Anselm Jappe Sohn Rethel and The Origin of Real Abstraction

8/10/2019 Anselm Jappe - Sohn-Rethel and the Origin of 'Real Abstraction'
historical materialism
i ßi ftwrxiu th ory
R LL Historical Ma terialism 21.1 2013)3-14 brill.com/hima
Soh n-Reth el a nd th e Origin of Real Ab stra c tio n :

A Critique of Pro ductio n o r a Critique of Circ ulatio n?*
Anselm Jappe
Éco le des Hautes Études en Sciences Soc iales, Paris and Acc adem ia di Belle Arti di Fro sinone
a,jappe@ac ca dem iab elleaiti,fr,it;
Abstract
Alfred Soh n-Rethel did no t just elab or ate a m aterialist theory of knowledge, he also introduced
the term real ab stra ctio n into Marxist deba te. However, he loc ates the origin of co m m odity
abstraction solely in the sphere o f circ ulation, co nceiving of pro duction itself as a m e r e m e ta b o l i sm
with nature. This co nception, in whic h the cr itique of ca pitalism aim s exclusively a t distrib ution,
a nd whic h rejects the Ma rxian co ncept of ab stra c t lab our , rem ains widespread. It is our express
intention h ere to undertake a cr itique of such a c o nception for the b enefit of a cr itique of the very
m ode of ca pitalist production.
Keywords
Alfred Sohn-Rethel, real abstraction, critique of value, Robert Kurz, abstract labour, social origin
of knowledge, relationsh ip between co m m o dity productio n and exch ange
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
an a b iding presence with in it and m ana ges from tim e to tim e to a ro use so m e
interest.
soc io lo gistNearly
a nd eceverything
o no m ist: b was odd1899
o rn in in in
theParis,
fate in
of th
this German
e 1920s philosopher,
h e was clo se to
Walter Benjamin and to Theodor W. Adorno, to Siegfried Kracauer and Ernst
Bloch , But h e was never per m itted to jo in Max Hor kheim er s Institute for Social
Resear ch . After fleeing Nazi Germ any, h e lived for m any years in o b scurity
in England a nd it was o nly after 1970 th a t h e returned to Germ any wh ere h e
co uld finally publish h is b o o ks, b egin tea c h ing at university level, a nd a ttra c t a
co nsidera b le following am o ng the Germ an New Left. He died in 1990. Only two
of his b oo ks h ave b een tra nslated into English: Intellectual Labour and Manual
abour ^ a n d Economy and Class Structure of German Fascism. ^
* English text estab lish ed with th e help of Joh n McHale,

1, So h n-Reth el 1978a,
2, So h n-Reth el 1978b,
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/anselm-jappe-sohn-rethel-and-the-origin-of-real-abstraction 1/13
© Koninklijkc Brill NV U id cn 2013 nOI: IO II63/I5692U6X-1234I283
4 A . Jappe / Historical Materialism 21.1 2013)3-14
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 ex pression of th e co m m odity form. As he p ut 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 mea ning for capitalist
production with pure intellect , capital itself with reason , the com modity world
with experience , and comm odity exchange according to the laws of capitalist
prod uction 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 ab strac t think ing, of seizing wh at 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 5
Throughout history, the separate intellect and forms of exchange have

developed co-extensively. abstract
s 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. The re exists a link betwe en the logical form of
universality, i.e. the pur e activity of tho ug ht, and the social form of labou r. The
social form of labo ur rises
a bove 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 he art 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.
6 A.Jappe/HistoricalMateriaiism2\.i 2013)3-14
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 avery good expla nation 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 etc. of the animal kingdom , there existed also
in addition the animal the individual incarnation of the entire anim al kingdom.
Such a particu lar which con tains 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 labour. The

humanófrealization
specific labour materialized in it now thereby counts as universalform
of hum an labour, as universal tabour. °
Apart from a brief occurrence of the term of 'real abstraction' in the work of
Georg Sim m el, it was Sohn-Rethel w ho effectively intro du ced 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. M üller 1977.
9. Bockelmann 2004.
10. M arx 1976, p. 27.
u. Simmel 1989, p. 57.
A Jappe Historical Materialism 21.1 2013)3-14 7
great de al of discussion. Some of it is ma rked by the large am ou nt 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 abstra ction s do not bea r essentially on logic or ideology
and should not be linked with Louis Althusser s theor etical 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 conc ern. 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 th at 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 m odities, bearers of social alienation? This question is not as abstract
or as convoluted as it might seem, since an im portan t issue depend s on it: in
wh ich sp here of social life do we hav e to interven e in orde r to heal the ravages
generated by social abstraction?
Sohn-Rethel locates the origins of com mod 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
Marxof exchange
underlines,there indeed lies
as opposed to conc
the entrated a purely
relationship socialman
between relation, which
and nature
which takes place in all types of material use activity, be they activities of
con sum ption or of produ ction . ^ S ohn-Rethel defines labo ur clearly as use
activity . Quite logically, he rejects M arx 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.

8 AJappe/Historical Materialism 21.1 2013)3-14
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 ma n 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 rem ains 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 m ean s of excha nge, and
one by means of labour. He argues that the sort of abstraction and form of
social synthesis
exchan entailed
ge abstraction in the
. ** For value formlabo
Sohn-Rethel, is ur
notd oes
a labour
n ot seabstraction but an
em 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 bec om 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 m unity
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 relations hips.
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, ab strac t labou r 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 hum an 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 ass ertion is true b ut does not justify the former
since exch ang e is no t the o nly 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-R ethel s real me rit is to have a rticula ted th e w hole issue of real
abstraction. But the answer he gives cannot be accepted unconditionally. He
con siders himself a Marxist, an d p rese nts 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.
10 A . Jappe / Historical Materialism 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 a bstraction' 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 ounc e
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
ma rginalism, which is in total contra st to M arx's critiqu e of political eco nom 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 tempo ral 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 com mo dity exchange. T his equalisation
is in turn the root of the n otion 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. Soh n-R ethel 1990, p. 20.

21. Soh n-Re thel 1978c, p. 123.
A Jappe Historical Materialism 21.1 2013)3-14 11
abstraction is, at th e 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 prod ucts: as the opposition between the act
of exchang e and the act of use in relation to the in anim ate pr odu 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 eara nce 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
pro du cers ' relation to on e ano the r as the o bject 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 concerne d 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
already hunter-gathering
falls into those as a categories
false ontological form of 'labour'
laid by inthetoday's sense,
'abstract he
labour'
he dismisses.
A threefold 'infidelity' may thus b e discerned in Sohn-Rethel with regard to
the Marxian analysis of the value form: he neglects, indeed rejects th e con cep 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 th at Engels, toge ther with very nearly th e 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.
12 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 ada pt 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 create s com m odities. Every
specific labour, farming or car co nstru ction, as well as clean ing services or th e
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 sam e labour considered from the p oint of view of
the me re qua ntity of time e xpend ed. But since this value is invisible and not
mea surable, it represents itself in ano ther com mod 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 exam ple, 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 th e 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 sam e conclusions: labour
in pro duc tion is a techn ical, ne utral 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 m ulation 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 c ontem 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 uctio n lies outside itself w ithin 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 inde pen 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 th at may yet lead the way out of econo mic causality :
tha t is the question.
W hat is the im por 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, Da s 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 ig h t o f H is to 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 te 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 tic l e s f o r i n d i v id u a l u s e .

Anselm Jappe Sohn Rethel and The Origin of Real Abstraction

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Anselm Jappe Sohn Rethel and The Origin of Real Abstraction

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

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

R LL Historical Ma terialism 21.1 2013)3-14 brill.com/hima

Soh n-Reth el a nd th e Origin of Real Ab stra c tio n :

a,jappe@ac ca dem iab elleaiti,fr,it;

* English text estab lish ed with th e help of Joh n McHale,

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

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

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

A Jappe / Historical Materialism 21.1 2013)3-14 5

Throughout history, the separate intellect and forms of exchange have

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

was made possible by the contemporary transition from simple commodity

universal value-body, universal materialization of abstract labour. The

7. Sohn -Rethel 1990, p. 47.

A Jappe Historical Materialism 21.1 2013)3-14 7

great de al of discussion. Some of it is ma rked by the large am ou nt of confusion

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

12. Sohn-Rethel 1990, p. 17.

8 AJappe/Historical Materialism 21.1 2013)3-14

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

13, Sohn-Rethel 1971, p. 70,

AJappe Historical Materialism 21.1 2013)3-14 9

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

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

15. Sohn-R ethel 1978a, p. 29.

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

20. Soh n-R ethel 1990, p. 20.

A Jappe Historical Materialism 21.1 2013)3-14 11

abstraction is, at th e initial stage, much ra ther tha t of the comm odity p roducers

22. Kurz 1987, pp. 86- 7.

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

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

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

A Jappe / Historical Materialism 21.1 2013)3-14 13

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

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

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

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

You might also like