Critical Theory, Philosophy, and History

Congrès Marx International V - Section Philosophie –Capital – Paris-Sorbonne et Nanterre – 3/6 octobre 2007

Critical Theory, Philosophy, and History

Moishe Postone

Paris, Oct. 5, 2007

As is well-known, Marx concludes his Theses on Feuerbach in 1845 with the statement that “philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.”[1] This famous eleventh thesis raises the issue of the relation of philosophy to society and, hence, the relation of philosophy and social theory. This problematic is central to the Theses on Feuerbach, which begin by opposing materialism and idealism. Whereas materialism, according to Marx, conceives of reality only in the form of the object, idealism grasps the active, subjective dimension, but does so in a manner abstracted from sensuous activity.[2] Marx does not take the side of materialism here, but regards the opposition of materialism and idealism as expressing a subjective/objective dualism that has characterized modern Western philosophy. Marx’s aim is to overcome the dualism itself – which he claims can only be accomplished by an approach centered on sensuous human praxis.

In so arguing, Marx is not simply calling for a better philosophical understanding of the world. His statement that “Feuerbach…does not see…that the abstract individual which he analyzes belongs to a particular form of society”[3] implies that the object of thought must be understood as historically and socially determinate.

Moreover – and this is even more fundamental – not only the object of thought, but thought itself must be grasped with reference to its context. Consequently, Marx criticizes “the materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstances and upbringing” not only for forgetting the active dimension – “that it is men who change circumstances” – but also the reflexive dimension – “that the educator must himself be educated.” The result is that materialist doctrine ends up dividing “society into two parts, one of which is superior to society.”[4] This critique can be read not only as one of avant-gardist conceptions of politics, but also of any understanding of theory that, explicitly or implicitly, posits a decontextualized theorist, hovering above and outside of all determinate contexts as an omniscient spirit.

Overcoming the classical subject/object dualism endemic to modern Western philosophy, then, requires a form of thought that grasps philosophical problems with reference to their determinate social/historical context. In other words, the approach Marx outlines in the Theses on Feuerbach, although still underdetermined, regards critical social theory as the adequate supersession of philosophy.

This general point emerges more clearly in the German Ideology. In that manuscript, Marx famously argues that, contrary to the idealism of the Young Hegelians, “[i]t is not consciousness that determines life, but life that determines consciousness.”[5] Nevertheless, Marx does not simply argue that the Young Hegelians have made a conceptual error. Instead he claims that their idealist understanding – that consciousness determines life – must itself be understood with reference to its context: “If in all ideology men and their relations appear upside-down as in a camera obscure, this phenomenon arises…from their historical life process...”[6]

One task of critical theory, then, is to show that determinate forms of thought are forms of misrecognition by elucidating their conditions of possibility with reference to their context. This critique, however, is not and cannot be undertaken from a standpoint that claims transhistorical validity. Within the framework of this approach, no theory, including Marx’s, has such validity.

This critique of any conception of transhistorically valid truth, does not, however, necessarily imply a radical relativism that ultimately is self-undermining. A theory can show itself to be both a rigorous theory of its context and historically specific if it reflexively can account for its own conditions of possibility by means of the same categories with which it grasps that object, i.e., its own context. In this way, it can get beyond the opposition of universal decontextualized truth and relativism.

In the German Ideology, this approach is still largely programmatic. Marx only begins to work out the relationship between society and thought. So, for example, in discussing idealism, he relates its condition of possibility in very general terms to the division of mental and manual labor.[7] He also very generally relates the possibility of social critique to the contradictory character of society, arguing that “if…theory…comes into contradiction with the existing relations, this can only occur because existing social relations have come into contradiction with existing productive forces.”[8]

Although the notion of contradiction is not well developed here, it should be clear that it is crucial to the self-reflexive character of the critique. It grounds the possibility both of social critique as well as of historical transformation. Its significance in Marx’s work cannot adequately be grasped objectivistically, in terms of the problematic of economic crises, or subjectivistically, simply in terms of social antagonism.

It is in the Grundrisse and Capital that Marx provides a firm foundation for a historical/social analysis of forms of thought, consciousness, and subjectivity – that is, for a critical social theory capable of superseding philosophical thought by convincingly mediating it and its historical context. He does so by developing a conception of historically specific social forms.

The Grundrisse, a massive preparatory study for Capital, helps illuminate Marx’s critique of capitalist modernity. Capital is more difficult to decipher inasmuch as it is very tightly structured as a critique undertaken from a standpoint immanent to its object of investigation. For this reason, its critical categories can be misunderstood as affirmative. Hence, all too frequently, what clearly, in light of the Grundrisse, is the object of Marx’s critique has been regarded as its standpoint – an issue to which I will return.

In a crucial section of the Grundrisse, titled “[the] method of political economy,”[9] Marx wrestles with the question of an adequate point of departure for his critical analysis. He makes clear that the categories of his analysis should not be understood in narrow economic terms. Rather, they “express the forms of being [Daseinsformen], the determinations of existence [Existenzbestimmungen]…of this specific society.”[10] As such, they are, at once, forms of subjectivity and objectivity; they express “what is given, in the head as well as in reality.”[11] That is, Marx’s categories grasp as intrinsically interrelated, economic, social, and cultural dimensions of capitalist modernity that frequently are treated as contingently related, as extrinsic to one another. This categorial approach also contravenes understandings of the relations of social objectivity and subjectivity in terms of a base/superstructure model.

Moreover, Marx makes very clear that the categories of his critique are historically specific. Even categories that appear to be transhistorical and that actually do play a role much earlier historically – such as money and labour – are fully developed and come into their own only in capitalist society.[12] As simple, abstract categories, according to Marx, they are as “modern…as are the relations which create this simple abstraction.”[13] That is, the abstract character of such categories is rooted in the abstract form of the social relations of capitalism. And it is precisely because of this abstract form that what is specific to capitalist society can appear to be transhistorical. In other words, Marx now intrinsically relates forms of thought, including forms of misrecognition, and forms of social relations.

Marx’s emphasis on the historical specificity of the object of investigation is intrinsically linked to the issue of the point of departure of his critical analysis. The historically specific character of the theory is not simply a matter of content, but also of form; its form should not contravene the historically specific character of the theory. The theory cannot present itself in a transhistorical form, for example, as a universally valid ‘method’ that simply can be applied to a variety of objects, to which it is related only contingently. Rather the historical specificity of the theory requires that the concept be the concept of its object.

The point of departure of the critical analysis, therefore, cannot be grounded in a Cartesian manner, as a deduction from purportedly indubitable, transhistorically valid, truths. Rather, the point of departure must be historically specific, the core of a historically determinate analysis of the historically specific formation that is its context. Rather than presenting the categories in the order in which they arose historically, critical analysis must begin with what is most essential to the determinate society it seeks to grasp.[14]

If Hegel, in The Science of Logic, was concerned with the problem of the point of departure for the exposition of a logic that doesn’t presuppose a logic, that is, a grounding outside of that which it seeks to demonstrate, Marx was concerned with the problem of a historically specific point of departure for a critical social theory that is rigorously immanent, that doesn’t ground itself outside of its object/context.

Such a point of departure can only be rendered plausible immanently – by the course of its unfolding, whereby each successive unfolded moment retroactively justifies that which preceded it. And, indeed, this how Capital is structured. The categories of the beginning – for example, commodity, value, use value, abstract labour, concrete labour – are only really justified by the subsequent unfolding of the analysis. What appears to be their transhistorical ‘grounding’ in the first chapter of Capital, in the form of a Cartesian deduction, should be understood with reference to the framework of Marx’s immanent mode of presentation, which does not take a standpoint extrinsic to its object. Understood in this way, what appears to be a transhistorical grounding (of value, for example) is the way in which the subjective/objective forms present themselves. It is a metacommentary on thought that remains bound within the limits of the structuring forms of modern, capitalist society.

The historical specificity of the categories of Marx’s critique also emerges clearly in another important section of the Grundrisse entitled “Contradiction between the foundation of bourgeois production (value as measure) and its development.”[15] There, Marx outlines what he regards as the essential core of capitalism and the fundamental contradiction that generates the historical possibility of a postcapitalist form of social life. The category of value expresses the social relations that most fundamentally characterize capitalism as a form of social life,according to Marx. At the same time, it expresses a determinate form of wealth. As a form of wealth, value generally has been understood of as a category of the market. Yet Marx’s characterization of value as “the foundation of bourgeois production” calls that into question and suggests it also should be understood as a category of capitalist production itself.

This implies that the process of production should be seen as intrinsically related to capitalism, and that Marx’s understanding of capitalism’s fundamental contradiction should not be thought of as one between industrial production, on the one hand, and the market and private property, on the other. This requires further examination.

Value as a social form, according to Marx, is constituted by the expenditure of direct human labour in the process of production, measured temporally. As a category of the fundamental social relations that constitute capitalism, it expresses that which is, and remains, the underlying foundation of capitalist production.[16] Yet production based on value generates a dynamic that gives rise to a growing tension between this foundation and the results of its own historical development. Marx argues that capitalism generates enormous, ongoing increases in productivity, as a result of which what he calls “real wealth” comes to depend less on labour time than on the general state of science and on the progress of technology. A huge gap emerges between direct human labour and the productive powers developed under capitalism.[17]

The contrast Marx draws between value and “real wealth” is one between a form of wealth based on labour time and one that does not depend on immediate labour time and can be generated by knowledge. It clearly indicates that value does not refer to social wealth in general, but is a historically specific form of wealth that is intrinsically related to a historically specific mode of production.

Many arguments regarding Marx's analysis of the uniqueness of labour as the source of value – supportive as well as critical – overlook his distinction between “real wealth” and value. The Grundrisse indicates, however, that Marx's “labour theory of value” is not a theory of the unique properties of labour in general, but an analysis of the historical specificity of value as a form of wealth and, hence, implicitly, of the labour that supposedly constitutes it. Consequently, it is irrelevant to argue for or against Marx’s theory of value as if it were intended to be a labour theory of (transhistorical) wealth – that is, as if Marx had written a critical political economy rather than a critique of political economy.

I am suggesting then, that value, for Marx, is a category that expresses the historical specificity of the form of wealth and of production characteristic of capitalism, and is not a normative category for judging capitalism. In the Grundrisse, Marx argues that, as the mode of production based on value develops, value becomes less and less adequate as a measure of social wealth; it becomes anachronistic in terms of the potential of the system of production to which it gives rise. The realization of that potential would entail the abolition of value.

This historical possibility is not simply quantitative – that ever

greater masses of goods could be produced on the basis of the existing process of production, and distributed more equitably. The logic of the growing contradiction between ‘real wealth’ and value also implies the possibility of a different process of production, one no longer based on direct human labour.[18]

This section of the Grundrisse makes abundantly clear that, for Marx, overcoming capitalism involves the abolition of value as the social form of wealth, which, in turn, entails overcoming the mode of producing developed under capitalism. It entails a fundamental transformation of the structure of social labour.

Yet, although the course of capitalist development generates the possibility of a new, liberating, structure of social labour, its general realisation is impossible under capitalism, according to Marx. Despite value’s growing inadequacy as a measure of social wealth produced, it is not simply superseded by a new form of wealth. Instead, according to Marx, it remains the necessary structural precondition of capitalist society.[19]This is the basis of capitalism’s fundamental contradiction.

These Grundrisse passages indicate that Marx’s notion of the structural contradiction in capitalism should not be identified immediately with social antagonism, such as class conflict, and does not refer most fundamentally to a contradiction between private appropriation and socialized production, since production itself is moulded by capitalist relations. Nevertheless, Marx's analysis locates a contradiction between the actuality of the form of production constituted by value, and its potential – a potential that grounds the possibility of a new form of production. Far from entailing the realization of the proletariat, overcoming capitalism would involve the material abolition of proletarian labour.

This section of the Grundrisse indicates, then, that Marx’s critical theory should be understood essentially as a critique oflabour in capitalism, rather than a critique of capitalism from the standpoint of labour (as in traditional Marxism). This has far-reaching implications for comprehending Capital.

At this point I can briefly outline a reading of Capital based on the considerations developed thus far. As is well known, Capital’s point of departure is the commodity. On the basis of the Grundrisse, it now is evident that the category of the commodity here does not refer to commodities as they might exist in many societies. Nor does it express a (fictitious) historical stage of ‘simple commodity production’ purportedly antecedent to capitalism. Rather, the category of the commodity here is historically specific. It designates the most fundamental social form of capitalist society, the form from which Marx then proceeded to unfold the essential features and dynamic quality of that society. The characteristics of that form – that it simultaneously is a value and a use value, for example – should also be understood as historically specific.[20]

The commodity form of social relations is constituted by labour, according to Marx. Hence it necessarily exists in objectified form. Marx’s conception of the historical specificity of labour in capitalism underlies this description. He maintains that labour in capitalism has a “double character”: it is both “concrete labour” and “abstract labour.”[21] “Concrete labour” refers to the fact that some form of what we consider labouring activities mediates the interaction of humans with nature in all societies. “Abstract labour,” however, does not simply refer to labour in general. Rather, it is a historically specific category signifying that labour in capitalism has a unique social function that is not intrinsic to labouring activity as such: it serves as a kind of quasi-objective means by which the products of others are acquired. As such a socially mediating activity, labour constitutes a new, quasi-objective, form of interdependence, where people’s labour or labour products function as quasi-objective means of obtaining the products of others. In serving as such mediations, labour and its products pre-empt that function on the part of manifest social relations.

Labour in capitalism not only mediates the interaction of humans and nature, then, but also constitutes a historically specific social mediation, according to Marx. Hence, its objectifications (commodity, capital) are both concrete labour products and objectified forms of social mediation. The social relations that most fundamentally characterize the capitalist form of social life are thus very different from the qualitatively heterogeneous and overtly social relations, such as kinship relations, which characterize other forms of social life. The fundamental forms of social relations constitutive of capitalism are peculiarly quasi-objective and formal, and are characterized by a dualistic opposition of an abstract, general, homogenous dimension, and a concrete, particular, material dimension (both of which appear to be natural, rather than social).

In Marx’s mature works, then, the notion of the essential centrality of labour to social life is historically specific. It should not be taken to mean that material production is the most essential dimension of social life in general, or even of capitalism in particular. Rather, it refers to the historically specific constitution by labour in capitalism of a form of mediation that fundamentally characterizes that society. Because this mediating activity is not a characteristic that is intrinsic to labouring activity, however, it does not – and cannot – appear as such. Instead, when the commodity is analyzed, its historically specific dimension, value, appears to be constituted by labour in general, without any further qualifications – the “expenditure of human brains, muscles, nerves, hands, etc.”[22]In other words, what is historically specific – the socially mediating function of labour in capitalism – appears as transhistorical, as socially ontological. This transhistorical form of appearance of labour’s historically unique socially constituting function in capitalism – whereby the concrete dimension expresses and veils the abstract dimension – is an initial determination of what Marx refers to as the fetish forms of capitalism. It underlies all approaches that transhistoricize the socially constituting role of labour in capitalism, whether affirmatively (as in classical political economy and traditional Marxism) or negatively (as in Dialectic of Enlightenment).