1.

As Marxists we were brought up to think that of all the contradictions inherent in

capitalism the one between the ever-increasing social dimension of social
production and private appropriation is the most fundamental. It expresses the
historical trend of the capitalist mode of production and asserts its transient
character. This teaching has gained enhanced relevance in monopoly capitalism.
With the introduction of ow production the social dimension assumed a speci!c
structural form of its own and henceforth increased in a conclusive manner
reaching in our days the si"e of the giant multi-national corporations#. $This%
discrepancy creates problems which tend to exceed the controlling power of
private capital and re&uires supplementation by the social resources and power
of the 'tate( )A. 'ohn-*ethel( +I,M -.( pp./01-23.
As we saw in our earlier critique of Habermas, classical Marxism reprises the
idealist objectivism of Hegel by emphasizing the dialectical contradiction
between the instrumental development of the forces of production and the
interactive backwardness of existing capitalist social relations of production. It is
this contra-diction between the objective possibilities of human emancipation
from capitalist appropriation of surplus value and the subjective or
voluntarist imposition of obsolete capitalist social relations that, in the eyes of
classical Marxism, determines the crisis of capitalism. Yet even the mere re-
statement of this theory that is, the discrepancy between the possibility of
emancipation and the obsolescence of capitalist categories of private appropriation
evinces its implicit logical contra-diction: - because it is impossible to see how the
objective development of forces of production can ever give rise to claims of
emancipation that can clash against subjective legal and social relations!
Emancipation is a political notion that is categorically diferent from the kind of
social dimension of social productionthat exceeds the controlling power of
private capital. The very fact that private capital has always exerted a
controlling power over social production means that social production
cannot be distinguished from the controlling power that private capital
exerts over it! Consequently, it is impossible to distinguish, as Sohn-Rethel
attempts to do here, between the social dimension of social production and the
private appropriation of production by capitalists as if the frst could be
objectively determined and the second were a mere subjective appendage or
appurtenance. Quite simply, Sohn-Rethel fails to see as did Marx who tended to
relegate the State to the sphere of superstructure that capitalist society was
never in a competitive stage that did not require supplementation by the social
resources and power of the State for the simple reason that the political coercion
of State institutions, in their various State-forms since the rise of capitalism,
has been essential to the reproduction and expansion of the wage relation. To
imagine that capitalism (the wage relation) would have been possible without the
political violence of the collective capitalist, the State-form, is to indulge in sheer
fantasy.
The Marxian distinction between base and superstructure therefore has no basis in
reality because the wage relation, and not the commodity form or the law of
value, is what is at the centre of capitalist social relations of production, and what
makes these irreducibly antagonistic. The reality of crisis is endemic to the
capitalist wage relation because the defnition of capital is precisely the command
of the capitalist by means of dead objectifed labor over living labor. If we wish to
understand what reifcation means we need not delve into the foggy notions of
commodity fetishism or of crystallized labor time, but rather peer into the
simple, naked violence that capitalists perpetrate against workers through the
coercion of wage labor.
The wage relation, which occupied at frst only a limited sphere within post-
feudal mercantilist societies, eventually became generalized to the extent that
capital became the predominant force until it transformed the societies within
which it originated into its own shape and form into societies of capital. No
automatism, then; no self-regulating market economy; no competitive
capitalism that is replaced eventually by monopoly capitalism. Indeed, once
we entertain the notion of a competitive capitalism, it becomes quite simply
impossible for us ever to be able to reach both logically and historically the
stage of monopoly capitalism again for the simple reason that the two notions
are aporetic, contradictory in a practical historical sense. For it is just as impossible
for competition to subsist without turning into monopoly as it is for
monopoly to make any sense at all without the reality of competition!
(Schumpeter, in CS&D, brilliantly captures this point when he observes that even
the strictest monopoly in capitalism lives in fear for its life! One may also recall
Schumpeters quip at those clever economists who objected that monopolies are
in breach of the law of competition that in fact it is the law of competition that
runs foul of monopolies!)
The upshot of what we are arguing here is that competition and, by extension,
monopoly are meaningless concepts because once we look at capitalist market
competition we discover that it is dependent solely on the ability of capitalists to
secure the command of dead labor over living labor by means of the exchange
of the two, as if living labor could be objectifed like dead labor! Sohn-Rethel is able
to see the second point, the incommensurability of dead and living labor, but he is
unable to extend this point as logically it must to the impossibility of defning
objectively a specifc form of quantitative co-ordination of an economy, whether
capitalist or other. Here is Sohn-Rethel:
Thus the commensuration of labor demanded by way of a +law of nature. $Marx%
for any human society( presupposes a &uanti!cation of labor of di4erent kinds or
by di4erent individuals. And the fact is that labour, as it occurs in society,
is not itself quantifable. It is not directly &uanti!able in terms of needs( nor
needs in terms of labour( neither is labour &uanti!able in terms of labor time
unless the labour were identical in kind or the actual di4erences material or
personal were disregarded. Therefore to satisfy +the law of nature. stated by Marx
thereby making human society possible( systems of social economy are needed
to operate a commensuration of labour based on a &uanti!cation of labour#.
A most signifcant diference in the modes of commensuration of labour
rests upon whether it is brought about indirectly by the exchange
process, or directly by the labour process. )I,M-( p./513
The logical contra-diction in Sohn-Rethels argument is almost too obvious: in one
and the same breath he claims in the passage above that the commensuration of
labour presupposes the quantifcation of labour of diferent kinds and that
labour [whatever that is!] in society is not itself quantifable and so far he is
entirely right. But then, contrary to this correct assertion, he immediately adds
that the commensuration of labour is what makes human society possible and
that this can be brought about indirectly by the exchange process or directly by
the labour process.
Now, we may certainly agree with Sohn-Rethel that the labour process is what
constitutes the social synthesis, if it is understood in the broader sense of both the
technical element as well as its refexive (or decision-making) component,
which is what Habermas was aiming at earlier (see our posts on him) and which
we criticized for is artifcial separation of these two elements which for us are
instead absolutely indivisible. For us, for the society that we intend to substitute
to capitalism, the technical labour process and the decision-making process that
goes with it cannot be separated either intellectually or indeed politically, so that
the socialist society of the future will have to re-establish the control of workers
over their working activity something that capitalism separated violently.
But we cannot agree with Sohn-Rethel or with Marx or with the vast majority of
Marxists who have fallen into the trap of believing (with Classical and
Neoclassical Political Economy!) that the exchange process or the market
mechanism is what brings about the social synthesis or social co-ordination
because, as we have argued here repeatedly, no social co-ordination is possible
under capitalist industry without the direct intervention and regulation of the
capitalist economy by the collective capitalist, the State-form, which has now become the
Crisis-State.
2.
It is this 6anti-nomy7 that 8iet"sche tackles and denies most vigourously 9 this
oxy-moronic concept of 6necessary pre-supposition7 of a 6free individuality7 9
whence comes :ant.s transcendental )necessary or 6intelligible7( required by
*eason3 idealism )freedom of the will3. ;ere we have a 6cognition7( the very act of
knowing 9 the actus cognoscendi 9 that forms the foundation of the ultimate
'ub<ect( the Will= cogito ergo sum. In other words( it is *eason( the *atio( that in its
very 6reasoning7 re&uires an 6ordering7( its -ogos( the Word( essence become
existence( the unity of >eing and beings. This is the meaning of :ant.s
6transcendental dialectic7. ?&ually( the ;obbesian decision achieves its 6value-
lessness7 purely in extremis( in point of death( under 6dire7 necessity 9 and yet
this necessity has no 6organic7( historical or physiological or ontological nexus with
the 6freedom7( the @reiheit of the forum internum. 8iet"sche instead !rmly insists
on 6im-manence7( on the 6physio-logical7 or material foundation and origin )fons
et origo3 of our 6cognition7( of knowledge as a living activity 9 vivo ergo cogitoA
>ecause 8iet"sche sees life and the world within the hori"on of time and place 9
the hic et nunc 9 whereby 6everything7 happens here and now( the being of beings
can be understood only within this 6extra-temporal7 and 6extra-mundane7 hori"on
of time and place 9 not )A3 as an 6ob<ect7( as a 6sub-stratum7 or 6essence7 that can
be 6known7( 6explored7( 6de-!ned7( even 6measured7( but rather as an intrinsic(
constant becoming 9 the 6gi-gnomai7 that turns into 6gi-gnosco7 )knowledge as
6recognition73( and therefore 6gnosis7 or 6science7 )scire3 and into 6noesis7
)meaning3( then into 6dia-noia7 )in-tention( pro<ect3 and !nally 6dynamai7 )power3.
$8iet"schebuch( Bt.C( p.DE%
The above quotation from our Nietzschebuch is meant to highlight the dif-ference
between our approach to the question of abstract labour, which follows closely
on Nietzsches critique of Western prima philosophia, and that taken by Sohn-Rethel.
Specifcally, and in essence, the dif-ference concerns the fact that for us the
abstraction of living labour does not originate in the distinction or division
of intellectual and manual labour, but rather in the substantive practical reason
for this distinction that is, the command of living labour by dead labour. Sohn-
Rethel has mis-taken the reality of command (the Hobbesian Power that lies
behind possession and its proprietary individuality) and the simple formal
distinction between what may be perceived as intellectual and what may be
perceived as manual labour. To illustrate the mis-apprehension under which
Sohn-Rethel labors, let us quote him directly:
If the contradiction between the real abstraction in Marx and the thought
abstraction in the theory of knowledge is not brought to any critical confrontation(
one must ac&uiesce with the total lack of connection between the scienti!c form of
thought and the historical social process. Mental and manual labour must remain
divided. This means however that one must also ac&uiesce with the persistence of
social class division( even if this assumes the form of socialist bureaucratic rule(7
)I,M-( p.C/3.
There are a few obvious non sequiturs in Sohn-Rethels reasoning here that leap
immediately to our attention. The frst is that he assumes that the elimination of
the division between intellectual and manual labour is indispensable to the
formation of a classless society. Yet we all realize immediately that such a pre-
requisite is simply unattainable for the obvious reason that it is impossible to
distinguish between intellectual and manual labour in all but perhaps the most
extreme cases. All intellectual activity involves some manual aspects and vice
versa: the distinction is well-nigh impossible to draw. Worse still, Sohn-Rethel is
putting the cart before the horse by identifying all intellectual labour with
commanding activity and all manual labour with subaltern or commanded
activity. Neither of these propositions are valid.
Furthermore, Sohn-Rethel is assuming, in line with Marxs position, that there
actually, really exists such a thing as a real abstraction of human social labour in
such a manner that capitalists can achieve the social synthesis that is, the
efective operation of market commodity exchange or the rule of exchange value
through the commodifcation of human living labour. Again, just as we
showed earlier in our discussion of Habermas and Lukacs that no such necessary
illusion like the fetishism of commodities is possible, again we must argue
against Sohn-Rethel that abstract labour, its monetization or exchange for
dead labour and money, is purely, merely and simply the product, the fruit, the
result of nothing other than capitalist violence and nothing else! In other words,
there is and there cannot be anything like a value that is exchanged in a
capitalist economy through the operation of the market or any other
competitive device! Capitalism consists quite simply in the violent reduction
of living labour to an exchange with dead labour that is the product, not of the
market or of competition, but rather of sheer violence organized and enforced
institutionally. The idea that Marx and his followers to date have formed similar
to the delusions of bourgeois economists whether classical or neoclassical or
Keynesian that the capitalist economy operates independently of direct political
command on the part of specifc institutions, or that it operates automatically or,
as Sohn-Rethel puts it citing from Marx, behind the backs of human beings
(p.20: They do this without being aware of it) is a complete and utter fabrication!
No such magic Eskamotage is possible!
Indeed, the very notion of crisis that we have sought to present in nearly all of
our work consists in the fact that the capitalist economy and society can never
operate automatically, in monetary or in any other terms, except for the fact that
the money wage constitutes the ultimate institutional measure of social
antagonism because it indicates how available or willing are workers to sell
their living labour in exchange for (!) the pro-ducts of social labour that are owned
by capitalists and for which they pay the workers in money wages. Quite clearly, it
is simply impossible for this exchange to have any real basis whatsoever
except as violence, as sheer coercion through the various institutions of capitalist
society. And therefore it is impossible for this exchange to form the basis of that
social synthesis that Marx and all Marxists to date have believed takes place
through the market mechanism (self-regulating for bourgeois economists and
crisis-prone for socialist economists, Keynes included).
Interestingly, Sohn-Rethel himself seems to have his own misgivings about the
Marxian notion of socially necessary labour time as the basis of the social
synthesis and he does so after quoting a crucial passage from Marx:
The reason for this reduction [i.e. the social synthesis through the homologation
of individual labours] is that in the midst of the accidental and ever-fuctuating
exchange relations between the products, the labour-time socially necessary for
their production asserts itself as a regulative law of nature.The determination of
the magnitude of value by labour-time is therefore a secret hidden under the
apparent movements on the relative values of commodities, (at p.33).
Sensing the non-sequitur involved in Marxs reasoning how can it follow that
independent decisions made by independent producers can ever, in a million
years, satisfy the requirements of a society? -, Sohn-Rethel objects to Marx:
Surely the exchange relations must have the formal ability to weave a web of
social coherence [!] among the mass of private individuals all acting
independently of one another [!] before, by the action of these exchange relations,
their labour spent on all the variety of products can be quantifed proportionately
to the social needs, (p.33).
Precisely, Alfred! Except that the formal ability of the exchange relations to weave
a web of social coherence is not a formal ability at all but is instead a real and
eminently political one!
Instead of realizing the im-possibility of this formal ability, Sohn-Rethel
proceeds to seek to prove the impossible!
I shall defne the purely formal [!] capacity of the exchange abstraction and its
social functionThis conviction of mine, that the commodity form, to use Marxs
expression, can be analysed as a phenomenon of its own, in separation from the
economic issues, does mark a diference from the Marxian theory but only in the
sense that it adds to that theory. The formal analysis of the commodity holds the
key not only to the critique of political economy but also to the historical
explanation of the abstract conceptual mode of thinking and of the division of
intellectual and manual labour that came into existence with it, (p.33).
In other words, not only is Sohn-Rethel insisting on proving the impossible that
is, that the social synthesis, the reproduction of capitalist society, can be explained
through the mere form of commodity exchange and its real abstraction of
social labour; but also he pretends to be able to establish that this real
abstraction which makes possible (just as Kant asked what makes knowledge
possible) the social synthesis is dependent on the division and separation of
intellectual from manual labour!
3.
In light of our discussion of Nietzsches critique of epistemology quoted above, let
us now turn to how Sohn-Rethel seeks to set up this confrontation between real
abstraction and the critique of epistemology through the crucible of commodity
exchange. The essence of commodity abstraction, argues Sohn-Rethel, is that it
is not thought-induced; it does not originate in mens minds but in their actions.
While the concepts of natural science are thought abstractions, the economic
concept of value is a real one. It exists nowhere but in the human mind but it does
not spring from it. Yet, as Nietzsche showed conclusively with his critique (see
especially Part One of our Nietzschebuch, section on Nietzsches Eristic
Genealogy of Law and Political Economy), this is quite incorrect: in actual fact
the concepts of natural science originate in the actions of humans as much as
the economic concept of value. Sohn-Rethel is attempting to draw a line between
scientifc concepts that deal with a natural reality and economic concepts
that deal with social reality: [Economic value] is purely social in character,
arising in the spatio-temporal sphere of human inter-relations. It is not people who
originate these abstractions but their actions. They do this without being aware of
it. (p.20).
In other words, for Sohn-Rethel it is the very act of exchange between human
producers that leads to the equiparation of their individual activities and there-
fore to the abstraction of these individual activities into homogeneous labour
measurable by the category value. [Quote from Marx.] [Commodities] are
equated by virtue of being exchanged, claims Sohn-Rethel, they are not
exchanged by virtue of any equality that they possess. In this way the relationship
between the exchanging personsis expressed as equality between these objects.
Individual workers know that their activities are materially (spatio-temporally)
incommensurable; but it is through the act of exchange that these activities
become commensurable without the awareness of the producers, without their
being aware of their performing this otherwise [!] impossible task. We say
otherwise because according to Sohn-Rethel and Marx this task of
commensuration or equiparation of human activities is socially possible
through commodity exchange.
What Sohn-Rethel is doing here is confusing simple exchange in the form of
barter or even gift (?) with the exchange of commodities which can take place
only in an inchoately formed capitalist system until it becomes generalized to the
entire reproduction of society as in advanced capitalism! But we say that this task
is impossible in any case! Because incommensurables cannot become
commensurable except through the concerted action of human beings, and not
through the mere act of exchange by independent[!] producers! If producers
were truly independent, then no amount of exchange could ever be
responsible or lead to the commensuration of their private individual labours!
It is only because there is no such thing as a private individual labour, only
because all human labour is part of social labour, that the social synthesis is at
all possible! Except that in capitalism this synthesis occurs only on condition that
producers are separated from one another (from social labour) through their
separation from the means of production. The Trennung therefore occasions
two separations for workers:- from the means of production frst and consequently
from their collective activity, so that the productivity of social labour appears as
the property of the capitalist!
The error that Sohn-Rethel has committed is to characterize all exchange as
commodity exchange! We can see yet again, then, that his insistence on the
independence of commodity exchange, despite his misgivings and
reservations on Marxs solution to the problem by means of socially necessary
labour time, leads to the hypostatization of social labour and to the treatment of
commodity exchange as an attribute of all (!) human inter-relations rather
than as a specifc historical characteristic of capitalism! Thus, the real abstraction
becomes a crystallization of human activity similar to the forms hypothesized
in Georg Simmels neo-Kantian social theory. Or indeed even in Nietzsche except
that the philosopher of Rocken excoriated this as the ontogeny of thought, that
is, as a fctitious con-vention that serves to disguise the instincts of freedom, the
Will to Power, whereas Simmel treats these forms as ineluctable aspects of
human social existence. But so does Sohn-Rethel, because of his failure to indicate
correctly (!) how exchange arises historically and thus incorrectly attributing
this to the division between intellectual and manual labour.
4.
As we demonstrated earlier, the division of human activity into intellectual and
manual is quite simply untenable, for the evident reason that all human activity
involves both a mental and a manual element and to seek to dichotomise it in
the manner of Sohn-Rethel is palpably absurd. For Sohn-Rethel, the coercive
separation of intellectual from manual tasks is the real source of the
abstraction of concrete human labour what Marx called real abstraction
which leads to the commodifcation of use values, that is, their trans-formation
into exchange values. At the intellectual level, however, this very separation of
mental and manual labours, this real abstraction, engenders also the
hypostatization and reifcation of the concepts of natural science in the manner
operated by Kant in his critique which is why Sohn-Rethel subtitles his work
Critique of Epistemology: Kants work does not presuppose that it is in the
nature of the human mind to perform its labour in separation from manual labour,
but it leads to that conclusion, (p.36). At p.34:

>ut I set out to argue that the abstraction operating in exchange and reected in
value does nevertheless !nd an identical expression( namely the +abstract
intellect.( or the so-called +pure understanding. 9 the cognitive source of scienti!c
knowledge.
And again at p.57:
This real abstraction is the arsenal from which intellectual labour throughout the
eras of commodity exchange draws its conceptual resources. It was the historical
matrix of Freek philosophy and it is still the matrix of the conceptual paradigms of
science as we know it( )p.G03.
Quite clearly, what Sohn-Rethel is attempting here is that unifcation of social and
natural science that Marx had prophesied but that he was unable to realize
because of his failure to supply the critique of epistemology:
The practical solipsism of commodity-exchanging owners is nothing but the
practice of private property as a basis of social relations. And this is not by
people.s choices but by the material necessity of the stage of development of their
productive forces 9 the umbilical cord that ties human to natural history( )p.EC3.
The problem with Sohn-Rethels account, however, is quite simply that the
abstract intellect is something that long pre-dates the arrival of the exchange of
commodities or indeed of exchange value. It is meaningless, for instance, to
speak of commodity production or exchange in Ancient Greece, because its
commerce was never based on the real abstraction of living labour. Even if it
were, however, the fact remains that abstract labour is not and cannot be the
result, the outcome of exchange unless and until that exchange has become so
generalized that it afects all aspects of the reproduction of a society which was
certainly not the case in Ancient Greece. In any case, it is impossible at least for
Antiquity to distinguish between simple exchange and commodity exchange
with the consequence that Sohn-Rethel runs the real risk of hypostatizing all forms
of human exchange as the exchange of commodities. And fnally, why does
exchange have to lead to the abstraction of labour and why does this real
abstraction have to be the result of the distinction between intellectual/mental
and manual labour? Is it not better, instead, to follow Hegel (as did Marx) and
focus instead on the command of living labour by some human beings either
through sheer violence (as in slavery) or through the (impossible) exchange (in
fact a dif-ferent form of violence) with dead labour?