Value-Form and the State

The tendencies of accumulation and

the determination of economie policy
in capitalist society
1·
1,

Geert Reuten and Michael Williams

·~
Routledge '
1989
London and New York
Preface

This book bas two closely related aims. The first is to theorise the
interconnection in capitalist society of the economy, the state and
economie policy. In this respect it could be placed in the tradition of
classica! politica! economy of Smith, Ricardo and Mill, which, soon
after Marx, was overshadowed by the far narrower 'economics' of
the subjectivist and then the neoclassical tradition. Today, politica!
processes insofar as they can be cast in an economics framework are
allotted to a tiny sub-branch of economics - public choice theory.
Otherwise one is referred to the allegedly different discipline of
politica! science. Major disputes amongst economists on economie
policy, even within the same school of thought, manifest the
inadequacy of this separation. More fundamentally it precludes the
understanding of society: one cannot keep separate in thought
processes that are interconnected - at least if the aim is to theorise
reality.
It is of course hard to overcome this separation, given that it bas
gone on for so long. We could not just go back to the classicals and
Marx and pass over a century of - albeit one-sided - theoretica!
work. Moreover, to do so would meao neglecting the question as to
why the separation emerged and has been sustained for so long. This
takes us to the prior aim of the book, which is to develop a method
from which the interconnection of economy, state and economie
policy can be theorised. We distance ourselves from both the purely
abstract formalism, and the empiricism, of economics, as well as
from the empiricist philosophy of science on which it claims to be
based. Abstract formalism and empiricism have, in our view, at least
contributed to\the emergence of the separation of economics and
politica! science; and their persistence bas been sustained by the
widespread indifference to methodology and philosophy of science
amongst mainstream economists.

xix
 Value-form and the state Preface

The notion of interconnection, which is central to our work, of the first three Parts bas been written by Reuten, and of the last
derives from Regel, who is, for us, the most profound critic yet of three by Williams. We should like to thank all those who have
empiricist philosophy. Interconnection between empirica! pheno- contributed to the production of this book at some stage. We are
mena cannot be established by applying isolated abstract formal grateful to Neil de Marchi and Eg. Berns for their comments on
categories - as empiricism does. lt rather bas to be established in the (parts of) the manuscript and especially to Jörg Glombowski who
development of the categories themselves from empirica! pheno- bas taken much time to comment on it in detail. We also thank Veith
mena, which are then both reconstituted and concretised so that as a Bader, Meindert Fennema, Gerd Junne and Bob Rowthom for their
result they can be grasped concretely. This dialectica! process should support at different stages of the project.
reveal eventually how and to what extent economy, state and policy
are necessarily, as opposed to merely contingently, connected within May 1988
capitalist society. This systematic interconnection then reveals to
what extent there is, within that society, freedom for systemic change Geert Reuten Michael Williams
of policy. Although we strongly reject Hegel's historicism, in University of Amsterdam Victoria University of Wellington
developing our method we draw heavily on bis logic, so that our Faculty of Economics Economics Group
work might be characterised as 'dialectica! politica! economy'. Jodenbreestraat 23 PO Box 600, Wellington
The coincidence of politica! economy and dialectics explains why 1011 NH Amsterdam New Zealand
throughout this book frequent reference is made to Marx and the
Marxist tradition. Indeed both (as well as historicism) appear in
Marx's Capita/. However, Marx's mature work did not reach the
conceptualisation of the state and economie policy, and the Marxist
tradition bas for the most part been no more successful in theorising
their interconnection. Whilst this is partly due to the often dogmatic
textual exegesis of many Marxists, it is also the case that Marxism
had been influenced by the purely abstract formalism and the
empiricism of economics. To the extent that Marxists distance
themselves from empiricist philosophy, it is often historicism rather
than dialectical logic that is counterposed to it. Relatedly Marxist
politica! economy bas been widely reduced to a one-sided Marxist
economics. Nevertheless, taking the project of dialectica! politica!
economy seriously, we cannot simply neglect Marxist economics nor
for that matter that of neoclassicals, Keynesians or Austrians, each
of which has therefore been critically located within our
presentation.
Part One provides a systematic account of the method of
dialectica! politica! economy. Such a project is never complete, hut
we feel that the subsequent Parts show that a systematic account of
bourgeois society is feasible, and that it provides an understanding of
the interconnection of social processes, and indeed capitalist society
as a whole. We hope to have shown that our method can indeed be
generally deployed within politica! economy.
\
This project could only have worked as ajoint effort. We are both
convinced that what we have produced together is much more than
the sum of the parts. Whilst we have both contributed to all the
Parts, and take full responsibility for their coherence, the final draft For a note on the arrangement of the text see pp. 5-6

XX
xxi
 J\

Summary and Conclusions

SECTION 1 THE CONTRADICTIONS OF THE BOURGEOIS

EPOCH: SUMMARY

§1. The starting point

. ~'
We have expressed our dissatisfaction with the method of main-
stream economics (OS 1), and constructed from within Hegelian-
Marxist politica! economy the method of 'dialectical systematic
theory' as amore adequate altemative (OSS2-3). Our presentation of
the bourgeois epoch is itself developed from the fundamental logical
categories of being and nothing (0§15). In this it differs from most
'"," Hegelian social theory, which tends to start with the social and
.t(., economie categories in The Philosophy of Right. Sociation,
necessary for the existence of individuals inherently incapable of
self-production, is negated on the emergence of the bourgeois epoch
by dissociation. The specifically bourgeois mode of association is
postulated to be the value-form (0§16, lSSl-3): the starting point
(0§8) which the systematic presentation proper is to ground (0§9),
and so to validate (0§12).

§2. The moments reproducing the economy

The value-form is the social universal form grounding the association
of dissociated production and consumption in the capitalist
economy. It is the necessary dimension of useful objects and of the
activity of their creation, which thus each have a contradictory
double reality - use-value and value (which constitutes the useful
object as commodity), and concrete and abstract labour (which
constitvte the activity as labour), respectively (lSSl-3). Value is a
purely quantitative form, whose sole autonomous social expression
is in money as the general equivalent (1 S4), and which is concerned
only to valorise. Use-value, on the other hand, is multidimensional in
~\.:
·;;
289
Value-form and the state
terms of for what or for whom it is a use-value. lt is the theorisation
of the dialectical unity of value and use-value that marks our value-
form reconstruction of the abstract labour theory of value. lts
crucially dynamic nature is maintained in the introduction of ideal
pre-commensuration anticipating exchange in production, which
ensures that the form-determination imposed by ubiquitous
exchange is internalised into the very organisation of production.
The labour process itself thus bas the contradictory double form of
use-value production and valorisation. The production of use-values
requires in general both labour and means of production. However,
because only labour takes the value-form and yet is itself created
outside the capitalist economy (in the private sphere - 7Sl), it is the
only element of valorisation. However, since capital is the necessary
value-form of the elements of production as inputs, valorisation
takes the contradictory form of valorisation of capital, which is thus
contradictorily related to itself as self-valorising value, as expressed
in the rate of profit (IS5).
The logic of the valorisation of capital is its futher expansion,
which requires increasing control over the labour process by capital,
and the investment of profits. The valorisation of capital thus entails
its accumulation. The limits to accumulation are initially resolved in
technical change (2S l). The accumulation of capital is grounded in
the extended reproduction of labour power (2S3) and the credit
system. Banks have been developed from the two forms of
commercial credit - trade and production credit, doubling respect-
ively into money of account and means of payment, and money
capital and means of payment. The ex-nihilo creation of credit
money by banks anticipates as a private pre-validation the successful
production and social validation of commodities, and is thus a
condition of existence of accumulation. Continuous pre-validation
was itself grounded in inter-bank credit from which was derived the
central bank and redeemability of credit money in legal tender. In
this way (and contrary to most Marxist treatments) money ( l S4) and
the credit system have been developed without any recourse to
commodity money (2S2).
The interaction of 'many capitals' - competition conceived
abstractly - generates the tendencies to equalisation of rates of profit
and to uniform wages and uniform prices. These tendencies, together
with the compulsion to invest capital in cost-reducing and labour-
productivity increasing techniques of production, establish that each
branch of production tends to be composed of a stratification of
capitals according to cost of production, and concomitant rate of
profit differences (2S4). The concept 'money expression of labour'
links the determinations of production, valorisation, accumulation
290
Summary and conclusions
and the interaction of many capitals, concretising the value-form of
labour and useful objects. With it, all the moments of the economy
have been presented in outline, and so also its (abstract) existence
(2S5).
§3. The tendencies of economie development
In the process of accumulation the value-use-value contradiction is
expressed in the tendencies of accumulation - that to over-
accumulation (Chapter 3) and that for the rate of profit to fall
(Chapter 4). With increase in the composition of capital blended out,
the validation of extended accumulation requires an ever-increasing
rate of accumulation, the condition of existence of which is an
abundant labour force. However, an increasing rate of surplus value
and its accumulation tend to deplete the reserve of labour, so that
valorisation and accumulation tend to be extended up to the point
where capital is abundant relative to labour (3Sl). The tendency to
over-accumulation of capital (TOC) is expressed either in labour
scarcity profit squeeze or in underconsumption. The first is produced
when labour scarcity gives rise to wage increase, squeezing profits
and leading to a reduction in the rate of accumulation, until labour
eventually becomes abundant again. Underconsumption is produced
when labour scarcity does not generate sufficient wage increase to
maintain effective demand, and so accumulation comes to stagnate.
Underconsumption and labour shortage profit squeeze are usually
put forward as mutually exclusive, but we have presented them as
expressions of the same contradictory force whereby accumulation
of capital is extended up to its negation in over-accumulation (3S2).
The tendency of the rate of profit to fall (TRPF) is predicated
upon an increasing value composition of capital (VCC), concomitant
on investment in labour-productivity increasing techniques of
production. lt contradicts the tendential increase in profit and the
rate of profit generated by the accumulation of capital in new plants
(4Sl, cf. 2Sl). Tuis contradiction bas been conceived by authors
following Okishio (1961) as a theoretical inconsistency justifying the
rejection of the TRPF. The dialectical systematic presentation
reveals that the TRPF may be adequately grounded if it is conceived
not as a comparative statie, but as a dynamic process incorporating
fixed capital. We have shown how this contradiction is transcended,
and so ~an have existence, in the concretisation of capital stratifi-
cation. When stratification is extended with composition of capital
increasing techniques at one end, whilst sub-marginal plants are
scrapped at the other, the new plant capital will tend to have a higher
productivity and rate of profit than that of the capitals in the
291
Value-form and the state
previous stratification, whilst the capitals in the rest of the stratifi-
cation experience devalorisation and declining rates of profit (4S2).
One expression of the TRPF is in devaluation of capital. The price
decrease typically concomitant on the TRPF counteracts the
increasing vee of newly accumulated capital, hut at the same time
falling means of production prices (and/ or generalised over-
capacity) devalue previously accumulated fixed capital, reducing the
extension of accumulation. The TRPF is further expressed in restruc-
turing and, contingently, in centralisation of capital. The more rapid
and sustained the productivity increase, the more it generates
scrapping of plants before the capital invested has had time to be
fully amortised. As scrapping of the least efficient plants accelerates,
the range of the stratification of capital is reduced, preventing the
possibility of a smooth, gradual increase in the vee. lnstead,
technical knowledge then tends to be implemented in waves,
expressing the law of the TRPF in a tendential cyclical movement
(4S3).
The tendencies of accumulation are articulated in the irregular
cyclical course of economie development (ehapter 5). The increasing
vee concomitant on the TRPF counteracts the expression of the
Toe in labour-shortage profit squeeze and underconsumptions.
(5Sl). The cycle of expansion and contraction of accumulation
implied by each considered in isolation therefore tends to be
extended. The character of the turning points is, however, indeter-
minate: alternation may occur either gradually or in the form of
disruptive economie crises. Nevertheless the combination of the
credit system (tending to increase the amplitude of the cycle), and the
eventual cumulative expulsion of labour from the circuit of capital,
tends to make the economy vulnerable to economie crisis, one
important characteristic of which is the enforced manifestation of
devalorisation and devaluation, and of restructuring and centralis-
ation. The concomitant decrease in the range of stratification tends
to generate 'boarding' of technology, which may explain the wave-
like implementation of new techniques (Schumpeter) (5S2).
The presentation of inflation (5S3) introduces (for the first time) a
contingent moment, thus showing how the contingent may be linked
with the systematic (0§11). Inflation is thus merely one possible
process generated within the economy to overcome economie crisis
(itself merely one possible manifestation of the contradictions of
valorisation and accumulation). The inflationary reproduction of
accumulation appears to overcome economie crisis, hut it reinforces
the tendency for the implementation of new techniques to come in
waves. Whilst the revaluation of capital produced by inflation
provides, in the form of windfall capital gains, compensation for
292
Summary and conclusions
devalorisation, it is offset by a loss in the purchasing power of the
non-banking money capital lent to industrial capital. This causes the
gradual withdrawal of such capital from industry, which has then to
rely increasingly on short-term bank credit. This gives rise to an
increasing share of interest in surplus value, reducing the inflationary
compensation for devalorisation. Protracted inflation further
enforces the cyclical manifestation of the TOe, imposed on an
upward growth trend. The associated relative decrease in average
rates of unemployment inhibits the regular disciplining of the labour
force, affecting not only the level of the wage hut also the intensity of
labour, so that the rate of surplus value comes under pressure. The
withdrawal of non-banking money capital from industry and the
reinforcement of the TOe tend to put a further drain on profits,
causing banks to slow down the increase in lending. Tuis may be
accomplished gradually, typically in the form of selective lending
leading to a dual structure of a strong and a weak layer of capital.
The resultant increase in the range of stratification puts a downward
pressure on prices, which restores the tensions and conflicts that
inflation was to overcome.
The contingent expression of the articulation of the TRPF and the
TOe in protracted inflation undermines money as a store of value, so
that not only is the position of banks within the circuit of capital
undermined, hut also the very associative function of money as
genera} equivalent itself. eontinuously increasing inflation therefore
cannot persist, so that inflation cannot overcome hut only modify the
manifestations of the contradictions of the valorisation and devalor-
isation, and accumulation and devaluation of capital.
The presentation of the conditions of existence of the value-form
as the bourgeois mode of association has thus been developed to the
extent where necessity gives way to contingency. The value-form of
association has been validated as the starting point of the present-
ation to the extent that it has been grounded in its abstractly
economie conditions of existence. All the relations and forces
conceptualised thus far are necessarily one-sidedly economie, and
thus remain abstract, so the presentation must proceed to their further
concretisation.
§4. Civil society and the state
In the, presentation of the economy, subjects have had only an
implicit and contradictory existence as the bearers of economie
relations - subjects without subjectivity. This contradiction i1 tr1n1·
cended in competitive society, the unity of the abstract caplt1l11t
economy and the abstract social existence of free will (6SI 2). Tht
29.1
Value-form and the state
bearers of economie relations and of abstract free will are concretised
as competition subjects, with the abstract free will to deploy their
income sources in pursuit of income within the constraints of the
opportunities offered by the value-form determined economy. There
are two categories of competition subject: subjects of property
income sources and those of labour income sources. The particular
subjective right to existence cannot be grounded within the capitalist
economy as the value-form is immanently indifferent to it, and the
tendencies of accumulation threaten it. Equally, the bourgeois right
to property, derived from the free will of competition subjects to
deploy income sources in pursuit of income, cannot be grounded
within the capitalist economy. Therefore it is, as a system which is
not self-reproducing, by itself contradictory (6S3). Tuis contra-
diction is transcended in the doubling of competitive society into the
state and civil society (6§7). Civil society is determined by the subject-
less economie processes of valorisation and by the income-seeking
activities of competition subjects, in the context of the separate
existence of the state. The state is determined as the universal social
subject which upholds the universa} rights of property and existence
(6§8). It is bourgeois in that the people it represents are essentially
bourgeois subjects, in their two determinations as competition
subject (with rights of property and, negatively, existence) and
citizen.
The existence of the state is grounded first in its positing of right as
law, and secondly in its legitimation by the will of bourgeois subjects
whose consent depends upon their perception that the state is
upholding their rights as constitutive of the general interest - that is,
in universal forms. The legitimation of the state and the autonomy of
the value-form require that the state be concretely separated from
civil society, but also that its existence and activity be willed by
bourgeois persons. Tuis separation-in-unity (6§12) is the basis of the
state's material existence (8S2), and of the contextual (8Sl), welfare
(9Sl), macroeconomic (9S2) and microeconomic (9S3) activities in
which the reproduction of the rights of property and person, and the
market reproduction of the economy wherein lies their prime deter-
mination, require the state to engage.
§5. Economie policy
The contradiction of the universal social subject, which is both
separated from that over which it is subject and restricted to
particular sovereignty (7S3), is grounded in the state as provider of
the social context of law, money and infrastructure for the economy
(8Sl). Provision of such a context entails physical existence, for
294
Summary and conc/usions
which the state is dependent on the economy, ultimately through
taxation (8S2). Separation-in-unity bas its contradictory existence in
the mixed economy - the necessary coexistence of value and use-
value criteria for resource allocation and subjective decision-making.
The contradiction of the mixed economy is grounded in the state
(social subject) as agent of active economie policy, intervening
explicitly in the economy from outside civil society (8S4). Tuis inter-
vention is further particularised in welfare, macroeconomic and
microeconomic policy (Chapter 9). In order to cope as it sees to be
necessary with the contingency of, and systematic threats to
individual existence, active state policy is particularised first in
welfare policies, concerned to enhance the conditions for the sale of
labour power and to provide income support or replacement for the
unsuccessful labourer (9Sl). Active macroeconomic attempts to
manage the cyclical manifestations of the tendencies of accumulation
(Part Three) provide further determinations of the state's fiscal and
monetary activities (9S2). The restricted sovereignty of the macro-
economic agent further determines its policy towards its national
economy in the context of the world economy (7SS2-3). Micro-
economic intervention attempts to enhance the market-regulated allo-
cation of resources in pursuit of more efficient valorisation and
accumulation, and of the use-value demands of contextual, welfare
and macroeconomic policy (9S4). lt manifests to the highest degree
the expression of the contradictions of separation-in-unity, in the
form of interventions by the state as social subject back into civil
society.
As policy activities are predicated upon the reproduction of the
value-form, they must inevitably reproduce the contradictions of that
form (9S4). Welfare and economie policy involves the attempt to
bring to bear a complex of use-value criteria on, in the first instance,
necessarily value-criteria based commercial decision-making pro-
cesses. Produced value is thereby diverted from the productive
circuits of capital, and the pure logic of the value-form processes is
distorted. Market prices become even less perfect bearers of inform-
ation on the consumption, production and investment possibilities
open to competition subjects, being contaminated by the effects of
the activities of the state. The value-form is confronted in principle
with the concrete particular social, rather than merely the abstract
universal political, realisation of the right to existence. Tuis, and the
dilutiod of bourgeois property right, and of the connection betwecn
access to consumption and the effective contribution of labour power
to the processes of valorisation and accumulation, appean tn
challenge the necessity of the unification of use-value wllh v1h1t In
the commodity. It becomes possible for indlvldu1I 1ulajHt1
••
Value-form and the state
systematically to consume useful objects without the mediation of
money, and to obtain money without contributing to their
production.
§6. Legitimation
The citizen is a moment of the bourgeois person (6§10), itself deter-
mined by the contradictory existence of the competition subject
characterised by pure self-interest. However, as citizen, the person
must be persuaded to legitimate state activity grounded in the genera/
interest. This creates a problem concerning the basis of legitimation
in the will of the citizen, to the extent that the latter is to be con-
fronted with state activity which actively discriminates against one in
favour of another, albeit in the name of the general interest. In its
necessary attempts to impose a system of morality ('Sittlichkeit)
whose essential moment is disinterested conduct, upon a civil society
grounded in the amorality of purely self-interested conduct, the
universa! social subject cannot help hut threaten its own legitimation.
More specifically, in trying to actualise the merely ideal right to
existence the state is bound to fail, and thence to undermine its
legitimation based upon the will of its citizens. To the extent that
redistributive activities are successful, they undermine the value-form
processes of the economy; to the extent that they are not, they
undermine legitimation.
In order to carry out laws which enact economie policy the
executive (6§12) invariably requires some discretionary powers in
assessing which economie agents (competition subjects) fall under
the provisions of a particular policy or regulation, and to what extent
they are liable to bear its costs or are entitled to receive its benefits. lt
is a practical impossibility that such discretionary discrimination
could be obviated by drafting laws so tightly that they could be
implemented in an entirely automatic way by a rule-bound executive
bureaucracy, with disputed liability or eligibility being decided by an
independent judiciary. lndeed, cost-efficient implementation of
economie policy in order to reduce the quantitative strain on
accumulation ( 1OS2), and the dilution of market reproduction of the
value-form, demands that economie agents be subject to specialist
scrutiny by bureaucrats to ensure the exact ex tent of their liability of
entitlement. The state's role in supporting the value-form and the
form of right both requires and abhors discretionary discrimination
as between persons and groups of persons: it is contradictory. To
have discretion, the executive must de facto legislate and adjudicate,
and thus break down the separation of executive bureaux from the
legislative and the judicia! (8§§2-3). To the extent that the executive
296
Summary and conclusions
bureaux of the state are seen to act in the interests of one person or
group of persons and against others, the state's legitimation
grounded in the will of bourgeois persons is undermined.
By bridging the necessary separation between state and civil
society (6§11), economie policy places on the social agenda
intimations of principles for the allocation of resources and the
regulation of the economie aspects of social life other than (and in
conflict with) market reproduced value criteria. If this agenda were
to be taken up consciously by large numbers of economically,
socially and politically effective people, the dominance of the value-
form, and of the power structure of vested interests which grounds it,
might be threatened. The state's activities in the form of economie
policies become the object of politica!, administrative and legal
struggles in and around the state, which may not be confined to the
legitimate form of parliamentary debate and legislation, hut may
reappear within the execution and adjudication of economie policy,
as well as within civil society. It is these struggles, in the context of
the constraints of international competition (lOSl), and articulated
with the working out of the tendencies of accumulation, which
proximately determine the course of development of the mixed
economy (10SS2-3).
SECTION 2 THE EMPIRICAL AS THE CONCRETE
§7. Actually existent contradiction
Modern mainstream social science finds it difficult to come to terms
with the notion of an actually existing social system which is
perceived as contradictory. For us, contradiction refers to the unity
of opposites, and the point is to explain how they can coexist within
a unity. Those contradictions that are not transcended necessarily,
must have a contingent form of existence (0§§ 10-11). Both the
contradictions of the capitalist economy taken in isolation and the
contradictions of separation-in-unity developed from them work
themselves out in the form of the irregularly cyclical course of
development of the capitalist economy (Chapter 5), and of the
developing and fluctuating forms of welfare and economie policy in
which both economie and legitimation crises continually threaten
(Chapter 9). The concrete content of these transcendent forms of
existenre of contradiction is, however, indeterminate (for examplc,
5S3; 10S3). The activities of the state more concretely graspcd are
constituted by its attempts to manage the conflicting manifcst11tiom1
of the working out of the contradictions of the mixed cconomy,
Economie activity rises and falls, and policy targets and h1111rum111I•
Jt?
Value-form and the state
- and perhaps the govemments espousing them - come and go.
Concrete accounts should thus be concemed to grasp how the
contradictions of the crucial moments and tendencies of the epoch
are momentarily resolved in the cyclically changing empirica}
phenomena of the conjuncture. lt is in the actuality of everyday life,
with its many contingent determinations, that contradictions are
ultimately grounded. However, such contingent resolution cannot
dissolve the contradictions of the bourgeois totality, which will
persist until the latter is itself transcended. Our systematic
presentation is concemed to trace out the relationship of the
contingently actual to the necessary moments and tendencies, which
is what is required for a theory of crises which could identify those
processes which challenge the dominance of the value-form (Offe
1973: 38), as they manifest themselves in a cyclical course of
development, rather than in an inevitable secular increase (cf. Offe
1973: 41; 1979: 80).
§8. Form and content
Because the content of the more concrete necessary moments is
proximately determined only contingently, it would appear that the
systematic presentation of the development of the bourgeois epoch
cannot be extended beyond them. However, the immediate objects of
conjunctural accounts of the mixed economy would consist of the
form and content of the controversy, and economie, social and
politica} struggle over such things as the appropriate scope and
nature of state activity; the legitimate constituents of the social
context for the market; the proper level and eligibility conditions for
welfare benefits; the extent to which the state can and should attempt
to manage the macroeconomy; the degree and substance of possible
and desirable microeconomic intervention; the perceived trade-off
between redistribution and efficiency; and the changing institutional
forms of the inner state (6§12).
The restricted sovereignty of the agent of policy in the context of
the world economy further contingently determines the outcome
( IOS 1). The state provides the necessary conditions of existence of
valorisation and accumulation in the shape of a social context and
welfare, macroeconomic and microeconomic policy (Chapters 8ff).
Given the existence of many states, in the light of the geographically
indifferent value-form processes reproduced by world market
mechanisms, how a concrete particular state manifests these policies
will be modified by the extemal threats from other states. That is the
object of the presentation in 7S3, which enables the subsequent
further particularisation of the state-society relationship in the
298
Summary and conclusions
different categories of state policy in lOSl. We have argued that the
existence of the state as many states is at a more concrete level than
the determination of the state itself on the basis of the value-form.
Further, we have postulated that this form of existence is contingent
with respect to the reproduction of the bourgeois totality. The intro-
duction of 'many states' is, however, only provisional.
§9. Systematicity and conjunctural accounts
The examination of any conjuncture can be effective only to the
extent that it grasps the empirica} detail concretely - that is, as
interconnected within the totality - so grounding the abstract
determinants. 1t is a condition of the possibility of a systematic
conceptualisation of it that the object-totality (bourgeois society -
0§14) is a structured, coherent whole. Observed changes in the
processes by which that system seems to reproduce itself are to be
theorised in terms of their likely effects on the reproduction of its
derived conditions of existence. To the extent that it is shown to be
impossible to grasp significant aspects of any conjuncture on the
basis of the contingent transcendence of the persisting contradictions
of valorisation and accumulation, and of the rights-based state
grounding the value-form, the presentation must be modified (0§12).
The presentation constitutes our argument for the correctness of
our starting-point in the value-form as the specifically bourgeois
mode of association, by grounding it. The authors would not be so
immodest as to claim that further intensive development of the value-
form presentation of the bourgeois epoch is not required. Partic-
ularly underdeveloped topics are the private sphere, the existence of
the state as many states and the presentation of the world economy
I'" and (the lack of) world money (all provisionally presented in Chapter
1
7), hut there are no doubt many other interconnections which have
been neglected. Nor can there be any absolute certainty about the
i-
l
1 correctness of the order of presentation in all its details (0§12). The
major next step in extending the presentation, however, must surely
involve still further concretisation, to the investigation of everyday
life. This, on the basis of adequate concepts, bas proved troublesome
for Marxist and Hegelian social science, as well as specifically for
mainstream economics (OSl), so it is worth spelling out briefly the
'~
mode of investigation of policy at the level of the empirica} concrete
implicit i• the method. The development of policy is, for value-form
theory, to be theorised as an element of the state's attempts to
manage the manifestations of the playing out over historical time of
the contradiction between the ahistorically necessary satisfaction of
particular human needs, and the socially necessary universnl form In
JW
Value-form and the state Summary and conclusions
which that content appears in the bourgeois epoch: value. Such a their possibilities of successfully deploying their capacity to labour,
development is the history of any particular state's attempts to as well as of winning an increased 'social wage'. But such growth
manage, suppress, mediate and compensate for the phenomenal must of necessity be the successful reproduction of the value-form
manifestations of these fundamental contradictions. The kinds of determined processes which inhibit people's potential for self-
research questions suggested by value-form theory for interrogation determination. 'Subjective individuals acquire objective recognition
of the empirical description of events and trends are: Does the by means of these two factors (exchange and contract), and this
observed removal or modification of some policy target or recognition transforms their fortuitous possessions into property,
instrument mean that some derived necessary condition of existence and themselves into persons' (Kortian 1984: 201). For Regel, as for
is not being reproduced, or is being undermined? Is the system then Marx: 'human capacities and the potentialities contained in
degenerating (in terms of its own logic)? If so how? Or are altemative economie activity, can only be fully actualised in the context of a
mechanisms (policies, or autonomous economie or social processes) properly ordered social context' (Walton 1984: 250). According to
emerging which will serve to reproduce that condition of existence?
Or bas the system developed in such a way that the threatened .~· value-form theory, in the bourgeois epoch that context's 'proper
order' is fatally flawed by the diremption into economie, political and
condition of existence is no longer necessary to its reproduction? Or
was it perhaps wrongly identified as a necessary condition in the first
place?
As with any theory of cyclical development, the most interesting
' private spheres. The economie rationality which dominates
bourgeois society is, in reality, hut one, separated, moment of a
conception of rationality adequate to humankind's species being -
and, we have shown, can be comprehended as such. Nevertheless,
questions concern the tuming points: what kinds of manifestations of whilst truth is in-itself political, it may only become for-itself political
the persistent tensions of the mixed economy are likely to stimulate a - thus freedom in-itself - if it is comprehended as in-itself political
reversal of policy strategy? In general, such tuming points may be (0§13).
expected to result from the decreasing success of a strategy as the
manifestations of persisting contradictions build up, faced with the
rising expectations of the electorate generated by the promises of
change and by its early successes. Whilst a sovereign state may do
whatever it can get legitimated - and it is therefore a state's under-
standing of the tasks and problems facing it which proximately
determine the intended objects and instruments of policy - the task
of theory is to grasp those understandings in the light of a concept-
ualisation of the systematic whole that is bourgeois society.
Conjunctural accounts are not some optional extra, hut are
demanded by the methodological imperatives of value-form theory
itself: contradiction must have a form of existence, however
contingent its content. The procedure of systematic conceptual
development and the programmatic interrogation of empirica!
information not only generate new insights as to contingent
developments, hut also provide a more adequate foundation for
existing assertions about the basis of policy. Policy and political
options can then be discussed on the firm basis of their interconnect-
edness within bourgeois society. One issue evolving from our present-
ation may clarify this. Value-form theory would argue that the
diremption of society, and concomitantly of the individual (7S 1), is
manifest in the antinomy of pro-working class polities in the
bourgeois epoch. It is clearly in the interests of labourers that civil
society be economically successful, since economie growth enhances

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