دانلود کتاب Marxism and the Critique of Value

www.mcmprime.comMarxism and the Critique of Value is the first broadly representativebook-length collection in English translation of work from thecontemporary German-language school of Marxian critical theoryknown as Wertkritik, or, as we have opted to translate the term,value-critique or the critique of value.1 The critique of value itselfis understood in these pages as having begun with Marx, whoinitiated a theoretical project that was as philosophically radicalas its implications were revolutionary; an incomplete projectthat has been taken up only fitfully by Marxism after Marx.2 InMarx’s critique of political economy, value and other categoriesattendant on it are shown to be concepts both fundamental to thefunctioning of capitalism and fundamentally incoherent, riddledwith contradictions as pure concepts and productive of crisis asactually existing concepts operative in the day-to-day reproductionof social life under capital. While this “esoteric” Marxian critiquehas been rediscovered from time to time by post-Marxists who knowthey’ve found something interesting but don’t quite know which endis the handle, Anglophone Marxism, for reasons that will become clearin the course of this book, has tended to bury this esoteric critiquebeneath a more redistributionist understanding of Marx, imaginingthat there could be a positive Marxist science of the economy, a sciencethat would be oriented toward devolving surplus value to the laborthat creates it.3 But what if the value relation does not constitute itselfin contradiction to labor, but rather encompasses labor as preciselyanother of its forms of appearance — if labor is, to paraphrase andecho what is perhaps Norbert Trenkle’s most direct challenge to“traditional Marxism,” itself always already a “real abstraction” noless than the commodity form? What then are, for a critical thoughtstill faithful to Marx, the implied forms of revolutionary practice andagency?The introductory remarks that follow are intended principallyfor readers with little to no previous knowledge of Wertkritik. Thenearly universal absence of English translations that has prevailed upuntil now — over a period of nearly three decades, in effect an entiregeneration — has resulted in a virtually total absence of Wertkritikfrom Anglophone critical theory — even as one of those spacesmarked “terra incognita” on the maps drawn up by the conquerorsand colonizers of the first phases of the capitalist world-system. Giventhis absence, the need for a minimum of historical and bibliographicalinformation can hardly be more urgent — even as the context woulditself demand to be contextualized, ad infinitum. The bulk of thisintroduction will consist of a series of interpretive summaries of thethirteen texts selected for translation and conforming to a looselythematic sequence.4 These summaries, making up the most practicalsegment of the introduction, are intended only to orient the readertoward the esays themselves. The best introduction to Wertkritik as atheoretical orientation is the essay that begins this collection, NorbertTrenkle’s “Value and Crisis: Basic Questions.” There the reader willfind a concise presentation of the “what and why” of value-critique(originally presented as a lecture for this purpose in 1998) that wouldrender an elaborate summary of fundamental tenets here superfluous.