The Hidden Abode of Materialist Production
In Transcritique, Karatani invokes Volume III of Marx’s Capital to point out that in everyday life within capitalist society, economic activity appears to be simply about profit (price of was is produced minus cost price). He goes on to say that “[t]hus the insistence of neoclassical economists that the concepts of value and surplus value are false is in total accord with the everyday consciousness of the agents.” (TC p. 242)
Kanishka Goonewardena, in a piece analysing Karatani’s The Structure of World History, quotes a passage from Volume I of Capital, where Marx speaks of the “hidden abode of production” which many do not know about, given the “noisy sphere” of “the market or the sphere of circulation.” This clamorous market is where most people live in their “everyday consciousness.”
It strikes me that this move of positing and then examining a “hidden abode” can be applied to the materialist universe, which is indeed a “noisy sphere” which is often the sum total of one’s everyday consciousness. What is the obscured space where the spiritual underpinnings of materialist life are quietly produced and reproduced? Theological reflection can be of some help here, but ultimately such an investigation can best be carried out at the level of -- to quote the 12-step writer Thomas E. Powers -- a “great experiment” which explores “the possibility that God can be known.” Mainstream religious practice can certainly be of help here, but only, I think, if it is accompanied by an experience of the heart.









