Dialectical representation method

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As dialectic representation or dialectic display method describes a specific manner, according to the Karl Marx in the "principal" has thus explained following the subject matter capitalist production, a certain order. According to this method, Marx begins with a certain abstract starting point, the commodity . “The wealth of the societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails appears as an 'enormous collection of goods', the individual goods as its elementary form. Our investigation therefore begins with the analysis of the commodity. ”By abstract , it means that the commodity is initially considered as a starting point without any connection with the concrete whole, the capitalist mode of production as a whole. It is still seen as abstracted from the totality of the object of investigation, the totality .

Marx therefore considers the commodity and its properties. He comes across questions or contradictions . So the commodity has a use value and an exchange value . What is the relationship between these two values ​​(see also classic value paradox )? By giving the simplest possible answer to these questions, new, more concrete terms are introduced. In this way Marx progresses from commodities to money , that use-value in which all commodities express their exchange value. In the consideration, the exchange of goods C - C (goods for goods) is expanded to the money economy C - G - W (goods for money, money for goods).

With money there are further questions or contradictions connected, so that further terms, extensions and concretizations have to be introduced. In principle, the circulation form G - W - G (money buys goods, goods are then sold for money) is also possible. This form doesn't make sense, however, because the end G is the same as the beginning G, unless G has increased in the meantime: G - W - G '. This is the capital formula, capital as a new concept has been introduced.

The question now arises where the increase in the value of capital can come from if only goods of the same value are exchanged. Why is the value of the goods that the capitalists buy lower than the value of the goods that the capitalists sell? This question is answered by wage labor - the next term. The value of labor-power is equal to the value of the commodities which the workers need for their reproduction. But this value is less than the value of the goods the workers manufacture. The added value is created in the production process .

With a certain compelling logic, a systematic sequence of more and more developed, more concrete terms results, until finally the capitalist mode of production is represented as a totality with all its components and interrelationships, whereby due to this dialectical method of representation, the inner logic of the capitalist mode of production, the meaning of the respective moments within the capitalist mode of production, has become visible. It has been worked out how capital as a system creates its own prerequisites for itself, for example the “free” wage worker on one pole and the capitalist class as the owner of the means of production on the other.

For example, money is not just a "smart" tool to be able to cope with the exchange of goods more easily, but arises dialectically from the question of how the value of the goods should be expressed as exchange value, where the "true" value of the goods in one Society of independent private producers is unknown.

In the end, the commodity turns out to be the characteristic product of capital, so that the starting point of the dialectical representation, the commodity, ultimately turns out to be correctly chosen.

Within the dialectic of Marx and Engels , the "dialectical representation" as a method must be distinguished from an ontological conception of dialectic .

Empirical Study

Empirical investigations must precede or supplement the dialectical presentation. The most important components and relationships of the capitalist mode of production must first be known before one can think of their dialectical representation. It is also necessary to check how things actually behave in the transitions to higher levels of representation, or how necessary prerequisites have historically developed.

The starting point of Marx's dialectical representation, the commodity, is also empirically secured, because in fact today's mode of production, in contrast to earlier modes of production, is characterized by the predominance of the commodity as a product.

Hegel

The first application of the dialectical method of representation is Hegel's science of logic . There Hegel deals with various logical concepts. If a single logical term is subject to a " contradiction ", it must be supplemented or expanded by further terms (" cancellation "). For example, the concept of being as such, without any further determinations, differs in no way from “nothing”, its opposite, according to Hegel. The concept of being is transformed under the hand into its opposite, nothing, it has changed, it has "become". This brings the new term “becoming” into the presentation. The being that has become, the determinate being, is Dasein, with new contradictions, so that the dialectical method continues on and on until finally a self-contained overall system, a totality , has been reached. This totality then in turn establishes the chosen starting point in retrospect.

example

In Das Kapital, Marx encounters the contradiction that on the one hand the values ​​of commodities are determined according to the labor value theory, on the other hand it is to be expected that the same rate of profit will have to set in in all branches, since no capitalist will invest in a branch where the rate of profit is is lower. Both assumptions contradict each other, since if the labor value theory is applied more precisely in industries with comparatively little labor input, comparatively less added value arises, and thus the rate of profit would be lower there. Marx does not see the labor value theory simply as refuted, but he assumes a redistribution of surplus value between the branches in such a way that the same general rate of profit develops in all branches . Because capital moves from industries with a low rate of profit to industries with a high rate of profit, the price in the former rises above the labor value and vice versa in the latter. This process continues until a uniform general rate of profit has developed.

The prices of goods are no longer determined directly according to the labor value theory, but are determined as so-called production prices in such a way that the same rate of profit prevails in all branches of industry. The overall economic total of the added value has not changed, however, the added value has only been redistributed between the industries in such a way that production prices have resulted. The labor value theory is not refuted, but " canceled ".

Question of the starting point

The starting point, with Marx the commodity , is to be chosen in such a way that its dialectical further development actually leads to an overall representation of the capitalist mode of production. Other authors have chosen different starting points. Geert Reuten and Michael Williams, like Hegel, start from being / nothing and, after a few further intermediate steps, finally arrive at the form of value and the exchange relationship, i.e. at or near Marx's starting point, goods.

Question of the systematic order

When it comes to the question of which systematic order is the right one for dialectical presentation, some authors come to different conclusions from Marx. According to Christopher Arthur , labor value theory should not be introduced at the level of the commodity , as it was with Marx , but only at the level of capital when the question arises of how the increase in capital G-G 'can take place.

Homology hypothesis

Some authors see an isomorphism or homology between Marx's Capital and Hegel's Science of Logic . Thus, by Christopher J. Arthur parallels drawn between Hegel's being - being - term and Marx's commodity - money - capital. Viewed in this way, the dialectical method of representation in Das Kapital would not simply be an application or further development of a Hegelian method, but the entire Hegelian philosophy reflects the inner logic of capital or of bourgeois society, admittedly from a bourgeois point of view.

Criticism of capitalism

While in Hegel the dialectical representation is supposed to provide a logically closed foundation and also justification of bourgeois society, in Marx the dialectical representation is supposed to show breaks in the capitalist building. Thus capital depends on the workers, from whom surplus-value is to be squeezed, as a prerequisite, which includes the possibility of the abolition of capitalism by the working class . In addition, through the increasing organic composition of capital , the source of surplus value is increasingly being displaced by constant capital in accordance with the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall . The material side, the use value side, does not fit completely into the logic of capital, so that crises regularly occur.

criticism

Marx himself warns in the floor plans in the section “The Method of Political Economy” against an idealistic interpretation of the dialectical method of representation: “Hegel therefore fell into the illusion that the real is the result of that which is summarized, deepened and moved by itself Thinking, while the method of ascending from the abstract to the concrete is only the way for thinking to appropriate the concrete, to reproduce it as a spiritual concrete. But by no means the process of creation of the concrete itself. ”The dialectical method of representation should not reflect the actual process of creation, but systematically work out the inner connections.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Capital , First Book, First Section, First Chapter, First Sentence. MEW 23, p. 49.
  2. ↑ [1] On the Critique of Political Economy, First Book, Vom Kapital, Section I, Capital in General, First Chapter, The Goods, MEW 13, p. 36
  3. ↑ Cf. Michael Heinrich : The science of value. The Marxian Critique of Political Economy between Scientific Revolution and Classical Tradition . Westphalian steam boat , Münster 2003, ISBN 3-89691-454-5 , p. 164 f .
  4. ↑ Reuten and Williams (1989), pp. 19 and 53ff.
  5. ↑ Christopher J. Arthur (1993), p. 85, (2002), p. 79.
  6. ↑ See e.g. B. Christopher J. Arthur 2002, chapter 5, "Marx's 'Capital' and Hegel's 'Logic'"
  7. ↑ "Hegel's supposedly universal logic is also the specific logic of capital." (In German: Hegel's supposedly universal logic is also the special logic of capital.), Christopher J. Arthur (1993), p. 86
  8. ↑ See e.g. B. Hiroshi Uchida, Marx's Grundrisse and Hegel's Logic . Edited by Terrell Carver. London, New York 1988 ISBN 0-415-00385-7
  9. ^ "Floor plans", MEW 42, p. 35.
  10. ↑ On the criticism of the 'New Dialectic', as the systematic presentation is also called in English, cf. Alex Callinicos (2005).

literature

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