Kapital and its subtitle: critique

Kapital and its subtitle:

A note on the meaning of
critique
Werner Bonefeld
the context of the , political economy is
of central importance. Surveying the debate on
especially value theory, it seems however that little
has been made of the subtitle of Capital, critique of political
economy. Arthurs () recent contribution is an exception.
His article focuses on form and his argument shows a close
resemblance with the work that has developed under the
heading Open Marxism. This heading derived from a book
by Agnoli and Mandel () where the two protagonists
debate the meaning of critique and, connected with it,
whether Marxist economics is a contradiction in terms.
Mandel argued that it is not and Agnoli argued that Marx
primarily negated the world of capital. Economics is what
Marx called the relationship of the things between
themselves.The critique of social forms, in this view, amounts
to a critique of economic categories and it does so by
revealing the human content that these forms render invisible
at the same time as which the existence of capital rests in its
entirety on human social practice. Marcuse (: ) makes
this point succinctly when he argues that the constitution of
the world occurs behind the backs of the individuals; yet it
is their work.
Marx argued untiringly that labour is the substance of
value and this is seen to entail that labour becomes
productive only by producing its opposite, i.e. capital (Marx,
: ). Further, and connected with this, Marx frequently

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refers to the forms of capital as sensuous-supersensuous

things, crazy objects, perverted forms, theological quirks,
obscure things and so on. These formulations are decisively
uneconomic and would suggest that his critique of political
economy, rather than oering an alternative economic theory,
amounts in fact to a theory of social constitution. From this
perspective, the core problematic of Marxs critique, then,
is: how is it possible to understand the circumstance that
human social practice is constitutive practice at the same
time as human beings appear to be ruled by already existing
abstractions. What, then, is to be understood by critique?
Within the eld of Marxist economics, critique is usually
understood in terms of Marxism as an alternative economic
theory that is superior to classical political economy which
either failed to provide a coherent economic account or
oered contradictory and inconsistent explanations of
economic categories and their relationship to each other.
According to Mohun (: -), Marxist economics has
to answer three questions: 1) Why is value labour-time, and
what sort of labour-time is it, 2) what is money, and why is
it the form of value?; 3) How do amounts of labour-time
become represented as sums of money, and what is the
meaning of this representation?1 The critical question of
Marxist economics is whether Marxs work successfully
integrates the neo-classical concern with the form of value
in exchange (price) with the Ricardian emphasis on the
objective content of labour in production (embodied labour
as value). Marxist economics seems to suggest that Marxs
work provides a successful integration of form and content,
transcending the shortcomings of classical political economy
and establishing it as a most sophisticated economic theory.
Marxs labour theory of value is thus seen to be a macroeconomic one that can be applied to examine contemporary
capitalism (Mohun, : ).
Backhaus () has argued that economic theor y
amounts to an uncritical acceptance of economic categories.
It presupposes labour and capital as constituted economic
things or factors. Mohuns questions are important.Yet, they
reduce Marxs question, why does this content assume that
form (Marx, : ),2 to why labour is represented by
the value of its product and labour-time by the magnitude
of that value (Marx, : ).3 In short, they presuppose
what needs to be explained. The notion that value is labourtime presupposes that labour is divorced from its conditions
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Kapital and its subtitle: critique

and, more pronounced, a social form of human reproduction

where the conditions of labour confront labour as an alien,
commanding personication in the form of capital (Marx,
: ). Hence Backhaus insistence that Marxs critique
is a critique of unreected presuppositions (Backhaus, :
) and he argues that the constituted economic forms can
be deciphered on a human basis (ibid.: ). In contrast to
the armation of economic categories in Marxist economics,
Backhaus argues that the signicance of Marxs critique is
its critique of the fetishism of economic categories, including
the fetish form wage labour (Marx, : ch.).
How does Marxist economics deal with Marxs critique
of fetishism?4 Mohun () provides the succinct answer:
He argues that the root of the problem of appearance rests
in the fetishism of the commodity form and that an account
of commodity fetishism is crucial to an account of the
structure and development of ideological systems. Therefore,
following Mohun, a Marxist theory of ideology is necessary
to establish the dierences between knowledge and ideology,
and the relations between the two. This task, he argues,
comprises the classical task of epistemology. Leaving aside
Marxs answer to the classical task of epistemologythe
separation between in-itself and for-itself, the substance of
the subject, is abstract mysticism (Marx, : )
Mohuns argument implies that there is a Marxist economic
science, a Marxist theory of ideology, and in addition one
might add, a Marxist theory of the state, a Marxist theory
of society, a Marxist theory of history etc...How many
Marxist theories of this and that are required to cope
marxistically with all the forms of social life?
The proliferation of Marxist theories of this and that
denies that Marx provided a critique of political economy.
His work is often seen to contain many theories whose specic
points of reference are specic to distinct social structures
each of which is assumed to exist on its own and to relate
to other structures in an external way.5 In distinction to
such views, it is worthwhile to recall Marxs insight that
theoretical mysteries nd their rational explanation in human
practice and in the comprehension of this practice (cf. Marx,
: ). Marx charges that critical thought has to establish
the inner connexion (Marx, : ) between phenomena.
In short, it is not the unity of living and active humanity
with the natural, inorganic conditions of their metabolic
exchange with nature, and hence their appropriation of
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Capital & Class #75

nature, which requires explanation or is the result of a

historic process, but rather the separation between these
inorganic conditions of human existence and this active
existence (Marx : ). According to Marx, this
separation is constituted by the conditions of labour which
confront workers as alien property, as an independent, alien
force. This implies that these conditions of labour confront
them as capital (Marx, : ). Marx called the
relationships among the things themselves (Marx, :
) the form of value. This form is the focus of Marxs
critique of fetishism where all productive power of labour
is projected as powers of capital, the same as all forms of
value are projected as forms of money (Marx, : ).
All these projections and fetish-like forms hide the
circumstance that they are the product of a social relation,
not the product of a mere thing (Marx, : ).
According to Marx, critique has to demonstrate ad
hominem, and it demonstrates ad hominem as soon as it
becomes radical. To be radical is to grasp the root of the
matter. But for Man the root is Man himself (Marx, b:
) and Man is the highest being for Man [Mensch] (ibid.).
This, then, leads to his demand that all relations in which
man is a debased, enslaved, forsaken, despicable being have
to be overthrown (ibid.). The standard of critique is the
human being, her dignity and possibilities. Critique, then,
has to return the world of things to the human being herself
by showing that the forms of capital are constituted by and
subsist through the social practice of active humanity (Marx,
: ). Their conceptualisation as forms of social
relations does not entail Man [Mensch] as an abstract
individual but as a member of a denite form of society
(Marx, : ). Marxs critique of the constituted forms of
capital seeks to bring to the fore their social foundation,
that is the human basis of their existence. The foundation of
human existence can only be Man herself.
These quotations from Marxs earlier work are usually
seen to carry little weight, especially for those who argue
through Althussserian analytical lenses. Marx is said to have
matured as a result of his serious study of political economy,
leaving behind his youthful idealism and espousing instead
a mature critique of bourgeois economics. This view accepts,
rightly, that Marx was a highly intelligent scholar and it is
for this reason that his mature work has indeed to be studied
carefully. When he then argues that critique has to return
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Kapital and its subtitle: critique

the relations amongst the things themselves, the constituted

forms of the economic categories, to relations between
humans (Marx, : ) and that the critique of the
fetishism of the commodity form entails its deciphering on
a human basis (cf. Marx, : ), this would indeed
require serious attention. Further, he is adamant that his
critique of political economy entails a general critique of
the entire system of economic categories (Marx, : ;
and Marx, c: ).6 Might this not mean that Marxist
economics arms those same economic categories which
Marx criticised as deceitful and perverted?7 The economists,
as Marx (: ) argued, do not conceive of capital as a
relation and provide justications for the capitalist form, in
which the relationship of labour to the conditions of labour
is turned upside-down, so that it is not the worker who makes
use of the conditions of labour, but the conditions of labour
which make use of the worker (ibid: ). Might it therefore
not follow that the economic interpretation of Marxs critique
of political economy reduces human relations to economic
categories, frustrating Marxs programme of reducing
[zurckfhren] economic categories to human social relations?
According to Marx, each form, even the most simple
form like, for example, the commodity, is already an
inversion and causes relations between people to appear as
attributes of things (Marx, : ) or, more emphatically,
each form is a perverted form (Marx, : ). Marxist
economics does not ask why the content, human social
existence, assumes the form of capital. As a consequence,
Marxs insight that capital is the form assumed by the
conditions of labour (Marx, : ), of labour that is
object-less free labour (Marx, : ) under the command
of capital (ibid.: ), would have to appear, especially since
the recent transformation of Marxist economics into
heterodox economics, almost as a falsication of Marxs
work.8
Marxs programme is subversive:9 it thinks the world upside down, deriving human social relations not from
presupposed structures but, rather, deriving these from real
human relations in an attempt to bring to the fore what is
hidden behind the objective appearance of things. As Marx
saw it, it is, in reality, much easier to discover by analysis
the earthly core of the misty creations of religion, than,
conversely, it is, to develop from the actual relations of life
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the corresponding celestialised forms of these relations. The

latter method is the only materialist, and therefore, the only
scientic one. The weak points of the abstract materialism
of natural science, a materialism which excludes history and
its process, are at once evident from the abstract and
ideological conceptions of its spokesmen, whenever they
venture beyond the bounds of their own speciality (Marx,
: , fn. ). In short, Marx derives the celestial forms
from social relations and thus inverts the reality of social
existence as it appears in order to bring to the fore the actual
relations of life that the world of things renders invisible.
The critique of political economy has to show the genesis
of economic forms and therewith the constitutive social
practice that exists through them in the mode of being denied.
After all, as Marx argued, primitive accumulation is the
foundation of capitalist reproduction (Marx, : ) and
forms the conception [Begri] of capital (Marx, : ).
In contrast to Marxs insistence on the genetic development
of constituted social forms (cf. Marx, : ),10 economic
thought starts from them as given premises (Marx, :
). The espousal of constituted forms that the derivation
of social relations from hypothized economic structures
entails, transforms thought into the ideology of reication
the actual mask of death (Adorno, : ). There is,
however, no reication without human content and that is,
the reality in which the social individual moves day in and
day out has no invariant character, that is, something which
exists independently from it. The critique of political
economy amounts, then, to the conceptualisation of the
human social praxis in and through per ver ted forms
(begriene Praxis) (cf. Schmidt, : ).11 Marxs critique
of capital has, then, to show the human content, however
perverted and debased, that subsists, suuses and contradicts
the constituted forms of capital. This human content obtains
in the mode of being denied: the social character of labour
appears to us to be an objective character of the products
themselves (Marx, : ). It is for this reason that Marx
insists on demystication: Neither nations nor history nor
capital have made war. History does nothing, does not
possess vast wealth, does not ght battles! It is Man,
rather, the real, living Man who does all that, who does
possess and ght, it is not history that uses Man as a means
to pursue its ends, as if it were a person apart. History is
nothing but the activity of Man pursuing its ends (Marx
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Kapital and its subtitle: critique

and Engels, : ). Demystication aims to reveal the

social constitution of the relations between things to show
their human content. Capital, he argues, is a denite social
relationship and that means that human beings produce,
through their own labour, a reality which increasingly enslaves
them (Horkheimer, : ). In short, the fetishism of
commodities has its origin...in the peculiar social character
of the labour that produces them (Marx, : ).
In sum, Marx critique is not an economic critique of
bourgeois economics nor does it entail some sort of abstract
negation of capital. It entails, rather, a determinate abstraction [bestimmende Abstraktion], an abstraction which
determines the forms of capital as perverted forms of human
relations. 12 Marxs critique is intransigent towards any
reication and fetishism, to any notion that the relations
between the things, the perverted forms of capital, embody
extra-human properties or that labour is a mere macroeconomic factor. The world of things is a world in and
through which human social practice exists in the mode of
being denied. His critique of fetishism seeks to uncover that
which stands denied and to bring it to the fore as the content
of the things themselves, and that is human social productive
practice. Marxs critique of political economy is a critique
of the system of economic categories as the distorted form
in which the real inversion is expressed (Backhaus, :
, quoting Marx, : ). It is thus a matter of deciphering the appearance [Schein] of independence that economic
categories posits and then of abolishing it practically from
the world allowing human beings to enter into relationship
with one another, not as personications of economic
categories, but as social individuals (Reichelt, : ).
In conclusion, economic thought is consumed by the
perverted forms of capital (see Reichelt, ). Marx had
nothing positive to say about these forms and he criticised
them as forms of essential relations. As Marx (b:)
was acutely aware, there can be nothing more essential in
society than the human being. If essence is conceived as
something other than the human being, then society
transforms into a humanless world (entmenschteWelt), a world
of economic objectivity. However, Marxs determinate
critique is a science of human relations only insofar as it is
also a science of the inhumanity of her existence (cf. Adorno,
: ). As Marx saw it, to be a productive labourer is
not a piece of luck, but a misfortune (: ). Any
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armative theory of the constituted forms of capital has,

with necessity, to presuppose perverted and that is, inhuman
conditions. In short, critique is charged with providing
enlightenment as to the social constitution of the world of
things. As Marx (: ) argued, all science would be
superuous if the outward appearance and the essence of
things directly coincided. Marxs critique of fetishism, then,
provides a critique of value in terms of its human content,
that is, as a perverted form through which social relations
subsist contradictorily as relations between things (Backhaus,
; Holloway, ). In other words, in capitalism, the
social character of human social practice has to be realised
in and through the categories of political economy. These
categories are adequate insofar as they posit the constituted
existence of per ver ted social relations. However, to
presuppose the constituted forms of capital, including especially
the form of money, as the basis of critical inquiry amounts
to the theoretical embrace of the most nonsensical, most
unintelligible form[s] that posit pure madness (reine
Verrcktheit) (Backhaus, : , quoting Marx, : ).
In sum, the signicance of Marxs critique of political
economy is that it shows the condition which render necessary
the existence of capitalist forms. Following Marcuse (:
), the critique of the predominant form of labour entails
at the same time the prerequisite for its abolition. Marxs
critique is both negative and positive: it shows the negative
human condition in the light of its positive suspension
[Aufhebung]. In other words, Marxs critique deciphers the
appearance [Schein] of independence that the capitalist forms
posits, leaving the respectful forms of bourgeois purposeful
activity naked by showing what it really is: a pumping
machine of surplus value (Marx, : ). Yet, as such a
pumping machine, it remains a form of human social
relations (ibid., ch.). For the human beings to enter into
relationship with one another, not as personications ruled
by their self-imposed and reproduced abstractions, but as
social individuals, as human dignities who are in control of
their social conditions, the economic mastery of capital over
man has to be abolished so that Mans social reproduction
is controlled by him (cf. Marx, : ). Full-employment makes sense in a society where labour is no longer the
measure of all things. In other words, full employment makes
sense in a society where humanity exists not as an exploitable
resource but as a purpose. The truth, then, of Marxs critique
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Kapital and its subtitle: critique

of political economy does not rest in its macro-economic

interpretation and application; rather it is realised in its
negation (Marcuse, : ).

Notes
1. The only reference to Marxist economics is to Mohuns contribution
because it provides a clear and most sophisticated account.
2. All quotations from Marx (1962, 1976, 1981), Marx and Engels
(1980), Adorno (1975), Horkheimer (1992) and Backhaus (1997)
have been translated by the author.
3. The English edition of Kapital omits the rst part of the quotation.
4. This part draws on Rooke (1998).
5. See, for example, the treatment of the state as an autonomous
entity. For critique see the collection of articles published in Clarke
(1991).
6. The English quotation of Marx (1976), which substitutes critique
with criticism, can be found in Marx (1972, p. 254). See also the
Preface of 1859, in MEW 13, p.10.
7. In the German edition of Kapital, Marx uses the phrase verrckte
Form (Marx, 1962, p. 90). In the English edition this is translated as
absurd form (Marx, 1983, p.80). The translation is absurd. In
German, verrckt has two meanings: verrckt (mad) and verrckt (displaced).Thus, the notion of perverted forms means that
they are both mad and displaced. In other words, they are perverted
forms of human social practice, in which subject and object do not
statically oppose each other, but rather are caught up in an ongoing
process of the inversion of subjectivity into objectivity, and vice
versa (Backhaus, 1992, p.60).The essay refers to perverted in this
double sense.
8. On this see Eldred (1984).
9. The following draws on Bonefeld (2000).
10.The frustrating English translation can be found in Marx (1976,
p.500).
11. On this see Bonefeld (1995).
12. According to Marx (1973, p.90) determination is negation and
that is, it negates the self-identity or appearance of independence of
economic forms as things in-themselves.

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_______ (1993), Zur Logik der Sozialwissenschaften, in ibid. etal.,
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Backhaus, H.G. (1986), Zum Problem des Geldes as Konstituens oder
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_______ (1992), Between Philosophy and Science: Marxs Social
Economy as Critical Theory, in Bonefeld, W. etal. (eds), Open
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_______ (1997), Die Dialektik derWarenform, a ira, Freiburg.
_______ (2000), ber den Begri der Kritik im Marxschen Kapital
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Bonefeld,W. (1995), Capital as Subject and the Existence of Labour,
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_______ (2000), Die Betroenheit und die Vernunft der Kritik, in
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Frankfurt.
Marcuse, H. (1979), Vernunft und Revolution, Luchterhand, Darmstadt.
_______ (1988), Philosophy and CriticalTheory, in ibid., Negations,
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_______ (1966), Capital vol. III, Lawrence & Wishart, London.
_______ (1972), Theories of Surplus Value Part III, Lawrence &
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_______ (1973), Grundrisse, Penguin, Harmondsworth.
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_______ (1975), Thesis on Feuerbach, Collected Works, vol. 5,
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_______ (1975b), Contribution to the Critique of Hegels
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_______ (1975c), Marx to Lassale, 22.2.1858, in Marx, K. and F.
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_______ (1976), Theorien ber den Mehrwert, vol. III, MEW 26.3,
Dietz, Berlin.
_______ (1981), Kritik des Hegelschen Staatsrechts, MEW I, Dietz,
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_______ (1983), Capital vol. I, Lawrence & Wishart, London.
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_______ (1994), Value,Value Form and Money, in ibid. (ed) Debates
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_______ (2000), Jrgen Habermas Reconstruction of Historical
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