Automatic subject

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According to Karl Marx , in capitalism the value in the sphere of circulation is transformed into an automatic subject .

Term in Marx

In the chapter “ Transformation of money into capital” in his work Das Kapital , published in 1867, Marx explains the general formula of capital (M - W - M '). He uses the symbols “G” for money, “W” for goods and “-” for exchange. He thus notes the different forms of circulation of capital: on the one hand the commodity circulation C - M - W (hence a circulation of commodities oriented towards use values ), also called simple circulation , and on the other hand the money circulation (hence a circulation oriented towards the exchange value of goods) G - C - C (or C - C - C '; money - commodity - more money, since an exchange of equal amounts of money is pointless), also referred to as circulation for short . Marx writes:

“The independent forms, the forms of money which the value of commodities assumes in simple circulation, only mediate the exchange of commodities and disappear in the end result of the movement. In the C - C - C circulation, on the other hand, both commodities and money function only as different modes of existence of value itself, money as its general, commodity as its particular, so to speak only disguised mode of existence. He constantly passes from one form to the other without losing himself in this movement, and so transforms himself into an automatic subject . If one fixes the particular manifestations which the utilizing value alternately assumes in the cycle of its life, one obtains the explanations: capital is money, capital is commodity. In fact, however, value here becomes the subject of a process in which it changes its size under the constant change of the forms of money and commodity, repels itself as surplus value from itself as original value, and utilizes itself. Because the movement in which he adds surplus value is his own movement, his utilization, that is, self-utilization. It has received the occult quality of setting value because it is value. He throws alive young or at least lays golden eggs. "

- Karl Marx : Das Kapital, MEW vol. 23, p. 168 f. , Underlining added

In the following he characterizes the representation of capital in the sphere of circulation as "a processing, self-moving substance , for which commodity and money are both mere forms." It has been pointed out that Marx takes up the terms "subject" and "substance" here which Georg Friedrich Hegel also used.

Interpretations

Relationship to Hegel

According to Moishe Postone's reading , Marx proposes to understand his category of capital analogously to Hegel's concept of the objective “spirit”, i.e. as the regularity of social relationships that follow the dialectical basic law (self-becoming through becoming one another / alienation). From this it follows that social relations cannot be understood solely from the external phenomenon of class relations , but are based on the internal principle of their development. Marx assumes that Hegel understood the relationship between human relationships in society and an inner principle of development in a similar way.

See also "homology hypothesis"

Relationship to National Socialism

Heinz Langerhans (1904–1976), a friend of Karl Korsch and a temporary employee at the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research , assessed National Socialism in 1934 as a “unified state subject, capital”, which replaced the “automatic subject capital with the guaranteed state as a special organ”. Already in the crisis of the First World War , the preconditions for the crisis were set once again through the conversion of industry to war industry, and the destruction of unusable value became the object of production.

Under National Socialism, the state is no longer an ideal, but a real total capitalist:

“The state subject, capital, enforces a monopoly on class struggle. The smashing of all class organs of the workers is his first act. A ruthless social pacification action with the purpose of the 'organic' insertion of the capital part of wage labor into the new state is initiated. At the same time a generous reorganization of the capitalist class is being carried out (...). The state subject, capital, organizes the internal market, regulates - a national 'general cartel' - prices and at the same time intensifies international competition. (...). "

According to Langerhans, the development of industry and social pacification also represented armaments and war preparations.

Critical interpretations

Attempts by representatives of the critique of values ​​to understand capitalism adequately with the concept of the automatic subject have given rise to various controversies since 1990.

The Nuremberg Krisis Group regards value as an automatic subject, which expands more and more in spurts and finally disappears:

“Value as the automatic subject can only exist by expanding its domain by transforming pre- and early capitalist material. For the time being, bourgeois society overcomes its internal contradictions by translating them into a movement of expansion that devours its own pre-forms. As soon as the bourgeois form is to continue to exist on its own, it is at an end, and all of its emanations give up one after the other. [...] The value as the secret automatic subject that has been discovered cannot be sung about apologetically, it only reveals itself in the analysis of its untenability. "

For the Freiburg Socialist Forum (ISF) initiative, capital is the automatic subject. It is the realization of God, therefore incomprehensible, and only to be criticized from outside. The "scandalous tip and the denunciative nerve of the criticism of political economy" exist:

“Nothing other than the fact that what centuries could only vaguely imagine under 'God' has become the law of motion of reality in the concept and matter of capital - the 'automatic subject'. Nobody has understood this carelessly used phrase. Least of all Marx as a Marxist, because it is in itself and objectively incomprehensible, is as objectively arational as it should be for a 'crazy form'. "

Critics of this interpretation argue, among other things. a. with the assertion of the social existence of capital as an automatic subject defending the primacy of the capital relation over the class relation, whereby Marxism becomes a constructive and objective theory and loses its "revolutionary reason". Representatives of the critique of value counter that, according to Marx, it is an illusion to believe that one can eliminate class relations without abolishing those basic categories of a capitalist society that legally lead to class rule, i.e. the production of value and commodities. "It is a pious as well as a stupid wish that exchange value does not develop into capital or that labor which produces exchange value becomes wage labor." (Marx, Grundrisse zur Critique of Political Economy, MEW 42,189).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Karl Marx: Das Kapital , Vol. I, MEW Vol. 23, pp. 161-170
  2. ↑ Note: Probably an allusion to Aristotle , who justified his rejection of interest with the saying "Money doesn't throw a boy" .
  3. ↑ Karl Marx: Das Kapital , MEW Vol. 23, p. 169, underlining added
  4. ^ Moishe Postone: Time, Labor, and Social Domination (1996), pp. 75-76.
  5. ↑ Heinz Langerhans: The next world crisis, the second world war and the world revolution , in: Karl Korsch: Schriften 1928-1935, complete edition vol. 5 , Amsterdam 1996, p. 768-776, quotations from: Gerhard Scheit : Totalitarian state and crisis of Capital , trend-online 3 2001
  6. ^ Ernst Lohoff: The inflation of the crisis. From the immanent cycle to the decomposition of the capitalist structure  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Crisis 8-9 , 1990@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.balzix.de  
  7. ^ Initiative Socialist Forum: The theorist is value. An ideology-critical sketch of the value and crisis theory of the crisis group , Freiburg i.Br. 2000, page 21 quoted from: Jürgen Behre, Nadja Rakowitz: Automatisches Subject? (2001)
  8. ↑ Jürgen Behre, Nadja Rakowitz: Automatic Subject? (2001)

literature

  • Moishe Postone : Time, Labor, and Social Domination: A Reinterpretation of Marx's Critical Theory , Cambridge University Press, 1996, ISBN 0-5215-6540-5 , in particular section Labor and totality: Hegel and Marx , page 71 ff.
  • Hans-Georg Bensch, Frank Kuhne (ed.): The automatic subject in Marx , Social Science Institute Hannover, Lüneburg 1998, ISBN 3-9242-4567-3

Web links