anselm jappe - sohn-rethel and the origin of 'real abstraction

8/10/2019 Anselm Jappe - Sohn-Rethel and the Origin of 'Real Abstraction'

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So h n-Reth el a n d th e O r i gi n o f Re a l A b stra c ti o n :

A Cri t ique of Pro duct io n o r a Cr i t ique of Ci rc ula t io n?*

Anselm Jappe

É c o l e d e s H a u t e s É tu d e s e n S c i e n c e s So c i a l e s, P a r i s a n d A c c a d e m i a d i B el l e A r ti d i F r o s i n o n e

a , ja p p e @ a c c a d e m i a b e l l ea i t i ,f r ,i t ;

A b s t r a c t

A lfr ed S o h n -R e th e l d i d n o t j u s t e l a b o r a t e a m a t e r i a l i s t t h e o r y o f k n o w l e d ge , h e a l s o i n t r o d u c e d

t h e te r m r e a l a b s tr a c t i o n i n t o M a r x i s t d e b a t e. Ho w e v er , h e l o c a t e s t h e o r i g i n o f c o m m o d i t y

a b s t r a c t i o n s o l e l y in t h e s p h e r e o f c i r c u l a t i o n , c o n c e i v i ng o f p r o d u c t i o n i tse lf as a m e r e m e ta b o l i sm

w i t h n a t u r e . T h i s c o n c e p t i o n , i n w h i c h t h e c r i t i q ue o f c a p i ta l i s m a i m s e xc l u si v el y a t d i s tr i b u t i o n ,

a n d w h i c h r e je c t s t h e M a r x i a n c o n c e p t o f a b s tr a c t l a b o u r , r e m a i n s w i d e sp r e a d . It i s o u r e x p r es s

i n t en t i o n h e r e t o u n d e r t a k e a c r i t i q ue o f su c h a c o n c e p t i o n fo r t h e b e ne fi t o f a c r i t i q ue o f t h e v er y

m o d e o f c a p i ta l i s t p r o d u c t i o n .

K eyw o rds

A lf red So h n-Ret h el , rea l ab st r act io n, c r i t ique o f va lue, Ro b er t K urz, ab st r act lab o ur , so c ia l o r ig in

o f k n o w l e dg e, r e l a t i o n s h i p b e t w e e n c o m m o d i ty p r o d u c t i o n a n d e xc h a n g e

Alfifed Soh n-Reth el h a s never b een a c entra l figure in Ma rxist deb a te - yet h e is

a n a b i d in g p r e se nc e w i th i n i t a n d m a n a g es fr o m t i m e to t i m e to a r o u se so m e

i nter est . Near l y ever yth i ng was odd i n the fa te of th i s Ger m an ph i l osopher ,

soc io lo gist a nd ec o no m ist: b o rn in 1899 in Par is, in th e 1920s h e was c lo se to

W a l t e r B e n j a m i n a n d t o T h e o d o r W. Adorno, to Siegfr ied Kracauer and Ernst

Bloch , But h e was never per m i t ted to jo i n M ax Hor khei m er s Inst i tute fo r S oc i a l

Resear ch . After f leeing Nazi Germ any, h e l ived for m any years in o b scur i ty

i n Engl and a nd i t was o nl y af ter 1970 th a t h e r etur ned to Ger m any wh er e h e

co ul d f i na l l y publ i sh h i s b o o ks, b egi n tea c h i ng a t uni ver si ty l evel, a nd a t tr a c t a

co ns i der a b l e fo l l owing am o ng the Ger m an New Left. He di ed i n 1990. Only two

o f h i s b o o k s h a v e b e en t r a n sl a t e d i n t o

English:

Intellectual

Labour

and Manual

abour ^

a n d

Economy and Class Structure of German Fascism. ̂

* Engl ish t ext estab l ish ed w ith t h e h e lp o f Jo h n McH ale,

1,

So h n-Reth el 1978a,

2,

So h n-Reth el 1978b,

© Koninklijkc Brill NV U id cn 2013 nOI: IO II63/I5692U6X-1234I283



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A . Jappe / Historical Materialism

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Not only was th e very late recep tion of his ideas odd Ûiefocus of this recep tion

was different from what Sohn-Rethel himself intended. From 1921, he worked

continually for seventy years on his great project: a materialist explanation

of the forms of knowledge and thinking. Historical materialism, which had

already hecome an orthodoxy in the first decades of the twentieth century,

investigated the material and economic origins of the contents of thought,

establishing links for examp le betwee n medieval philosoph y and feudal social

organisation, or between Enlightenment philosophy, the critique of religion,

and the interests of the rising bourgeoisie. Sohn-Rethel wanted to go further:

for him, even very formalist categories with apparently no content, such as

Imm anuel Kant s a pn on , which synthesises experience, can be deciphered as

an expression of th e co mmodity form. As he put it in 1937:

If you replace th e identical unity of money w ith the unity of self-consciousness ,

replace the synthetic function of money for exchange, society with the original

synthetic unity of appercep tion , its constitutive meaning for capitalist

production with pure intellect , capital itself with reason , the commodity world

with experience , and commodity exchange according to the laws of capitalist

production with the existence of things following laws , that

is

to

say

nature , you

are ahle to deduce from he analysis of capitalist reification Kant s whole theory of

knowledge, together with its necessary internal contradictions.^

Ever since the original separation between intellectual labour and manual

labour which brought class society into being, the separated intellect has

elaborated its abstract categories in order to organise production and exploit

the direct producers. he faculty of abstrac t think ing, of seizing what is common

to several objects w ithou t b eing visible in any of them , is not a given, a prius, a s

the idealistic conce ption of thou ght ha s always claimed, b ut is the result of th e

existence of

real

abstractions in the production and reproduction of human

life. What kind of real abstractions? In what is maybe the most convincing

part of his analysis, Sohn-Rethel shows that the origins of Greek thought,

of mathematics or of philosophy with its logical categories, as substance

or identity, are linked to the first coinage of money (in the seventh century

BC in Ionia) by means of which the experience of a non-empirical, but real

substan ce resistant to the alterations of time was introd uced into everyday life.

This discovery can be seen to have arisen from the m utual influence between

Sohn-Rethel and the British Marxist historian George Thomson, who in 1955

published

The First

Philosophers,

a

study of the Pre-Socratics.

3.

Zur kritischen Liquidierung des Apriorismus. Eine materialistische Untersuchun g , a paper

presented in 1937 to the Institute for Social Research, reprinted in Sohn-Rethel t978c, pp. 36ff.

4. Thomson 1955.



A Jappe / Historical Materialism 21.1 2013)3-14

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Throughout history, the separate intellect and forms of exchange have

developed co-extensively.

s

abstract entities, both exc hange an d the intellect

appear

as

non-historical, with out origin, eternal, and

as

such rem ain im pervious

to criticism and to historical practice in particular. Both the exchange of

equiva lents and scientific know ledge are based on calculating reason which lies

above yet is applicable to every conten t. Marx s designation of logic as mo ney

of the spirit ̂ was m otivated by the fact th at in b oth cases there is the sam e

indifference to specific co nte nt. There exists a link between the logical form of

universality, i.e. the pure activity of thoug ht, and the social form of labour. The

social form of labo ur

rises

above real produ ctive activities

as

their comm on p oint

of reference: value (in th e form of mo ney) as the equ ivalent of the ab stract side

of all labour. Sohn-Rethel s analysis transcen ds orthod ox historical materialism

in the sen se that he do es not link the de velop m ent of intellectual categories to

the concrete side of labour, or to, say, technical advances, but to the social

side of labour which in commodity society is its abstract side represented by

money. Social, abstrac t labour serves to form the a uto no m ou s social bon d that

governs its own creators. Far from acknowledging the abstractification that

occurs in exchange as some innocent process comprising a mere technical

requirement inseparable from the circulation of goods within every kind of

society, Sohn-Rethel instead asserts that th e exchange ab straction con stitutes

the very heart of capitalist society, that it is historically specific an d has sp atial

and tem pora l characteristics all of

its

own.

Sohn-Rethel tried to show how over the last 2500 years the evolution of

philosophy and scientific thinking has always been the expression of the

development and dissemination of money and commodity exchange^ - for

instance, Galileo s concep tion of an ab stract and infinite m ove m ent in physics

5. Logic - th e money of the spirit, the speculative or mental value of man and nature - its

essence which has grovm totally indifferent to all real determinateness, and hence unreal - is

alienated thinking, and therefore thinking which abs tracts fi-om nature and from real man:

aésírací thinking. (Marx

1959,

p. 65; transla tion modified.)

6. There seems to be a contradiction betwe en S ohn-Rethel s putting abstraction at the core

of capitalist society and his tracing of abstraction back to some quite archaic situations, as in

early Greek society. Naturally, the first forms of mone y played a different role, and a ttribu tion of

value to products was only virtual . The exchange relations betwee n goods in a non-com mod ity

society (in fact, in a non-capitalist society) are not essentially regulated by the amount of labour

they represen t . Money and products that could be called com mo dities (essentially, production

exceeding need which the otherwise self-sufficient com mu nities exchange betwe en themselves)

exist only as exceptions, as niches in these societies. Even in the m ost developed forms of ancien t

societies, everyday social reprodu ction was not m ediated by mo ney. We could say that capitalism

in its m ode m form (beginning with the Renaissance) mea nt that mo ney and com mo dities, which

had already existed for more tha n two tho usan d years, had taken over , after a long prepara tion,

the whole reprod uction of society.



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was made possible by the contemporary transition from simple commodity

circulation to infinite capital accumulation.'' Sohn-Rethel's historical

analysis has been taken as a starting-point for some other inquiries, for

instance by the German historians Rudolf W alter Müller® and, mo re recently,

Eske Bockelmann.3 But, on the whole, it is not his attempt to elaborate a

materialist epistemology which prompts the ongoing debates about his

ideas. Poststructuralist (feminist, postcolonial) explorations of the origins of

intellectual categories in social practice hardly ever refer to Sohn-Rethel, but

point instead in other directions. Whenever Slavoj Zizek, Alberto Toscano,

Paolo Virno, Moishe Postone or Robert Kurz refer to Sohn-Rethel, it is always

in relation to the category of real abstraction - as had previously been the

case in the heated discussions about Sohn-Rethel's theory in Germany during

th e 1970s.

The German term

Realabstraktion

does not occur in Marx, even if this

con cep t - if no t the word - is presen t, and is absolutely crucial in his writings.

e gives a very good explanation of it in a passage from the first Germ an edition

oí

Capital unfortunately not reproduced in subseque nt editions:

In form III (which is the reciprocal second form, and is therefore contained in

it),

the linen appears on the other hand as the

general orm

of the Equivalent for

all other commodities. It is as if alongside and external to lions, tigers, rahbits,

and all other actual animals, which form when grouped together the various

kinds,

species, subspecies, families e tc. of the animal kingdom, there existed also

in addition the

animal

the individual incarnation of the entire animal kingdom.

Such a particular which contains w ithin itself all really present species of the sam e

entity is a universal (like

animal

god etc.). Just as linen consequently became

an individual Equivalent by the fact that one other commodity related itself to

it as form of appearance of

value,

that is the way linen becomes - as the form

of appearance of value common to all commodities - the universal

Equivalent

universal value-body, universal

materialization

of

abstract

human

labour.

The

specific labour materialized

in

it now thereby counts

as universalform ófrealization

of human labour, as universal tabour. °

Apart from a brief occurrence of the term of 'real abstraction' in the work of

Georg Sim mel, it was Sohn-Rethel who effectively introduced it into Marxist

deb ate. But his con ception of real abstraction is quite special and gave rise to a

7.

Sohn -Rethel 1990, p. 47.

8. Müller 1977.

9. Bockelmann 2004.

10. Marx 1976, p. 27.

u. Simmel

1989,

p. 57.



A Jappe Historical Materialism 21.1 2013)3-14

7

great deal of discussion. Some of it is marked by the large am ount of confusion

which often surroun ds the actual term abstraction . But it also provides an

opportunity to gain some essential insights into the concept of abstraction

and its impo rtance for unde rstandin g both Marx s thoug ht and the na ture of

contemporary capitalism.

Sohn-Rethel s real abstraction s do not bea r essentially on logic or ideology

and should not be linked with Louis Althusser s theoretical practice . Logic,

ideology, science and so on remain

thought abstractions

for Sohn-Rethel.

What he stresses is their

origin

in real abstractions such as m oney and the

commodity.

It is even possible to discuss the origin of real abstraction without any

reference wha tsoever to Sohn-Rethel s epistemological concern. The qu estion

is: if capitalism is not just the personal domination of one social group over

other

groups,

bu t is also the m eans by wh ich that society as whole is governed

by abstractions such s m oney and the comm odity, where do these a bstractions

come from, where do they originate: in the production sphere (the sphere of

labour) or in the circulation sphe re, the sphere of exchange of the products of

labour, the market sphere?

Under capitalism, is it productive activity itself (labour) which is alienated,

or is it the act of selling and buying which transforms inno cen t products into

com modities, bearers of social alienation? This question is not as abstract

or as convoluted as it might seem, since an importan t issue depend s on it: in

wh ich sp here of social life do we have to interven e in orde r to heal the ravages

generated by social abstraction?

Sohn-Rethel locates the origins of commod ity abstraction in the exchange

sphere, in circulation, since production represents, in his eyes, a non-social

and supra-historical metabolism with nature. As he writes, within the very

act of exchange there indeed lies conc entrated a purely social relation, which

Marx underlines, as opposed to the relationship between man and nature

which takes place in all types of material use activity, be they activities of

con sum ption or of produ ction . ̂ Sohn-Rethel defines labour clearly as use

activity . Quite logically, he rejects Marx s con cep t o f abstra ct labour :

I think that the concept of abstract social labour, as far as it can be recognised in

commodity analysis, is a fetish concept bequeathed by the Hegelian heritage....

The fetish concept of abstract labour occupies exactly the place which should be

occupied by real abstraction generated by the act of exchange. It acknowledges

the fact of real abstraction, but explains it in the wrong terms. Consequently,

labour plays no constitutive role in the social synthesis m ediated by commodity

12. Sohn-Rethel

1990,

p. 17.



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exchange. In the functioning of the market, it is not abstract labour which

dom inates, but the abstraction from labour. ̂

This mean s that for Sohn-Rethel labour as such can never be alienated, since it

s always concrete labour. Alienation starts only wh en labour prod ucts en ter th e

sphere of exchange. Naturally, Sohn-Rethel is right in saying that abstraction

is a social phe nom eno n and does no t originate in man s relation to natu re as

such. But nothing justifies his conclusion that social abstraction exists

only

or even

mainly

as the result of exchange. Such a statement presupposes that

produc tion is a non-social sph ere. In this respect, Sohn-Rethel remains firmly

within the framework of traditional Marxist approaches for which industrial

production is neutral and pre-social, while it is class relations (exploitation)

which falsify the original character of production as a satisfaction of human

needs.

Sohn-Rethel says that the commodity form and the alienation caused

by it come into existence only in the moment when the products enter the

exchange sp here. According to Moishe Postone, Sohn-Rethel does no t analyse

the specificity of labo ur in capitalism as being socially con stituting but, rather,

posits two forms of social synthesis - one effected by mean s of exchange, and

one by means of labour. He argues that the sort of abstraction and form of

social synthesis entailed in the value form is not a labour abstraction but an

exchange abstraction . ** For Sohn-Rethel, labour does n ot seem to be affected

by the commodity form, and if social synthesis were to take place directly

in production, we would be in the presence of a classless society, a society

with out exploitation. Postone has shown in Time

Labor and So cial Dom ination

that, on the contrary, it is only in capitalism that social synthesis takes place

in the labour sphere itself which is governed by its own fetishistic and blind

autom atism, w hereas in pre-capitalist societies labour s the object of decisions

taken in othe r life sph eres. In capitalism, abstrac t labour has becom e the social

nexus, the aim of society, instead of being the means to obtain other aims.

Capitalism is not based only on exploitation - exploitation existed equally

in slavery or feudal societies. Capitalism is a society where labour no longer

serves to perpetuate social structures which managed to form themselves on

othe r bases (tradition, political domina tion, or, on the contrary, a com munity

of free individuals ), but where labour becom es au tonom ous and w here its

anonymous dynamics, not controlled by anybody, themselves become the

basis of social relationships.

13, Sohn-Rethel 1971, p. 70,

14, Postone 1993, pp, 177-8,



AJappe Historical

Materialism 21.1 2013)3-14

9

Sohn-Rethel w rites:

The nexus of exchange is established by the network of exchange and by nothing

else.

It is my buying coat, not my wearing

it

which forms par t of the social nexus,

just as it is the selling, not the making of

it.

Therefore, to talk of the social nexus,

or, as we may call it, the social synthesis, we have to talk of exchange and not

ofuse. ̂

For Marx, abstrac t labour invests prod uc ts with th eir value-objectivity , i.e.

confers v lue on them . For Sohn-Rethel, exchange accom plishes this task which

is why he advocates the replacemen t of the M arxian con cept of com m odity

abstrac tion with th at of exchang e abstraction . Unlike Marx, Sohn-Rethel

does not deem labour to be the source and substance of the value form. He

attribute s th e substan ce an d form of value to two different factors:

Value, the magnitude of value and the form of value have different origins. Labour

confers value on them but only by in turn assuming - s the result of real exchange

abstraction - in its capacity

s

value creator, the status of abstract human labotir .

The value form boils down to real exchange abstraction

and the m agnitud e of value is determ ined by labour. ̂ He is at p ains to

stress tha t this sepa rate dedu ction of the value form in relation to exch ange

abstraction, real abstraction, and of the magnitude of v lue in relation to the

labour subsumed within it is crucial and m ust be upheld . ^ For him it represe nts

a decisive aspect of his own theory. The im porta nce of our analysis lies in the

fact that it allows us to distinguish clearly between the analysis of the form of

value and th e magn itude of value. The concept of value (not the mag nitude of

value) derives from the exc hange equ ation and not vice versa ; it is thus purely

social in origin. ̂ The la tter assertion is true but does not justify the former

since exch ange is no t the only form of sociality. However, for Sohn-Rethel only

the value form permits the determination of the magnitude of v lue because

it makes labour measurable by the same standard. Without real abstraction

through exchange, there is no equivalence in exchange . ̂

Sohn-Rethel s real merit is to have a rticula ted the w hole issue of real

abstraction. But the answer he gives cannot be accepted unconditionally. He

considers himself a Marxist, and p resents his epistemolog y as a kind of missing

15.

Sohn-R ethel 1978a, p. 29.

16. Sohn-Rethel 1990, p. 30.

17. Sohn-R ethel 1990, p. 31.

18. Sohn-R ethel t978c, p. 122.

19. Soh n-Re thel 1990, p. 3t.



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21.1 2013)3-14

element in Marx's own theory. For him, the 'only' difference he has with the

master resides in the fact that he wants to replace the Marxian concept of

'comm odity abstraction' w ith tha t of 'exchange abstraction': for Sohn-Rethel,

it is not abstract labour tha t confers value on pro ducts, but their exchange. But

in doing

so,

he diverges from Marx on very central p oint. For Sohn-Rethel, the

exchange act is abstract because the exchangers have undertak en to ren ounce

temporarily the

use

of the produ cts. The origin of'abstrac tness' is therefore the

exchanger's 'abstracting' from the use they could m ake of the object in question,

and this 'abstracting' is a 'real physical act'. Sohn-Rethel's innovation lay in

his idea that mental abstraction derives from real action in space and time -

but this real action consists for him only in the temporal distance between

exchange act and use act. So, he provides a kind of psychological explanation

of exchange abstraction, and links it to the subjective motivations of the

exchangers - in a way that approximates the bourgeois economic theory of

marginalism, which is in total contra st to Marx's critique of political econom y.

Marx is absolutely clear in saying that the abstraction in the act of exchange

merely

accomplishes -

'realises', in Marx's terms - the abstraction created in

production. But many Marxists who touch on Sohn-Rethel are unwilling to

recognise that there is a problem in his reformulation of Marx's concept of

abstraction.

In Sohn-Rethelian terms, abstraction takes place only in exchange. On

the subject therefore of his own theory, he asserts that he 'differs fi-om Marx

only [ ] in the sense tha t Marx does no t pursu e the analysis of "commodity

abstraction" - which he had been the first to point out - down to its roots and

far-flung causes, wh ence th e rem aining obscurities concerning the relationship

between the form and substance of value as well as the hasty conflation of

value form and abstract labour".^" In a previous text, Sohn-Rethel described

these roots thus:

The analysis partially outlined here

will

serve to elucidate the roots of abstraction:

the unavoidable temporal separation between the act of exchange and tha t of

use.

It will also demonstrate that the abstraction which results from this separation

turns commodity exchange into an equalisation of commodities and specifically

fulfils very real and objective function of commodity exchange. This equalisation

is in turn the root of the notion of value which by

its

very na ture

is

abstract.^'

Robert Kurz has made the foUovving objection to this: 'Far from being the "act

of exchange" or the relation with the object

per

se the "activity" that creates

20. Sohn-Rethel 1990, p. 20.

21.

Sohn-Re thel 1978c, p. 123.



A Jappe Historical Materialism 21.1 2013)3-14 11

abstraction

is,

at the initial stage, much ra ther tha t of the comm odity p roducers

in the process of production

itself

it is abstract in the social sense because of

the reduction of concrete labour to its materiality and the separation fVom its

social universality that takes place within this activity'.^^ In the final analysis,

Sohn-Rethel grasps abstraction in psychological term s: as a postpo nem ent of

satisfaction. His concept of real abstraction denotes both abstract activity that

'disregards' every use of the commodity, and the production of the abstract

objectivity of value. Kurz has this to say about it: 'When the vievvrpoint of the

totality, which can be understood only on the basis of a formal determination

of the productive content, disappears, and when the basis of abstraction

is placed within circulation as a separate sphere, then abstraction must be

achieved separately in finished products: as the opposition between the act

of exchange and the act of use in relation to the in anim ate produ ct. Thus Sohn-

Rethel's very ded uctio n of the abstractifying act sees him fall imm ediate prey

to the reified fetish - to its app earance to be ju st a thing - of the com mo dity

world insofar as he takes the consumer's relation to the product and not the

producers ' relation to one ano the r as the object of abstractification'.^^

Sohn-Rethel has an ontological vision of labour, as something identical to

productive activity, something that has existed always and everywhere. In

reality, in pre-modern societies there is no separation between what we call

'labour' and other activities such as ritual or play or community life. Each

activity is considered in its specificity, instead of them all being reduced

to one aspect: the time expended as 'labour'. So far, it is not only abstract

labour, but labour in general that exists in its developed form only in modern,

capitalist societies. Always so concerned to stress the historical characte r -

the genesis - of concepts, Sohn-Rethel nevertheless uses a concept of labour

which is non-historical and ever devoid of any problematic. In his assessment,

say, of prehistoric hunter-gathering as a form of 'labour' in today's sense, he

already falls into those false ontological categories laid by the 'abstract labour'

he dismisses.

A threefold 'infidelity' may thus be discerned in Sohn-Rethel with regard to

the Marxian analysis of the value form: he neglects, indeed rejects the concep t

of 'abstract labour* which for Marx constitutes the whole basis of exchange

abstraction; he identifies Marx's conceptual précis of the value form's

development with an historical outline in the belief that 'simple value form'

ever actually existed (an error that Engels, toge ther with very nearly the e ntire

body of orthodox Marxism, had previously fallen victim to); he replaces the

22. Kurz 1987, pp. 86- 7.

23 . Kurz 1987, p. 85.



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A . Japp e /Historical Ma terialism 21.1 2013)3-14

com mo dity abstraction dedu ced by Marx, who totally disregarded com mo dity

ow ners' behaviour - owners who have no othe r option but to adapt them selves

to the movements of value (the very locus of social fetishism) - by a theory

comprising psychological explanations for the actions and motivations of

comm odity exchangers.

A further aspect of abstract labour requires clarification: abstract labour

in Marx's sense has nothing do to with

immaterial

labour. In commodity

society, each labour is always

both

abstract and concrete. This is what Marx

called the 'twofold character of the labou r wh ich creates com modities. Every

specific labour, farming or car co nstruction, as well as clean ing services or the

development of a software package necessarily contains a concrete side: it

results in a good or a service meant to satisfy some need. On the other hand,

each material or immaterial activity is in Marx's own terms a 'productive

expenditure of human brains, nerves, and muscles' measured by time

regardless of the content of production. This is why, far from being innocent,

abstract labour is in fact highly destructive. But no one kind of labour can be

more abstract

than another, or develop into something 'more abstract'. In the

produc tion phase, labour does not start out as concrete, thereafter to b ecom e

abstract in circulation by virtue of its sale. Neither can it be said that labour

becomes 'more abstract' during the development of capitalism because of the

growing division of labour or of com pute risatio n. These a re com pletely different

levels of analysis. Naturally, there has been a real increase in the importance

of immaterial labour during the twentieth century, but this has nothing to do

with abstract labou r in the sense of the twofold charac ter of labour.

Each commodity has two sides, the use value created by concrete labour

and the value created by abstract labour, that is to say by the abstract side of

the sam e labour, or by the same labour considered from the p oint of view of

the mere qua ntity of time e xpend ed. But since this value is invisible and not

measurable, it represents itself in ano ther commod ity: in exchange value, and

especially in that particular exchange value that is

money.

So, money can be

called the main real abstraction: it gives a material form to that social fiction

tha t is value.

Manycontemporaryauthorsthink,justlike

Sohn-Rethel,

thatlabourbecome s

abstract only when its products get into the exchange sphere - the market.

Value, they say, is a social relation, it is not created by the single producer in

the labour sphere. Value does not enter into the pro duct

as,

for example, wood

enters into a piece of furniture. Naturally, this is true. But if we take Marx's

theory of abstract labour seriously, as does the 'critique of value' developed in

different forms by Moishe Postone or by Robert Kurz and the Germ an journ als

Krisis

and

Exit

we understand that in capitalist society production itself is



A Jappe / Historical Materialism

21.1 2013)3-14

13

regulated by abstract labour: the co ncrete side of produc tion is subord inated

to value production, and each good or service enters the market already as a

value - even if this value, naturally, is always a social attributio n, a 'projection',

a 'real abstraction', not a material 'reality*. In production, labour is concrete

only when considered as a material process, but not for the produce rs as social

beings. The postmodern denial that commodities are already value in the act

of their production does not reject the term 'abstract labour' in the same way

tha t Sohn-Rethel does, but this denial arrives at the same conclusions: labour

in produc tion is a techn ical, neutral activity, and capitalism resides only in the

sphe re of exchange, circulation and distribution.

This debate might seem a rather philological or conceptual one, even a

kind of hair-splitting without any practical consequence. But nothing could

be further from the truth. If value is not determined, as Marx himself affirms,

by the quan tity of abstrac t labour which is always the ex pend iture of a certain

quantity of human energy but is determined instead by inter-subjective

convention in exchange, this would m ean tha t there is no limit to the growth of

value, and co nsequently no limit to the growth and con tinuation of capitalism.

This is why the refusal to admit that value has its origin in abstract labour

(a refusal pronounced explicitly or, more often, implicitly and in the absence

of any direct reference to Sohn-Rethel) is so widespread in contemporary

Marxism, which is nearly always engaged in denying the systemic character of

the crisis of capitalism and in denying the fact th at th e accu mulation of capital

has reached its internal limits - limits that are caused by the ever-increasing

use of technologies which do not create value, and as a consequence no

surplus value. The ever-growing disparity between ma terial wealth and value

cons titutes th e real cause of the contem porary crisis of capitalism.

Consideration of the foregoing may perhaps allow us better to appreciate

the topicality of Sohn-Rethel's thought: it resides in his limited yet real

contribution to the critical analysis of a world where commodity fetishism is

leading to social destruction and self-destruction. Indeed, by

937

Sohn-Rethel

was already expressing the idea that in commodity society, the rationality of

prod uction lies outside itself within a purely social sphere w here products have

an economic

'value'.^ *

The grovifth of independent thought represented a kind

of attempt to limit the damage caused by the independence of the economy

which nevertheless has the same origin as indepen den t thou ght. But the result

is always uncertain: 'The moment when production requires the theoretical

ratio in order to be feasible is the point at which the social relations between

24, 'Zur kritischen Liquidierung des Aphorismus, Eine materialistische Untersuchung', in

Sohn-R ethel 1978c, p, 4 0,



14 A Jappe / Historical Materialism 21.1 2013)3-14

men that are indispensable to life became uncontrollable, a blind result of the

law of value s causalit/.^^ To ascertain w heth er the theoretical ratio is today

able to discover a path that may yet lead the way out of econo mic causality :

tha t is the question.

W hat is the impor tance of Sohn-Rethel s thou ght for today s social

critique? It was not our aim here to examine his materialist explanation of

epistemological categories, which could always serve as a good starting-point

for further analyses. We wanted to underline that he contributed to drawing

attention to the importance of the category of real abstraction for the

und erstand ing of the hidden core of capitalist society, but that his m erit - as to

this question - resides mainly in having

posed

the question. The answer must

be found elsewhere: that is to say, in the determination of the origin of real

abstraction in the commodity form of production on the basis of the twofold

natu re of labour.

References

Bockelmann, Eske 2004, Im Takt des Geldes. Zur G enese modernen Denkens, Springe: Zu

Klampen.

Kurz, Robert 1987, Abstrakte A rbeit un d Sozialismus. Zur Marx schen W erttheorie und ihrer

Geschichte , M arxistische Kritik 4:57-108, available at: <www.exit-online.org>.

Marx, Karl 1959, Economie an d Philosophie Manu scripts 0/1844 Moscow: Progress P ublishers.

1976. Value: Studies by Karl Marx, edited and translated by Albert Dragstedt, London: New

Park Publications.

Müller, Rudolf Walter 1977, Geld

und Geist Zur E ntstehungsgeschichte von ¡dentitätsbewusstsein

und Rationa lität seit der Antike, Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag.

Postone, Moishe 1993, Time, Labor an d Social Domination: A Reinterpretation of Marx s Critical

Theory, C ambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Simm el, Georg 1989

[1900],

Philosophie des Geldes, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkam p Verlag.

Sohn-Rethel, Alfred 1971, Ma terialistische Erkenn tniskritik und Verge sellschaftung der

Arbeit

Berlin: M erve.

1978a,

Intellectual and Manual Labour

translated by Martin Sohn-Rethel, Basingstoke:

Macmillan.

1978b, Economy and Class Structure of German Fascism, translated by Martin Sohn-Rethel,

Londo n: CSE Books.

1978c, Warenform und Denkform, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrk amp Verlag.

1990,

Das Geld die

bare

M ünze des Apriori,

Berlin: Klaus Wagenbach.

Thomson, George 1955, The

First

Philosophers: Studies in

Ancient

Greek Society, London: Lawrence

and W ishart.

25. Sohn-R ethel 1978c, p. 86.



C o p y r i g h t o f H i s t o r i c a l M a t e r i a l i s m i s t h e p r o p e r t y o f B r i l l A c a d e m i c P u b l i s h e r s a n d i t s

c o n t e n t m a y n o t b e c o p i e d o r e m a i l e d t o m u l t i p l e s i t e s o r p o s t e d t o a l i s t s e r v w i t h o u t t h e

c o p y r i g h t h o l d e r ' s e x p r e s s w r i t t e n p e r m i s s i o n . H o w e v e r , u s e r s m a y p r i n t , d o w n l o a d , o r e m a i l

a r t i c l e s f o r i n d i v i d u a l u s e .

anselm jappe - sohn-rethel and the origin of 'real abstraction

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