to defend Marx's theory on an empirical basis, however compelling the evidence offered, inevitably degrade the status of the "law of value" to that of a merely more or less plausible hypothesis Now, in conformity with the foregoing, when Marx comes in Capital I to treat the subject of capital, he again does so initially as just a given economic form, i.e., as just another phenomenon of the circulation sphere of commodities. In other words, Marx starts his analysis from the "form of appearance" of capital in the circulation sphere, from its, so to say, immediately perceptible aspect. This immediately perceptible aspect of capital is, namely, a positive monetary return upon investment and, supposing capitalist conditions of production in fact obtain and are not subject to any extraordinary disturbances, it is just there. It does not have to be "derived," as would, for instance, the "concept" of capital in a Hegelian exposition. Thus, in stark contrast to the tortuous "dialectical transition" from money to capital which Marx presents in the Grundrisse, he now introduces his discussion of capital with a simple observation. "The direct form of the circulation of commodities," he writes,
is C - M - C, the transformation of commodities into money and the reconversion of money into commodities: selling in order to buy. But alongside this form we find a second specifically different form: M - C - M, the transformation of money into commodities and the re-conversion of commodities back into money: buying in order to sell. (Marx, 1976, 247-8/MEW, Vol. 23, 162,)
Marx notes further that in order for this second form of circulation to have a rational content and for the social activity associated with it to have a comprehensible sense, the quantity of money representing its endpoint must typically be greater than that representing its point of departure. Otherwise, the circuit of money as capital, since money is by definition qualitatively homogenous, would be "pointless." So, this circuit must, more precisely, be represented as M - C – M’. [20] The phenomenal form of capital is, in short, profit, which, contrary to Marx's tentative remarks from the Grundrisse cited above, is not a price, but rather appears as the difference between the respective sums of two sets of prices: first those "cost-prices" incurred by a given economic agent, whether individual or corporate, and then those "sales-prices" charged by the same.
It will be recalled that in the Grundrisse, Marx attempted to derive the "necessity" of profit from a supposed contradiction between the "concept" of value or rather the "generality" of the latter as realized in the form of money and the "restricted particularity" of any given sum of money. Capital, as value imbued with the "drive" to overcome its quantitative limitation, was supposed, in effect, to represent the "sublation" of this contradiction. Far from attempting any similar "derivation" in Capital, it is precisely the prima facie inconsistency between the "law of value" and the datum of profit - profit is not "necessary," it is just empirically observable - to which Marx draws attention in order to motivate the investigation into the specific conditions of possibility of the latter. This is the very point of Marx's discussion of the so-called "Contradictions in the General Formula of Capital" and it requires an excess of "dialectical" sophistication to be able to miss this point.
If commodities should tend to exchange in such proportions as they represent equal values (the proportion in which different sorts of commodity represent equal values being indicated by their respective prices) and this is the "law" which governs the "direct form" of their circulation (C - M - C) , then how can it systematically be the case that a "surplus-value" appears in the inverse circulation (M - C - M) in which monetary quantities rather than goods constitute the extremes? Since, as noted, the "law of value" is a necessary condition for the stability of the exchange system as such, it cannot be suspended without entailing the disappearance of all value phenomena whatsoever. In shifting the focus of his analysis to the capitalist production process and, more precisely, the specific juridical conditions under which it occurs as determined by the capital/wage-labor contract, Marx's achievement is to expose those conditions which enable profit-making on the very basis of the consistent application of the "law of value."
Department of Philosophy
Colorado College
14 East Cache La Poudre Street
Colorado Springs, Co 80903
jrosenthal@cc.colorado.edu
