Grundrisse: Chapter on Capital: pp. 239-250; Reading Notes 9: Part I
1. Money is a social relation, appearing as metal, stone, etc. Gold/ silver as naturally occurring is not money. Nature doesn’t produce money, but money is directly gold/silver. In its third quality -- in its perfection -- the formal function of money as measure vanishes. But the fact that it is a result of a social process is not apparent. It is (just) money. And realizing money as social process is made more difficult by the fact that its use value serving the individual p. 239 is extinguished in being exchange value. And here all the contradictions of exchange value and of its corresponding social production emerge. Previously, we (Marx) criticized attempts to overcome these contradictions by depriving money of its metallic form and, instead, something posited by society and expressing a social relation in labor-money (time chit). This foolishness should be clear as exchange value remains the basis (of labor-money). As the opposition to the ruling relations of production are directed against money as it represents the most striking/ palpable contradictions, artful tinkering of money is supposed to overcome the contradictions of which money is only the appearance. As long as there is only an attack on money, the consequences; the causes of disturbances in the productive process remain unaffected. And those with power -- via means that are more or less violent -- can define these as passing disturbances.
2. To construct apologetics, money is presented in its simple form, disregarding it in its pure (third) form. In this way, the inherent contradictions of bourgeois society appear extinguished in the character of money. p. 240 To the extent commodities are just exchanged, individuals are just exchangers; this indicates the social function or relation between individuals. Each person is an exchanger and their relation is one of equality and the commodities they exchanged are equivalents -- barring error/ cheating. The pure form or economic side of this relation -- opposed to the content which falls outside economics as natural, but coinciding with it (use value) -- has three distinct moments: (1) exchangers; (2) objects of exchange/equivalents -- not only equivalents but supposed to be equal; (3) act of exchange: where exchangers are equals. The equivalents are the objectification of one subject for another are of equal worth but at the same time are mutually indifferent: i.e., subjects in exchange exist for one another through their equivalents of equal worth and thus exist for each other as equally worthy but also indifferent to each other, as whatever individual differences/peculiarities there are between them is not a concern. But now, re the content outside the act of exchange/ the economic form is (1) particularity of the commodity; (2) particular natural need of the exchangers/ use values of commodities exchanged. This content of exchange does not endanger the social equality of individuals but makes natural differences into their social equality. If individuals A and B both had the same needs and satisfied them in the same way, there would be no relation between them; considering production they would not be different individuals, like two people breathing the same air with no social contact. The difference between needs and production gives rise to exchange and the social equation where natural differences are the precondition of social equality in exchange. Re. the natural difference between them; A is owner of the use value for B and vice versa. Therefore, their natural difference puts them into a relation of equality.
3. However, in this relation they are not indifferent to each other, but integrate with one another as B, objectified in the commodity is a need of A and vice versa and stand not only as equals p. 242 but in a social relation. Moreover, the fact that each is satisfied by and produces the needs of others proves that they relate to each other as human beings / their common species-being. This does not occur among animals. The natural differences among individuals and their commodities (albeit products & labor are not different here but exist as commodities) are the motive for integration and their social integration as exchangers, where they are stipulated and proved to be equals. But in addition to this equality there is the character of freedom. While A has a need for B’s commodity, A does not appropriate it by force and vice versa. Instead, A and B recognize each other reciprocally as proprietors; persons whose will penetrates their commodities. Thus, the juridical moment of the Person (sic) enters as well as freedom. No one seizes another’s property by force; property is divested voluntarily. So too, A serves B via commodity a, only in so far as B serves A via commodity b and vice versa. Each serves the other to serve themselves; each makes the other their means. Thus, in the consciousness of A & B: (1) Each arrives at their end by serving the other as means (2) each becomes p. 243 means for another only as an end for self (3) this reciprocity for each -- which is means and end for both -- and they attain their end only by becoming a means, and become a means only by positing themselves as end. Each thus posits themselves as a being for another in so far as they are being for themselves and the other is being for them. And, in so far as they are being for themselves, this reciprocity is a necessary fact, presupposed as a natural condition for exchange; but as such is irrelevant for each in exchange as this reciprocity interests the individual only as it satisfies their interest to the exclusion/ without reference to the other. The common interest, which appears as the motive, is not the motive but proceeds behind the back of self-reflected, particular interests: behind one’s interest opposed to another. Albeit, at most, the individual can have the consoling awareness that satisfaction of their (antithetical) individual interest is precisely the realization of the (suspended antithetical) general, social interest. Out of the act of exchange, individuals are reflected in themselves as it’s (exchanges) exclusive and dominant subject. And with that, the complete freedom of the individual is posited as a: voluntary transaction; with no force; positing or serving the self as means to posit self as an end in itself, as dominant/primary. And, finally, the self-seeking individual which brings nothing of a higher order to realization, recognizes the other as self-seeking, with the other also recognizes their self-seeking interest, so that both know their common interest exists only in the duality and autonomous development of exchanges between their self-seeking p. 244 interests. The general interest is precisely the generality of self-seeking interests. Therefore, when the economic form/ exchange, posits the equality of its subjects, then the content -- the individual as well as the objective material that drives toward exchange -- is freedom. Exchange of exchange values is thus the productive, real basis of all equality and freedom. As pure ideas, they are merely expressions of this basis and as judicial, political and social relations they are merely the basis to a higher power. This equality and freedom are exact opposites to equality and freedom in antiquity, where developed exchange value was not their basis, but the development of that basis (in antiquity) destroyed them (equality & freedom). Equality and freedom are presupposed in relations of production -- as yet unrealized -- in antiquity and Middle Ages. Direct forced labor is the foundation/ where community rests, in antiquity. And labor as a privilege -- still particularized -- not yet generally producing exchange value is the basis of the Middle Ages. Here, labor is not forced nor does it take place with respect to a common, higher unit.
4. Admittedly, re. natural motives outside the economic process does rest on a compulsion; on one side, the other’s indifference to my need/ natural individuality and hence their equality with me and their freedom, which is a precondition of my own; on the other side, if I am determined/ forced by needs and drives, it is only my own nature and is nothing alien to me: my interest posited in a general, reflected form. But it is precisely in thus way that I exercise compulsion over the other and them into the exchange system. Servus in Roman law is one who does not enter exchange to acquire anything for self. Therefore, this legal system corresponds to a social p. 245 state where exchange is not developed. Nevertheless, in so far as it was developed, it was able to develop the attributes of the juridical person, precisely the individual engaged in exchange; anticipating the legal relations of industrial society and the right bourgeois society had to assert against medieval society. But the development of this right coincides with the complete dissolution of the Roman community.
5. As money is only the realization of exchange and the system of exchange values only realized itself in developed money system, the money system can only be the realization of the system of freedom and equality. As measure, money only gives the equivalent its specific expression and makes it an equivalent form. But a distinction in form does arise in circulation: the two exchangers appear in different roles as buyer and seller. Exchange value appears once in its general form as money, then in its particular form in a commodity with a price. But these forms alternate. Circulation does not create a dis-equation but merely a suspension of the negated difference (?). The inequality is only formal. Even equality posits itself tangibly in money as medium of circulation. Each views the other as owner of money and views the process of exchange as money itself. Thus, indifference, and equal worthiness are expressed in the form of a thing. The particular, natural difference in commodities is constantly extinguished by circulation. A worker who buys a commodity for 3′s appears to the seller in the same function/ in the same equality as 3′s -- and the king does the same. All distinctions between them disappears. The seller only appears as an owner of a commodity with a price of 3′s, so that both appear equal -- except that 3′s exists as e.g., silver or sugar. Money in its third form might seem to enter between subjects in the process. But as money is the material/ general commodity of contracts, distinction between the contracting parties is extinguished. As money -- the general form of wealth -- becomes the object of accumulation, the subject p. 246 withdraws it only to the extent that they do not withdraw (purchase) commodities. Thus, if one accumulates and the other doesn’t, it is not at the expense of the other. If one gets poor and the other wealthy, it is because of their own free will and does not in any way derive from the economic relation; the economic connection as such where they are placed. Even inheritance -- which perpetuates this inequality -- does not prejudice this natural freedom and equality. If A’s relation is not in contradiction to the system originally, then such a contradiction (of inequality?) doesn’t arise because B steps into the place of A, and perpetuates A (?). Rather, this is the perpetuation of the social relation that is a person’s natural lifespan and is reinforcement against influences of nature that might suspend individual freedom. Moreover, as the individual in this relation is only the individuation of money, they are just as immortal as money, and representation by their heirs is merely a logical extension of this role.
6. If this (above) way of conceiving the matter is not put in historical context, but raised to refute the more developed economic relations where individuals no longer relate to each other as exchangers/ buyers & sellers, but in specific relations that are no longer of the same character, then it is the same as saying there is no difference between natural bodies because they have weight and therefore are equal. Similarly, exchange value is viewed in its simple character, as the antithesis of more developed, contradictory forms. Same in science: where abstract attributes appear earliest and sparsest and appear historically with the more developed as the more recent. In the present bourgeois society, the positing of prices and their circulation, etc. appears as the surface process, beneath which there is an entirely different process where individual equality and liberty disappear. It is forgotten that the presupposition of exchange value p. 247 as the basis of the system of production implies compulsion over the individual, as their product is not a product for them, but becomes such in the social process and must take this general, external form: that the individual only exists as a producer of exchange value and hence the negation of their natural existence is implied; therefore determined by society; and thus presupposes a division of labor, etc. where the individual is posited as more than a mere exchanger. This presupposition does not arise out of the individual’s will or nature but is historical and posits the individual as already determined by society. It is forgotten that these higher forms where exchange is realized -- or the relations of production which realizes themselves in it (exchange) -- do not stand still in the simple form and where the highest distinctions are merely formal and irrelevant. What is overlooked, is that the simple forms of exchange value and money latently contain the opposition between labor and capital. Therefore, what all the wisdom comes down to is to stick fast to the simplest economic relations -- which are pure abstractions -- but are mediated by the deepest antithesis, and represent only one side in which the full expression of the antithesis is obscured.
This reveals the foolishness of the (French) socialists who want to depict socialism as the realization of the ideals of bourgeois society and demonstrate that exchange and exchange value are originally (in time) or essentially (in adequate form) a system of universal freedom and equality, but have been perverted by money and capital; or that history has failed to implement them (exchange/ exchange value) in their true manner and, like Proudhon, have discovered how to supply the genuine history of these relations (via labor chits) over the fake (money). The proper reply is: exchange value/ money system is the system of equality and freedom and the disturbances p. 248 they encounter in further development are inherent and that the realization of equality and freedom proves to be inequality and un-freedom. It is just as stupid to think that exchange value would not develop into capital nor labor that produces exchange value into wage labor. What separates these “socialists” from bourgeois apologists is their sensitivity to the contradictions as well as their utopian inability to grasp the difference between the real and ideal form of bourgeois society; which causes them to undertake the superfluous business of realizing the ideal expression again as an inverted projection of this reality. And now -- opposing these socialists -- there is the recent, degenerate economics (whose insipid, affectation of dialectics, arrogance, etc… representative, who is incapable of grasping historic process, is Bastiat; as Carey at least brought out the specific American relations v. European) which demonstrates that economic relations everywhere express the same simple determinants and thus everywhere express freedom and equality of the simple exchange of exchange values -- to the point of infantile abstraction. E.g., the relation between capital and interest is reduced to the exchange of exchange values. Thus, taking from the empirical world the fact that exchange value exists not only in this simple form but in an essentially different form in capital. Capital is then reduced to the simple concept of exchange value and interest expresses a specific relation to capital, as such; similarly torn out of this specificity and equated with exchange value. The whole relation is reduced to an abstraction and everything reduced to the undeveloped relation of commodity exchange. According to this, all economic categories are only so many names for what is always the same relation, and this crude inability to grasp the real distinctions is then supposed to represent pure common sense as such. The ‘economic harmonies’ of Mr. Bastiat amount au fond to the assertion there exists only one single economic relation which takes on different names, or that any differences which occur, occur p. 249 only in name. The reduction is not even scientific as everything is reduced to a real economic relation by dropping the difference development makes. E.g., wage labor is payment for a service one individual does for another. Profit is also payment for a service done by one individual for another. Therefore, profit and wages are the identical. But re. profit and interest: with profit, payment of the service is exposed to fluctuations, while with interest it is fixed. Therefore, since with wages payments are exposed to chance fluctuations while with profit v. labor it is fixed, it follows that the relation between interest and profit is the same as between wage and profit; which, as seen, is the exchange of equivalents for one another. The opponents (socialists/ Proudhon) take this twaddle literally and demonstrate that, e.g., with capital and interest there is not simple exchange as capital is not replaced by an equivalent, but that the owner of capital, having consumed the equivalent 20 times over in interest, still has it in the form of capital and can exchange it for 20 more equivalents. Therefore, the debate on one side that there is no difference between developed and undeveloped exchange value and on the other side that there is unfortunately a difference that ought not to be.
