Parallax in Marx
For Karatani, such “trans-critique” is made possible by, and exercised through, the
reflexive movement in-between cultures, communities, and cognitive
perspectives
Germany vs France vs. England
Classical (Ricardo) vs. neoclassical (Bailey)
Commodity vs. Money
Labor vs. capital Those who are in the position of capital are subjective (active),
while those who are in the position of having to sell their labor power are
inevitably passive(293)
M-C (production) vs. C-M’ (circulation)---credit
The process M—C—M is split---M-C and C-M occur in different times
and places. (231)
in the context of the theory of value form and seen as a transposition from
relative value form to equivalent value form(from seller of labor-power
commodity to buyer of a commodities); and further in the context of the
capital’s metamorphosis: M-C-M’ (296).
Profit vs. value (Volume3 vs. Volume 1)
ex ante facto vs. ex post facto
Salto Mortale The emphasis falls on what Marx called salto mortale performed by
the commodity the moment it is sold, thus realizing its value which, as Marx
stressed through his reading of Bailey, enjoys a purely relational status; thus it
does not exist in itself but only if inserted into a system of equivalence with
other commodities
Surplus value is finally realized on the consumption point, the place where
capital is confronted by alterity and compelled into a salto mortale as a seller
of commodities (289).
Trade cycle
Crisis
State-- The problem with Gramsci and Foucault, Karatani argues, is that they see the
state as either civil society or immanent power because they only see it from
within, i.e., they miss the crucial detail that the state exists in competition with
other states, and the competition is about capital: “No matter how social
democratic the state appears within itself, it is hegemonic to its exteriority –
namely, even under the slogan of “humanitarian intervention’ (Karatani, 275)
Capital-state-nation Protected by the absolutist state, merchant capital (bourgeoisie)
grew up and nurtured the identity of the nation for the sake of creating a
unified market. Yet this was not all in terms of the formation of the
nation….(2) While individual agrarian communities that had been autarkic
and autonomous were decomposed by the osmosis of money, their
communalities—mutual aid and reciprocity—themselves were recovered
imaginarily within the nation (278).
It was amid the bourgeois revolution that these three were officially married
(278).
…capital(liberty), state(equality), and nation(fraternity) copulated and
amalgamated themselves into a force that was inseparable ever after
(278-79).
Surplus value--Different value systems--(227)---only where there are heterogeneous
systems can money transform into capital that gains surplus value from the
exchange between systems.(227)---the surplus value arises from the
differences between manifold systems. (228)
Inasmuch as surplus value can only be realized globally, the movement to
terminate it must be transnational (292).
Worker vs. consumer
Transcendental in Marx
Money Money is not merely a denominator of value, but a mediating function
through which all individual commodities are exchanged, and through
which the value-relation among all commodities is constantly adjusted and
readjusted. For this precise reason, money exists as an organizer of the
system of commodities, namely, a transcendental apperception X of human
exchange (22).
…money as the general equivalent. Money in this sense is totally irrelevant
to money as substance like gold or silver; rather, it is like a Kantian
transcendental apperception X, as it were (6)
Value-form-- Transcendental and value form: “all the enigmas of capital’s drive are
inscribed in the theory of value form….Value form is a kind of form that
people are not aware of when they are placed within the monetary economy;
this is the form that is discovered transcendentally” (9)
Borrowing from Kant’s paradigmatic notion of transcendental apperception,
Karatani claims that in itself the value of a commodity does not exist, since it
is determined in a system of relations with other commodities – which is why
the price of the same product differs from country to country, or even within
the same country (Karatani, 228)
Surplus value---…one has to be cautious about surplus value. This is usually ascribed
to Marx, but it derived from the Left Ricardians. That is to say that Marx’s
critique of classical economy implied the critique of the surplus value theory,
which considers the production process as the only place where the
exploitation of surplus value takes place (285).
Total surplus value-----When Marx assumed that total surplus value was being
distributed to individual capitalists, he conceptualized it within a synchronic,
equilibrium system. This can be grasped only on the transcendental level (not on
the empirical level). Rather now the spatial coexistence of branches should be
transposed back into temporal succession once more (247).
Association—regulative—mode of exchange D
Association—lottery—center without substantial center( 306)
The association of associations is far from the organization of the tree structure,
while at the same time it would remain isolated, dispersed, and conflicting, if it did
not have a center. So it needs a center, but the center should exist as a function
just like transcendental apperception X and not something substantial (306).
Instead of elections (democratic parliamentarism), he suggests instituting a lottery
to decide who is temporarily in charge of associations. The solution would take
us beyond the capitalist state and not yet answer the need for centralized power
to coordinate operations. The function of this centre would be “just like
transcendental apperception X and not something substantial[…] the
associations would be united by a central committee consisting of a
representative of each dimension (Karatani, 306)
Ethical in Marx
The movement against capitalism is an ethical and moral one (287).
Beyond capitalistic nation state, which treats the other as a means Ethical and
exchange
The other can come from an outside community that does not share a common set
of rules (125). Yet this morality will never be achieved so long as we live in a
society dominated by commodity exchange (viii)
Communism—the other as ends
In the context of a capitalist economy where people treat each merely as a
means to an end, the Kantian “kingdom of freedom” or “Kingdom of ends”
clearly comes to entail another new meaning, that is, communism (Karatani, vii,
viii)
Ethical-economic
Worker as subject
Those who sell their labor-power commodity have no other choice but to be
passive; yet again there is an exception in the structure: this is a topos where
workers appear to be the subject—the place where the products of capitalist
production are sold. This is the place of consumption. This is the only position
where workers can stand as buyers, with their own money (288).
For capital, consumption is the place where surplus value is finally realized, thus
the only place where it is subordinated to the will of the other, that is, the
workers qua consumers (288).
Struggle without and within---without—not to work and not to buy (25)
---within—The struggle within inexorably requires these
cooperatives and LETS as an extra-capitalist mode
of production/consumption; and furthermore, this
can accelerate the reorganization of capitalist
corporation into cooperative entity.
Labor movement and consumer movement meet
In other words, the success of the moralist intervention is guaranteed not only
by the power of morality in itself, but more crucially, because it is the
embodiment of the asymmetric relation between commodity and money. There,
in order to begin an oppositional movement against capital, it is imperative to
discover a new context where labor movements and consumers’ movements
meet, and this not as a political coalition between existing movements but as a
totally new movement itself (294).
Association-- This is a form of mutual aid, yet neither exclusive nor coercive like
community. Associationism can be considered as an ethico-economic form of human
relation that can appear only after a society that once passes through the capitalist
market economy. It was thought that Proudhon was the first to have totalized it;
according to my reading, however, Kant’s ethics already contained it (13).
I think the possibility lies in associationism: to develop a circulation system using
local currency, and thereby to nurture producers/consumers’ cooperatives and
connect them to those in the First World. This would be noncapitalist trade and could
form a network without the mediation of states (295),