by Andreas Peglau
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Strange beings
In 1843, Marx wrote that „money“ had „deprived the whole world, humanity as well as nature, of its peculiar value,“ „this alien being dominates him, and he worships it.“[1]
In 1844, he attested that labour „produces itself and the worker as a commodity.“[2] In Capital, we then learned that „commodity“ „loves money,“[3] is „a very complicated thing […], full of metaphysical subtleties and theological quirks“ as well as internal communication possibilities. The commodity „canvas,“ for example, reveals „as soon as it comes into contact with another commodity, the skirt,“ „its thoughts in the language familiar only to it, the language of commodities.“[4] We hear that „value“ becomes „the subject [!] of a process, in which it […] changes its own size, […] exploits itself. […] It gives birth to living young or at least lays golden eggs,“ transforming itself into an „automatic subject.“[5]
Marx endowed the relations of production with the same power and vitality as capital by equating the two: „capital is“ a „relation of production belonging to a particular historical formation of society“.[6] He proceeded in the same way with the means of production („Capital is the means of production transformed into capital“)[7] and money: „Every new capital enters the stage for the first time […] still as money.“[8]
In the afterword to the second edition of Capital,[9] we then encounter an accumulation of Marx-animated entities:
„On the one hand, large-scale industry itself was only emerging from its infancy, as is already proven by the fact that it only began the periodic cycle of its modern life with the crisis of 1825. On the other hand, the class struggle between capital and labour remained in the background, […] economically suppressed by the strife between industrial capital and aristocratic land ownership […].“
Shortly before the end of the third volume of Capital, the metaphor that the capitalist is „in fact nothing […] but personified capital“ is repeated, followed by the unpoetic formulation that the capitalist economy is „characterised“ by „the reification of the social relations of production and the subjectification of the material foundations of production“.[10] By „subjectification,“ Marx did not mean that the individual personality of capitalists – which does not occur in his work – determines the production process, but rather he once again varied the thesis that „capital“ acts as a subject.
What Marx had already noted in 1844 seems like a programmatic announcement in this respect: „The more the worker works, the more powerful becomes the alien, objective world he creates for himself.“ The product of his labour exists „independently“ of him, as an „autonomous power“; „the life he has given to the object“ becomes „hostile“ to him: „With the mass of alien objects, […] the realm of alien beings to which man is subjugated grows.“[11]
Mental states
Marx biographer Michael Heinrich aptly summarises Marx’s views on this subject: „In a commodity-producing society, people (all of them!) are in fact under the control of things.“[12] But things are, by definition, inanimate. They have no thoughts, feelings, will or goals, nor can they control or rule. However, things are used by people who want to control and rule or pursue other goals.
A stone lying on the side of the road is not lying in wait for me. I would only be injured by this stone if someone, perhaps an angry person, threw it at me. If I did not see this person and am naive enough, I might imagine that the stone itself wanted to hurt me. But that is just that: imagination.
So what did Marx actually express in words and images here? A psychological reality: people feel as if they are controlled by things, they convince themselves of this, allow themselves to be persuaded of it – and behave accordingly. They build themselves a clay idol and worship it as a powerful ruler.
Michael Heinrich writes that „objective domination“ exists solely „because people relate to these things in a particular way„.[13] In other words, the supposed rule of things ends as soon as people relate to things in a different way, when they deal with them in a realistic manner, put an end to suggestion and autosuggestion, brainwashing, demystify the idol, identify those behind it and disempower them.
Where Marx believed he was observing objective economic factors at work, he was in fact often describing mental states. More precisely: the mental states of individuals who had been raised in an authoritarian manner and were thus alienated from themselves.[14]
The authoritarian character is marked by two main courses of action: kowtowing to those above and kicking those below. This „cyclist personality“ is instilled, to a greater or lesser extent, in all members of patriarchal-hierarchical social orders from birth. It therefore connects „above“ with „below“, but can be acted upon differently at the top of the power pyramid than at its base.[15] Those who manage to become leading capitalists or one of their privileged henchmen can „kick“. The „workers“ and the rest of the population are encouraged to kowtow. The majority comply. But, as shown, there is considerable leeway, especially for capitalists.
Marx correctly perceived and described the behaviour of most people under capitalism. But he drew the wrong conclusion that they must behave in this way.
To avoid this, he would have had to abandon his fixation on economics in favour of a more holistic, not least psychological, perspective. Of course, how could he have done that? He believed what he thought he had recognised to be a law of nature.
Social laws
In 1844, Friedrich Engels wrote: „The law of competition is that demand and supply“ of products cannot be controlled „because in this unconscious state of humanity, no one knows“ what products are actually needed or marketable. Since the capitalist economy therefore never reaches a „healthy state,“ this inevitably leads to crises, which ultimately lead to revolutions. Engels emphasised that this was „a pure law of nature.“ He dismissed the objection that seemed obvious to him: „What are we to think of a law that can only be enforced through periodic revolutions?“ „It is simply a law of nature based on the unconsciousness of those involved.“[16] In order to accept this as a natural and therefore inevitable effect, Engels would have had to classify „unconsciousness“ as inevitable as well. Instead, he added the exhortation: „Produce consciously, as human beings, not as fragmented atoms without class consciousness, and you will be beyond all these artificial and untenable contradictions.“[17] The fact that this liberating blow would also cause that „law of nature“ to vanish into thin air seems to have irritated neither him nor Marx, who approvingly refers to the first lines of this passage in Capital.[18]
The latter is not surprising: such „laws“ abound in Marx’s main work. Already in the preface, there is talk of „the natural laws of capitalist production,“ which operate and prevail „with iron necessity.“ Marx states that the „ultimate purpose“ of his book is „to reveal the economic law of motion of modern society.“ He regards the „development of the economic formation of society“ as a „natural historical process“,[19] and the „natural phases of development“ of society „can neither be skipped nor decreed away“.[20]
To list just a few more examples: there are „laws of simple relative expression of value,“ a „blindly operating average law of irregularity,“ the „law that the quantity of means of circulation determines,“ „the laws of money circulation,“ the „law of speculation,“ laws „about the nature of commodities, value, money,“ the „law of commodity exchange“, the „immanent laws of simple commodity circulation“, the „natural laws of the modern mode of production“,[21] the „compulsory laws of competition“, the „law of value determination by working time“, the „law of valorisation“, the „absolute, general law of capitalist accumulation„.[22] Marx adds to the latter that it is „modified in its realisation by manifold circumstances, like all other laws“. Anyone hoping for more detailed information will be disappointed: Marx dismisses this, saying that „their analysis does not belong here“.[23]
His assessment that the „working class […] recognises the requirements of that mode of production as self-evident laws of nature due to its education, tradition and habits“ also contains a degree of relativisation.[24] This is also one of the places where Marx seems to hint that he is dealing with mental states.[25] For it sounds as if workers imagine that these are laws of nature; if they were to withdraw their recognition of this view or make changes in education, tradition and habit, those „laws“ would be done away with. But Marx does not pursue this either.
Some laws, he says, could „transform“ into one another, such as the „laws governing the change in the price of labour power and surplus value […] into laws governing wages“. Or: to the same extent that commodity production „develops into capitalist production according to its own immanent laws, the laws of property in commodity production are transformed into laws of capitalist appropriation.“[26]
Marx makes it clear several times that the equation with physical or biological laws of nature, with factors that are unchangeable in the long term and independent of humans, is to be taken literally.[27] Thus, „socially necessary labour time imposes itself as a regulating law of nature, just as the law of gravity imposes itself when a house collapses on your head.“[28] Social caste divisions and craft guilds, he says, „arise from the same natural law that governs the separation of plants and animals into species and subspecies.“[29] The „change of labour“ prevails „as an overwhelming natural law and with the blind destructive effect of a natural law“,[30] i.e. analogous to a natural disaster. And we learn that „social production“ behaves „just like celestial bodies,“ which, „once hurled in a certain direction, always repeat the same motion.“[31]
In 1868, Marx reiterated in a letter: „Natural laws cannot be abolished at all.“[32]
Seemingly prevailing coincidences
But how are all these socio-economic (natural) laws supposed to prevail when they encounter countless people who are of different „physical constitutions,“ live in a wide variety of „geological, oro-hydrographical, climatic & other“[33] conditions, have different dispositions, interests, class affiliations, and differ from one another in terms of „sex, age and skill,“[34] level of education, experience and many other factors?
Since Marx so often refers to „laws,“ the credibility of his concepts depends to a large extent on how this question can be answered. When Engels commented on this again in 1886, he returned to the idea of „unconsciousness“:
„In nature, it is […] nothing but unconscious blind agents,[35] interacting with each other and in whose interaction the general law comes into effect. […] In contrast, in the history of society, the actors are nothing but conscious beings, acting with deliberation or passion, working towards specific goals; nothing happens without conscious intention, without a desired goal. But this difference […] cannot change the fact that the course of history is governed by internal general laws. For here too, despite the consciously desired goals of all individuals, chance seems to prevail on the surface. Only rarely does what is intended happen; in most cases, the many intended purposes thwart and conflict with each other, or these purposes themselves are unfeasible from the outset , or the means are insufficient. Thus, the clashes of countless individual wills and individual actions in the historical sphere bring about a state of affairs that is entirely analogous to that prevailing in unconscious nature. […] But where chance plays its part on the surface, it is always governed by inner, hidden laws, and it is only a matter of discovering these laws.“[36]
I consider this argument to be unsubstantiated, unprovable and tautological: because these laws exist, they simply operate according to the law; therefore, both chance and the people affected have no choice but to implement them, and that’s that!
This also contradicts the considerations – which I consider justified – made by Marx and Engels in 1845, at the beginning of their collaboration: „The ideas of the ruling class are the ruling ideas in every epoch, i.e. the class which is the ruling material power of society is at the same time its ruling intellectual power.“[37] The Communist Manifesto then stated: „The ruling ideas of each age have always been the ideas of the ruling class.“[38] Instead of lawful coincidences, it was still a matter of – changeable! – power structures that prevent the will of the vast majority from prevailing against the interests of the rulers.
Laws of nature
According to the 2021 edition of the Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, a law of nature is „a regularity recognised in the natural sciences, especially in physics, chemistry, biology, applied natural sciences such as geology or medicine, and to some extent in biological psychology, which is objectively and universally valid“.[39] During Marx’s lifetime, the explanation was less precise; it was understood to mean „‚laws according to which changes in nature take place‘. All changes that could be derived in mathematical formulas were considered scientifically explainable“.[40]
However, I cannot imagine a law of nature whose effect is first produced by the objects affected by it, in that „in most cases“ their objectives „interfere“ with each other or fail in some other way.
The Tübingen philosopher Karl Theodor Groos illustrated this in 1926 with an example: even if snowflakes are initially „whirled up by the wind instead of falling to the ground according to the law of gravity“, gravity acts on them from the outset and throughout[41] – the law of gravity does not only come into effect when they fly in different directions and perhaps collide at some point. And gravity certainly does not come about by chance. Quite apart from the fact that snowflakes do not „want“ anything, do not bring their own momentum into the process, and do not set out to cheat gravity.[42]
*
Continue reading in Part 7: Doubtful pre- and review, wishful thinking
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Sources of the entire text (mostly in German).
German version of part 6.
Notes
[1] Marx 1976b, p. 375.
[2] Marx 1968, p. 511.
[3] Marx 2021, p. 122.
[4] Ibid., p. 66. Neffe (2017, pp. 406, 410) also quotes this and comments: „It is fascinating how Marx repeatedly transforms seemingly [!] passive objects into active subjects. […] Commodities […] take their place in human society as independent beings […].“ It may be fascinating, but it does not make it real.
[5] Marx 2021, p. 168f. The latter expression is apparently intended to breathe life into a mere neologism (cf.: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatisches_Subjekt).
[6] Marx 1983a, p. 822.
[7] Ibid., p. 823.
[8] Marx 2021, p. 161.
[9] Ibid., p. 20.
[10] Marx 1983a, p. 832, 838.
[11] Marx 1968, p. 512, p. 546.
[12] Heinrich 2021, p. 73.
[13] Ibid.
[14] See Peglau 2018a.
[15] In 1844, Marx formulated something that, in my opinion, came quite close to this view. He wrote that the „proprietorial class“ and the proletariat experienced „the same human alienation.“ However, the former felt „comfortable and affirmed“ in this situation, experiencing it „as their own power,“ which gave them „the appearance of a human existence.“ The workers, on the other hand, felt „destroyed by alienation,“ perceiving it as „their powerlessness and the reality of an inhuman existence“ (Marx/Engels 1972a, p. 37).
[16] Engels 1981, p. 514.
[17] Ibid., p. 515.
[18] Marx 2021, p. 89, footnote 28.
[19] Ibid., pp. 12, 15f., 16.
[20] Ibid. Even though Marx uses the term „natural“ in relation to economic processes, what he usually means is: independent of humans.
[21] Ibid., p. 299.
[22] Ibid., pp. 114, 117, 136, 141, 224, 170, 248f., 172, 299, 335, 337, 343, 674.
[23] Ibid.
[24] Ibid., p. 765.
[25] Another passage is a footnote in which Marx (ibid., p. 72) states that someone is „only king, for example, because other people behave as his subjects. Conversely, they believe themselves to be subjects because he is king.“
[26] Ibid., pp. 565, 613.
[27] He was therefore not concerned with something that was not even discussed in academia at the time and which is now referred to as stochastic or statistical laws: correlations that only prevail with a certain probability. The word „probable“ appears in all three volumes of Capital almost exclusively in quotations and is certainly not used to relativise Marx’s „laws“.
[28] Ibid., p. 89. Hiebel (2019, p. 32) comments: „Marx should have put ’natural law‘ in quotation marks here, because a social regulation is not a natural law. ‚Natural law‘ is clearly used here as a metaphor.“ But Hiebels latter sentence is simply incorrect – and that is why the quotation marks are missing.
[29] Marx 2021, p. 360.
[30] Ibid., p. 511.
[31] Ibid., p. 662. In the 19th century, however, the expectation that human development could be recorded as accurately as natural processes was not uncommon among scientists, especially ethnologists (Kuckenburg 2021, pp. 56–58).
[32] Marx 1974, p. 532.
[33] Marx/Engels 2017, p. 8.
[34] Marx 2021, p. 477.
[35] Driving forces.
[36] Engels 1975a, pp. 296f. Two years earlier, he had already stated: „But chance is only one pole of a connection whose other pole is necessity. In nature, where chance also seems to reign, we have long since demonstrated in every single area the inner necessity and regularity that prevails in this chance. But what applies to nature also applies to society. The more a social activity, a series of social processes, becomes too powerful for people to consciously control, the more it seems to be left to pure chance, the more its peculiar, inherent laws prevail in this chance, as if by natural necessity. Such laws also govern the contingencies of commodity production and exchange […]“ (Engels 1975b, p. 169). Marx argues similarly in a letter from 1868: „World history would be […] very mystical in nature if ‚contingencies‘ played no role. These contingencies naturally fall into the general course of development and are compensated for by other contingencies.“ In the third volume of Capital, he then stated that „the sphere of competition“ was, when viewed in each individual case, „governed by chance“. However, „the internal law that prevails in these coincidences and regulates them“ becomes „visible“ as soon as these coincidences „are aggregated in large masses“ (Marx 1983a, p. 835).
[37] Marx/Engels 2017, p. 60, further explanations on this ibid., pp. 60–66.
[38] Marx/Engels 1972b, p. 480. Wilhelm Reich (1933, p. 12) later gave this a psychosocial foundation: „In class society, it is the ruling class that secures its position with the help of education and the institution of the family by making its ideologies the ruling ideologies of all members of society.“
[39] Sandkühler 2021, p. 1728. Nature, it also says (ibid., p. 1705), is „a collective term used to describe areas of reality that arise or exist without human intervention. In this sense, nature is also used as a counter-concept to the terms ‚culture‘ and ’society‘.“ Seen in this light, Marx would have had no chance of finding socio-economic laws of nature.
[40] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturgesetz
[41] Gross 1926, p. 8.
[42] Popper also argued against the predictability of social developments through what he saw as a „historicism“ stretching from antiquity to Marx in 1974 (see also Gmainer-Pranzl 2019). Erpenbeck (2023, pp. 169–177), who partly criticises Popper’s view, nevertheless agrees that valid predictions for long-term social developments are impossible.