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GRUNDRISSE, CAPITAL, AND MArXIST SCHOLArSHIP

In a recent issue of Science & Society, Spyros Lapatsioras and John Milios set out to compare the theory of money presented in Marxs Capital I (1867) with some of the same authors remarks on the subject in his Grundrisse (1857) (cf. Lapatsioras and Milios, 2012).

The authors start out from roman rosdolskys Zur Entstehungsgeschichte des Marxschen Kapital (rosdolsky, 1969). rosdolsky launched a criticism of the Grundrisse draft The Chapter on Money (cf. Marx 1953, 34148; 1993, 113238). His main objection was directed against a thesis of Marxs, ac-cording to which exchange value can be turned into a separate commodity only because a specific commodity obtains the privilege of representing, symbolizing, the exchange value of all other commodities, i.e., of becoming money (1953, 84; 1993, 167).

rosdolsky suggested that there lay an error in the identification of the concepts symbolizing and representing (1969, 143, note). Furthermore, he thought that Marx was here identifying money in general with a symbol. For rosdolsky, as later for Milios/Lapatsioras, there is a contradiction between the money theory of Grundrisse and the one in Capital.

Now, the theory of money offered in Capital is of course to be found in the third chapter, Money, or the Circulation of Commodities. In this circulation, the gold commodity serves as a basis for an imagining of quantities (of gold) (Marx, 1969a, 110111; 1976, 189190). For in its function as a measure of value, and a fortiori as a numraire, it is not required that it be present: the price of a commodity is a result of its being measured in imagined gold. Its relative price stands forward in the moment it is conceived as a quantity of metal on

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the gold rod, while the latter functions as a standard (numraire) of prices for every commodity other than the gold itself. Coins, and even paper money, are derivate forms of this numraire. It is clear that, as such, these forms have the privilege of representing or symbolizing the gold commodity. Marx, in both Capital and Grundrisse, consequently calls them Wertzeichen or simply Zeichen, most often rendered symbol in English translations.

This view of circulation was present already in the Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy (1859), published just a year after Marx ended working on the Grundrisse. As is made clear in all relevant works by Marx (in this respect, it is sufficient to consult rosdolskys text) the said imaginative act does not in the least contradict the necessity of gold money. On the contrary, the latter is necessary as a basis for that imaginative process.1

Now, does anything prevent us from saying that the sentences criticized by rosdolsky are reflecting precisely this constellation of circulation? Nothing at all, since that would just mean that Marx is pointing out that as soon as money is constituted, it will and must be in adequate shape to be represented, or symbolized, through signs.

rosdolskys error, then, was to take it for granted that Marx is thematizing the immediate exchange of products and its undoubted relevance for the genesis of money, while he more likely is describing circulation, and the duality of the commodity on the level of its manifestation as a material product pure and simple, furnished with a price label (another sign). Furthermore, the error was to presuppose that the Grundrisse Chapter on Money is built up in a systematic way, proceeding in orderly fashion from elementary notions. It is evident that it does not, since the manuscript starts with the notes Marx took of the book De la rforme des banques, published by the Proudhonist Al-fred Darimonin 1856. The chapter begins in medias res, and that goes even for its content, for Marx begins with a polemic against Proudhons idea of replacing money with time bills (Stundenzettel), that is, a constellation fo-cusing (according to Proudhon) on circulation, not on immediate exchange.

Now, rosdolsky also tried to strengthen his viewpoint by arguing that Marx, as a consequence of his relationship with Hegel, originally had been inclined to regard money as a mere symbol, just as . . . Hegels pupil Lassalle (1969, 142). He added that Marx had been reading Lassalles book on

1 The same point is consciously made in Marx, 1953, 106 and 121seq; 1993, 191, 207; cf. also 1953, 676, probably invalidating the thesis that there is to be found a symbol theory in Grundrisse. Marxs expression is vorgestelltes oder ideelles Gold. Thus, it should be added here that when Lapatsioras and Milios propose to translate Marxs Vorstellung, as it is used in the Grundrisse on parallel occasions, with the term notion, it looks odd indeed. Actually, Marxs Vorstellung here stands in a close connection with its provenance from the theory of imagination in bourgeois philosophy from Descartes to Hegel. See Sandemose, 2010, 295, note, for the connection of this theory with the concept of imagination in post-renaissance bourgeois philosophy.

GRUNDRISSE, CAPITAL, AND MArXIST SCHOLArSHIP 563

Heraclitus, published in 1858 (where of course, the author reflects on that philosophers fragments on money, or gold), substantiating this through a reference to Marxs letter to Engels of January 2, 1858, where he informs him about Lassalles book. That is virtually all.

rosdolsky abstained from mentioning data that must weaken such a theory, i.a. the fact that Marxs letter to Engels contains a virtual slaughter of Lassalles presuppositions in the book:

He is going to learn to his detriment that it is quite another matter first to bring a science, through criticism, forward to the point where it can be expressed dialecti-cally, than employing an abstract, ready-made logical system based on vague notions of precisely such a system. (Marx, 1858.)

Furthermore, at the time Lassalle started working on his Heraklit, Marx had remarked on his work that

the ideologism is thoroughgoing, and the dialectic method is wrongly understood. Hegel never gave the name of dialectics to the subsumption of a mass of cases under a general principle. (Marx, 1857.)2

Now, as regards methodology, Lapatsioras and Milios are up to the same trouble as rosdolsky. Their evaluation of the Grundrisse text is summed up in this way (522), through a presentation of a quote from Marx:

In the Grundrisse, money is presented as an outcome of the necessarily dual existence of the commodity: the commodity achieves a double existence, not only a natural but also a purely economic existence, in which the latter is a mere symbol, a cipher [Buchstabe/Zeichen] for a relation of production, a mere symbol for its own value. (Marx, 1993, 141.)

However, as we saw, there is no clear indication that this is meant as a de-scription of an actual genesis of money. That the authors impermissibly ignore this might well lead them to overlook alternative solutions. Actually, as regards the relevant texts of Capital I, they say that they do not want to include as a part of the theoretical production of the money form the third

2 Marxs attitude to Lassalles dialectics is clearly of interest to readers of another article in the same issue of Science & Society, namely Carchedi (2012) where what the author calls dialectical logic is applied to the world in exactly the way that Marx exposes to criticism in his letters. Carchedi takes (not unlike Stalin, in the herostratic pamphlet Historical and Dialectical Materialism from 1938) a set of abstract principles given from nowhere such as social phenomena are subject to constant movement and change (547) indicating temporality, in the form of succession, and then unscrupulously applies them to concrete social settings, without the slightest empirical evidence. See Sandemose, 2010, passim.


chapter of that book (525). This is an extraordinary premise. For the title of Chapter 3 indicates precisely that the genesis of money as money is at stake. All parts of it are indispensable when it comes to understanding the presuppositions of money.

And indeed, despite their hesitation as regards taking commodity circu-lation into consideration, the authors soon introduce its terms and symbols, de facto treating it as an important part of their theme. Considering (appar-ently) its form MCM, that is, moneycommoditymoney, they write that

money is the body that the specific MC ordering is entifying, position M being the place of appearance of the value and C being the possible use value of M. In this analysis M has the function of [re]presenting value and appearance, measuring its [which?] value and at the same time acting as a general equivalent (a special use value to be exchanged directly with every other commmodity). (527528.)3

Now, this implies that Lapatsioras and Milios confuse essential determina-tions in Marxs theory of value. It might seem, also, that this confusion in-directly leads them to postulate the artificial contradiction between Capital and Grundrisse.

In circulation, the gold commodity plays its role because it is the gen-eral equivalent, but it is not functioning as such. It is certainly not being exchanged directly against any other commodity. Such a thing could not possibly be the case, since its very presence here confines it to its function as a measure of value (and its sequels). That is precisely what we saw above: commodities are measuring their values in gold taken ideally. Already in the Contribution, Marx pointed out that

nothing can be more erroneous than the view that gold and commodity inside the process of circulation pass into the relation of immediate exchange (Tauschhandel) and consequently that their relative value is shown through their exchange (Austausch) as simple commodities. (Marx, 1972, 72; italics in the original.)

One will have to ask Lapatsioras and Milios how they figure that circulation of commodities diverges from their direct exchange. If circulation can be described as the latter, then its very concept, and the new set of functions performed by the gold commodity, evaporate.

However, it gives comfort to see that the authors nonetheless underscore (cf. 529, note) Marxs formulation of the end result of the analysis in the first chapter of the first edition of Capital I:

3 According to Marx, the form MCM is present in commodity circulation, but in a hidden manner. He describes it as the genesis of the general formula of capital, in the beginning of the fourth chapter.


If therefore each commodity opposes its own natural form to all other commodities as the general equivalent form, all commodities exclude all others from the general equivalent form, and therefore exclude themselves from the socially valid presenta-tion of their value magnitudes. (Cf. Marx, 1966, 240.)

As the authors seem to realize, this contradiction belongs to the inner struc-ture of the commodity itself, and is by Marx duly located in a special, terminat-ing value form Form IV. but its significance is by no means only to point out the necessity for the commodity-owners to select a special commodity as a universal equivalent, a social process that is then described in Chapter 2 of Capital I (correctly reported by Lapatsioras and Milios). What the authors seem to overlook is that Marx is showing that when the selection is necessary, it is because the structure of exchange as a whole is collapsing. That is to say, he shows that value expressions, like x commodity A = y commodity b, or any of the exchange expressions that he develops from this form, cannot include a socially valid presentation of . . . value magnitudes of commodities.

Now, if no such expression can keep a social structure going, one has to find the basis of that structure in another kind of expression altogether, and this is commodity circulation.4 Contrary to this, bourgeois economics postulates the universal, immediate social relevance of simple exchange forms. To the extent that mainstream economists preoccupy themselves with a study of circulation proper, they contend that circulation is a kind of exchange, so that commodities are exchanged against money, thought of as acting as a universal equivalent, which then again is thought to exchange against any other commodity. This is their version of Marxs CMC, or CommodityMoneyCommodity. This mainstream has been joined by theorists interested in Marxian economy, whose presentation of the first three chapters of Capital has consequently been prob-lematic for a serious approach to Marxs system in general. Where Marx sees the value expressions ending in an aporia, the theorists in question overlook the critical point and push the aporetic constellation further on towards a breakdown of the credibility of the Marxian system. A critical example is the transformation problem, i.e., L. v. bortkiewiczs contention ( la ricardo) that the capitalist production structure (implying differences in organic com-position of capitals) makes relative prices of commodities dependent on the

4 This is probably the main reason why the extended value-form in Marx has the structure of a disjunctive judgment (xA = yb or = mC or = vD or = wE, etc.). Marx is on this occasion indirectly confirming that he builds on the Hegelian view of the relation between judg-ments (basic value-forms) and syllogism (circulation) (cf. 1966, 231). However, he is also transcending Hegels method, since (in Form IV) he is taking each joint in the predicate of the disjunction, and turning them into a subject in further disjunctive judgments. Through this, he de facto constructs the category of the Individual, which in this case is the special commodity able to be both a true universal equivalent, a means of circulation, and also both measure of value and numraire (cf., i.a., Sandemose, 2001; 2010).


composition in gold production, that is, of the actual, ever-changing price of gold, with the consequence that in his view nothing seriously prevents a breakdown of Marxs thesis of a quantitative identity between a) total prices and total values, and b) total surplus value and total profits.

These prejudices are fully accepted not only by faithful followers of bortkiewicz, but also by adherents of the so-called new solution to the transformation problem, and of the TSS school of Marx-based writers, to use David Laibmans expression in this same issue of Science & Society (427). Actually, this confusion is a main reason for extant anarchic theories (e.g., Negri et al.) about the alleged impossibility of determining levels of values and prices in the modern world.5

Any thesis like the bortkiewiczean, however, turns out to be obsolete as soon as one accepts that gold money functions as a means for circulating commodities, and not for their direct exchange.

Say that a commodity owner (or any buyer) wants xA or yb. He can then spend, say, z gold, or a derivation of it in the form of coins or paper bills, and get what he wants. The buyer in question is using circulating gold (or the symbol for it) to acquire A or b, or both, because they both have a price, which is nothing other than an ideal picture of their worth. Of course, the actual quantity of gold is in each case determined by socially necessary conditions, continuously varying over time. The stipulation of their price z, though, being made in ideal gold, is apriori to each act of circulation, or is so to speak the commodities entrance ticket to the market. That is why a changed price of gold does not affect the valueprice transformation of commodities and, consequently, their relative prices, the relation between total values and prices, and total surplus value and total profit.

5 Laibman points to a critical instance of such thinking, incarnated in Yanis Varoufakis Modern Political Economics. Against extant forms of such views, included Carchedis and the TSSs, Laibman insists on the viability of a system whose quantitative dimension will appear as a set of equations with determinate solutions, or equilibria (Laibman, 428). It is surprising that Laibman takes this stance. He is known as an ardent defender of the bortkiewiczian correction of Marx. but in the set of equations that follows from the correction, there is bound to be indeterminacy, as the debate on the Sraffa system has shown (cf. also Sande-mose, 1976, chs. 3 and 4). (Unless, of course, one will fix an exogenous variable, a will-o-the-wisp which Laibman refuses to consider.) This is a necessary consequence of a theory that measures changing wages, profits and relative commodity prices through a medium that itself is changed by the same mechanism. Indeed, since the TSS/Carchedi theory is subject to the bortkiewiczian illusion, it would stand to reason that it accepted the thesis that there is a contradiction in Marxs transformation procedure. Instead, its proponents have constructed a fanciful, untenable and never substantiated theory to the effect that Marxs transformation is not meant to be compatible with equilibrium. but indeed it is; since the price of gold cannot change in relation to measuring of values (something which is clear already from Chapter 3 of Capital), there was never any contradiction in Marxs procedure. One can easily see what is the motive force of Carchedis dogma of all-pervading change in temporal succession (where he conveniently forgets that simultaneity is just as much a mode of time as is succession).


As far as Marx is concerned there is no doubt regarding his point of view: . . . a change in the value of gold does not, in any way, affect its func-tion as a standard of price (Marx, 1969a, 113). And Marx explicitly criticizes ricardos theory of exchange and of the relation between prices and the organic composition in the gold industry by refuting ricardos false presup-position that money, inasmuch as it serves as means of circulation, is exchanged as commodity against commodity. [On the contrary:] The commodities are evaluated in it before they circulate (Marx, 1969b, 198).

As long as Lapatsioras and Milios insist on the contrary view, they are joining the horde of theorists flocking around a transformation fetish, replacing the Marxian theory of value with a classical bourgeois one, con-tributing to the maybe most embarrassing howler ever seen in Marx-related scholarship.

All in all, we Marxisant authors, including those of us who might wish to be Marxists, should take stock, and seriously consider whether our general insight into the themes in question is not too loose. When it comes to the corpus of a revolutionary thinker of Marxs caliber, it is all too easy to be led astray by class prejudice, even of the most unconscious kind.

Jrgen Sandemose

University of OsloIFIKK (Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Arts and Ideas)PO Box 1020 BlindernN-0315 Oslo, [email protected]

rEFErENCES

Carchedi, Guglielmo. 2012. Mathematics and Dialectics in Marx. Science & Society, 76:4 (October), 546549.

Laibman, David. 2012. Editorial Perspectives. Science & Society, 76:4 (October), 425429.

Lapatsioras, Spyros, and John Milios. 2012. The Notion of Money from the Grundrisse to Capital. Science & Society, 76:4 (October), 521545.

Marx, Karl. 1857. Letter to Engels of November 13. P. 207 in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Werke, Vol. 29.

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Germany: Europische Verlagsanstalt.Sandemose, Jrgen. 1976. Ricardo, Marx og Sraffa. Kritikk av den nyricardianske retningen

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