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).
Value—classical, neoclassical, ex ante facto, ex post facto,
--- difference between communities, value corresponds to the difference
between the relational systems (230)
--- M--C—M
---circulation process
---credit
---crisis—money > commodity
--worker as consumer has to buy back his products
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).
Different from profit---surplus value (essence), profit (historical starting point)
(242-43)---S/v (surplus value) vs. S/c+v (profit)
Against a unitary system(227)---Against the equilibrium between supply and
demand(227)--Against equilibrium price (228)
Circulation process (224)---Marx sought to reconsider surplus value from the
vantage point of circulation (235).
antinomy—in and not in (224)---the realization of surplus value is completed
in the process of circulation, but the process of circulation is not enough for
the realization. To solve this aporia, the being of manifold systems must be
introduced again (237).
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)
In the manner of Kant, Marx points out an antinomy. He says, on the one
hand, that surplus value (for industrial capital) cannot be attained in the
process of production in itself, and, on the other hand, that it cannot be
attained in the process of circulation in itself…this antinomy can be undone,
that is, only by proposing that the surplus value (for industrial capital) comes
from the difference of value systems in the circulation process (like in the
merchant capital), and yet that the difference is created by technological
innovation in the production process (11).
The process M—C—M is split---M-C and C-M occur in different times and
places. (231)
Worker as consumer---surplus value is engendered only in totality by worker
selling their labor power and with the money buying back the commodities
they produced (239).
Relative surplus value—Only where there is a difference in price between
value systems: A (when they sell their labor power) and B (when they buy the
commodities), is surplus value realized. This is so-called relative surplus value
(239).
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).
Distributed between workers of different industrial branches (246-47)
Surplus value cannot be realized only as total social capital. Here is a vital
important implication: Inasmuch as surplus value can only be realized globally,
the movement to terminate it must be transnational (292).
State
The absolutist monarchical states conspired with the merchant class, monopolized
the means of violence by toppling feudal lords (aristocracy), and finally abolished
feudal domination (extra-economic domination) entirely. This was the very story of
the wedding between state and capital (14).
The amalgamation of absolutist state and mercantilism. (270) what is called
liberalism is also a form of the absolutist-mercantilist agenda, an economic policy
that hegemonic states always adopt (269).
The state is essentially mercantilist (270).
Relationship with other states---In order to grasp the state as an autonomous
entity, we have to see it as existing in relationship with other states (275).
…absolutist states appeared amid the competition with each other in world
capitalism (275).
No matter how social democratic the state appears within itself, it is hegemonic to its
exteriority—namely, even under the slogan of “humanitarian intervention” (275).
Nation
The nation is based on principles of exchange different from those of state and
capital (277).
1) 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).
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),
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).
Ethics
The movement against capitalism is an ethical and moral one (287).
Consumers’ civil acts, including the problematization of environmental and minority
issues, are moral, but the reason they have achieved a certain success is that a
consumers’ boycott is the most dreadful thing capital can imagine. 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).
Transposition
The movements of consumers’ boycotts have long existed empirically, but the attain
a radical implication comparable to the Copernican turn only when they are posited
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).
…it is in the transcritical position where workers appear as consumers, namely, at the
front of circulation (300).
Marxists failed to grasp the transcritical moment where workers and consumers
intersect (21).
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).
With respect to our position, however, the consumer position is something that
should be rediscovered and redefined. All in all, surplus value that sustains industrial
capital can exist, in principle, only thanks to this mechanism that worker in totality
buy back what they produce. 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 commodiites (289).
…value is fully realized only in the process of circulation. Therefore, it is only here
that the moment for workers to be subject exists (291)….In our context, we rather
have to find the moment for class struggle in the theory of value form in capital(291).
….The split between production and consumption constitutes capital, while it is also
this moment that can terminate capital (291).
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. Therefore, it
is only a matter of inevitability that workers can only engage in the economic struggle
where they negotiate with capitalists over their commodity value. In Capital, the
moment for workers to be subjective is found when the shift of workers’ position in
the categories—commodity-money—takes place: from the labor-power commodity
to being the money en masse that buys commodities (293).