"Reflections on the Economic Crisis. The Transcendental Character of Money: An Exposition of Karl Marx’s Argument in the Grundrisse," Nordicum-Mediterraneum, vol. 5, no. 1 (March 2010). (original) (raw)

REFLECTIONS ON THE ECONOMIC CRISIS. THE TRANSCENDENTAL CHARACTER OF MONEY: AN EXPOSITION OF KARL MARX’S ARGUMENT IN THE GRUNDRISSE Abstract An exposition of Karl Marx’s argument in the Grundrisse for the logical development of money, this essay is divided into three parts. Since Marx is concerned to distinguish himself and his method from that of the seventeenth century political economists, I begin my paper with a brief reflection on “the scientifically correct method: or the “theoretical method” (Grundrisse 100). In this context, Marx argues against the historical method of the seventeenth century political economists, because this approach has failed to distinguish the concepts relevant to an understanding of political economics. Instead of beginning with the “imagined concrete” (i.e., concepts like “population,” “class,” etc.), Marx maintains that according to the correct scientific method the concrete is something to be attained. Reality is not transparent to the understanding; it is not immediately accessible to political economists; reality must be understood. Beginning with the simplest determinations, the political economist brings chaotic conceptions to conceptual clarity by identifying “a small number of determinant, abstract, general relations” which “lead towards a reproduction of the concrete by way of thought” (Grundrisse 100 and 101). Hence, political economists do not produce reality as the product of thought; rather, they proceed correctly by conceptualizing reality in thought. The second part of this paper considers how Marx justifies beginning his reflection with the concept of production in general. To understand the importance that Marx attributes to production, one must also appreciate the way in which distribution, exchange, and consumption belong to the sphere of production. Indeed, in his “Introduction” to the Grundrisse Marx is concerned to demonstrate the way in which previous political economists have gone astray in separating distribution, exchange and consumption from production in general. Marx, however, does not argue that “production, distribution, exchange, and consumption are identical, but that they all form the members of a totality; they are distinctions within a unity. Production predominates not only over itself, in the antithetical definition of production, but over the other moments as well” (Grundrisse, p. 99). In the remaining pages of this section of my paper, then, I attempt to reconstruct Marx’s argument for the way in which these concepts (distribution, exchange, and consumption) are to be understood in relation to the sphere of production. Finally, in the last part of this paper identifies four conceptual moments of money as it moves from a mere medium of exchange to a commodity necessary for the productive process. The four following moments of money are discussed: 1) Money as the “measure of commodity exchange” (Grundrisse, p. 146); 2) Money as the “medium of exchange” (Grundrisse, p. 146); 3) Money as the “representative of commodities” (Grundrisse, p. 146); and 4) Money as a “general commodity along side particular commodities” (Grundrisse, p. 146).