Marxian Totality

Historical Materialism
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volume 322

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 Marxian Totality
Inverting Hegel to Expound Worldly Matters

By

Kaveh Boveiri

leiden | boston
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isbn 97-89-004-70396-4 (hardback)
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Copyright 2024 by Kaveh Boveiri. Published by Koninklijke Brill bv, Leiden, The Netherlands.
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This book is dedicated to Danny Goldstick, for being Danny

∵
Contents

Acknowledgements ix

Prologue 1

1 Two Misconceptions of Totality 4

1 The Atomist-Rationalist Conception of Totality 4
2 The Organicist and Organicist-Dynamic Conception of Totality 11
3 Conclusion 14

2 On Hegel’s Totality 17
1 Totality in the Doctrine of Being 17
2 Totality in the Doctrine of Essence 18
3 Totality in the Doctrine of Notion 21
4 Conclusion 26

3 On Lukács’s Totality 29
1 Conclusion 39

4 On Kosík’s Totality 41
1 Totality: Concrete and Pseudo-concrete 42
2 Totality and Objectivity 47
3 Objekt-Gegenstand: Marx’s Distinction 48
4 Objectivity in Kosík: Conceptual-Lexical Discussion and Its
Implications 50
5 Praxis, Labour, Care, and Totality 57
6 History and Totality 64
7 Factor Theory, System, Structure, and Totality 68
8 Criticism of Kosík 70
9 Conclusion 75

5 Marxian Totality Seen through His Works 78

A Note on the Difficulty and the Strategy Adopted 79
1 Prelude – The Poem and the Letter to His Father: Marx, a Diver in
Search of the Sache selbst in Life in the Street 81
1.1 Methodology-Logic 82
1.2 Praxis in Methodology 83
1.3 Dialectics and Mathematics 84
viii contents

2 Marx in the Laboratory: Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of

1844 86
3 Prototype-Genesis: Totality in the German Ideology and the ‘Theses
on Feuerbach’ 91
4 Totality in Oscillation: The Grundrisse 98
4.1 Introduction to the Grundrisse 99
4.2 The Chapter on Money in the Grundrisse 106
4.3 The Chapter on Capital in the Grundrisse 111
4.3.1 The Production Process of Capital 112
4.3.2 The Circulation Process of Capital 113
4.3.3 Capital as the Fruit-Bearer: Transformation of Surplus
Value into Profit 115
4.4 Conclusion 120
5 Totality in Categorial Movement: Capital 122
5.1 Categorial Movement in Capital Volume i 123
5.1.1 The Opening Passage of Capital Volume i 123
5.1.2 Categorial Movement in Capital Volume i 128
5.2 Categorial Movement in Capital Volume ii 132
5.3 Categorial Movement in Capital Volume iii 136
5.4 Conclusion 141
6 Conclusion 142

6 The Relationship between the Grundrisse and Capital and between the
Method of Enquiry and the Method of Exposition 144
1 The Roots of the Thesis of a Rupture in Marx’s Works 145
2 The Idea of a Rupture between the Grundrisse and Capital 148
3 The Alternative Reading 151
4 Conclusion 162

Epilogue 166

Appendix 1: Rereading of a Passage from the French Edition of First

Volume of Capital Edited by Marx 169
Appendix 2: Some Passages of Capital iii, in Original for Further
Verification 171
Appendix 3: Note on Translation 177
Bibliography 178
Index 201
Acknowledgements

When I am asked when I began my project on Marx, I typically answer when I

was a toddler! At that age Kaveh was taken to demonstrations against the Shah
in Masjed Soleiman, during the last days of the Iranian revolution of 1979. Con-
sequently, the question arises as to how I can thank all those who have, in one
way or another, played roles in the development of this lifetime project, which
does not stop here. The answer is straightforward: I can’t! The safest way would
probably be to alphabetically list some names, as far as I can think of them –
this remains, undoubtedly, a non-exhaustive list.
Professor Yves-Marie Abraham let me audit his seminar on Degrowth (Dé-
croissance) in autumn 2016, and hence put me in touch with problems on the
ground relating to current capitalist society and possible practical and imme-
diate actions.
Professor Andreas Arndt permitted me to participate in his two seminars on
Hegel at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin in 2014–15, which deepened my know-
ledge of Hegel, and gave me this opportunity to discuss my project with him.
He also commented on an earlier version of the Chapter on the relationship
between the Grundrisse and Capital, during the conference ‘Materialistische
Dialektik: Marx Lektüren im Dialog’, organised in Freie Universität in Berlin in
October 2015.
Professor Joseph Berkovitz very patiently and kindly helped me to improve
my first papers on philosophy of science in general and philosophy of econom-
ics in particular.
Professor Andy Blunden gave me the opportunity to discuss the basic
thoughts leading to this project, particularly in Marxist epistemology – since
1990! As a dear colleague in the Marxists Internet Archives (mia), of which
Andy is the secretary, he has always been a source of inspiration and exemplar
of assiduousness and solidarity.
Martina Chumova kindly and patiently checked all the terms in the Czech
language in the Chapter ‘On Kosík’s Totality’ and corrected mistakes and typos
as I finalised this text.
Professor Di Giovanni kindly elaborated on some complexities in Hegel’s
methodology.
The late Professor Mahmoud Ebadian, with whom I took the first serious
steps of dialectical thought, encouraged me in my translations and made me
familiar with the texts of Hegel and Marx in their original language. His encyc-
lopedic knowledge of the ancient Iranian and European languages, on the
one hand, and his deep knowledge of European philosophy, on the other, also
x acknowledgements

helped me to broaden and deepen my intellectual competence. He also let me

discuss with him, on numerous occasions, his own translations, particularly of
Karel Kosík and Hegel.
My comrade Danny Hayward, the editorial co-ordinator of the Historical
Materialism Series in Brill, meticulously read the whole text and asked for cla-
rifications when necessary. His contribution became more meaningful when I
heard later that he was doing all this during the period that his partner and our
dear comrade Marina Vishmidt was in a terminal stage of a long illness. Along
with Danny, I would also like to thank all my colleagues of the hm Series and
also Brill.
Professor Stephen Houlgate patiently clarified some technical points of the
Hegel-Marx relationship regarding method.
Professor Martin Jay insightfully elaborated on the complexities of totality
from a Marxian standpoint as they pertain to contemporary capitalism.
Professor Ivan Landa has clarified several points regarding Kosík’s termino-
logy and also read the relevant chapter of the current book, assisting me with
my references to the Czech.
Professor Karim Mojtahedi generously permitted me, more than once, to
participate in his seminar on Hegel held at University of Tehran during the
years 1997–99.
Since 2000, Doctor Khosrow Parsa has helped me to familiarise myself with
the scientific discussions in general and the relationship between evolution
and Marxism in particular from a materialist point of view.
Professor Milan Prucha, Professor Emeritus at the Freie Universität Ber-
lin, was of great help not only in clarifying different passages in Kosík’s book
Dialektika Konkrétního, by elaborating on the nuances of the original text in
Czech, but also in discussing the relationship between Hegelian and Marxist
dialectics.
Professor Paul Sabourin, whom I have known since 2012, discussed my
monograph on many different occasions since its germinal stage.
Professor Tony Smith kindly read and commented on a paper related to this
monograph. One of the most well-known figures in debates concerning Marx’s
methodology, he has exerted an invaluable influence on my project – one that
goes beyond the present text.
The late Professor Abolghasem Zakerzadeh kindly permitted me to particip-
ate in his seminars on Hegel and Kant at the University of Shahid Beheshti in
Tehran in 1998–99.
Michael Zibell not only read and edited a shorter version of Chapter 6 of this
monograph, published in the proceedings of the abovementioned conference
in Berlin, but also, with his decades of profound engagement in philosophy and
acknowledgements xi

theology in general and German philosophy in particular, enhanced my philo-

sophical thought.
I also need to thank my comrades in the union of the lecturers at our uni-
versity (Syndicat des chargées et chargés de cours de l’Université de Montréal –
scccum), and also Northcliffe Educational Foundation for their inestimable
support.
To four persons, however, I am particularly indebted:
The first is my supervisor, the late Professor Yvon Gauthier. If Professor Gau-
thier had not accepted the supervision of an earlier version of this work in the
second year of my PhD in 2013, I cannot just envisage how I could have accom-
plished this project. His profound knowledge of Hegel’s philosophy, on the one
hand, and his gigantic mastery of analytic philosophy and philosophy of sci-
ence, on the other, invigorated this work even before he accepted me as a PhD
candidate.
Professor Frieder Otto Wolf, whom I first met at a conference on Althusser
and Benjamin in Potsdam in 2011, paved my way for a scholarship at Freie Uni-
versität Berlin in 2014–15, where I had the opportunity to discuss my project
step by step and regularly, participating in his own courses and seminars as
well as those of many others in Berlin.
Professor Marianne Kempeneers accepted me as her teaching assistant and
gave me the opportunity to be exposed directly to the students of sociology
in her course Marx et Marxismes in the department of sociology at Université
de Montréal. In my lifetime as an elderly student, enrolled in six universities
in four languages, and exposed to an extensive number of Marxist scholars in
several countries in the world, I have never seen anyone with the ability of Pro-
fessor Kempeneers to expound sophisticated concepts in Marxist thought with
such enviable lucidity; this remains an ever-unachievable goal for me. In the fol-
lowing year, 2016, she also supported my candidacy to teach the same course.
Teaching this course and being challenged by the earnest students who parti-
cipated in it helped to concretise my somewhat remote theoretical and abstract
discussions on Marx’s methodology and connect it to social contexts.
Niloo, my comrade-partner, supported me with all the means possible dur-
ing this project and before. I cannot imagine how one can be simultaneously a
comrade and a muse: Niloo is! Without her support, particularly with my poor
health, which has been affected by both chronic and acute diseases, the cur-
rent monograph could not have been accomplished. During this period, she
has also been the guardian who made me concentrate notwithstanding all my
weaknesses, who made me proceed faster when I was unnecessarily slow, and
more slowly when I was too fast! This is even more meaningful once I mention
she has done all this with her master’s and PhD project waiting to be accom-
xii acknowledgements

plished! If this monograph is to be thought of like a child, then it represents a

shared delivery, with all the pangs and pains divided between Niloo and me.
This monograph is dedicated to Danny Goldstick, the source of both theor-
etical and practical inspiration.
It is needless to add that notwithstanding all the support I had, the short-
comings of this work are uniquely mine.
Prologue

Marx is recognised as the most important thinker of our epoch, not only by
a public medium like the bbc (1 October 1999), but also by more science-
oriented sources such as Nature (6 November 2013). A survey made by the Arts
& Humanities Citation Index for the period 1993 to 2000 puts Marx’s works as
the first among the ten most cited sources – the Bible comes fifth! We do not,
however, witness the positive effect of his standpoint in our daily life; much
worse, parts of the self-proclaimed left take conflicting positions on major
issues – the question of whether the United Kingdom should leave EU, the
question of participation in the 2017 US elections, or the more recent conflict
between Russia and Ukraine are just a few examples. That there should be some
theoretical agreement that could provide social-practical orientation seems
evident. It is equally needless to emphasise the need for some common general
methodological agreements on which these particular theoretical agreements
rely. It has been argued that Marx’s ambition was to theorise the capitalist mode
of production as a totality, instead of offering a prescription for how that total-
ity might be ‘corrected’. The fulfilment of this ambition has been left to other
writers who came after him.1 The current work follows that path. This book has
as its aim to introduce some common theoretical ground by showing a method-
ological dialectical consistency on the conception of totality in Marx’s works:
between the works of the young and the mature Marx on the one hand, and
between two works by the mature Marx, namely the Grundrisse and Capital,
on the other.
It is therefore composed of three parts. Following a broadly recognised clas-
sification suggested by the Czech philosopher Karel Kosík in his book The Dia-
lectic of the Concrete, published in 1966, Chapter 1 of the first part sets the scene
by discussing two misconceptions of totality. The first section of this chapter
evaluates the first misconception of totality (the atomist-rationalist conception
which prioritises the parts over the whole) through a detailed elaboration of
the work of the best representative of this misconception, namely Ludwig Wit-
tgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. The second section examines the
second misconception (the organicist and organicist-dynamic conception of
totality, which prioritises the whole over the parts) by examining the work
of Schelling and Othmar Spann. The demonstration of the shortcoming of
these two misconceptions leads the discussion to the second chapter, where

1 Jameson 2011, p. 3.

© Kaveh Boveiri, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004703971_002

2 prologue

the Hegelian conception of totality is discussed. This is done by analysing the

treatment of totality by Hegel in the work where he discusses this conception
in the greatest detail, namely the Science of Logic. It will be shown that his
account from the chapter on Being to the chapter on the Absolute Idea does
not overcome the closedness of the totality of his system and leaves no room
for the human subject or for future and conscious transformation of social real-
ity. The third chapter deals with the first representative of Marxist philosophy
to emphasise the importance of totality, Georg Lukács. His attempt to propose
a reading of Marxist dialectics is shown to suffer from some important short-
comings. Not only does he not adequately criticise the closedness of Hegel’s
system, but he endorses it. What is more, by hypostasising the whole against
its parts, his account remains ultimately close to the second misconception of
totality discussed in Chapter 1. Responding to such shortcomings is the bedrock
of the fourth chapter, where Karel Kosík’s own conception of totality is evalu-
ated. Through an extensive analysis of Kosík’s Dialectics of the Concrete with
reference to the text in Czech, it will be shown that his multifaceted account
is the most rewarding in the existing Marxist literature. Nonetheless, his pro-
ject suffers from two main shortcomings. The first is that he does not textually
show how Marx’s conception of totality is differentially nuanced in the differ-
ent moments of his intellectual development. I try to address this first lacuna
in the fifth chapter, in Part ii, which in turn contains five sections that trace
the complex development which Marx’s account of totality goes through. In
section i., through an examination of Marx’s letter to his father and also one of
the poems he wrote in 1837, it is shown that some characteristics of the later
conception of totality exist even in these two pieces written by the nineteen-
year-old Marx. This claim is then developed further in section ii., where it is
shown how Marx approaches more closely the later conception of totality and
neighbouring concepts in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844.
In iii., this is shown to be even more developed in the work Marx and Engels
wrote jointly, the German Ideology, and also in Marx’s ‘Theses on Feuerbach’.
Although the prototype-genesis of the eventual conception can be seen here,
for a detailed discussion of totality one has to wait for section iv, which con-
siders Marx’s most extensive discussion of the conception of totality, which
is found in the Grundrisse. Oddly enough, that characteristic, the dialectical
language of the Grundrisse, along with explicit reference to totality, does not
make it the best representative of Marx’s viewpoint on this subject. On the
contrary, the conception of totality is shown to oscillate between the main two
chapters of the book, the Chapter on Money and the Chapter on Capital. For
the paramount example of Marx’s treatment of totality, it is necessary to turn
to the examination of Capital, where the Marxian totality is shown to exhibit
prologue 3

totality via categorial movement, albeit with hardly any direct reference to this
by name. The analysis of this movement is presented in section v. While sev-
eral studies have discussed the conception of totality, hardly any have fully
considered its development in Marx’s works. With this, the examination of
Marx’s treatment of the conception of totality in Marx’s works is accomplished.
Although I hope that by this point the work has already made a new contribu-
tion to the existing literature on Marxian methodology, it does not stop there.
Chapter 6, in Part iii, addresses the second lacuna in Kosík’s account. The point
is that, although Kosík underlines the necessity of distinguishing the method of
inquiry and the method of exposition, he does not recognise this distinction in
Marx’s works. By referring to the last two sections of Chapter 5, this last chapter
of the book advances a response to the longstanding problem in Marxist liter-
ature about the relationship between the method of inquiry and the method of
exposition. It will be argued that, contrary to what Alex Callinicos2 and Jacques
Bidet3 claim, there is no rupture between the Grundrisse and Capital; rather, the
former is an example of the method of inquiry, while the second exemplifies
the method of exposition. It will be established that these two are related to
each other as two moments embraced in the overall method of investigation.4

2 Callinicos 1978, 2014.

3 Bidet 1984, 2004, 2005.
4 This book-length discussion deals with totality from a methodological point of view. It draws
on the previous works in the literature, but has some distinctive features. For readers inter-
ested in the broader literature on the topic, I here add a few brief remarks about some of the
more significant contributions in this earlier literature.
John E. Grumley’s History and Totality (1989) has only a short chapter on Marx, and even
there he does not show the different moments of Marx’s conception of totality. Although
Furio Cerutti writes at the beginning of his book Totalità, Bisogni, Organizzazione: Ridiscuten-
do ‘Storia e coscienza di classe’ (1980) that the book is not limited to discussing Lukács, it
remains to a large extent within the framework of Lukács’s conception of totality, which
is discussed in a separate chapter here. Fred Moseley’s Money and Totality (2015), the most
recent book on the conception of totality in relation to money, does not have as its aim the
development of an account of totality as such, of methodological problems in general, or
the relationship between the method of inquiry and the method of exposition in particular.
Martin Jay’s now classic Marxism and Totality: The Adventures of a Concept from Lukács to
Habermas (1984), as its subtitle implies, is more an account of the adventures ‘totality’ has
gone through than a focused investigation of the problem of totality; moreover, it ends with
the hope that another work might elaborate further on the concept of totality itself – a task
which this book has hopefully accomplished, at least in part.
 chapter 1

Two Misconceptions of Totality

Before turning in the following chapters to the dialectical conception of totality

and its complexities and subtleties, in this chapter i briefly overview two other
conceptions of totality, which should rather be considered misconceptions.
To begin with, let us quote the passage where Karel Kosík gives his classific-
ation in full:

Three basic concepts of the whole, or totality, have appeared in the history
of philosophical thinking, each based on a particular concept of reality
and postulating corresponding epistemological principles:
(1) the atomist-rationalist conception, from Descartes to Wittgenstein,
which holds reality to be a totality of simplest elements and facts;
(2) the organicist and organicist-dynamic conception which formalizes
the whole and emphasizes the predominance and priority of the
whole over parts (Schelling, Spann);
(3) the dialectical conception (Heraclitus, Hegel, Marx) which grasps
reality as a structured, evolving and self-forming whole.1

This passage constitutes the guiding line of this book. Each of the two sections
of this chapter elaborates on one of the first two conceptions. Sentences 1 and
2 are each turned into a section. The rest of the book will elaborate on the third
conception.

1 The Atomist-Rationalist Conception of Totality

According to Kosík, the atomist-rationalist conception, of which two repres-

entatives are Descartes and Wittgenstein,2 considers reality to be a totality of
the simplest elements and facts. In this conception, we have the ontological
predominance of the parts over the whole, where parts determine the whole
they compose. The whole, regardless of the parts, is just a proto-whole, an

1 Kosík 1976, p. 24.

2 One may add Leibniz: ‘And there must be simple substances, because there are compounds;
for the compound is nothing else but a cluster or aggregate of the simple [things]’ (Leibniz
1881, p. 11, my translation).

© Kaveh Boveiri, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004703971_003

two misconceptions of totality 5

ensemble of the uncombined parts, which turns into the whole through the
mediation and determination of the parts. Put differently, insofar as a whole is
not constructed ab extra, it comes into being through the mediation and the
determination of its parts.
In referring to Wittgenstein, Kosík has in mind, of course, the early Wit-
tgenstein of the Tractatus.3 Here, I first elaborate on the conception of totality
through its critical analysis in the Tractatus and through the analysis of what
Kosík ascribes, without any further elaboration, to this category; I then criticise
a Tractarian conception of totality that goes beyond what Kosík invokes in his
book, still according to a dialectical conception.
The opening passages of Tractatus imply the notion of totality: ‘The world
is all [alles] that is the case’ and then ‘The world is the totality [Gesamtheit] of
facts, not of things’ (§1).4 Totalities are not over and above the facts, and the
uncompounded facts [Sachverhalten], and the relationship between facts and
statements of facts, is the primary question of Tractatus. It has been argued
that Wittgenstein takes the relationship between facts and sentences as being
analogous to a ‘phonograph record–sound recorded’ relationship.5 The same
relation exists also between a sentence and what it is composed of; that is,
the meaning of its components determines the meaning of the sentence. This
is equally true of the world and its components as of atomic facts: the com-
plete description of the world hinges on the description of all atomic facts. The
nature of this determination is such that the totality is determined by the indi-
vidual facts. Through this method of construction or generation, as Bertrand
Russell puts it,6 the totality of propositions is constructed through atomic pro-
positions. The totality is then built up through amalgamation of the blocks.
This is also how objects, potentially recurrent experiential universals, form
atomic facts, the totality of which is the world (§2.04). Similarly, the immediate
combination or concatenation of names builds up an elementary proposition
(§2.421).
Wittgenstein then introduces the hierarchy of the components of the world,
namely, Tatsachen, Sachverhalten, and facts. The world is composed of Tat-
sachen, Tatsachen are composed of Sachverhalten, and Sachverhalten are com-

3 The discussion presented here regarding Wittgenstein’s conception of totality may be criti-
cised on the ground that, for instance, the logical independence discussed here does not really
mean independence. Such a sweeping criticism would, nonetheless, make an elaboration on
Kosík’s view barren.
4 All the quotations from the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (Wittgenstein 1922) refer to the
text by numbered proposition. Translations are modified when necessary.
5 Moore 2005, p. 91.
6 Wittgenstein 1922, p. 4.
6 chapter 1

posed of facts (§4.2211). We also have a hierarchy of propositions: the one that
entails says more than the one that is entailed; it is, so to speak, richer. This
determination by the parts imputing themselves to the wholes is reiterated in
a work that appeared several years after Tractatus. There it is claimed that the
logical form of each entity is determined by its two determinants: the sentence,
along with the mode of projection which projects reality into the sentence.7
Hence we have a bottom-up building of propositions. This demarcates the hier-
archy of parts over wholes. This determination and superiority of parts over the
whole is also asserted on other occasions: if a proposition has no sense ‘it is only
because we have failed to give sense to some of its constituent parts’ (§ 5.4733).8
The constituent parts of a proposition thus make a proposition sensed or sense-
less, possessed of a sense or lacking one. Through the meaningfulness of names
and the sensefulness of elementary propositions, the scaffolding of the world
is presented by logic; we also thus know how it is connected with the world
(§6.124).
After this brief sketch of the notion of totality in Tractatus, in which we take
our cue from Kosík’s scanty reference to the first conception of totality, in what
follows I attempt to distinguish the Tractarian totality from a dialectical one.
To begin with, it should be noted that Wittgenstein’s view does not totally
lack any hint of a dialectical picture of totality. As if he himself were aware
of the problem of a static picture of reality or the world, he makes statements
such as the following: ‘One name stands for one thing and another for another
thing, and they are connected together. And so, the whole [Ganze] like a liv-
ing picture [lebendes Bild], presents the atomic facts’ (§ 4.0311). There is still
a second case where a point similar to a dialectical conception of totality is
found in Tractatus: In §5.2 we read that the structures of propositions possess
internal relations to one another [internen Beziehungen]. Some things are thus
in connection with other things. This, along with the previous point – namely,
that the whole gives a living picture of the parts – is the moment at which the
Tractatus acquires an at least apparently dialectical aspect (pace Kosík). Non-
etheless, these points will be shown not to be watertight.
From a dialectical standpoint, one central problem with the Tractatus is not
that the parts determine the whole (the view criticised by Kosík as a reduction)
but the fact that there is no room for change. In the only places where Wittgen-
stein talks about change [Verwandlung], the word ‘replace’ will do just as well;
for example, instead of ‘change a constituent part of a proposition into a vari-

7 Wittgenstein 1929, p. 169.

8 This entails that the propositions do have parts. This standpoint has been challenged recently
by Goldstick (2020), who argues that propositions do not have parts, and hence have no forms.
two misconceptions of totality 7

able’ (§3.315), we may say ‘replace a constituent part of a proposition with a

variable’. The similarity between death and world that Wittgenstein proposes
is also illuminating in this respect. In neither, he claims, do we witness change
[ändern] but only cessation [aufhören], a halt (§ 6.431). The essence of a sen-
tence also cannot be altered without altering its sense (§ 4.465). Furthermore,
although we read that in the proposition ‘The truth or falsity of propositions
does make some alteration in the general construction of the world’ (§ 5.5262),
reality is restricted to two alternatives: yes and no (§ 4.023). The polar binary
world of Wittgenstein’s book does not leave room for a dialectical conception
of totality that considers incessant change as an essential characteristic of real-
ity. As a result, the whole issue of the dialectical sense of totality, that is, what
comes in between, change, incessant becoming, the mors immortalis,9 in rela-
tion to which the apparent fixity of objects is but a mere abstraction, as well
as the transformation of quantity into quality, is left out.10 Put differently, such
a reading overlooks the fact that continuous change involves more – indeed
infinitely more – than two different states of affairs, and take changes in reality
as jumps from one state to another.
In the Philosophical Investigations, however, Wittgenstein’s position changes.
In this book, regarding the relation of death and life, he to some extent endorses
the well-known and much discussed dialectical dictum of the transition from
quantity into quality:

And so, too, a corpse seems to us quite inaccessible to pain. – Our attitude
to what is alive and to what is dead, is not the same. All our reactions are
different. – If anyone says: ‘That cannot simply come from the fact that
a living thing moves about in such-and-such a way and a dead one not’,
then I want to intimate to him that this is a case of the transition ‘from
quantity to quality’.11

This should not be taken to mean that I believe Wittgenstein remains loyal to
a dialectical conception of totality, or for that reason to dialectics in general.
Another flaw in Tractatus seen from a dialectical standpoint is the absence of
interconnectedness, another characteristic of a dialectical conception of total-
ity. Instead, we witness the mutual disconnectedness of facts in Tractatus, not-
withstanding the passage (§4.0311) where Wittgenstein claims that he wants to
preserve a living picture of reality. Take the following proposition for instance:

9 Marx 1977, p. 130.

10 Compare §5.153: ‘An event occurs or does not occur, there is no middle course’.
11 Wittgenstein 1958, i, §284.
8 chapter 1

‘For each item can be the case or not the case, while everything remains the
same’ (§1.121). This is reiterated in §2.061: ‘Atomic facts are independent of one
another’. Once totalised, this mutual independence, according to which each
element can be true or false independent of whether the others are true or false,
impedes an organic interconnection between the whole and the parts. This is
in polar opposition to a dialectical conception of totality, according to which
there is an organic relationship between the whole and the parts, and between
the parts. This is a principal flaw in Wittgenstein’s conception of the totality,
but one on which Kosík does not elaborate.
Still another shortcoming that stems from Wittgenstein’s prioritising of the
parts over the whole is found in the priority he gives to the internal qualities of
objects, in contrast to the co-occurrences, sequences, etc. of objects. Accord-
ing to Wittgenstein, this is, in contrast to external qualities of the objects, the
determinant of the object, and these internal qualities are what enable us to
know an object (§2.01231). This demarcation of inner and outer qualities is also
different from a dialectical conception of totality, according to which things are
taken to be processes in inseparable relationship with each other, and a sharp
demarcation between inside and outside is baseless.12
One may also add Wittgenstein’s understanding of senseless pseudo-
propositions (§4.1272, §5.535). Although he maintains that mathematical pro-
positions, for instance, are also pseudo-propositions, since they are mere equa-
tions (§6.21), they are not senseless. The example he gives of propositions that
are in fact pseudo-propositions but also nonsensical [sinnlos] is interesting. As
is well known, ‘in itself’, ‘for itself’, and ‘for us’ are crucial dialectical terms not
only in Hegel but also in Marx. In the aforementioned article, he gives the fol-
lowing example as a senseless pseudo-proposition: ‘The Real, though it is an
in itself, must also be able to become a for myself.’13 Seen from a dialectical
perspective this becomes more peculiar when Wittgenstein takes this to be as
senseless a pseudo-proposition as ‘Red is higher than green’!14
To all this one may add the mystical character of the Tractarian concep-
tion of totality. Although Wittgenstein defends language in the name of reality,
and in this sense distinguishes himself from Kant, who defends language in
the name of appearance,15 the Tractatus’s conception of totality still retains a

12 One corollary of adopting such a standpoint is avoiding the dichotomy, or sheer demarc-
ation, of endo-consistence and exo-consistence, as put forward by Deleuze and Guattari
2005, p. 130.
13 Wittgenstein 1929, p. 162.
14 Ibid.
15 Glouberman 1980, p. 20.
two misconceptions of totality 9

strong hint of mysticism that leaves the totality of what is in the world indes-
cribable.16 Regarding this mysticism, Russell says that it stems from Wittgen-
stein’s doctrine of pure logic. According to this doctrine:

the logical proposition is a picture (true or false) of the fact, and has in
common with the fact a certain structure. It is this common structure
which makes it capable of being a picture of the fact, but the structure
cannot itself be put into words, since it is a structure of words, as well as
of the fact to which they refer.17

The unutterability of the structure of the possible picture given of the world is
the germ of the mysticism of the Tractatus, which turns objects into pseudo-
concepts: to say ‘x is an object’ is to say nothing.18 If this is so, then the gener-
ality and construction elaborated on by Russell are not general enough to talk
about things in general or about the world in its totality; being able to do so,
according to this approach, necessitates our going outside the world – which is
impossible.19 Wittgenstein’s mysticism is probably best expressed in § 6.45: ‘The
contemplation [Anschauung] of the world sub specie aeterni is the contempla-
tion of the world as limited whole [begrenztes Ganzes]. The feeling [Gefühl] of
the world as a closed whole is the mystical [das Mystische]’.
This mystical consequence also has its roots in the fact that according to
Wittgenstein the boundaries of logic and of the world coincide. You cannot
know anything beyond the boundary, nor can you know as a whole what is
within the boundaries, because to do so you have to be able to view the totality
from outside. As we will see in what follows, Kosík responds to this dilemma
by ascribing some characteristics to totality that permit us to know the total-
ity without having to know all its details, but rather through the contradictions
and the mechanism of the totality.
The only two candidates in human knowledge that seem, on the face of
it, endorsable by Tractatus are logic and natural sciences. As to logic, its pro-
positions are tautologies, and since they are analytic, they are uninformative,
they say nothing (§6.1), and they show only the formal properties of language

16 As we will see in Chapter 4, this is totally absent there.

17 Russell in Wittgenstein 1929, p. 7.
18 Wittgenstein 1929, p. 5.
19 A comparison with Kosík is here remarkable: the subtitle of his book – A Study on Prob-
lems of Man and World – indicates a different path: for according to Kosík, talking about
the world in its totality not only is possible, but does not necessitate viewing it from a
standpoint outside the world.
10 chapter 1

and the world (§6.12); therefore, they do not give knowledge. As to the nat-
ural sciences, Wittgenstein introduces one superstition and one delusion. The
superstition is related to the belief in a causal nexus (§ 5.1361), which is also
the problem of change elaborated on in the previous passages. The illusion is
to believe that the laws of nature explain natural phenomena (enunciating the
laws merely states the phenomena, and, like a tree stump, bears no explana-
tion); this is at the basis of whole modern view of the world (§ 6.371).
Both cases are then enmeshed with strong, unutterable solipsism, the indes-
cribability which is concomitant with mysticism. That the world is my world
brings the self into philosophy. The borders of my world are the borders of the
particular language I understand. The limits of my world, my microcosm and
the limits of my language are coincident. The reality is coordinated with this
solipsistic I, the metaphysical, philosophical subject that lies not in the world
but in its limit, and is not a part of the world (§5.62).
Wittgenstein makes use of a paradoxical pun by logically describing the
totalities that are logically indescribable; he thus provides us with sentences
that are ‘strictly nonsensical according to the very doctrine that they pro-
pound’.20 This is of course the paradoxicality that he admits at the end of
the book; nonetheless, those totalities remain ‘the subject-matter of his mys-
ticism’.21
If the criticism presented here is correct, then it follows that what Wittgen-
stein calls ‘the totality’ has hardly anything to do with the totality but is just the
sum total of the components of it. That totality will then remain an illegitimate
totality,22 because the colossal number of individual facts is determined empir-
ically.23 This position was criticised by Kosík, who reminds us that the facticity
of facts, to use his phrase, is not their reality, it is not per se revealing, unless
facts and totality are seen in dialectical relationship to each other. Put differ-
ently, neither totality nor reality ensues from the sum total of the facts. It may
not be wrong to say that to the Wittgensteinian dictum ‘of what one cannot
speak, one must be quiet’, a dialectical conception of totality would respond –
and that this might be akin to what the German sociologist Norbert Elias means
when he says that ‘of what one cannot speak, one would search’.24 But before
going into the details of such a conception, let us first turn to the second con-
ception of totality in Kosík’s classification.

20 Anscombe 1959, p. 162.

21 Wittgenstein 1922, p. 7.
22 Sullivan 2000, p. 175: ‘the totality of facts is an obvious example of an illegitimate totality’.
23 This is further developed in Glouberman 1980.
24 Elias 1991, p. 215. (My translation.)
two misconceptions of totality 11

2 The Organicist and Organicist-Dynamic Conception of Totality

‘[T]he organicist and organicist-dynamic conception’, according to Kosík,

‘formalizes the whole and emphasizes the predominance [pantsví] and prior-
ity of the whole over parts (Schelling, Spann)’.25 Here I attempt to develop the
merely fragmentary references to Schelling and Spann as found in the Dialectics
of the Concrete.
Schelling holds that nothing can be known in its isolation and singularity,
‘but rather only in its context and as part of a great, all-encompassing total-
ity’26 and as one of the characteristics of the philosophical science of the era.
While this is partially correct, this conception goes further and holds that what
predominates is the whole and that the whole is determinative of the parts.
As examples, one may recall the predominance of the genotype over the parts
of the phenotype, or the avalanche over its component snowballs. This pre-
existence or existential priority of the whole over the parts reflects a tendency
in this conception to hypostasise the whole over the parts, leading to emergen-
tism27 – the view that under certain highly specific conditions, life, conscious-
ness, will, etc. are produced, without the governing law of such production
being in turn explicable on the basis of more general laws. Similarly, based on
this conception of totality, the proto-parts change into parts through the medi-
ation of the whole. Along the same lines, while each part presupposes the exist-
ence of all the other parts, the existence of the parts hinges upon the existence
of the whole: beyond presupposing any other part, each part, in consequence,
presupposes the existence of the hypostatised whole. A simple analogy may be
helpful here. Take you and all the cells of your body. According to this concep-
tion, the cells of which you are composed all came into existence later than
you did. Such a conception does not realise that the You at time T1, let’s call it
Y1, constitutes the sum total of your cells, let’s call it ∑C1 and is constituted by
them, in the same way that You at T2, that is, Y2, constitutes and is constituted
by the sum total of your cells, that is, ∑C2.
After stating his admiration for an unexplored characteristic of Schelling’s
thought, that is, his treatment of nature as the unity of product and productiv-
ity in his early writings, Kosík quotes him to highlight the presence even here
of the principal flaw of Schelling’s approach, that is, the hypostasising of the

25 Kosík 1976, p. 24.

26 Schelling 2007b, p. 150.
27 And in passing it should be added: in contradistinction with the transformation of quant-
ity into quality – a distinctive characteristic of a dialectical conception of totality. This will
be further developed in the following chapters.
12 chapter 1

whole over, or at the expense of, the parts: ‘Inasmuch as all parts of an organic
whole carry and support each other, this whole must have existed prior to its
parts. The whole is not inferred from the parts, but the parts had to spring from
the whole’.28
In other passages, Schelling introduces totality in close relationship with
identity. Both totality and identity are what generate perspectives. Viewed from
the perspective of totality, the Universe is God; viewed from the perspective of
identity God is Universe.29 What is more, the expression of totality is limited
to human beings, because unlike animals their expression is not limited to par-
ticularity.30
With that said, a distinction is to be drawn with regard to Schelling’s dis-
cussion of totality that is absent in Kosík’s discussion. While totality is intro-
duced as the product of ‘the apposition of plurality to unity and the apposition
of unity to plurality’,31 according to Schelling this is true only about relative
totalities. ‘God’, for instance, as an absolute identity, is also immediately ‘abso-
lute totality, and vice versa’,32 but in this absoluteness there is not multiplicity;
instead there is only simplicity. Nonetheless, if it is the mega-totality in which
and through which all relative totalities, complex as they are, find their exist-
ence as well as their cognisability or intelligibility, then oddly enough all these
relative totalities that are complex find all this in what is itself not complex but
simple! Hence, any existence of the individual outside the absolute totality is
the result of mere arbitrary separation.
What is more, true totality seems to be found more in mythology than in
philosophy. Here Schelling introduces the subject matters that lie outside the
reach of philosophy, and to which it does not have any relation. The first are the
things without any essential actuality to themselves; the second group com-
prises things that are corrupt and distorted, since only the original things have
meanings in philosophy; and a third matter in which philosophy cannot find
and know itself is that which is boundless, that is, without end. But mytho-
logy as the true totality, as ‘the original product of the consciousness striving
to restore itself’, is self-completing and self-conclusive, ‘something complete,
something held in certain limits, a world for itself’. The fourth set of things

28 Schelling 1927b, p. 279 (quoted in Kosík 1976, pp. 34–35, emphasis added).
29 This is developed in Schelling 1989, p. 15. Such enunciations suggesting non-identification,
one may add, could permit Hegel to ridicule Schelling’s Absolute, drawing an analogy
between this term and a night in which all cows are black (Hegel 1980, p. 22).
30 Cf. Schelling 1989, p. 183: ‘[Animals] appear as particular precisely because they do not
express the totality, which appears only in human beings’.
31 Schelling 1980, §41, p. 227.
32 Schelling 1989, p. 24.
two misconceptions of totality 13

opposed to totality are the things that are dead and stagnant, but mythology as
‘the highest human consciousness’ overcomes its contradictions and proceeds
based on its immanent laws.33
A few points are noteworthy regarding this discussion. One is the difficulty
that this conception faces in understanding the totality discursively. The reason
for this is that totality for Schelling, as for Spinoza, implies a certain spatial-
ity, but this spatiality is to be in harmony with infinite absolute totality. The
impossibility of this synthesis makes it such that any ‘discursive understand-
ing’s conceit of totality is a lie’.34 The same difficulty is also seen in Othmar
Spann, another figure who commits to this conception of totality, since for him
too the concept of the world as a whole lies beyond man’s reach.35 This stand-
point is targeted by Hegel in the Phenomenology of Spirit: as the coming-to-be
of science, this book, Hegel says, does not have the smallest similarity with ‘the
rapturous enthusiasm which, like a shot from a pistol, begins straight away with
absolute knowledge, and makes short work of other standpoints by declaring
that it takes no notice of them’,36 and neither does it endorse revelation, as is
the case in Schelling’s Positive Philosophy.
The second point, hinted at previously, is that Kosík ignores the distinction
Schelling draws between relative and absolute totality. For instance, Schelling
writes: ‘Relative totality does not subsist in itself, but only the absolute totality
does’.37 To say that only the wholes exist and the existence of parts is dependent
on the existence of the wholes means that even relative totalities are depend-
ent on the absolute totality; it is this totality for which all the simultaneity of
all potencies holds, which is not true about relative totalities. This absolute,
unconditioned totality, or God, is the one to which all existence belongs.38
The third point regarding Kosík’s discussion of Schelling is that he ignores
the fact that Schelling does actually approach the third classification at one
point in his philosophy, namely, his philosophy of art. Take the following pas-
sage as an example: ‘They [god figures] necessarily constitute a world in their
own turn collectively, one in which everything together is mutually determined,
an organic whole, a totality, a world’.39 Although pre-eminence is still ascribed

33 Schelling 2007a, pp. 154–55.

34 Vaught 2008, p. 247.
35 Spann 1939, xv: ‘The concept of world as a whole is not attainable by human knowledge’
(my translation).
36 Hegel 1977, p. 16.
37 Schelling 2012, p. 167, §26.
38 Schelling 1927b, p. 148.
39 Schelling 1989, p. 41 (emphasis added).
14 chapter 1

to the whole, as can be seen, the point that there are nonetheless some roles
for the parts is recognised here.
Such a misconception regarding totality is attributed to Marx by some con-
temporary thinkers. This is the case with Paul Paolucci, for instance, who in his
book Marx and the Politics of Abstraction writes:

Sociologists as a group accept the principle, as famously expounded by

Durkheim, that when we add the parts of society up they collectively res-
ult in a whole that is greater than the sum of these parts. Marx – while
he does agree the whole is larger than the sum of its parts – starts with
assuming that a whole already exists and then inquires into what sort of
parts does empirical evidence allow us to carve. In Durkheim’s approach,
and by extension mainstream sociology, parts exist first and the way we
put the parts together for study constitutes the whole. For Marx, the whole
exists first and it is our job to discover, through research, what parts com-
prise its most important relations and processes.40

While Paolucci rightly criticises the first conception of totality presented here,
he does not go farther than the endorsement of the Schellingian-Spannian
standpoint criticised by Kosík. What Marx invokes is a totality in which the
whole and the parts have a dialectical relationship in that they co-constitute
each other. The word ‘first’ underscored by Paolucci and ascribed to Marx can-
not be accommodated by the particular conception of dialectics that will be
developed in the following chapters. This ‘first’ is a reiteration of the ‘prior’ we
earlier saw in Kosík’s passage in which he specifies a dialectical approach.

3 Conclusion

But before turning to the following chapter let us review some of the sociopol-
itical implications of these two conceptions. While it may not be difficult to
infer an asocial atomistic individualism from an atomistic conception of total-
ity, the upshot of which is on the one hand the non-existence of society,41 as
articulated by Margaret Thatcher, and on the other the right to pursue indi-
vidual happiness as found in the American Constitution, neither is it difficult
to see how the second conception of totality leads to despotic regimes in gen-

40 Paolucci 2011, p. 56.

41 Thatcher 1987.
two misconceptions of totality 15

eral and fascism in particular. If the whole is to be prioritised over the parts
not only epistemologically but also ontologically, with generalisation, the same
may be said about a society and the individuals composing that society. Would
it then be too far-fetched to infer that one consequence of such an approach
would be the endorsement of despotic regimes? Although this may not be
explicit in Schelling, Karl Polanyi insightfully demonstrates such a relation-
ship in the doctrine of the Austrian philosopher Othmar Spann, another pro-
ponent of such a conception. In ‘Othmar Spann, the Philosopher of Fascism’,
Polanyi highlights the ‘Master-key role’ that the conception of totality plays in
Spann’s endorsement of Fascism. If single ideas, single facts, and single indi-
viduals are taken to be the articulations of totalities in these different realms
– namely, cognition, existence, and society – and causation is also to be gotten
rid of, as argued by Spann, the riddle of his endorsement of Fascism would be
explained. In Der wahre Staat, Spann develops the elements of the predomin-
ance of whole, nation, society, etc. over individuals, and advocates ‘the model
of a non-democratic, hierarchical, and corporatist state as the only truly valid
political constitution’.42 Nonetheless, Polanyi finds a ‘functional and corporat-
ive organization of society’ more adequate to its essential nature, in contrast
to what can be a consequence of the atomistic conception, in which isolated
individuals independent of one another are society’s basic constituents. But
the question would be: What forces us to put ourselves to commit to this inev-
itable binary choice between individualistic laissez-faire of capitalism on the
one hand, and the endorsement, even a partial one of the kind made by Pola-
nyi, of the corporative society, in the illusion that it can be simply functional,
rather than outright fascistic or despotic?43
This is one of the pivotal questions of this book. The answer lies, I believe,
in adopting a Marxian conception of totality that avoids the dilemma presen-
ted here, as well as several other pitfalls that will be presented in the following
chapters. Such a Marxian conception of totality will be full developed by the
end of this book. By adopting such a conception of totality one can look for-
ward, with Marx, to the day when ‘human progress [will] cease to resemble
that hideous pagan idol who would not drink the nectar but from the skulls of
the slain’.44

42 Tudor. Spann did not realise that such an approach can affect his own individual life: he
was expelled from the party owing to minor disagreements. See Klemperer 1968, pp. 204–
5.
43 Polanyi 1934, p. 7. Polanyi’s short text does not explicitly endorse the dialectical concep-
tion of totality presented in this book.
44 Marx 1979, p. 222.
16 chapter 1

With this note, and after the development of the two phrases by Kosík intro-
duced at the beginning in this chapter into a brief clarificatory overview, we
turn to the third conception of totality, that is, the dialectical conception. This is
one of the bedrocks of the work at hand. In the next chapter, we will undertake
a discussion of Hegelian totality, examining its relation to the Marxian dialect-
ical conception. And by examining Kosík’s third classification – the dialectical
approach to totality – we will find that the misunderstanding of this dialectical
conception is not limited to non-Marxist thinkers, but that there are also Marx-
ist thinkers who have failed to appreciate it – as was the case with Paolucci’s
reading, hinted at above.
 chapter 2

On Hegel’s Totality

Having briefly elaborated on what Kosík presents as the characteristics of the

two misconceptions of totality, in this chapter we will introduce the dialect-
ical conception of totality. As Kosík remarks: ‘The dialectical conception [of
totality] (Heraclitus, Hegel, Marx) … grasps reality as a structured, evolving
and self-forming whole’.1 Examining this version of totality in Hegel’s Science
of Logic is the objective of this chapter.2
Hegel’s conception of totality in turn may be thought of as a response to
the Kantian conception of totality. For Kant, totality falls under the group of
the categories of quantity: allness and totality. It comes after unity and plur-
ality, and according to him it is plurality taken as unity.3 Notwithstanding
this apparent dynamism, it has, like all the other of Kant’s eleven categor-
ies, a fixed place in the table of categories – a conviction that Hegel does not
share.
I attempt to limit the discussion of Hegel’s totality to The Science of Logic.
In addition to feasibility, there are several important reasons for this: The Sci-
ence of Logic, known as ‘the only real candidate for the role of strict dialectical
proof’,4 is the work in which totality is the most extensively elaborated.5

1 Totality in the Doctrine of Being

Hegel discusses totality mainly after the Doctrine of Being. The reason is not
difficult to grasp when we remember that the categories in the following book
(namely, the Doctrine of Essence) are the result of mediation and are real-
ised through reflection, which is absent in the Doctrine of Being. Essence is
thus Being mediated by its self-negation. Owing to this characteristic, what
we have before the Doctrine of Essence is an ‘unmediated and presupposed

1 Kosík 1976, p. 24. This is a slightly modified version of a chapter published in Ferrer et al. 2020.
I would like to thank Editora Fundação Fênix and Diego Ferrer for their kind permission.
2 All the references to these works, unless otherwise specified, come from Hegel 1969b and
1969c.
3 Kant 1968, B111, p. 154.
4 Taylor 1995, p. 225.
5 And, one may add, most frequently referred to – more than three hundred times!

© Kaveh Boveiri, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004703971_004

18 chapter 2

totality’,6 a ‘totality of indifference’,7 ‘indifferent totality’,8 ‘the totality being

for itself’,9 ‘formal totality’,10 and a ‘negative totality’.11 Totality, the all-sided
contradiction, the result of unity being posited as totality, posits itself as a
‘self-sursuming contradiction’12 and passes over to Essence. In so doing, it over-
comes its being just an empty name,13 its formality, its being negative, and its
indifference. We may say roughly that we have the sursumption of the pre-
supposed totalities through determination. At the transition moment of Being
to Essence, this amounts to sursumption of the outsideness or externality of
the former and its passage to the latter. In order for totality to posit itself,
each determination has to have a double transition: forwards to the determ-
ination that comes after it, and backwards to the determination that comes
before it. This double transition is presented as of the utmost importance
to scientific method in general.14 If there are these two transitions, the cat-
egorial movement entailing the determination of the totalities is not unidirec-
tional.15

2 Totality in the Doctrine of Essence

It is in coherence with the discussion of the previous section that at the begin-
ning of the Doctrine of Essence, Hegel speaks of the return of Being in its
totality into Essence and (at the end of the Logic) of a return to the beginning.16
The complex act of the subject matter [Sache selbst] conditions itself, and at the
same time it posits its conditions as ground against itself.17 To step into exist-
ence, the Sache selbst must have all its conditions at hand, which is tantamount

6 Hegel 1969b, p. 457.

7 Hegel 1969b, p. 449.
8 Hegel 1969b, p. 444.
9 Hegel 1969b, p. 146.
10 Hegel 1969b, p. 445.
11 Hegel 1969b, p. 457.
12 Hegel 1969b, p. 451. For a discussion on the translation of Aufhebung see Appendix iii.
13 Hegel 1969b, p. 450.
14 Hegel 1969b, p. 384.
15 Cf. McTaggart, who speaks of the succession of categories ‘from one [category] to another
because the admission of the first as valid requires logically the admission of the second as
valid’ (McTaggart 1999, p. 140; see also p. 6). The result of a non-linear reading of determ-
ination – different from McTaggart’s account, which is introduced as an alternative here
– is found in the very end of the Science of Logic (Hegel 1969c, p. 573).
16 Hegel 1969c, pp. 21, 572.
17 Hegel 1969c, p. 119.
on hegel’s totality 19

to its totality being posited as the groundless immediacy; ‘then the scattered
manifoldness recollects itself in the Thing itself’.18
Although Hegel refers to whole and part and to their relationship on numer-
ous occasions in the Logic, he allocates a particular part of the Doctrine of
Essence to this theme.19 This is, according to Hegel, the first moment of essen-
tial relationship, where both sides, so to speak, simultaneously and mutually
condition and presuppose each other. This first moment is followed by the
second moment of the essential relationship – that is, force and its external-
isation – then by the third moment of the internal and external relationship.
The reflected independence is here brought about through the reflection of the
unmediated independence in itself. Each side is a moment posited by the other
side and in negative unity with it.
Part and whole are both here existing, reflecting, and in immediate inde-
pendence, but their being posited in isolation is just a moment of their negative
unity. The whole makes the independence of the plurality of the parts, and the
parts are the realisation or instantiation of the whole, since they are merely the
means of the manifestation of the whole. Their independent reflected totality
is in fact relative, and this relativity is the product of the mediation of each in
the other.20 Through this negation, the parts are the same as the whole, but
only insofar as they are parts of that whole; similarly, the whole is the same as
the parts merely as the whole of the parts. While in Hegelian terminology the
parts are the same as the whole considered ‘as partitioned whole’ [als geteiltem
Ganze],21 one may say by generalisation that the whole is the same as the parts
considered as the ‘wholified parts’ [als geganzte Teile]. Thus, the primary neg-
ative unity, in which the immediacy of each side is mediated through the other,
is developed into reflective identity [Reflexionsidentität], or ‘reflected unity’
[reflecktierte Einheit].22
The parts have the whole as one of their moments in themselves.23 There is
nothing in the parts that is not in the whole, and vice versa.24 While the part in

18 Hegel 1969c, p. 122. My translation of the last part of the sentence (‘so erinnert sich diese
zerstreute Mannigfaltigkeit an ihr selbst’) is different from that of George di Giovanni: ‘…
then this scattered manifold internally recollects itself’ (Hegel 2010, p. 416). There are two
reasons for this: 1. ‘internally’ is added; and 2. Hegel says an ihr. Without this, ‘recollects
itself’ would be enough; with this, it is not.
19 Hegel 1969c, pp. 166–72.
20 Such an approach, taking into consideration both parts and whole in treating Hegel’s work
in general, is highlighted by Stephen Houlgate (Houlgate 2006, pp. 4 ff.).
21 Hegel 1969c, p. 169.
22 Hegel 1969c, p. 170.
23 See Hegel 1969c, p. 168.
24 Hegel 1969c, p. 169: ‘Es ist nichts im Ganzen, was nicht in den Teilen, und nichts
20 chapter 2

its stance before being for itself seems to be differentiated from the whole, once
it is for itself the part is the whole.25 This relationship is an inseparable iden-
tity in which the whole is the reflected identity and the parts are the various
pluralities of the whole. The whole is also the starting point of the parts, and so
too the parts are the starting point of the whole; each is in this way in essential
relationship with the other through self-negation, or with itself through nega-
tion of the other, and each then collapses into the other. In doing so, each side
constitutes both itself as well as the other side as the foundation [Grundlage]
of this relationship, and each is both conditioned [bedingte] and conditioning
[bedingende]: ‘This relationship is therefore the immediate contradiction and
sursumes itself in the very relationship’.26 This contradiction, which is no more
than the opposing tension in this relationship, which is immediately independ-
ent and relative, leads to the next moment.
The distortedness of the isolated consideration of parts and whole is not just
an epistemological question, in which parts are not fully understood without
considering the whole they constitute, and also the whole is in turn not a com-
prising whole unless seen as the whole of the parts. The relationship between
them is rather an ontological one, in which the differentiation and function-
ing of each hinges upon the existence and differentiation of the other. Each
of them, both part and whole, also has its independence through the other.
The part is independent as an independent part of a whole; the whole, in turn,
is independent as a whole comprising the parts. Each finds its independence
through the mediation of the other – that is, through interdependence.
In the Doctrine of Essence, the immediate totality as the illusion-totality
or pseudo-totality – in the form of ‘being for itself’,27 ‘negative being’,28 ‘being
closed in itself’,29 and merely ‘formal being’30 – is propelled through negation
to make ‘the totality of existence’.31 It is dichotomised into the two completely

in den Teilen, was nicht im Ganzen ist’. One can legitimately rebut that there is of course
something in the whole that is not in its parts, namely, their mode of combination. The
reason is that the same parts can be combined in different ways, thus constituting differ-
ing wholes, and those parts had it in them to combine in that way into the whole. At this
point, Hegel’s discussion is silent about such a question.
25 Hegel 1969c, p. 172.
26 Hegel 1969c, p. 167: ‘Dies Verhältnis ist daher der unmittelbare Widerspruch an ihm selbst
und hebt sich auf’.
27 Hegel 1969b, p. 146.
28 Hegel 1969b, p. 457.
29 Hegel 1969b, p. 373.
30 Hegel 1969b, p. 445.
31 Hegel 1969c, p. 132.
on hegel’s totality 21

expelling and dissimilar but also complementary worlds of the appearing and
the essential: the world that is in and for itself [die an und für sich seiende Welt]
and the apparent or phenomenal world [die erscheinende Welt]. While their
independence brings along the construal of the former by the whole and the
latter by the parts, their relationship puts each in the illusion [Schein]32 and
identity of both of these worlds.33 Both the independent wholes of existence
– where the apparent and phenomenal world is the ground for the world that
is in and for itself, and the world that is in and for itself is the ground for the
apparent or phenomenal world – are the expression of the world of which each
is a moment. The contradictory unity of the pseudo-totality of the Doctrine of
Being hence differentiates itself by relating itself to the differentiated moment
of itself that is the product of its negation and its realisation through external-
isation.
This externalisation and differentiation, in which the totality or the Sache
selbst itself is limited to the determination of form, has to internalise [erin-
nern] this differentiation.34 However, this cannot be done in the Doctrine of
Essence, in which the totality is mainly reflective. This propels this negativity
to sursume ‘the totality-less multiplicity of form and content determinations’.35
To free itself, the negation is propelled from the mediated but still incomplete
totality in the Doctrine of Essence to the completed [vollendete] totality in the
Doctrine of Notion.

3 Totality in the Doctrine of Notion

In the Doctrine of Notion, Hegel first introduces the general characteristic of

the Science of Logic: it is the formal science of absolute formalness, which is
in itself totality, and in its absolute formalness has its content or reality, and
thus constitutes the pure idea of truth.36 Since the notion itself is the totality, it
may not be wrong to say that all the different forms of the totalities introduced
and sursumed one after another are the precursory introductions to the totality
as notion to be developed, enlightened.37 Nonetheless, since every determined

32 I have translated the word Schein as ‘illusion.’ George Di Giovanni chooses ‘shine’ in his
translation of The Science of Logic (Hegel 2010, p. 341).
33 Hegel 1969c, pp. 166–7.
34 Hegel 1969c, p. 181.
35 Hegel 1969c, p. 193: ‘[D]ie totalitätslose Mannigfaltigkeit der Form und Inhaltsbestimmun-
gen’.
36 Hegel 1969c, p. 265.
37 Hoffmeister 1932, quoted in Kosík 1976, p. 34: ‘The German word entwickeln is a translation
22 chapter 2

notion is empty and contains only the ‘one-sided determination’38 – notwith-

standing its being the richest and the most concrete moment in comparison
with the previous determinations – and their totality as well, notion is thrust
towards judgement.39
Each of the components of judgement – namely, subject and predicate – in
and by itself is the totality of the notion, but a partial totality. The movement
of judgement towards the predicate – that is, the development [Entwicklung]
of the judgment in the predicate – brings along the judgement, which is ‘the
reality of the Notion’ [Realität des Begriffes].40 The judgement itself in this
more developed moment, that is, judgement of notions, leads to the syllogism
through the restoration of the notion in the judgement, and hence gives the
unity and the truth of both of these moments, namely, notion and judgement.
As the most fully posited notion, syllogism becomes the reasonable, but in
reason the determined notions are posited in their totality; ‘therefore not only
is syllogism reasonable, but all that which is reasonable is syllogism’.41 In this
way, the syllogism turns into the objective nature of the Sache selbst.42
In his discussion of syllogism, Hegel introduces an unprecedented point.
Whereas according to Aristotle, finding the middle term in a syllogism (that
is, the recognition of a minor term that is subject to a major term through a
middle term) is identical to what all questions search for,43 Hegel’s Logic shows
that what is really arduous and of the utmost importance is the recognition
of the fluid character of the onto-logical middle term. Therefore, Hegel’s state-
ment in this section that ‘what is mediated is itself the essential moment of its
mediators, and each moment is as the totality of the mediated’,44 is valid for the
whole scenario in this book in general and his particular treatment of totality.45
Through this process, the extremes and the middle are in an organic rela-
tion, rather than static entities put into motion.46 In other words, organic-

of the Latin explicatio and means “unfolding”, clear structuration of a whole that had been
dark, muddled and mysterious’.
38 Hegel 1969c, p. 28.
39 Hegel 1969c, p. 295.
40 Hegel 1969c, p. 310.
41 Hegel 1969c, p. 351.
42 Hegel 1969c, p. 354.
43 At Posterior Analytics ii.3, 90a35, we read: ‘[T]hat everything we seek is a search for a
middle term is clear’ (Aristotle 1975, p. 54).
44 Hegel 1969c, p. 400.
45 This general characteristic is demonstrated by Yvon Gauthier (2010, pp. 19–22) in the con-
text of the Phenomenology of Spirit.
46 Compare Yvon Gauthier’s view (2010, pp. 77), according to which injecting the dynamic
on hegel’s totality 23

dialectical motion is inherent in them. In this respect, in Hegel’s statement

that different types of syllogism represent the stages [Stufen]47 of the com-
pletion or concretisation of the middle term, these stages should be read as
moments [die Momente],48 determined and being determined by the moments
preceding and following them. This is how the middle term will be posited as
totality.49 While each term taken individually is partial and one-sided, it over-
comes this partiality and one-sidedness by being the totality of all moments.
This is accomplished not merely by transposing its place in the syllogism, but by
the possibility stemming from its inherent contradiction; hence the dialectics
that inherently makes such role-taking possible. Put differently, the dialect-
ical nature of the formal syllogism lies in its inherent contradiction.50 To be
the one-sided and abstract moment of singularity, particularity, or universal-
ity is a deficiency that must be overcome if the content is to be represented
through syllogism. It is in this way that each moment overcomes its merely
partial totality to engender a ‘fulfilled totality’.51 This makes it necessary for
the notion to overcome the syllogism with its inherent deficiency (because it
remains a subjective that is not objectified) and to objectify itself in objectivity.
This objectivity is the Sache selbst that is now in and for itself.52
Although in its unity, Objectivity is the returned totality of the notion,53
this does not mean that it is so at the beginning of Objectivity. For without
passing through all the intermediary moments of Objectivity it cannot gain
its unity. The first of these moments is mechanism. The totality is here the
object in the form of the universality of the reflected being in its manifold that
is not determined particularity. But because of this it has the determinacy of
its totality outside it: an outside that is necessarily endless.54 But this endless,

aspect into Aristotelian syllogistics is a main feature of Hegel’s contribution in the history
of logic and philosophy.
47 Hegel 1969c, p. 400.
48 Marx and Engels both insist on this notion of das Moment. See Engels and Marx 1978, p. 29:
‘Übrigens sind diese drei Seiten der sozialen Tätigkeit nicht als drei verschiedene Stufen zu
fassen, sondern eben nur als drei Seiten, oder um für die Deutschen klar zu schreiben, drei
“Momente”, die vom Anbeginn der Geschichte an und seit den ersten Menschen zugleich
existiert haben und sich noch heute in der Geschichte geltend machen.’ See also Marx and
Engels 1976, p. 43.
49 Hegel 1969c, p. 401.
50 Hegel 1969c, pp. 376–7.
51 Hegel 1969c, p. 377.
52 Hegel 1969c, p. 401.
53 Hegel 1969c, p. 409.
54 Hegel 1969c, pp. 410–12.
24 chapter 2

undetermined determinism, which regards objects as enclosed totalities,55 can-

not lead to anything but formal totality.56
To overcome this deficiency, Hegel introduces the notion of mechanical pro-
cess. In this way, the unhindered continuity of the determinacy will be intro-
duced.57 Nonetheless, this continuity of objects does not overcome their being
still external to one another, even when absolute mechanism is introduced to
overcome this deficiency. This necessitates overcoming mechanism, to be sur-
sumed by an alternative in which a higher unity, as a less formal and more
content-laden state of totality, may be introduced, and that of the mechanical
object – this ‘indifferent totality’58 – is to be sursumed.
In its effort to overcome its decentralisedness, this insurmountable individu-
ality in which the objects remain external to one another, and in order to attain
inner totality, the mechanical object gives its place to the chemical object, and
hence we witness the introduction of chemism. In chemism this indifference
and outsidedness of the objects in relation to each other is overcome. Hence,
chemism is introduced by Hegel as the first negation of the indifferent objectiv-
ity and also the externality or outsidedness of the determinateness; however, it
is still unleashed insofar as it is still immediately dependent on the objects and
their outsidedness.59 This interdependence of the chemical objects still leaves
some outsidedness in chemical totality in place, which cannot be surmounted
in chemism itself, since a chemical object remains without a goal. The latter,
the notion itself in its existence, according to its form in itself an endless total-
ity, and the truth of both mechanism and chemism, cannot be introduced in
chemism but only in the third moment of objectivity, namely, teleology. With
this, self-determination is introduced in this moment as motion.
Whereas in judgement, the notions, as totalities, are related to one another,
in a syllogism the judgements, as totalities, are in turn posited as extremes
in a dynamic way, in which each in turn takes the place of the middle term.
The formation [Bildung] of each higher totality, notion, judgement, and syllo-
gism is through its realisation. Syllogism, having gone through objectivity in
the forms of mechanism, chemism, and teleology, has in the last moment the
goal according to its form and as a totality that is in itself endless.60 The total-
ity concretised in this process becomes at this moment immediately identical

55 See Hegel 1969c, pp. 413–14.

56 Hegel 1969c, pp. 412–13.
57 Hegel 1969c, p. 416.
58 Hegel 1969c, p. 422.
59 Hegel 1969c, p. 434.
60 Hegel 1969c, p. 439: ‘[D]er Zweck ist seiner Form nach eine in sich unendliche Totalität’.
on hegel’s totality 25

with objectivity. Nonetheless, the intertwined and unresolved tension within

the identity of this concrete totality – that is, its being immediately objective
on the one hand, and being immediate only through sursuming mediatedness
on the other – leads to Idea [Idee].61 Hegel’s dictum that there is nothing in
the part that is not in the whole and vice versa, finds its unsurpassed reper-
cussion in the section on the Idea, where each of the moments is essentially
the totality of all the other moments.62 Immaterial, subjective totality is hence
developed into objective totality through notions in which the Objekt itself is
no more than the totality of the notions.63 As a result, it is not entirely right to
say that Hegelian logic, as a processual totality, goes through Erinnerung, that
is, internalisation or ‘inwardising’;64 it is more accurate to say that this process
occurs through a complementary internalising-externalising process in which
the notion is incarnated through the states of this system.65
Attribution of the closedness of Hegel’s system has been criticised in the lit-
erature. One such case may be read in Houlgate’s The Opening of Hegel’s Logic:

Hegel has become for many today the quintessential philosopher of ‘total-
ity’, whose system allows nothing to fall outside it – no ‘otherness’ or rad-
ical ‘alterity’ – but always aims to ‘assimilate’, ‘absorb’, or ‘digest’ whatever
might seek to criticize or resist it and confronts everyone after Hegel with
the (possibly impossible) task of trying to ‘elude’, ‘subvert’, or ‘disrupt’ it.66

I think two comments are noteworthy regarding this standpoint. First, there are
some passages in the Science of Logic which are explicitly against such a read-
ing. Take for instance Hegel’s statement that the content of the book is ‘the
exposition of God [as found] in the eternal essence before the creation of the
nature and the limited spirit’.67 Along with some commentators, I think this
assertion should be taken seriously.68 To give another example, Hegel criticises

61 Hegel 1969c, p. 461.

62 Hegel 1969c, p. 479.
63 Hegel 1969c, p. 503.
64 See Callinicos 2014, p. 297.
65 This is also confirmed by Hegel (Hegel 1969c, p. 570): ‘Each new stage of exteriorization
[Außersichgehen], that is further determination, is also an interiorization [Insichgehen],
and the greater extension [is] the higher is intensity’.
66 Houlgate 2006, p. 57. I would like to thank Stephen Houlgate for his comments on an
earlier version of this chapter presented at the conference A Autobiografia do Pensamen-
to: A Ciência da Lógica de Hegel, held in Coimbra in 2019.
67 Hegel 1969c, p. 44. See Callinicos 2014, p. 71 on this passage.
68 Callinicos 2014, p. 71.
26 chapter 2

Plato’s Parmenides not only because it has presuppositions but also because it
leaves room for externality (that is, something external to the totality); there-
fore, although it is dialectical, it remains a dialectic of external reflection.69
Thus, according to Hegel, Plato here leaves some room for a ἕτερον (other) that
comes from outside the totality,70 instead of giving the inner dialectic of the
notions,71 since Being and the One are differentiated from one another.72

4 Conclusion

At the end of the Science of Logic, as a step towards the fusion of the true abso-
lute method and the true absolute system,73 the Absolute Idea attained at the
end of Science of Logic – that is, the Idea absolutised or the Absolute idealised
– is the realisation of the concretisation of totality. It is the exposition of the
system of totality that is to overcome the ‘night of totality’ [Nacht der Total-
ität] introduced in Hegel’s Jena writings.74 The notion, which is not free in the
previous moments, finds its absolute liberation at this moment. One may say
that here the double transition put forward previously is accomplished: each
category is determined by its previous one and also by the one following it.
That said, this moment, that is, the Absolute Idea, is still an intermediate step
between Absolute Knowledge – the zenith of The Phenomenology of Spirit –
and the Absolute Spirit – as the pinnacle of the Encyclopedia – a moment that
is yet to be attained.
Nevertheless, if totality is a metacategory present through Hegel’s Science
of Logic, and if the beginning had in itself the concrete totality, then why did
Hegel not introduce Being and Idea as equals from the start? The reason lies
in his entire dialectical conception: logic must go through all these states to,
so to speak, totalise this totality. The determination of Being is through its
totalisation-concretisation. Without passing through these states, Being would
remain a totality-illusion [Scheintotalität] or, in Kosík’s language, a pseudo-
totality. Before the complete exposition of the determinations culminating in
the last chapter, this undifferentiated unity of the Being and Idea could not be
posited. Once accomplished, an enriched return to the simple, or immediate

69 This constitutes the bedrock of Bertel Ollman’s (2003) ‘internal relationships’.

70 Hegel 1969b, p. 126.
71 Hegel 1969b, p. 193.
72 Hegel 1969b, pp. 105–6.
73 See Kroeger 1872.
74 Hegel 1986a, p. 30.
on hegel’s totality 27

unity which was introduced at the beginning of Logic becomes possible.75 In

this way, the determination has construed the Gegenstand of the logical science
in which the content in its universal form can be examined.76
In this regard, a standpoint that overlooks the distinction between Whole
[Ganze] and Totality is not watertight.77 As we have seen, in Hegel’s Science of
Logic the Whole has a particular (though of course fluid) place. This is not the
case regarding totality, and it is for this reason that we introduce it as a meta-
category as opposed to a category.78 Such a standpoint also draws a similarity
between Kant and Hegel regarding totality, one that is not really the case. As
presented in this chapter, the Hegelian totality is the all-sided bearer of contra-
dictions. Each of the categories can be called totality; and conversely, totality
can be thought of as any of the categories. Put differently, what we have wit-
nessed, according to our account, is a complex and multifaceted movement
from the chaotic totality to the accomplished totality, in which the particular
all-embracing totality amounts to absolute emancipation, for which no imme-
diate determination exists,79 a movement that is far from a mere repetition.80
In the same vein, the attainment at the conclusion of the Science of Logic of
a fully determined concept does not mean that discourse has thereby come to
an end but, on the contrary, that fully self-critical discourse can finally begin.81
This paves the way for further elaboration as found in the Elements of Philo-
sophy of Right, for instance.
But a Hegelian conception of totality, with its Geist – its ‘unifying essence
behind the apparent multiplicity of phenomena’82 – and with its a priori deriv-
ation of categories from pure being, cannot be satisfactory for a Marxian read-
ing. The following chapters aim at providing such a reading, first through the
evaluation of two major Marxist thinkers, namely, Georg Lukács and Karel

75 Hegel 1969c, p. 572.

76 Hegel 1969c, p. 550.
77 For a case in which such a distinction is overlooked, see Theunissen 1980, pp. 403 ff. and
501.
78 See Houlgate 2006, p. 21: ‘The category of totality signifies that which is determined to be
“all” rather than “some”’ (emphasis added). Read from Kosík’s standpoint, there is a mis-
interpretation in prioritising the Whole, or All over Parts or Some. Read according to the
interpretation presented in this chapter, it mistakenly calls totality a category.
79 Hegel 1969c, p. 573.
80 This idea shared by some commentators goes far back to an earlier interpretation of
Hegel’s logic. E.g., Calkins 1903, p. 317: ‘[N]obody can read either the larger Logic or the
Logic of the Encyclopedia, without the conviction that what is regarded as progress is
often mere repetition’; see also p. 339.
81 Di Giovanni 2013, p. 256.
82 Tilly 1993, p. 304.
28 chapter 2

Kosík, then through an extensive rereading of Marx’s conception of totality

in his own works. Lukács seems to be the first to recognise that the problem
with Hegel’s approach lies in the relation between parts and the whole, put in
sociological terms, between man and society: ‘Hegel does not depart from the
objective truth simply because he seeks to give man an ontologically autonom-
ous form as mind, for social being – whatever it maybe in itself – does actually
have an existence which is independent of the individual consciousness of par-
ticular men and has a high level of autonomously determining and determined
dynamic in relation to individual’.83 That’s why the following chapter discusses
his conception of totality.

83 Lukács 1978a, p. 25.

 chapter 3

On Lukács’s Totality

Among the Marxist philosophers who accentuate totality and who see both
similarity and also difference between a Marxian conception of totality and a
Hegelian one, the Hungarian philosopher Georg Lukács, who provided the first
and most extensive discussion of totality after Marx, is undoubtedly the pion-
eer.
It has been said that in attributing a pivotal importance to totality, ‘Lukács
announced a new paradigm in the history of Marxist theory, whose explora-
tion was to occupy western Marxists for the next half century’.1 Here I examine
Lukács’s works in his Marxist period; the analysis of his pre-Marxist works and
the role that totality plays in them is left to another study.2 In the foreword
to the second edition of History and Class Consciousness, Lukács writes that
restoring the category of totality to the central position of methodology, against
other non-revolutionary tendencies, was the great merit of his book. He admits
that he was unaware that a similar line of thought had already been developed
by Lenin – a result of the fact that Lenin’s Philosophical Notebooks were not
published at the time Lukács’ studies were composed.
In this chapter, I first survey the major features Lukács ascribes to totality,
concentrating mainly on History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist
Dialectics, the locus classicus where totality is discussed, but also making ref-
erence to his later works. Then I examine some of the criticisms of Lukács and
try to see whether they can be answered on the basis of his own work. Finally,
I criticise Lukács according to my own view.
Lukács’s treatment of totality is manifold and intricate. He introduces total-
ity as a category against the primacy of economic motives,3 according to which
changes in the economy automatically lead to social revolutions; he takes it to
be ‘the decisive difference between Marxism and bourgeois thought’4 and ‘the
bearer of the principle of revolution in science’5 – the science of the proletariat
in contradistinction to bourgeois science. The revolutionary nature of prolet-

1 Jay 1977, p. 118.

2 For a study that covers different periods of Lukács’s works regarding totality, see Grumley
1989.
3 Lukács 1971a, p. xx.
4 Lukács 1971a, p. 27.
5 Lukács 1971a, p. 27.

© Kaveh Boveiri, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004703971_005

30 chapter 3

arian science is not just due to its content (Inhalt)6 in opposition to bourgeois
society, but is primarily due to its method.
Lukács shares with many Marxist thinkers the view that, for the overthrow
of the Hegelian dialectic, ‘it was not enough … to give it a materialist twist’.7
What is needed, instead, is to adopt the point of view of totality, the core of the
Marxian method. Unlike many,8 however, he finds the core of this approach to
be equally present in Hegel. This common core is owing to Hegel’s insight that
human activity is what bridges the gap between the cognising producer, or the
subject, and the object.
According to Lukács, a genuinely holistic approach of the kind found in
Marx puts all the specifications of society into a totalising whole. Those spe-
cifications exist in a procedural relation9 as in a flux, but this relation also
makes this totality understandable. This is such an indispensable conviction
for Lukács that ‘[t]he whole system of Marxism stands and falls with the prin-
ciple that revolution is the product of a point of view in which the category of
totality is dominant’.10 In a work that was written later, Lukács recognises this
in Lenin and quotes him in agreement:

In order to know an object thoroughly, it is essential to discover and com-

prehend all of its aspects, its relationships and its ‘mediations’. We shall
never achieve this fully, but insistence on all-round knowledge will pro-
tect us from errors and inflexibility.11

A seemingly simple object such as pudding, whose test according to Engels lies
in eating it, is itself a social product, and so too when it is seen in its social
totality and process is ‘the making of the proletariat into a class, the process by
which its class consciousness becomes real in practice’.12 Attaining this truth
in practice brings about an objectivity for the proletariat that is not found in

6 Lukács 1971a, p. 27: ‘Proletarian science is revolutionary not just by virtue of its revolution-
ary ideas which it opposes to bourgeois society, but above all because of its method’.
7 Lukács 1971a, p. 175.
8 Compare Althusser’s discussion regarding the relationship between a Marxian and a
Hegelian totality: ‘These totalities have in common just: (1) a word, (2) some vague concep-
tion of the unity of things, (3) theoretical enemies’ (Althusser 2005, p. 208, my translation).
9 Lukács 1970, p. 92. This dual process-relation is later taken up among others by Bertel
Ollman (2003, p. 36). In a sense Lukács establishes the field for Ollman’s ‘Philosophy of
Internal Relations’.
10 Lukács 1971a, p. 29. This is also highlighted later in the same book (p. 180).
11 Lukács 1980, p. 33 (Lukács’s emphasis).
12 Lukács 1971a, pp. 198–99.
on lukács’s totality 31

other classes. While members of other classes are also reified, and trapped in
their roles – that is, turned into things or objects in social relationships – it is
only for the proletariat that it is possible to overcome this reification, and real-
ise the possibility and necessity of radical transformation of the social totality
of which it is the self-aware subject-object. This realisation applies both in the
sense of recognition and in the sense of bringing it from possibility into actu-
ality. In so doing, the proletariat overcomes the duality of the correspondence
theory of truth,13 the duality between subject and object – since it is jointly the
subject and object of history – and practical life, including the cognition of the
social world. This duality cannot be overcome, according to Lukács, unless his
Marxist reading is adopted.
In the political realm, this orthodoxy is also realised through and trans-
lated into ‘proclaiming the relation between the tasks of the immediate present
and the totality of the historical process’.14 Lukács links this to what Marx
and Engels write in the Communist Manifesto:15 the communists see from this
standpoint the common interest of the proletariat worldwide, hence the bor-
derless pursuit of the interest of the proletariat, and secondly the overall,
and not just the temporally immediate, pursuit of their interests here and
now – spatially and temporally, one may say. Then this counter-isolation of
the moment in the movement is achieved by sursumption [Aufhebung] of the
momentariness and immediacy of the moment.
To see an ultimate antagonism between these two, however, seems inappro-
priate.16 Only through seeing an apparent contradiction between these two, can
the immediate struggles of the working class in their workplaces for wages,
working conditions, etc. be dialectically linked to their long-term and wide-
scope struggle. Only in this way could Marx say that the ‘trade unions are the
schools of socialism’17 for the working class, where they sursume their imme-
diate consciousness into imputed consciousness. The ‘emancipation from the
here and the now’18 and the accompanying immediacy of the struggle, is real-
ised by demonstrating their role and relationship to that totality. This is also a
program for a struggle against vulgar materialism, vulgar economic determin-

13 For an attempt to argue against the correspondence theory of truth from a dialectical per-
spective, see Boveiri 2016a.
14 Lukács 1971a, p. 24.
15 Marx and Engels 1972, p. 474.
16 Compare Grumley 1989, p. 145.
17 Marx 2000, p. 583.
18 Russell 1956, p. 175: ‘I think the essence of wisdom is emancipation, as far as possible, from
the tyranny of the Here and the Now’.
32 chapter 3

ism, utopianism, as well as the thinkers of capitalism who refuse to contextu-

alise the moments in the process, since they take the moments to be isolated,
eternal, and haphazard.19
Lukács therefore advises us to heed Marx’s dictum, namely, that ‘the rela-
tions of production of every society form a whole’, as ‘the methodological start-
ing point and the key to historical understanding of social relations’.20 This
is clarified in some passages where Lukács reminds us of Hegel’s criticism of
mechanism in The Science of Logic, while elaborating on the insufficiency of the
reciprocal relation between parts taken as inorganic elements as in a machine,
in which the parts act and react towards and against one another – since such
a conception cannot replace dialectical totality, and illusory conceptions will
remain untouched. The result will be mechanistic dialectic and mechanistic
fatalism.21
The distinctive characteristic of Marxism, according to Lukács, is thus not
the predominance ‘of the economic motives in historical explanation’ but the
standpoint of totality: ‘The category of totality, the all-pervasive supremacy
of the whole over the parts is the essence of the method which Marx took
over from Hegel and brilliantly transformed into the foundations of a wholly
new science’.22 On occasion, he even equates the development of society and
the dialectical totality,23 in arguing against prioritising any moment of total
production, as well as the producer, a prioritisation and separation which is,
according to him, one characteristic of capitalism. A revolutionary orientation
does not limit itself to the confrontation of the proletariat with capitalism in its
entirety but ‘above all because of its method’.24 Hegel’s dialectic is thus turned
into the algebra of revolution.
All this, one may note, is actually an elaboration on Marx’s double metaphor
in the afterword to the second edition of the first volume of Capital: Hegel’s
dialectic should be turned upside down, and its materialistic kernel taken out
from its mystical shell. This is done through the recognition of society as a total-
ity that goes beyond its illusory moments and their abstracting isolation, and

19 Here he is reiterating Marx’s view: ‘Die Roheit und Begriffslosigkeit liegt eben darin, das
organisch Zusammengehörende zufällig aufeinander zu beziehen, in einen bloßen Reflex-
ionszusammenhang zu bringen’ (Marx 1983a, p. 23).
20 Lukács 1971a, p. 9.
21 Lukács 1970, p. 38.
22 Lukács 1971a, p. 28. In being against ‘vulgar economic determinism’ Lukács is believed to
be on the same page as Marx, Engels, and Lenin, but also Luxemburg and Gramsci. See
Thomas 2002, p. 99.
23 Lukács 1971a, p. 175.
24 Lukács 1971a, p. 28.
on lukács’s totality 33

which also supersedes the bourgeois sciences, such as science of law, national
economy, history, by the ‘single – unified dialectical and historical – science of
the evolution of society as a totality’.25
But the method, itself a product of class warfare,26 boils down to the con-
ception of totality as ‘the subordination of every part to the whole history and
thought’.27 The latter also determines both the subject and the object, which is
also possible only on condition that the subject can be totality, not only as the
subject but also as the object, which is in turn possible only when it – that is, the
proletariat – posits itself as a class,28 and hence gains a genuine subjectivity.29
In A Defence of History and Class Consciousness, a work written several years
after History and Class Consciousness, Lukács reiterates the principal points
found in the earlier book:

It is impossible to separate the ‘moment’ from the ‘process’. The subject

does not find the object inflexibly and unconnectedly. The dialectical
method does not intend either an undifferentiated unity or a definite sep-
aration of moments.30

In the absence of this particular conception of totality, revolution will be

viewed as an isolated moment apart from the process.
According to Lukács, it is not the case that the ‘concrete totality is the cat-
egory that governs reality’, (as it is implied in the English translation of the
text)31 but that ‘the concrete totality is the genuine category of reality’. This is
the conception to which Lukács remains loyal, and although he criticises sev-
eral points in History and Class Consciousness and The Theory of the Novel, he
explicitly defends an ‘objectively unified totality’32 developed previously.

25 Lukács 1971a, p. 28.

26 Lukács 1971a, p. 21: ‘The Marxist method is equally as much the product of class warfare as
any other political or economic product’.
27 Lukács 1971a, pp. 27–8.
28 Lukács 1970a, p. 56: ‘Diesen Gesichtspunkt der Totalität als Subjekt stellen in der mod-
ernen Gesellschaft einzig und allein die Klassen vor’.
29 Cf. Grumley 1989, p. 148.
30 Lukács, Rees et al. 2002, p. 30. See also Lukács 1971a, p. 9. The difference between such an
approach and Žižek’s will be discussed later in this book.
31 Emphasis added. This is how the German sentence ‘Die konkrete Totalität ist also die
eigentliche Wirklichkeitskategorie’ (Lukács 1970, p. 71) is translated into English in His-
tory and Class Consciousness, p. 10. As will be seen in the next chapter, Kosík developed
this point extensively.
32 Lukács 1980, p. 31.
34 chapter 3

That said, the prominence of totality is not limited to a single realm of

human activity. Ontologically, reality is the total process,33 and totality itself the
underlying unity.34 Methodologically, dialectical totality makes the real rela-
tionship between ends and means possible, and hence avoids not only the rigid
polarity and disconnection between means and ends, but also the prioritisa-
tion of either means or ends over the other.35 Yet totality also plays an essential
role in aesthetics: Aesthetically, ‘the novel’, writes Lukács, ‘is the epic of an age
in which the extensive totality of life is no longer directly given, yet which still
thinks in terms of totality’.36
After presenting Lukács’s viewpoint, we will now see how his views are cri-
ticised by others. One of the most recent critiques of Lukács is that of the con-
temporary Marxist philosopher Lucien Sève, who puts forward several objec-
tions. First, he finds the absence of a qualitative distinction between philosoph-
ical categories and scientific concepts a major regrettable point.37 I do not find
this criticism a strong one, and it may actually be an illegitimate demand. The
Marxian categories are the categories of the critique of political economy, and
thus possess simultaneously the characteristics of positive scientific concepts
such as money, exchange, distribution, but also more philosophical categor-
ies such as essence, appearance, subject, etc. An attempt to demarcate these
two mechanically would lead, I believe, either to something like pure econom-
ics, or to purely philosophical speculation. Furthermore, such a distinction is
not possible owing to the dialectical character of Marx’s work in general. This
particular characteristic, reprised also as the bat-like38 characteristic of the
Marxian terms, has led many to claim that classical definitions are absent in
Marx’s works.
Furthermore, Sève criticises Lukács for not accompanying gnoseology with
ontology, and thus leaving behind a barren ontology. Here, although Sève is
right, as far as I can see, in not finding explicit claims regarding the dialect-
ical relationship between ontology and gnoseology (or epistemology), there are

33 Lukács 1980, p. 40.

34 Lukács 1980, p. 32.
35 For a discussion of Hegel’s teleology, see Lamb 1992, esp. pp. 173 and 180.
36 Lukács 1971b, p. 56, my emphasis. For further elaboration on totality in literary works, see
Cascardi 1992.
37 Sève 2014, p. 96: ‘There, there is something else other than the very regrettable absence of
precision, namely, the qualitative indistinction between philosophical category and sci-
entific concept’. Oddly enough, in his 1967 article, ‘Structural Method and the Dialectical
Method’, Sève almost entirely leaves out the conception of totality.
38 Pareto 1902, p. 332: ‘Marx’s words are like bats. One can see in them both birds and mice’
(Quoted from Ollman 2003, p. 4). This is developed further by Ollman.
on lukács’s totality 35

several reasons to think that Lukács’s epistemology is actually intertwined with

a well-developed theory of knowledge.39 For instance, he relates social exist-
ence and knowledge through the mediation of praxis. This is accomplished,
according to Lukács, through the categories of mediation. The moments of
totality of the bourgeoisie, invisible or implicit in their immediacy, find their
organic relation in the totality through mediation. Such objects, such moments,
cannot, to use an imprecise phrase, be assimilated by the consciousness of the
proletariat if they are not objectively effective.40 As a methodological lever, the
category of mediation is both subjective and objective.41 This intertwined char-
acter lies in the activity of the proletariat as well: ‘The essence of the method
of historical materialism is inseparable from the “practical and critical” activity
of the proletariat: both are aspects of the same process of social evolution’.42
Furthermore, there are still more explicit passages in History and Class
Consciousness which buttress such an interpretation. Take the following for
instance:

For a problem always makes its appearance first as an abstract possibility

and only afterwards is it realized in concrete terms. And it only becomes
meaningful to discuss whether questions are rightly or wrongly conceived
when this second stage has been reached, when it becomes possible to
recognize the concrete totality which is destined to constitute the envir-
onment and the path to the realization of the goal in question.43

If each problem is then visible just in its abstract possibility, it is owing to its
undeveloped ontological status, not having yet attained concrete totality. The
intertwinedness of ontology and epistemology – let us call this their episte-
monical unity44 – is then recognised. Put differently, concrete totality can be
realised by the cognisant subject only once it is ontologically recognisable, that
is, once it has passed from abstract status to concrete status.
Sève also accuses Lukács of altering Marx’s text in the Grundrisse, so that it
could match his subject-object identity, this time as regards to the categories.45

39 As we shall see in the Chapter 4, Kosík avoids completely such a criticism, as he recognises
a distinction along with unity between these two realms.
40 Lukács 1971a, p. 163.
41 Lukács 1971a, p. 162.
42 Lukács 1971a, pp. 20–1.
43 Lukács 1971a, p. 296.
44 For an elaboration on this term in relation to Walter Benjamin’s works, see Boveiri 2014.
45 Sève 2014, p. 95.
36 chapter 3

Here is the full text:

Pour renforcer sa thèse Lukács altère le texte cité: Marx écrit que les cat-
égories (“économiques”) “expriment” des “formes d’être”: la dualité du
concept et de la chose est ainsi respectée; Lukács lui fait dire qu’elles
“sont” des “formes d’être” – “existant indépendamment de la conscience
pensante” … –: cette dualité est annulée, d’une façon qu’on n’hésitera pas
à dire indéfendable. La conclusion est lourde: il n’est vraiment pas pos-
sible de considérer ces Prolégomènes comme un digne achèvement de
l’œuvre lukácsienne.

The point is that Lukács changes Marx’s original wording, ‘die Kategorien
daher Daseinsformen, Existenzbestimmungen, oft nur einzelne Seiten dieser
bestimmten Gesellschaft, dieses Subjekts ausdrücken’,46 into ‘Ökonomischen
Kategorien sind nach Marx “Daseinsformen, Existenzbestimmungen”’.47 Thus,
according to the text as Lukács has it, the claim that ‘the economic categories
express the forms of being’ is turned into the claim that ‘economic categories
are the forms of being’. This, I think, cannot be responded to within Lukács’s
conception of totality, and it is left to one of the Marxists following him, namely,
Karel Kosík, to introduce a more nuanced relationship between subject and
object instead of their identity tout court.
That said, if the human being is taken as subject and nature as object, there
are passages in Marx’s works in which such an identity is reaffirmed. Indeed,
such an identity of subject and object in Marxian thought is not limited to
earlier works such as Philosophical and Economic Manuscripts,48 but is also
found in the introduction to the Grundrisse where Marx emphasises the ‘unity
which arises already from the identity of the subject, humanity, and of the
object, nature – [while] their essential difference is not forgotten’.49 This is, of
course, an identity in difference, which Lukács does not seem to deny either,
and in this way stays loyal to non-idealist dialectics, unless he is taken to be a
Hegelian idealist.

46 Marx 1983a, p. 40.

47 Lukács 1970, p. 136.
48 Marx 1968c, p. 516: ‘Daß das physische und geistige Leben des Menschen mit der Natur
zusammenhängt, hat keinen andren Sinn, als daß die Natur mit sich selbst zusammen-
hängt, denn der Mensch ist ein Teil der Natur’.
49 Marx 1983a, p. 21: ‘Einheit – die schon daraus hervorgeht, daß das Subjekt, die Menschheit,
und das Objekt, die Natur, dieselben – die wesentliche Verschiedenheit nicht vergessen
wird’.
on lukács’s totality 37

These are not the only criticisms that can be directed against Lukács’s con-
ception of totality. And although Kosík, as will be seen in the following chapter,
considers Lukács’s History and Class Consciousness an exemplary expression of
the dialectical conception, the interpretation that follows casts some doubt on
this claim.
The first point is the strong Schellingian vein in his approach towards total-
ity. To discuss this issue, we have to remind ourselves, with reference to the
first chapter, that hypostasising the whole over the parts was introduced by
Kosík as the characteristic feature of the second conception of totality, that is,
‘the organicist and organicist-dynamic conception which formalises the whole
and emphasises the predominance and priority of the whole over parts’.50
Then we see that by the introduction of totality as ‘the all-pervasive suprem-
acy of the whole over the parts’51 Lukács lets his conception fall into the
same conception of totality. He repeats the same claim when he says that
in dialectical method and the concept of totality we witness ‘the subordina-
tion of all the parts to the unity of history and thought’.52 In fact, this impli-
cit dichotomy of the whole and parts, and the prioritising of the former over
the latter, is repeated time and again throughout History and Class Conscious-
ness.53 In so doing, notwithstanding all the differences – once more over-
looked by Kosík – Lukács’s account has an important feature in common
with Kosík’s second classification, discussed in the first chapter. That said,
apart from Lukács’s sharing one of the characteristics of the second concep-
tion, namely, the hypostasising of the whole, the other characteristic of the
second conception of totality introduced by Kosík, namely, the unattainabil-
ity of the world by the subject and its comprehension, is absent in Lukács’s
work.
Still, this common feature is not the only shortcoming of Lukács’s interpret-
ation. By mythologising the category of totality, he overlooks the importance
of other concepts, such as contradiction, categorial movement, etc., and more
importantly, the relation between them. The linear determination for which he
criticises his opponents, rooted in their economic determinism, is replaced in
his own work by the category of totality. Here is an example: ‘The category of

50 Kosík 1976, p. 24.

51 Lukács 1971a, p. 27.
52 Lukács 1971a, pp. 27–8.
53 Here is another example: ‘The category of totality begins to have an effect long before the
whole multiplicity of objects can be illuminated by it’ (Lukács 1971a, p. 175). To be fair,
we have to admit that this is a possible reading of the passage in the Introduction to the
Grundrisse. This will be elaborated on in Chapter 5.
38 chapter 3

totality … determines not only the object of knowledge but also the subject’.54
This determination, I think, is performed through the action of all the categor-
ies in the discussion; moreover, the subject-object dialectically determines the
totality as well.
There is yet another significant shortcoming in Lukács’s account. Although
he recognised the closedness of Hegel’s system and its historical character –
‘[The dialectics should be] nonetheless, no longer in the form of a closed sys-
tem. Hegel’s system, as left for us is a historical matter’55 – he does not elaborate
on the openness of a Marxian dialectic. Furthermore, he does not refute the
charge put forward by Bloch regarding the closedness of his conception of total-
ity. In a paper he published after History and Class Consciousness, after quoting
Bloch,56 he does not argue that such a totality is open – as Kosík does, as we will
see in the following chapter – but instead takes totality to be the ‘closed integ-
ration’.57 Regarding this, while I do not find the criticism advanced by some
against the claim of closedness or completion of Lukács’s standpoint water-
tight,58 the claim that because of its shortcoming Lukács’s account of totality
is ‘philosophical mythology’59 is equally extravagant.
Finally, Lukács also takes totality to be a category; I do not consider this to
be precise. As was seen in the Chapter 2, totality is not a category, since to
say that it is a category necessitates finding its place in the categorial move-
ment of categories – the movement of categories [Bewegung der Kategorien]

54 Lukács 1971a, p. 28.

55 My translation of Lukács 1970, pp. 54–5: ‘Allerdings: nicht mehr in der Form eines geschlos-
senen Systems. Das System Hegels, sowie es für uns vorliegt, ist eine historische Tatsache’.
The existing translation (Lukács 1971a, p. xiv) is plainly misleading: ‘Of course we will no
longer expect to discover his achievement in his total system. The system as we have it
belongs to the past’.
56 Lukács 1980, p. 22: ‘Since Lukács operates with a closed, objectivistic conception of reality,
when he comes to examine Expressionism, he resolutely sets his face against any attempt
on the part of artists to shatter any image of the world, even that of capitalism. Any art
which strives to exploit the real fissures in surface inter-relations and to discover the new
in their crevices, appears in his eyes merely as a wilful act of destruction. He thereby
equates experiments in demolition with a condition of decadence’.
57 Lukács 1980, p. 31.
58 For such a response, see the entry on Lukács in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(Stahl 2016): ‘As many critics of Lukács have remarked … this seems to commit Lukács to
the view that there can be a complete overcoming of reification resulting in a totally trans-
parent society. However, this interpretation ignores Lukács’ insistence that the resistance
against reification must be understood as a never-ending struggle’. The major difficulty
with this passage is not that Stahl’s claim is not reinforced in the pages he refers to: his
claim makes the status of the proletariat eternal!
59 Grumley 1989, p. 151.
on lukács’s totality 39

to use Marx’s term – without yet fixing it in its place, as may be done with Aris-
totle’s categories or Kant’s table of categories. Once we see that it is impossible
to demonstrate its place in the categorial movement, totality turns out to be
a concept – or better put, a metacategory, as was suggested in the previous
Chapter – rather than a category. Further clarification on this distinction will
be given in Chapter 6 of this book.

Conclusion

We have seen that a few erroneous characteristics remain in Lukács’s totality.

First, it remains closed notwithstanding his efforts, and he did not argue against
the accusation in the writings he published after History and Class Conscious-
ness. Also occasionally, his conception of totality remains Schellingian, in the
sense that we saw in the first chapter regarding the second misconception of
totality, for it makes the whole predominant over the parts, though without
remaining an idealist conception, as is the case with Schelling’s approach.
This predominance of the whole over parts is the standpoint to which Lukács
remains faithful through and through.
As we have seen, Lukács does admit that ‘it was not enough … to give it
[i.e., Hegelian dialectic] a materialist twist’;60 nevertheless, he seems not to
have adequately integrated the elements of Marx’s approach in this regard. Put
differently, he might be said to have overestimated Hegel’s role in Marxian dia-
lectic. On one occasion, he sees the subordination of the Hegelian category to
logic as nothing ‘more than a mere form of appearance of the system’.61 He also
admits that Marx concretises Hegel’s idea of evolution ‘by applying it to social
development’;62 but if this is the case, this is not much more than the injection
of the sociality of the subject matter into Hegelian dialectics – undoubtedly a
complicated twist. In all of this, and notwithstanding a few remarks that sug-
gest the contrary,63 Lukács seems not to fully see the differences between the
two dialectics.
Even the subtitle of History and Class Consciousness – ‘Studies in Marxist
Dialectics’ – leaves a lot for later Marxists to develop. This leads us to the fol-
lowing chapter, where we assess the challenges that are left for later Marxists – a
consequence of the impossibility of rebutting the claims made against Lukács

60 Lukács 1971a, p. 175.

61 Lukács 1978a, p. 47.
62 Lukács 1971a, p. 20 (emphasis added).
63 Lukács 1978a, p. 25.
40 chapter 3

within the frame of his own thought – and to what extent their responses to
these challenges were successful. Among the efforts to develop a more com-
prehensive conception of totality, the most noteworthy are those made by the
Czech philosopher Karel Kosík. The following chapter critically reviews his
account.
 chapter 4

On Kosík’s Totality

It is undoubtedly true that Georg Lukács was the first Marxist thinker to under-
score not only the significance of the concrete totality in contradistinction to
abstract and formal totality, but also its revolutionary importance;1 however,
the task of providing an extensive and profound account of this conception
was left to the Czech philosopher Karel Kosík. In this chapter, I go deeper into
Kosík’s reading of the dialectical conception of totality, to which I have so far
made only passing reference.
In developing his own materialist dialectical philosophy – which he calls
‘dialectical rationalism’,2 a dialectical reason that gives ‘the universal and neces-
sary process of cognition and of forming of reality’3 – Kosík emphasises that
the primary concern common to all forms of dialectic is the quest for the
subject matter, die Sache selbst.4 Given that the subject matter is not mani-
fest and cannot be known immediately through contemplation, discovering
it requires both effort and a bypass, a detour [Oklika]. The process of this
effort and detour consists not just in the comprehension of social reality as
concrete reality but also in the formation of this reality through a process
of concretisation. To explicate this particular conception, Kosík develops a
complex account that is simultaneously a unified but also manifold theory
of reality as a whole, and its active cognition through the activity of human
beings. His account is thus at once epistemological, historical, and ontolo-
gical.
Like Marx, Kosík sees contradiction as the central concept of dialectics.
If this view is correct, then wherever contradictions can be seen, so too can
dialectics; therefore, since contradictions can be seen in nature, so too can
dialectics. Where Kosík is innovative is in his elaboration of the interconnec-

1 Cerutti 1980, p. 35.

2 Karel Kosík, Dialectic of the Concrete, trans. Karel Kovanda and James Schmidt (Dordrecht:
D. Reidel, 1976), p. 59. Unless otherwise specified, all references to Kosík’s text in English are
from this translation.
3 Kosík 1976, p. 60.
4 I am translating the Czech phrase věc sama as ‘subject matter’; see Kosík 1966, p. 10. The
German translator chooses the Hegelian term Sache selbst; see Kosík 1986, p. 7. The English
translators choose ‘thing itself’ (Kosík 1976, p. 1). Although this is literally correct, I do not use
their translation, to avoid any confusion with the Kantian Ding an sich.

© Kaveh Boveiri, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004703971_006

42 chapter 4

tion of totality and contradictions.5 As Kosík puts it, ‘The process of forming
the whole and forming a unity, the unity of contradictions and its genesis, all
belong to the dialectical whole’.6 Moreover, totality and contradiction are seen
as concomitant, and so prioritising one over the other robs them of their dia-
lectical character: ‘Without contradictions totality is empty and static; outside
totality contradictions are formal and arbitrary’.7 In what follows, we elabor-
ate on Kosík’s reading of Marxian totality and neighbouring conceptions, then
examine the two major shortcomings of his view. These necessitate further dis-
cussion in the following two chapters, each of which responds to one of these
shortcomings.

1 Totality: Concrete and Pseudo-concrete

In what seems to be a tautology, Kosík writes: ‘The dialectics of the concrete

totality … is a theory of reality as concrete totality’,8 ‘a coherent methodological
principle’9 ‘for investigating objective reality’.10 This is a conception of reality
in the most general sense, in which there is no bifurcation between nature
and society, but the concepts are not monolithic either – a conception distinct
from scientism, or the excessive belief in the power of scientific knowledge and
techniques, whose goal is efficiency, or the attaining of the greatest advantage
possible with the least consumption of energy. This totalisation-synthetisation-
concretisation is also radically distinct from a reductionist approach which
Kosík calls the ‘method of abstract principle’. This method, which is a constitu-
ent of capitalism as a part of its superstructure, does not let us see the process
of concretisation (the formation of totality in general), and cannot grasp that
it is not the theory but ‘the economic reality of capitalism … that reduces man
to the abstraction of the “economic man” really and practically’.11
The contradictory character of totality and its multiple meanings, as well as
the richness of reality, are thus left out; the result is instead ‘an empty totality
which treats the wealth of reality as an irrational “residue” beyond compre-

5 What Kosík sees as the interconnection of totality and contradictions is the notion which
can be traced back to Marx’s dissertation, 1968c, p. 38.
6 Kosík 1976, p. 24.
7 Kosík 1976, p. 30.
8 Kosík 1976, p. 19.
9 Kosík 1976, p. 18.
10 Kosík 1976, p. 22. The details of such a principle, which were left undeveloped by Kosík,
will be fleshed out in the chapters to follow.
11 Kosík 1976, p. 87.
on kosík’s totality 43

hension’.12 This vacuous or empty totality is one outcome of such an approach:

this is the totality that does not comprehend how the individual moments are
reflected in the whole, and thus excludes the ‘appropriation of reality as indi-
vidual moments, and the activity of analytical reason’ in relation to totality.13 It
is found in the Romantics, for instance, whose search for totality renders it void
of its vibrancy and fails to grasp the determinacy of relations within totality.
This empty totality, however, is just one type of false totality. Elaborating on
the different kinds of false totality will help us to better grasp concrete totality.
The second form of false totality is abstract totality. Such a totality one-sidedly
opposes the whole and the parts; it hypostasises the former against the latter
and petrifies it. Totality, thus taken to be a closed whole, is ‘without genesis and
development, without the process of forming the whole, without structuration
and destructuration’.14 In attributing a higher reality to the whole, this concep-
tion ignores the inputs into its genesis and the process by which the structure
of the whole is formed.15
The third type of false totality is bad totality. This is the misconception which
replaces the real subject with a mythologised subject; as a result, ‘social reality is
intuited only in the form of the object, of ready-made results and facts, but not
subjectively, as objective human praxis’.16 In divorcing human activity from the
product of that activity, autonomous structures are taken to play a social role
without any involvement of actual people. Social reality is then the sum total of
the structures in the society that reciprocally influence each other. The result is
thus not real-historical objectivity but a fictitious-fetishistic objectivity. Kosík
also shows how the epistemological aspects of such a misconception of total-
ity entail the political shortcomings of such a response: if reality is graspable
only in chunks, each change will be limited to those chunks, and an orientation
towards revolutionising reality as a whole is out of the question. If capitalism in
its totality is beyond our grasp, so a fortiori is revolutionising it in its entirety.17

12 Kosík 1976, p. 28.

13 Kosík 1976, p. 31.
14 Kosík 1976, p. 31.
15 As we saw in Chapter 3, this is what Lukács’s account comes close to doing. Another pitfall
of such a conception of totality is taking reality as an immutable totality, which is certainly
not found in Lukács.
16 Kosík 1976, p. 31. This does not mean that the erroneous counterpart of this account is not
possible: understanding social reality subjectively also consists in understanding social
reality as ready-made subjective results and facts.
17 Politically, the alternative standpoint has its roots in the ‘objective experience of social
reality’, namely, the view that the dynamics of the commitment to left politics ‘are not
derived from the reading of the “Marxist classics”, but rather from the objective experi-
44 chapter 4

All these are possible responses to what Kosík takes to be the cardinal ques-
tion in Marxism, namely: What is reality? This question comes before the ques-
tion of whether reality can be known; put differently, one has to know what
question about reality is involved before one can consider the possibility or
impossibility of knowing the answer. The category18 of concrete totality is intro-
duced as a response to this question. Reality is taken to be concrete totality. Let
us call the components of reality facts. What then is the relationship between
facts and reality? One possible response would be to take reality to be the sum
of all the facts that constitute reality. If this is correct, then since there are
too many facts, properties, and aspects for us to be able to take them all into
account and newer ones appear at each stage of inquiry, we cannot envisage
reality as a totality, but only parts of it. A fortiori, we can never know reality in
its totality, but only partially and within horizons that may converge towards
reality but never are reality.19
It may be argued that only divine omniscience could know all of reality com-
pletely and perfectly. To respond to such an argument, instead of adopting
a summative, additive view about reality, Kosík first admits that reality in its
absoluteness – that is, the world – is neither exhaustible by human beings nor
reducible to human knowledge. To this effect, three characteristic features are
introduced as related to reality. Since it is ‘structured’, totality is not a chaotic
whole, but is made up of parts that are organised and interrelated. However,
though this view turns the heap of facts into a structured form, it does not
necessarily entail life or even motion, since static structures can easily be envis-
aged, as by Parmenides, for instance. To avoid this, a second feature is intro-
duced: reality is an evolving whole. This gives dynamism to reality: it is not
‘given once and for all’.
So far, the Kosíkian conception of totality is similar to what Hegel would
call mechanism or chemism, since in both of these cases there is a dynamic
whole that is structured. However, although reality is shown to be a dynamic
whole once it is posited as evolving, it is still void of its genesis or original evol-
ution, that is, the process by which it is formed and what it turns into; hence,
this account still fails to account for the coming into being and evolution of

ence of social reality and the way in which one isolated cause or issue, one specific form
of injustice, cannot be fulfilled or corrected without eventually drawing the entire web of
interrelated social levels together into a totality, which then demands the invention of a
politics of social transformation’ (Jameson, 1990, p. 251).
18 It will be seen in the next chapter on the Marxian conception of totality that the introduc-
tion of totality as a ‘category’ is imprecise, as was the case with Hegel’s conception seen in
Chapter 2.
19 Similar argument is developed in Boudin 1993, pp. 24–30.
on kosík’s totality 45

reality. To meet this requirement, a third feature comes into play: reality is a
self-forming whole. This last feature, the expression of the law of the transform-
ation of quantity into quality, explicates the formation of novelty in totality.
Here Kosík reiterates what Marx says in Capital when he draws an analogy
between natural changes and the phenomena in his subject of exposition:20
in both cases, merely quantitative changes lead to qualitative differences. Con-
sidered this way, facts, or the encoded realities, are decoded: the essence of the
phenomenal is known through phenomena, and reality is the unity of phenom-
ena and essence. What such an account of dialectical totality is about then, on
the side of the human being, may be described as the process of decoding facts.
This entails that we should avoid seeing facts as merely mediated or merely
unmediated entities: grasping the Sache selbst is the process of penetrating into
facts by putting them into a dialectical relationship with one another. If we may
expound grasping the Sache selbst and penetrating into it as the apprehension
of its intrafactuality, then we may say that this is achieved only through inter-
factuality.21
This grasping simultaneously sursumes the process of what wrongly intro-
duced itself as the concrete when it was only pseudo-concrete, and this in
three respects: ideas, things, and conditions. Before seeing how this world
of the pseudo-concrete is to be sursumed, let us first see what the charac-
teristics of the world of the pseudo-concrete are. The world of the pseudo-
concrete, according to Kosík, is ‘the world of fictitious intimacy, familiarity
and confidence within which man moves about “naturally” and with which
he has his daily dealings’.22 The fact that human beings are usually able to
meet their routine needs presents a world to them in which things are regu-
lar, permanent, immediate, and self-evident. This world includes external phe-
nomena detached from their essence, the world of manipulation (the same as
the unsophisticated praxis at the level of ideas, as ideological appearances of
things), the ideological forms of such a routine praxis, and the world of static
objects. The world of the pseudo-concrete is thus the world of solid, isolated,

20 See Marx 1976, p. 423: ‘Here, as in natural science, is shown the correctness of the law dis-
covered by Hegel, in his Logic, that at a certain point merely quantitative differences pass
over by a dialectical inversion into qualitative distinctions’. This will be further discussed
in Chapter 5.
21 The introduction of the term ‘interfactuality’ is a development of a passage in the After-
word to the second edition of Capital Volume i: ‘A critique of this kind will confine itself
to the confrontation and comparison of a fact, not with ideas, but with another fact’. Marx
1976, p. 101.
22 Kosík 1976, p. 2.
46 chapter 4

and static objects that are also ideology-driven: not only are they seen as solid,
isolated, and static, but they are also idea bearers, not concept bearers.
The standpoint of concrete totality entails the process of sursuming the
pseudo-concrete.23 If we adopt the view that social reality, the only existent
reality for a human as a social being, is the construction of the social human
being, we will see how ontology and gnoseology are intertwined, while avoiding
Hegelianism, and also how social reality, natural reality, and their cognition are
intertwined.24 This is the result of discovering praxis, and indeed revolution-
ary praxis, in this new concept of reality. This reformulation of the standpoint
introduced by Marx and Engels in The German Ideology,25 inter alia, does not
involve a reduction of nature to social life, but emphasises the fact that any
interaction with nature on the side of human being, which is always, so to
speak, an active act of praxis, is always in a social milieu.
Let us elucidate this with an example. If there is something that is so un-
known to us, and so different from all that we know in the already existing
known totality, that it cannot even be called a case for cognition, then that
thing, until it is socially acquired and interacted with, does not exist for our
cognition, but only in itself. Talking about its existence entails some minimum
level of praxis, social integration, and interaction with it, even at the level of
sensation, in which case it is no longer merely a case of cognition detached
from human sociality.26 If it is a case of cognition, its being such a case entails
that we are already in the process of interaction with it. Before that, without
any minimal influence on us, it is no-thing for us, since it remains outside of
the procedural life of the Sache selbst. On this account, however, the dynam-
icity of totality, its inherent dialectics, is not to be taken to be injected into the
substance; rather, it is the substance.27

23 This will be discussed below when the role of praxis is further elaborated in this chapter.
24 Cf. Jameson, 2016, p. 77: ‘No philosophical or aesthetic synthesis between these dimen-
sions [i.e., history and nature] is attainable’.
25 See for example, the following passage from The German Ideology (Marx and Engels 1976,
p. 39): ‘[Feuerbach] does not see that the sensuous world around him is not a thing given
direct from all eternity, remaining ever the same, but the product of industry and of the
state of society; and, indeed [a product] in the sense that it is an historical product, the res-
ult of the activity of a whole succession of generations, each standing on the shoulders of
the preceding one, developing its industry and its intercourse, and modifying its social sys-
tem according to the changed needs. Even the objects of the simplest “sensuous certainty”
are only given [to] him through social development, industry and commercial intercourse’.
26 Kosík 1976, p. 31: ‘All degrees of human cognition, sensory or rational, as well as all modes
of appropriating reality, are activities based on the objective praxis of mankind, and are
consequently in some degrees connected with in some way by all other modes’.
27 According to one interpretation, the introduction of a dynamic aspect into Aristotelian
on kosík’s totality 47

2 Totality and Objectivity

So far, we have seen that Kosík defends the view that reality as totality is know-
able and representable. He thus takes a position that is radically different from
what is thought to be common in postmodernism in general,28 but also from
standpoints which try to retain totality while refuting reality.29 A question then
naturally arises: What is the relationship between this account of reality and
objectivity? Kosík’s account of the relationship between totality and objectiv-
ity is key, since when he defends objectivity, what is taken to be the ‘opium of
Marxism,’30 he criticises those who fail to take social reality as a ‘search for what
it is objectively, i.e., concrete totality’.31 This section and the two following this
attempt to answer this question.
To begin with, it should be noted that reality is grasped through the
complementary functions of pre-predicative cognition and predicative cogni-
tion, where understanding prior to predication is immediate cognition, and
understanding through predication is mediated cognition. The former is the
understanding that everybody has prior to any explication; the latter is the
result of argumentation or explication. Neither the immediacy of cognition
nor its mediacy brings about by itself such a status; rather, they do so con-
jointly; this is what is intended by their complementarity role. Limiting one-
self to immediacy leads to vegetative, pre-predicative cognition, or to a search
for intellectual intuition as found in Schelling; limiting oneself to mediacy
leads to the positive sciences or to Wittgenstein’s claim that the merely cog-
nitively important is science, and philosophy has no task beyond clarifica-
tion and remains a discipline full of tautologies. An overarching cognition
is thus either unnecessary or limited to the clarification of scientific claims.
Although modern science – say since Galileo – has taught us that intuitive infer-
ences and mere observations are not always trustworthy, there are cases whose
truth is to be pre-predicatively adopted and then confirmed through experi-
ence.

syllogistics is a main feature of Hegel’s contribution in the history of logic and philosophy;
see Gauthier 2010, p. 69.
28 While ‘All of postmodernism … concurs that even if totality exists it would be unpresent-
able and unknowable’ (Jameson 1990, p. 248).
29 This is the standpoint developed by Žižek (2002) in his introduction to a selection of
Lenin’s writings, and will be further criticised in this book.
30 Jacoby 1981, p. 8.
31 Kosík 1976, p. 76.
48 chapter 4

In Marx’s mature works we find both reliance on observation32 and the

untrustworthiness of mere observation.33 Taken in abstraction, these claims
seem contradictory, but once conjoined with Kosík’s account they reveal their
dialectical significance. Taking such a standpoint is in a sense a response to the
classical problem put forward by Sextus Empiricus:34 there are cases whose
truth is to be accepted a priori, that is, non-empirically. One such belief is
the existential-ontological-historical primacy of existence over cognition.35
Although Kosík may be taken as an ontology-first theorist of truth, according
to whom truth depends on being, in contradistinction to an explanation-first
theorist of truth,36 his understanding of the role of the subject means that this
attribution cannot be made without qualification. We will examine this further
in what follows.

3 Objekt-Gegenstand: Marx’s Distinction

As is recognised in the literature, Hegel distinguishes between the terms Gegen-

stand and Objekt,37 which are used interchangeably in normal spoken Ger-
man. Marx also distinguishes between these two terms.38 The distinction later

32 See Marx 1976, p. 247: ‘[W]e do not need to look back at the history of capital’s origins in
order to recognize that money is its first form of appearance. Every day the same story is
played out before our eyes’.
33 Compare the two following passages: Marx 1976, p. 433: ‘A scientific analysis of compet-
ition is possible only if we can grasp the inner nature of capital, just as the apparent
motions of the heavenly bodies are intelligible only to someone who is acquainted with
their real motions, which are not perceptible to the senses’. Marx 1968f, pp. 206–7: ‘It is
… [a] paradox that the earth moves round the sun, and that water consists of two highly
inflammable gases. Scientific truth is always paradox, if judged by everyday experience,
which catches only the delusive appearance of things’.
34 Sextus Empiricus 1976, p. 163: ‘In order to decide the dispute that has arisen about the cri-
terion, we have need of an agreed-upon criterion by means of which we shall decide it; and
in order to have an agreed-upon criterion it is necessary first to have decided the dispute
about the criterion. Thus, with the reasoning falling into the circularity mode, finding a
criterion becomes aporetic; for we do not allow them to adopt a criterion hypothetically,
and if they wish to decide about the criterion by means of a criterion we force them into
an infinite regress’.
35 This should be taken generally and dialectically, however, as will be developed in what
follows.
36 For a further discussion on this distinction (though in a different context), see Asay 2020,
particularly Chapter 3, ‘The Truth Making Relation’.
37 See Inwood 1992, pp. 203–5.
38 This distinction is not recognised in all interpretations, even those which defend objectiv-
ity. See, for example, Goldstick and Cunningham 1978.
on kosík’s totality 49

turned into one of the bedrocks of Cultural Historical Activity Theory (chat) in
the ussr.39 Before elaborating on Kosík’s position on the relationship between
objectivity and totality, I first give an interpretation of Marx’s first thesis on
Feuerbach, where this distinction can be seen quite explicitly. Since the
nuances of the text are not fully detectable in English, I quote the text in Ger-
man:

Der Hauptmangel alles bisherigen Materialismus (den Feuerbachschen

mit eingerechnet) ist, daß der Gegenstand, die Wirklichkeit, Sinnlich-
keit nur unter der Form des Objekts oder der Anschauung gefaßt wird;
nicht aber als sinnlich menschliche Tätigkeit, Praxis; nicht subjektiv. Daher
die tätige Seite abstrakt im Gegensatz zu dem Materialismus von dem
Idealismus – der natürlich die wirkliche, sinnliche Tätigkeit als solche
nicht kennt – entwickelt. Feuerbach will sinnliche – von den Gedanken-
objekten wirklich unterschiedne Objekte: aber er faßt die menschliche
Tätigkeit selbst nicht als gegenständliche Tätigkeit. Er betrachtet daher
im ‘Wesen des Christenthums’ nur das theoretische Verhalten als das
echt menschliche, während die Praxis nur in ihrer schmutzig jüdischen
Erscheinungsform gefaßt und fixiert wird. Er begreift daher nicht die
Bedeutung der ‘revolutionären’, der ‘praktisch-kritischen’ Tätigkeit.40

This thesis in fact argues against a dual anti-reductionist standpoint. On the

one hand, it is directed against the materialists who reduce Gegenstand to
Objekt, and hence deprive the former of its active, real, and subjective char-
acteristics, but also against the idealists, who underscore the active side of the
Gegenstand but cannot stay loyal to this standpoint. According to this thesis,
however, it is imperative that human praxis, which is the characteristic of all
social life, be taken objectively. It is thus suggesting a materialism that stems
from this dual critique. It should be noted that the whole thesis actually sug-
gests a distinctive Marxian materialism; this is important in order to avoid
a misreading that suggests going beyond materialism and idealism,41 a view
that does not bear scrutiny, even based just on the actual text of the other
theses. Such a new materialist standpoint supplies a political characteristic for
a materialist philosophy, one which, unlike intuitive materialism, does not find

39 For further elaboration on this, see Blunden 2017.

40 Marx 1978e, p. 5.
41 Cf. Jameson 2016, p. 79: ‘The ontology that wishes to escape ideological imprisonment in
either idealism or materialism can only do so by foretelling the inevitable temptations of
both and using them against each other in a permanent tension that cannot be resolved’.
50 chapter 4

in civil society a satisfactory form of social totality and wants instead a ‘human-
ised society’ – or formulated differently, a ‘socialised humanity’.42 Whereas here
Marx highlights the active side of human praxis, Kosík, without any direct ref-
erence to this thesis, refines it in a more dialectical manner by underscoring
its intertwined double function: registering and projecting, fact-finding and
planning, reflection in the sense of mirroring, but also projection. But before
getting into that in the following section, let’s first see in detail his treatment of
objectivity.

4 Objectivity in Kosík: Conceptual-Lexical Discussion and Its

Implications

After briefly considering the nuances introduced by Marx regarding the dif-
ference between Gegenstand and Objekt and its derivations, I now return to
Kosík to see how he deals with these nuances and what his particular contribu-
tion is. In addition to this nuanced objectivity – and also subjectivity – Kosík
introduces what may be called objectuality (he makes use of the correspond-
ing adjective ‘objectual’). In objectuality, what is grasped has the appearance
of objectivity without being really objective.
To avoid losing sight of this nuance through translation, let us first make a
lexical review of Kosík’s conception with reference to the original Czech text.
The classification of terms may be schematically illustrated, as shown in the
two tables below, the result of a thoroughgoing search of the whole text. The
first table shows the terms for ‘object’, ‘objective’, and ‘objectivity’, as used in
German more or less until Kant, together with Kosík’s rendering of the terms
in Czech and their English translations.

‘Object’ and Its Derivations

Czech German English

objekt Objekt Object

objektivní objektiv Objective
objektivita Objektivität Objectivity
objektivace Objektivierung Objectivation

42 Theses 9 and 10 in Marx 1978, p. 7.

on kosík’s totality 51

The particular nuance pointed out before, found in Hegel, Marx, and Kosík
(with differences which go beyond the purpose of this chapter), is reflected in
Table 2. In the third column, and for ease of discussion, I have added an aster-
isk to the terms to mark the difference. From now on, all the Czech or German
terms which lose their nuance in English are marked in this way.

Object* and Its Derivations

Czech German English

předmět Gegenstand object*

předmětné gegenständlich objective*
předmětnost Gegenständlichkeit objectivity*
zpředmětnění Vergegenständlichung objectification

It remains to be shown how this nuance is reflected in the text. I limit examples
to one or two.43 Kosík uses předmět and its derivatives when he wants to
attribute objectivity* to ‘praxis’ (C94/E76), including when he highlights its
being human praxis (C42/E31); ‘material praxis’ (C50/E40); ‘practical human
world’ (C51/E41); the ‘subject’ (C47/E37; C58/E47); realita (real objectivity*)
(C42/E30), inhuman (‘human’) objektivita (C85/E70); when he wants to ascribe
objektivita to ‘social reality’ (C42/E30) or when he wants to talk about the histor-
ical, fictitious, or fetishistic reality of objektivita (C42/E30); ‘activity’ (C92/E74,
C144/E125); ‘doing’ (C142/E122; C145/E126).
When he wants to attribute objectivity to objektivita he uses ‘objective’
(C50/E40), but when he is qualifying human praxis, he uses ‘objective’*: ‘The
world of human praxis is objective* – human reality in its genesis, production
and reproduction’. (C51/E40)
The objectivity* of labour stems, on the one hand, from the fact that the res-
ult of labour has a duration, it is ‘a cycle of activity and duration movement
and objectivity’* (C141/E122), and on the other hand, from the fact that it is
a manifestation of man as a practical being, that is, as an ‘objective* subject’
(C141/E122) a subject with an objective* existence with thoughts about objects.*

43 In-text references to Czech and English versions are to Kosík’s Dialektika konkrétního:
Studie o problematice člověka a světa (Kosík 1966) and to the English translation by Karel
Kovanda and James Schmidt, Dialectic of the Concrete (Kosík 1976). All page numbers refer-
ring to the text in Czech are preceded by C; their counterpart numbers in English are
preceded by E.
52 chapter 4

There is no way to dispense with objectification: ‘The existence of objecti-

fied artifacts is a prerequisite of history, i.e., of continuity in human existence’
in which the ‘tool is a reasonable mediation between man and the object’
(C141/E122–3). Through the process of objectification of man in labour, man
not only realises itself but also tears the object* out of the context in which it
existed before this process.44
So far, we have focused on cases where ‘object’* and its derivatives are used
to qualify other concepts or are qualified by them. Now we turn to those that
are qualified by ‘object’ and its derivatives. When Kosík wants to set something
over against the subject, like an opposition between matter and spirit, etc.,
he usually uses ‘subject’ and ‘object’ (C154/E137) for example, when he wants
to talk about the subject-object relationship (C47/E37, C96/E79). This is also
the case when he wants to counterpose the two worlds, namely, the world of
objectivity and the world of subjectivity (C72/E59), when he wants to counter-
pose the dialectics of the subject with its counterpart (C85/E70), or when the
former metamorphoses into the latter (subjective into objective; C65/E53); for
example, in an objectual world, man, a subject, sinks to the level of an object,
a tool, or a machine (C83/E68). It is noteworthy that he uses not the word
předmět but objekt (not ‘object*’ but ‘object’ in our clarification), the reduc-
tion to which is reprimanded by Marx in his first thesis on Feuerbach (see 3
above). As a result of this metamorphosis, the real reality is reduced to ‘the
objective world of things and of reified human relationships,’ and ‘having lost
control over the material world he had created, man loses reality itself as well’
(C83/E68). As one might expect, the same adjective, ‘objective’, is used together
with ‘alienation’ (C85/E70). This is equally true when he discusses the ‘sense’
(meaning) generally, including the objective sense of facts (C38/E26), the sig-
nificance of facts (C37/E25), ‘content’ (C37/E26, C42/E30), ‘function’ (C42/E30),
‘substance’ (C165/E146), ‘spirit’ (C165/E146), ‘laws’ (C47/E37), ‘Being’ (C50/E40),
the transindividual role of the individual (C48/E38), ‘mechanism’ (C64/E52),
‘change’ (C80/E65), and ‘ground’ (C72/E59).
When Kosík takes reality independently – for instance, when talking about
the changes that it undergoes (C49/E39), or when it is to indicate how its
objectivity is transformed into the world of the pseudo-concrete with only an
appearance of reality – he uses the same term ‘objective’ (C67/E54). In refer-
ence to praxis, however, he uses ‘objective’,* whereas when he uses it independ-
ently, he uses ‘objectivity’ (C156/E138); this is equally true when he wants to talk
about the objectivity of a social context (C65/E53) or a transindividual context
(C65–6/E53).

44 Kosík 1976, p. 122.

on kosík’s totality 53

Another noteworthy point regarding the themes to which Kosík ascribes

objectivity is a difference from Marx regarding truth. Unlike the adjective Marx
uses for truth in the second thesis, namely, gegenständlich,45 Kosík uses objekt-
ivní (objective) (C33/E22, C99/E82). Interestingly enough, this objective truth,
the result of objective* praxis, as far as cognition (C37/E26) is concerned, is
the result of cognition to which objectivity is ascribed. The knowledge is also
qualified by the word ‘objective’ (C78/E89), and likewise for ‘the reason of an
objective observer’ (C163/E144). Moreover, all this carries with it an object-
ive criterion, or measure (C119/E104, C79/E64). Once more, interestingly, the
objectivity of laws is called objektivita (objectivity) (C47/E37) and the investig-
ation or exploration needed to find such laws is also qualified with the same
term (C47/E37, C128/112), as well as for formations (C128/E112), and the object-
ive course of things (C133/E116). This objective attribution also confirms the
dual primacy of existence. This is in a sense a sign of a defence of objectivity in
the already recognised sense of the term, whereas for what is investigated we
have an object* of investigation (C150/133).
As far as I can tell, there are only two cases in the whole book where the two
terms are used interchangeably. When Kosík discusses the object of manip-
ulation, he refers to it as both object* (C49–50/E40) and object (C49/E40,
C153/E136). This is equally true when he wants to use adjectives for relations or
relationships: they can be either objective* (C156/E138) or objective (C48/E38).
To elucidate further my reading of Kosík’s distinction between Objekt and
Gegenstand and their derivations, let us review the senses that the word ‘object’
can have in English. In English the word ‘object’ can mean: (1) the grammatical
object, that is, the object of a proposition. In ‘I saw John’, for instance, ‘John’
is the grammatical object of the sentence; (2) the purpose aimed at, as in ‘The
object is to replace capitalism with socialism’; (3) a thing, as in the phrase ‘a pile
of miscellaneous objects’. Up to here, all the senses are used equally in common
English. But ‘object’ can also be used for (4) what is intended, as in ‘object of
scorn’ or ‘object of hatred’.46 There is yet another sense, (5) which distinguishes
that which is the result of the activity of human being from the most inact-
ive forms of being, such as observation, or pure contemplation. (All man-made
things you see around while reading this passage fall under this class.) It is the
fourth and fifth senses that are the focus of our discussion. The introduction
of the concept Object* here is intended to present a dialectical version of the

45 Marx 1978, pp. 5–7.

46 This clearly incorporate Husserl’s intentionality into the discussion. This had been done
before Kosík by another Marxist philosopher to whom Kosík refers, namely, Tran (2012,
esp. pp. 82–104).
54 chapter 4

homogeneity of the historical subject and object*. This in turn makes possible
the knowledge of the object* in all its varieties (praxis, labour, history, etc.) by
the subject.47
In the discussion of the part-whole relationship, one problem is how and
why a part of the whole is representative of the whole. The response is that
each part is representative of the whole insofar as the whole is an organism of
which it is a part. What makes a part representative of the whole is that it is a
cell48 of the whole. Thus, the whole is and is not in the part. It is in the part as a
cell of the whole; it is not in the part in the sense that this part constitutes only
a part of the whole.
Where then is the absolute whole or absolute totality? Absolute totality is
reality in its totality: in one sense it is ungraspable as a whole in its totality, but
in another sense it is graspable as a whole in its totality. This involves a partic-
ular dialectic between absolute totality and relative totality. In treating of the
relative totalities, given the relationship between them and the absolute total-
ity, it is the absolute totality that is grasped.
This is equally true of objectivity. Objectivity should not be ascribed to the
absolute totality as what is over and above the relative totalities. The objectivity
ascribed to the relative totality is simultaneously the same objectivity ascribed
to absolute totality.49 This can be better grasped when compared with Hegel’s
discussion of the finite and infinite. The infinite is not over and above the finite.
The absence of a transcendent infinite over and above the finite in Hegelian
philosophy, once searched for from a Marxian standpoint, is the relationship
between absolute totality and relative totality. Nature as the absolute totality
does exist, and one may say that a proof regarding its existence is not dealt with
in Marx’s works, at least not as a major issue. Yet cognition of the absolute total-
ity is possible and occurs in every aspect of human praxis, including sensation.
There is no unbridgeable chasm or insurmountable wall between absolute and
relative totality. In this regard, the similarity with a mathematical limit is cor-
rect so long as one affirms that what is being achieved through a process is the

47 Cf. Gadamer 2006, p. 218.

48 It may be asked whether, according to this account, a cancerous cell is representative of
the organism. Given that death, or for that reason, any qualitative transformation of the
whole is an inherent characteristic of a dialectical totality represented by all its parts, the
response is affirmative.
49 A comparison with a passage from Lenin, referred to in the previous chapter, is interesting
here: ‘In order to know an object thoroughly, it is essential to discover and comprehend
all of its aspects, its relationships and its “mediations”. We shall never achieve this fully,
but insistence on all-round knowledge will protect us from errors and inflexibility’. Lenin
1976, p. 130, quoted in Lukács 1980, p. 33.
on kosík’s totality 55

limit itself, not its horizons – the distinction insightfully accentuated by Kosík.
What is given to us in each step is not the horizons, aspects, or partial images
of the absolute totality, but the absolute totality relatively.
The rather tedious lexical elaboration developed above in order to unravel
Kosík’s account regarding the relationship between object, object,* and the
related conceptual distinctions, helps us to better grasp the conceptual distinc-
tion at the basis of his criticism of some Marxist thinkers. He criticises Marcuse,
for instance, for identifying two statuses that emerge from such a distinction,
namely, objectivation and objectification, ‘which renders the author vulner-
able to subjectivism and introduces chaos and inconsistency into elaborating
the problem of labor’,50 so that his standpoint ‘cannot objectively appreciate
Marx’s contribution’.51 Nonetheless, Kosík does not see an absolute distinction
between objectified and objectivised praxis, since he also sees a connection
between them. He does not stop at quoting what Marx says in the Grundrisse –
‘All production is objectification of the individual’52 – but adds objectivation,
and while he criticises Marcuse for identifying them, he himself sees the ‘inter-
connection of objectified and objectivized praxis’.53
Kosík’s technical usage of the term ‘objectification’ is thus different from the
way this concept is used in, for example, contemporary feminist discussion,54
where objectification means turning a person (in this case a woman) into an
object, a concept with a merely negative connotation. According to Kosík, so
long as labour is a transformation of the subject into an object, which brings
along with it reification, it is negative, but so long as it is the subject of con-
crete labour, that is, so long as it transforms nature into what is useful and its
use, it is inevitable. In this sense, not only is it positive, but it is also the prin-
cipal mode of human existence in the form of praxis. Praxis itself, however,
taken broadly, is concomitant with human existence, which is inevitably social:
our looking at the world is active-social. This does not entail, however, that its
revolutionary character, in the sense of the coincidence of the environment
and self-change, necessarily entails a social-radical transformation and substi-
tution of ‘is’ for ‘ought’. This latter transformation may be better described as
reification. To objectivise, by contrast, is to render things objective, and hence
to correct a biased account. In the same vein, says Kosík, ‘the subject is already
constitutively permeated with an objectivity which is the objectification of

50 Kosík 1976, p. 131.

51 Ibid.
52 Kosík 1976, pp. 114, 226.
53 Kosík 1976, pp. 145–146.
54 MacKinnon 1987, p. 50.
56 chapter 4

human praxis’ (C58/E47). In humanising nature and in objectifying (realising)

meanings, man forms a human world (C140–1/E122). Given that labour is the
process of objectification (C156/E138), it is through labour that man is objecti-
fied and the object humanised (C140/E122).
A misconception here turns praxis, which ‘in Marx’s philosophy had made
possible both objectivation and objective cognition, and man’s openness
toward being … into social subjectivity and closedness: man is a prisoner of
socialness’ (C121/E106). This is done in dialectical social theory and is criti-
cised by Kosík, because in adopting this ‘Man is walled in in his socialness’
(C121/E106). In contrast, Kosík sees the evidence for human’s social character
not only through being nothing without an object*, but particularly in that
a human being establishes his reality in objective* activity (C85/E70). Kosík
explains the relationship between social products and the social subject as fol-
lows: ‘Without a subject, these social products of man would be senseless, while
without means and objective* creations, the subject would be a mere specter’
(C86/E70).
A reference to Marx’s sixth thesis on Feuerbach is helpful here. Whereas
Marx writes that ‘the essence of man is the ensemble of his social relations’,
Kosík, while confirming this, reformulates his viewpoint as follows: ‘The es-
sence of man is the unity of objectivity* (předmětnost) and subjectivity’
(C86/E70). But the same unity can apparently be equally ascribed to the Idee
in Hegel.55 If so, then Kosík could easily be criticised for falling into a kind of
idealism, unless he proposes an alternative reading. For the time being, it is
important to emphasise with the help of the lexical analysis above that Kosík
does not use ‘objectivity’, but ‘objectivity*’. This is the objectivity* which is
equally ‘the constitutive element of labor’ (C141/E122). This unity is then human
objectivity*, or an objectivity* enriched with the subjectivity of the human
being. Kosík’s approach is here different from an objectivist one, if by that term
one understands not the approach which simply seeks to combat bias, but one
that tends to obliterate the role of the individual subject and ‘flees the subject-
ive as if it were the threat it may be’.56

55 See the entry for ‘Objektivität’ in the Hegel-Lexikon: ‘The Idea is the unity of subjectivity
and objectivity’ (Onnsach 2006, p. 340, my translation). Cf. Inwood (1992, p. 205): ‘The
Absolute Idea … is … both subject and object’.
56 Jacoby 1981, p. 9; see also p. 144.
on kosík’s totality 57

5 Praxis, Labour, Care, and Totality

Whereas objectivity, even a non-comprehensive and relativised one, is thought

by some contemporary philosophers to be attainable against ‘our ideas –
whether immediate actions or developed prejudices’, because we are reflective
thinkers,57 Kosík shows that objectivity with all its nuances is possible through
our social praxis. This is what we turn to now.
In Kosík’s words, the ‘objective* social reality’ that is the result of human
praxis is the twofold ‘metamorphosis of the objective* into the subjective and
of the subjective into the objective*’.58 Since it is the ‘active center in which
human intentions are realized and laws of nature discovered’, it ‘unites caus-
ality and purposiveness’.59 In paraphrasing the point found in Marx’s eighth
thesis on Feuerbach, that all social life is essentially practical, Kosík equates
being with praxis, stressing the significance of objective praxis as Marx’s most
important discovery. Thus conceived, it is that through which the problem of
the mode of comprehension of oneself and nature is solved, a problem that
could not be solved either by consciousness or by matter, but only by praxis
directed at the Subject matter [Sache selbst].
Since the Sache selbst is the goal of dialectic, a distinction is to be drawn
between two aspects of the Sache selbst: its idea and its concept, that is, its
abstract aspect and its concrete aspect.60 These constitute two different levels
of human praxis.61 Routine, utilitarian praxis grasps the idea of the subject
matter [Sache selbst], whereas dialectical thinking – where dialectic is a cer-
tain cognitive activity engaged in by dialectically minded inquirers – grasps its
concept. The former sees facts as detached entities, and the representation of
the activity of the individual is thus limited to two states. First, (1) ‘care’ [Sorge],
‘the world in the subject,’62 is the entanglement of the subject in the society; it
is praxis in its derived and reified form. Secondly, (2) ‘procuring’ [Besorgen] is
the phenomenal aspect of depersonalised praxis limited to manipulation rep-
resented as fragmented operations in the form of abstract labour; it is both the

57 Burbidge 2013, p. 89: ‘Objectivity in our thinking develops out of our ability to reflect on
our thoughts and consider them on their own terms’.
58 Kosík 1976, p. 71.
59 Ibid.
60 To associate ideas with phantoms is not unprecedented in the literature. Cf. L’avare by
Molière 1971, p. 67: ‘Ces chevaux ne sont plus rien que des idées ou des fantômes, des façons
des chevaux’. This is important to note, because the sense of idea advanced here is not the
same as Hegel’s Idee as one culminating moment of the Doctrine of Concept.
61 Cf. Jameson 1990, p. 53: ‘Concepts stand on the side of things, Ideas on the side of “truth”’.
62 Kosík 1976, p. 38.
58 chapter 4

realisation of the unskilled labour-power the capitalist reckons with buying,

and the boring undifferentiated way the hired worker spends day after day on
the job.63 Thus, objects and relations are fetishised and the human being is ali-
enated; the subject does not reflect on the genesis or formation of the world,
nor does he take it as a processual whole. The fall of the subject in this objectual
world to the level of an object, tool, or machine may be best expressed by the
allegory of the frog, who boils to death without noticing any change in its envir-
onment. In genuine praxis, by contrast, one finds the laws behind and beneath
their facticity64 as well as a totality that has the three characteristics of being
structured, evolving, and self-forming.
The approach dominated by a praxis that is not genuine praxis sees the phe-
nomena and limits itself to them. As a result, it represents the ideological and
fetishistic aspect of praxis, the result of a world in which the transparency of
tools is replaced by the complexity of implements; the singular existence of
the tool is to be distinguished from the plural existence of implements. The
approach dominated by genuine praxis sees how those phenomena are inter-
twined with their essence, and how they are revealed with it. Whereas the
content of an ‘idea’ does not ‘measure up to reality’,65 the concept can ‘exhaust
the essence of the phenomenon, and adequately [comprehend and] explain
it’.66 The mental concretisation of reality as concrete totality is thus a move-
ment from ideas to concepts as two apparently distinct points which are at
the same time coterminous: from manipulating reality to explaining and com-
prehending it. According to Kosík, however, one should not assume, as Lukács
does, that these two conceptions deal with two different levels of reality, one
‘higher’ than the other,67 because adopting such a standpoint would lead to a
dichotomy between facts and reality.
Praxis in such a relationship with reality is the inherent characteristic and
the specific mode of existence of human beings. Given that such an existent
always exists under some human conditions, and these conditions and human
beings are related through praxis, history comes into the account.

63 Kosík 1976, p. 39: ‘Procuring is praxis in its phenomenally alienated form’, it is ‘manipula-
tion (of things and people)’. Here Kosík is manifestly drawing on these Heideggerian terms
in Being and Time. See Heidegger 1967, esp. chaps. 3 and 4.
64 For his claim that the facticity of facts is different from their reality, see Lukács 1971a, p. 7.
65 Kosík 1976, p. 36.
66 Kosík 1976, p. 21.
67 See Lukács 1971a, p. 181: ‘The developing tendencies of history constitute a higher reality
than the empirical “facts”’. As will be seen later, Kosík does not see (or at least does not
mention) this difference between his own reading and Lukács’s.
on kosík’s totality 59

The distinction between objectification and objectivation discussed above

is also crucial in the distinction between praxis and care. In care, unlike in
praxis, the social ‘relations are not objectivized: they are not the subject-matter
of science or objective investigation’, but remain in the sphere of ‘personal, indi-
vidual, subjective involvement’.68
We have seen so far one moment of reified reality in the form of care and pro-
curing. Two other moments are Homo Economicus and the Economic Factor.
The activity of Homo Economicus is utterly dependent on the capitalist system:
once the system desires this activity, the individual as a member of the system
is active; once it does not so desire, the individual is not active. This is how the
abstraction of Homo Economicus is the real abstraction:69 it is abstraction from
all individual characteristics, which turns the individual into a ‘physical mag-
nitude’ imposed on him by the reality of capitalism. Only in abstraction is the
individual active, only when what the system desires is carried out; thus the
individual is detached from what is over and above the desire of the system.
As a result, social physics turns man into an object; the subject thus becomes
objectual. Man is enslaved in these moments, but praxis brings about the open-
ness of the object of cognition toward him and his existence: ‘Man surmounts
[překračuje] (transcends) ... his condtions’.70
Praxis is in this sense in unity with theory, but not with theoria (in the
sense of pure contemplation). Such a unity, the supreme postulate of mater-
ialist philosophy, is different from reducing praxis to the ‘socialness of human,
to a mere category, and technology’. Thus conceived, praxis is a philosophical
concept and not limited to ‘a category of a dialectical theory of society’;71 it
reveals itself not only in theorising about society but also in transforming it. To
use a classical example, Robinson Crusoe alone on his island was engaged in
praxis as well, even though he did so on the basis of his previous socialisation.
Highlighting the importance of praxis is indispensable in order to avoid a two-
fold danger: giving priority to theory leads to pure scientism, understood as the
excessive belief in the power of scientific knowledge and techniques, whereas
giving priority to action leads to Machiavellianism, or pragmatism, for which
the truth is subordinate to usefulness.
From the point of view of materialist philosophy, however, the issue revolves
around the response to a threefold question: Who is man, what is socio-human

68 Kosík 1976, p. 37.

69 Kosík 1976, p. 53: ‘For classical economics, man exists exclusively as a part of the system,
and studies even himself only by looking at himself as a part of the system’.
70 Kosík 1966, p. 167. (Translated with reference to the text in Czech.)
71 Kosík 1976, p. 135.
60 chapter 4

reality, and how is this reality formed? Man is a being whose immanent and
inherent onto-formative praxis forms socio-human reality. The truth of real-
ity, unlike its usefulness, which is what pragmatism limits itself to, cannot be
simply presented – it must be performed and realised. In so doing, man and
woman are able to grasp human and extra-human reality and leave nothing as
absolutely given. This is done through and in praxis, as the mutual objectific-
ation of man and woman on the one hand and the realm of manifestation of
their mastery over nature on the other. It is in this way that they realise their
freedom, that is, their self-mastery.
This freedom, the possibility of the totalisation of reality, is possible in
our contemporary world because revolutionary socialised praxis enables us to
adopt and actualise such a process. This capacity is both a prerequisite for our
era and its historical result. With the transformation of economics into science
under capitalism, the individual can see his law-like existence as an element in
the system: Homo Economicus is the constituent of this status. The multilateral
interdependence of all these features within capitalism did not exist before this
mode of social life; with this an unclosed horizon can be envisaged.
One important aspect of Marx’s works is that ‘no philosophy of labor has
been developed since Marx’s time’. This point is recognised by many but it
should be ‘coupled with the point that materialist philosophy is also the “latest”
“ontology of man”, in that it has not been rendered obsolete by history’.72 The
ability of humans to control time rather than being controlled, the exten-
sion or externalisation of his existence, is due to his objective* activity,73 with
the aforementioned twofold character of labour. Following Kosík’s account,
it seems imprecise on his part to write that the ‘master-slave dialectic is the
basic model of praxis’,74 unless praxis, as an existential moment, is reduced to
labour.75 Put differently, although labour is the manifestation par excellence of
human praxis, praxis should not be reduced to labour.

72 Kosík 1976, p. 119. To the point acknowledged by Sartre that the intellectual horizon of
Marxism cannot be transcended in our epoch, Kosík adds that Marxism as an ontology
of man cannot be overcome (Kosík 1976, p. 130, emphasis added). See Sartre 1963, p. 29:
‘What has made the force and richness of Marxism is the fact that it has been the most
radical attempt to clarify the historical process in its totality’.
73 Kosík 1976, p. 131: ‘That the problem of man’s time is linked with his objective* activity is
a basic point in which materialist philosophy differs from the existential conception of
totality’.
74 Kosík 1976, p. 153 (emphasis added).
75 The word práce (C140) is translated alternatively as ‘labour’ or ‘work’ (E121). I prefer ‘labour’
for two reasons: first, by ‘work’ Kosík sometimes means the result of labour; secondly, I
want to avoid a criticism of Marx’s standpoint regarding the distinction between labour,
work, and action developed by Arendt in The Human Condition (1998, chaps. 3–5).
on kosík’s totality 61

In the same vein, the advantage of Kosík’s conception becomes clearer when
compared with Lukács’s. As we saw in the previous chapter, Lukács hypostas-
ises the whole against the parts, and hence hypostasises a higher reality against
the reality of facts. While Kosík seems not to notice Lukács’s mistake, he him-
self avoids it. For Kosík, reality, taken as the absolute totality of nature and
history, the human and the extra-human, ‘the unity of events and their sub-
jects,’76 both is and is not beyond the reach of the human being. It is bey-
ond human reach because it cannot be grasped as a whole once and for all;
it is not beyond human reach because what is grasped constitutes a part of
the whole that in its threefold relationship with the whole – that is, struc-
tured, evolving, and self-forming – is the whole. To generalise the well-known
Marxian aphorism from the second thesis on Feuerbach, one may say: the
discussion of a whole over and above the parts, rather than of the subject-
object of praxis, is a scholastic issue. While praxis permeates the whole of the
human being and determines the human being’s totality, it is not in opposi-
tion to theory; it is rather ‘the determination of human being as the process
of forming reality’.77 This is, once more, related to the primacy of existence:
Kosík of course, like Marx,78 does not want to imply that nature, as the mater-
ial substratum, is created by humans, but the material substratum in its con-
frontation with praxis does undergo a minimal change. The exposition of this
material substratum with human praxis entails a change in this substratum:
the graspable is always formed. This is the point that the exposed Gegen-
stand is already formed by the praxis of the past as well as the present, and
undergoes further formation in the form of trans-formation. The role of praxis
is then social-human-active re-formation, the onto-formative character of the
human.
The practical-ontological recognition of the alienating character of praxis
has its counterpart in the alienating character of labour. The argument may be
put like this: all labour is praxis; thus, alienated labour is one sort of alienated
praxis. Recognition of the fact of praxis’s alienation of praxis has its counterpart
in (i.e., corresponds to) praxis’s actual alienation. This line of thought may be
criticised on the ground that not all practice is alienated thought. To this it can
be replied that under capitalism, the best example of non-revolutionary prac-

76 Kosík 1976, p. 84.

77 Kosík 1976, p. 137.
78 See Marx’s comment in Capital Volume i (1976, p. 133): ‘If we subtract the total amount of
useful labour of different kinds which is contained in the coat, the linen, etc., a material
substratum is always left. This substratum is furnished by nature without human inter-
vention’.
62 chapter 4

tice is labour. Revolutionary praxis can lead to the revolutionising status quo,
but given that the routine, ‘procuring’ life is the starting point of such praxis,
this revolutionary praxis gains its inherence in the existing-lived life, that is, a
necessity with its roots in the existing life. While we had reality as the unity
of phenomenon and essence, we have here the grasp of revolutionary praxis
as the product of penetration into the routine praxis. In this anti-reductionist
reading, a repercussion of Marx’s ‘Theses on Feuerbach’, Gegenstand, revolu-
tionary praxis, and gegenständlich on the one hand are introduced; on the other
hand, object, objectual, and routine praxis are also introduced. The account
given here goes farther than Kosík’s own account, since, following the ‘Theses
on Feuerbach’, I see one source of such a reading in Marx’s distinction between
Gegenstand and Objekt.
Along the same lines, a question that may be raised is the relationship
between totality and language, and the role language plays in totalisation:
how language, thinking, and activity are related. In his response to this ques-
tion, Kosík attributes a particular role to meaning:79 ‘The forming of a total-
ity as a structure of meanings is thus also a process which forms the object-
ive content and meaning of all its elements and parts as well’.80 Through his
objective* praxis, the human being has a twofold function: the formation of
meanings as the sense of things, but also the access to their objective* mean-
ing.81
The sursumption of the pseudo-concrete is itself accomplished through the
introduction of one totality of meanings that gives way to a new totality of
meanings to attain its real meaning. This sursumption is first realised in three
ways to destroy the pseudo-concrete:

(1) The revolutionary-critical praxis of mankind which is identical with

the humanization of man, with social revolutions as its key stages; (2)
by dialectical thinking which dissolves the fetishized world of appear-
ances in order to penetrate to reality and to the subject matter; (3) by the
realization of truth and the forming of human reality in an ontogenetic
process.82

79 In so doing, Kosík improves on the standpoint introduced but left undeveloped by Lukács.
See Lukács 1971, p. 163. This is the task later taken up by other Marxist thinkers; see Arthur
2004, chapter 2, p. 25.
80 Kosík 1976, p. 29.
81 Kosík 1976, p. 40.
82 Kosík 1976, p. 8.
on kosík’s totality 63

One may argue that the key stages in humanising our species (through revolu-
tions) are the ontogenetic process of the realisation of truth; accordingly, (1)
and (3) can be conjoined. With this destruction, however, the sursumption is
not yet complete. Although with this sursumption, the fetishistic character of
the pseudo-concrete is obliterated, in order to realise the concrete totality as
the dialectical-materialist standpoint of the cognition of reality, its intellectual
reproduction of the subject matter as totality, we need to have to a particular
cognition:

[T]he cognition of the phenomenon’s historical character which in a

peculiar way reveals the dialectic of the unique and of the generally
human; and finally, the cognition of the objective content and meaning of
the phenomenon, of its objective function and its historical place within
the social whole.83

Given that Marx sees not only thinking but also sensation as human praxis, and
every discussion of truth once isolated from praxis is mere scholastic discus-
sion, I would like to add that Marx’s standpoint should be taken as representing
three moments of revolutionary praxis, of ontologically-politically going from
pseudo-consciousness to revolutionary consciousness. The result of such a sur-
sumption or destruction is simultaneously the sursumption of the fetishistic
surrounding environment and the liberation of the alienated subject. This is
the response to the explanation of the simultaneous change in circumstances
and in human beings, which also entails going further than a passive approach
to truth. Thus, a materialist approach would distinguish between correctness,84
the subject of routine life, and truth taken as the ‘happening’ that becomes
actual as the result of revolutionary praxis; put differently, truth is to be actu-
alised through this revolutionary human-objective praxis.
Praxis, thus generalised, is the bedrock of objectivity*, intersubjectivity, and
subjectivity. That is, how social individuals in the world act on the already
socially constituted objects* is interrelated with how they act in relation to
other subjects and how their sensation also comes into play. Hence, this par-

83 Kosík 1976, p. 30.

84 Hegel puts forward such a standpoint, inter alia, in Phenomenology of Spirit. ‘To such
questions as, When was Caesar born?, or How many feet were there in a stadium?, etc.
a clear-cut answer ought to be given, just as it is definitely true that the square on the
hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides of a right-angled
triangle. But the nature of a so-called truth of that kind is different from the nature of
philosophical truths’ (Hegel 1977, p. 23).
64 chapter 4

ticular praxis brings along with it the realisation of truth and the destruction-
sursumption of the pseudo-concrete. Dialectics as the revolutionary method of
transforming reality actualises the concretised totality or totalised concrete-
ness through the recognition of the virtually inherent characteristic of the
pseudo-concrete through its sursumption. This virtuality is due to the possib-
ility given to man by revolutionary praxis according to which the present is
chosen based on a projection into the future. This approach is different from
other approaches in which the past plays the dominant role – psychoanalysis
for one, or Hegel with Essence as something belonging to the past (Wesen)85
for another. It is instead a standpoint in which it is not the past that plays the
primordial role in the present praxis, but the future.

6 History and Totality

On the basis of what has been observed to this point we can say that, by putting
praxis at the core of his thought and elaborating on its mediatory role, Kosík
cannot be criticised as Lukács can for not distinguishing gnoseology and onto-
logy.86 Nonetheless, given the historical determination of praxis that he posits,
his account will remain unsatisfactory if the notion of history and its relation
to totality and praxis is not elaborated on. Demonstrating that he has done this
is the task of this section.
Kosík’s account of the relationship between history and totality may be best
grasped by reference to Marx’s third thesis on Feuerbach. There Marx under-
scores the point that the coincidence of change in circumstances and human
activity or self-change has to be understood through the revolutionary praxis
of the human.87 This thesis is an improvement in comparison with the related
passages by Marx and Engels in The Holy Family88 in that it is more precise
in emphasising the mutual relationship between the subject and its condi-
tions. This will be later developed in the German Ideology, where Marx and
Engels write: ‘In revolutionary activity the changing of oneself coincides with

85 See Ernst Bloch’s discussion in The Principle of Hope (Bloch 1996), in chapter 19 where
Bloch sees a similarity between Hegel’s Wesen [essence] and Aristotle’s τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι in
that both are dominated by the past.
86 See the previous chapter.
87 Marx 1978e, pp. 5–6.
88 Marx and Engels 1975b, p. 131: ‘If man is shaped by environment, his environment must
be made human. If man is social by nature, he will develop his true nature only in society,
and the power of his nature must be measured not by the power of the separate individual
but by the power of society’.
on kosík’s totality 65

the changing of circumstances’.89 Kosík draws on this passage to criticise soci-

ologism, that is, historiography which, in reducing social reality to conditions,
‘just consists in treating historical conditions independent of activity’.90
Kosík gives a correct reading of the standpoint proposed by Marx and Engels:
history hitherto has not been class struggle, but the history of class struggles
performed by man.91 History as the gradual realisation of something other than
man turns into history as the realisation of nothing but man! History does noth-
ing – man does. People do enter circumstances that are independent of their
consciousness and will, but once they enter them, they begin, even unwillingly,
to transform those conditions. One may also add those conditions are also the
process and the result of previous individuals and their praxis.
Kosík’s own approach is to propose a distinction between history-historism
on the one hand and historicity-historicism on the other: ‘History is a history
because it includes both historicity of conditions and historism of reality’,92
where ‘the historism of social reality is not the historicity of conditions’.93 He
develops this by focusing on the apparent mystery of the transcendence of the
work of art in history, even as it revives, totalises, or integrates itself in history.
This does not mean that this durability is limited to works of art; it is also true
of thought and philosophy, inter alia.94 Whereas one may ascribe historicity to
conditions, to a work of art one should ascribe historism. In the case of works
of art, this may happen by absolutising the role that conditions play, taking
the relation between conditions and the work of art as the only link between
social reality and the work of art. The truth of a social practice in general and
a work of art in particular should not be reduced to the conditions in which
it is advanced as human objective praxis. The testimony of the work of art is
twofold: it is testimony of its conditions, society, and era; but more import-
antly – and this is often neglected – it is the testimony the work of art gives
us about its conditions, society, and era. The question is then how the limited
transcends its limitedness and attains the situation of the unlimited. The work
of art, though limited to its time, outlasts its conditions because it is not only a

89 See Marx and Engels 1976, p. 214.

90 Marx and Engels, The German Ideology, p. 60, quoted from Kosík 1976, p. 90.
91 Cf. Dardot and Laval 2012, chap. 3. (and its title: History as Class Struggle).
92 Kosík 1976, p. 83.
93 Kosík 1976, p. 79.
94 In so doing, Kosík avoids a charge that is made against Lukács’s historicism. For such a
criticism, see Corredor 1997, pp. 48–9. In these interviews, Lukács is criticised, by Peter
Bürger, among others, both for equating methodology and historicism, and for his attempt
to merge a ‘Marxist philosophy of history’ and a ‘normative aesthetic theory’.
66 chapter 4

reflection of the conditions, but also a creative recreation of those conditions,

and as a result acquires a timeless character. This is how Kosík, in an enigmatic
way, advances the following complex idea: ‘The timelessness of a work is in its
temporality as activity’.95 The determinism to be criticised is the determinism
that takes the transient conditions to be the only reality, not just ‘insofar as they
are the realisation, fixing, and development of the objective* praxis of man and
his history’.96
In this account, dialectics is distinct both from historicism, or historical
relativism, and from ahistoricism. Historicism reduces history to the historicity
of conditions: its temporality, transience, and irreplicability. Here the absolute
and the universal are pushed aside, since the facticity of facts is equated with
reality. But the facticity gives only the aspects of facts that are transient, emp-
tied, and devalued. Ahistoricism sees in history nothing but what is insubstan-
tial and trivial, since the essence of what is ephemeral is taken to be nothing
but its natural, transhistorical, and atemporal characteristics. When reality is
severed from facticity, the relative and particular are pushed aside: the trans-
factuality of reality is taken to be equivalent to reality. In both cases, a split
between the relative and the absolute is fixed in place, or else is arrested at a
particular stage of its development.97
According to dialectics, however, nothing is absolute or universal, or prior
to and independent of history, and both absolute and relative are formed in
history:

History is history only because it includes both the historicity of condi-

tions and the historism of reality, because it contains ephemeral histor-
icity which recedes into the past and does not return, as well as historism,
i.e., the formative of that which endures, the self-formative and the creat-
ive.98

As to a work of art for instance, or any work (in philosophy, history, etc.) as a
socio-human activity, its historicity which is ‘bad uniqueness and irreplicabil-
ity’ entails historism, that is, ‘the capacity for concretization and survival’.99 But
historicity does not entail historism, and whereas historicity is limited to the

95 Kosík 1976, p. 81.

96 Kosík 1976, p. 79.
97 This is but a nuanced paraphrase of the two extremes seen in the chapter on the undia-
lectical conceptions of totality.
98 Kosík 1976, p. 83.
99 Kosík 1976, p. 80.
on kosík’s totality 67

ephemeral characteristics of an era, its conditions, and its testimony to those

conditions, historism has for its subject the reproduction and concretisation of
the era so long as they also reflect the general movement of human history of
which that era is just a moment. This does not mean that such a work is not
socially determined, but its social determination is not limited to social condi-
tions. This is how the objective-historical praxis of mankind, unlike that of the
individual, can transcend the historicity of its conditions.
But a question arises: How is such a conception of history related to the
everyday life of the individual under capitalism and capitalism’s reified totality?
The approach imprisoned in care and procuring, the naïve or routine con-
sciousness of the individual, fails to realise how history and ‘the everyday’
interpenetrate: it sees a cleavage between ‘the everyday’ and history. And in
seeing one’s ability to realise one’s instinctive intentions, the person holding
this approach is once more in a situation similar to that of a fish in a pond, or,
to return to the example above, a frog in boiling water.
Let us draw an analogy between a fact and totality on the one hand, and the
‘everyday’ and history on the other. In this way the intrafactuality of a single fact
could be understood in its interfactuality: what it inherently is can ultimately
be known only in its relationship with the totality of which it is a constituent,
in the same way history is what enables us to make the everyday. The everyday
then both reveals and conceals history: it conceals history, since when history
is taken in isolation, one cannot grasp it; but it also reveals it, since it is the
partial manifestation, and the only possible manifestation, of history. The sur-
sumption of this reified, fetishised character of the everyday and of history is
accomplished through the twofold practical destruction of this reified reality,
not only in its phenomenal appearance but also in its real essence. To this effect,
Kosík makes fun of Hegel for treating history as the emperor on horseback.
He introduces instead a dialectic between the everyday and history: divorced
from history, the everyday, as the ‘phenomenal “layer” of reality’, becomes static;
divorced from the everyday, history becomes abstract and contentless. But if
this is so, it does not seem right to say, as Kosík does, that ‘one grasps the every-
day from reality, rather than vice versa’.100 We have to admit instead that the
reality of history is understood partially through the everyday, whereas the
everyday is understood through the reality of history holistically. According to
this alternative reading, the everyday is thus the sole phenomenal appearance
of the reality of history, in a relation different from an element, or factor, within
a system.

100 Kosík 1976, p. 45 (emphasis added). Here I am paraphrasing Kosík’s argument.

68 chapter 4

7 Factor Theory, System, Structure, and Totality

That Kosík distances his standpoint from historicity and conditions and the
associated misconception of totality is revealed best in the way he criticises
the factor theory and the inadequate criticisms put forward by earlier Marx-
ists. There are two contemporary views that stem from a confusion between
the economic factor and economic structure: the opinion that ‘class differences
have been abolished in the most advanced imperialist countries’,101 and the
opinion that many countries, because of their apparent lack of similarity with
the so-called normally developed Western countries, do not have a capitalist
mode of production. Both are ultimately justifications of capitalism, and stem
from a confusion between the economic factor and economic structure. In such
apologetic readings, ‘the economy’ is taken to be equal to the possession and
distribution of wealth and property, along with the agency and hierarchy of
power ownership. This is found, for instance, in Weber’s well-known idea that
social life is the triangulation among three factors that mutually influence one
another: economic position, the division of political power, and the gradation
of social status and prestige as independent autonomous series, as three dis-
tinct factors that influence one another. Such approaches do not see the unity
of social life and its formation as a concrete totality, a totality that must also be
distinguished from ‘metaphysical identity’, which degrades such a totality into
‘abstract wholeness’ or ‘empty totality’.
Kosík’s criticism of factor theory echoes Engels’s letter to Joseph Bloch of
21 September 1890. There Engels responds to Bloch’s question about whether
economic relationships are the only relevant factor or whether there are other
relationships that also play effective roles. Engels refines and accentuates the
view of the production and reproduction of real life, which is vaster than
economics as it is generally understood, as ‘the ultimately determining’ ele-
ment, but also leaves room for the contingency that results from this interac-
tion. Without mentioning the term, Engels defends a standpoint of which the
cornerstone is dialectical totality. Engels’s letter is even more precise in this
sense: whereas Kosík says that ‘the economic structure forms the unity and
continuity of all spheres of social life’,102 Engels explicitly emphasises that ‘the
various elements of the superstructure … also exercise their influence upon the
course of the historical struggles and in many cases, preponderate in determin-
ing their form’. He thus highlights the interactive character of this social totality

101 Kosík 1976, p. 64.

102 Kosík 1976, p. 64.
on kosík’s totality 69

through which ‘the economic movement finally asserts itself as necessary’.103

This cannot be seen by the supporters of factor theory, owing to their inabil-
ity to see the real genesis of the social whole, that is, because their notion of
totality is misconceived.
Kosík’s criticism is not limited to factor theory but is also directed at critics
that mistarget factor theory. Kosík criticises both Plekhanov and Labriola for
misconceiving totality and praxis in taking ‘economic factors’ as the outcome
of scientific investigation and suggests that they are ‘of a definite historical form
of development’.104 Regarding Plekhanov’s claim that ‘the subjective aspect of
human is precisely the psychological one’,105 Kosík says that this would explain
at most ‘the impact or consequences of the factors’,106 not how they origin-
ated. That said, however, it is an imprecision on Kosík’s part to treat these two
standpoints as equivalent, for Kosík overlooks the point that Labriola comes
closer to the dialectical standpoint that he himself endorses than Plekhanov
does. Kosík’s similarly sweeping attack on Labriola is thus not justified, for
Labriola considers Marxism an ‘organic conception of history’.107 As Labri-
ola says explicitly: ‘Separating in theory the factors of an organism, destroys
them in so far as they are elements contributing to the unity of the whole’.108
Thus, contrary to what Kosík claims, some characteristics are found in Lab-
riola’s works. They are admittedly not as coherent as in Kosík’s own account
though.
There are, however, some points on which Kosík’s discussion of system can
be criticised. For instance, he exaggerates the similarity between general sys-
tem theory and dialectical standpoint, saying, ‘All areas of objective reality are
systems, i.e., complexes of interdependent elements’.109 However, he is prudent
enough to add: ‘Only the dialectical conception of the ontological and gnoseo-
logical aspects of structure and system provides a fruitful solution and avoids
the extremes of mathematical formalism, on the one hand, and of metaphys-

103 Engels 1980, p. 34 (emphasis added).

104 Kosík 1976, p. 61.
105 Kosík 1976, p. 76.
106 Kosík 1976, p. 61. However, Plekhanov is not entirely ignorant of this point; see, for
example, Plekhanov 1980, p. 176: ‘Bismarck said that we cannot make history and must
wait while it is being made. But who makes history? It is made by the social man, who is
its sole “factor”’ (Plekhanov’s emphasis). Nonetheless even his account is nuanced here:
‘The character of an individual is a “factor” in social development only where, when, and
to the extent that social relations permit it to be such’ (p. 162, emphasis added).
107 Labriola 1980, p. 53.
108 Labriola 1980, p. 55.
109 Kosík 1976, p. 20.
70 chapter 4

ical ontologism, on the other’.110 The point he intends to make is that whereas
mathematical formalism denies that mathematical formulas correspond to any
substantial reality, metaphysical ontologism contends that they do, but not to
any material reality; in other words, whereas mathematical formalism denies
the content, metaphysical ontologism deprives the content of its materiality.
He cannot then be criticised for reducing totality to systems.111 In taking such a
standpoint, Kosík both foresees the two types of reductionism in the Marxian
approach – mathematical and metaphysical – and simultaneously distances
himself from both.112 This boils down to quantification of quality in the former
case, and in the latter to the fixation or freezing of reality. In the former case, the
critique of political economy is also turned into a positive science that remains
uncritical; this can be done, and is being largely done in economics depart-
ments all over the world, but it is entirely different from a Marxian standpoint
in that it deprives thinking of its critical-dialectical characteristics.

8 Criticism of Kosík113

Kosík’s account of the co-constitution of the parts and the whole as a distinct-
ive characteristic of Marxian conception of totality is sometimes imprecise and
involves misconceptions. The following is an example:

All cognition is a dialectical oscillation (dialectical as opposed to meta-

physical, for which both poles would be constant magnitudes and which
would regard their external, reflexive relations), oscillation between facts
and context (totality), an oscillation whose immediate active center is the
method of investigation.114

110 Kosík 1976, p. 21.

111 Cf. Levins 1998, p. 397: ‘A dialectical approach recognizes that the “system” is an intellec-
tual construct designed to elucidate some aspects of reality but necessarily ignoring and
even distorting others’, and also p. 398: ‘The internal workings of the variables in a model,
the dynamics of the model itself or the development of the science eventually reveals all
models as inaccurate, limited, and misleading’.
112 This does not mean that similar attempts are not being made. For the former, one may
mention scientism and formalism; see Paolucci (2007, p. 223) and Freeman (forthcom-
ing).
113 It will be later seen how Kosík’s account of totality may help us to develop a reading of
distinctive Marxian conception of totality. In what follows in this section, I limit myself to
the discussion presented in this chapter.
114 Kosík 1976, pp. 27–8 (emphasis added).
on kosík’s totality 71

The difficulty arising from this passage lies in its equating of context and total-
ity, thus undermining the point that this oscillation is within the totality.115 The
dialectic of facts and totality, or text and context, is better understood if it is
made clear that the context is also in the totality. Moreover, with the distinction
of facts in the context of reality and theory, to the clause ‘the very conception
of fact is determined by the overall conception of social reality’,116 I would add:
‘and vice versa’: the conception of social reality is equally determined by the
very conception of facts.
This co-determination of the moments and the whole is also overlooked by
Kosík in his political analysis. Here is an example: ‘In the epoch of capitalism,
capital turns into a structure of meanings that determines the internal content
and objective sense of its elements’ (emphasis in the original!).117 What Kosík
overlooks here is the co-constitution of this whole by its organic moments. This
of course is not something he denies, but he does not explicitly emphasise it.
Following Marx, he realises that the only means of comprehending facts is by
the power of abstraction. He further demarcates a Marxian abstraction, and
implicitly distinguishes it from empiricist, Aristotelian, and Hegelian versions
of abstraction. He also criticises the mode of abstraction that dichotomises
reality into essential and inessential, characterising it as mere abstraction, or
triviality.
Nonetheless, a question may be raised: To what extent can this co-
constitution of the parts and the whole be taken to be the only criterion for a
dialectical conception of totality? An outstanding example here is undoubtedly
Pascal, whose ‘logic of the heart’ is criticised by Kosík himself.118 The following
passage is exemplary:

All things being caused and causing, helped and helping, mediated and
mediating, and all maintained by a natural and insensitive link that joins
the most remote and the most different, I hold it impossible to know the
parts without knowing the whole, neither knowing the whole without
particularly knowing the parts.119

115 Kosík 1976, p. 25: ‘Every fact is comprehensible only in context and in a whole’.
116 Ibid.
117 Kosík 1976, p. 29.
118 Kosík 1976, p. 59.
119 Pascal 1963, p. 527. This is my translation of the following passage: ‘Toutes choses étant
causées et causantes, aidées et aidantes, médiates et immédiates, et toutes s’entretenant
par un lien naturel et insensible qui lie les plus éloignées et les plus différentes, je tiens
impossible de connaître les parties sans connaître le tout, non plus que de connaître le
tout sans connaître particulièrement les parties’.
72 chapter 4

As we see here, although Pascal does recognise the criterion of co-constitution

of the parts and the whole, his thinking can hardly be considered either dia-
lectical or materialist. Nonetheless, even a materialist dialectical relationship,
so long as it is restricted to the interaction of the parts and the whole, does not
have to accept the revolutionary characteristic of dialectic. In a recent read-
ing of a representative of the bourgeois approach, for instance, we read: ‘Like
Hayek, Marx focuses on the mutual interaction of the parts within an “organic
whole”’.120 That said, however, Marxian totality cannot be an organic totality,
in the sense found in Hegel, namely, an organic whole with a soul. A change in
a member of the whole does not transform the whole in an organic way, if by
that one understands a process that can be interpreted teleologically. It does so
only to the extent that since things exist in a closed world, as physics teaches
us, each is a component of the whole, and is hence not absolutely indifferent
to change in other components.
Another more important point is that Kosík does not see the limits to social
objectivity. To help elucidate my point, I use the following example. You and I
both agree that Mogadishu is the capital of Somalia, and that the combination
of certain amounts of acid and base under determinate conditions inevitably
results in a certain amount of salt and water. The situation is different as regards
social objectivity*. Three different types of disagreement can be held regarding
social phenomena. The first is the disagreement that can be reconciled through
argumentation and persuasion. The second happens when you and I do not
agree on something, and neither of us is convinced by the other’s argumenta-
tion. For instance, before the US presidential elections in 2020, we might not
have agreed on the proposition, ‘If Biden is elected, there will be significant
changes in the situation of the working class’. If neither of us could convince the
other through argumentation, we would pass to the second type of disagree-
ment. Now that Biden has been elected, we have the opportunity to see which
of us was right. This is the level of disagreement that will be resolved by real-
ity, unlike the first kind of disagreement, which could be reconciled by mere
argumentation.
But there is still another level of disagreement; this one is an antagonistic
conflict in which the two sides of the disagreement cannot be ultimately recon-
ciled. The opposition between the 1 percent and the 99 percent is of this kind.
For the 99 percent, the problem that every few seconds a child dies on this
planet because of the capitalist system has a particular importance, which
should be solved right at this moment. For the 1 percent it is the last problem to

120 Sciabarra 1995, p. 68.

on kosík’s totality 73

be dealt with if it is one at all. Even if at the individual level an agreement may
be possible, at the social level a logically possible agreement is not practically
possible, given that individuals are agents of social subjectivity, namely, capital
and labour. There can be no veritable dialogue between the two sides, for the
simple reason that there is no common logic. Put differently, the impossibility
of coming up with an agreement through dia-logue stems ultimately from each
side having a different λόγος. To say, ‘But they both seek power, and in this sense,
they have something in common’, is to miss the difference between the nature
of the power of the proletariat and the power of capitalism. The impossibility
of reaching an agreement at the level of happenings in reality stems from their
antagonistic social statuses. Along the same lines, there is no common stand-
point regarding social reality. All the attempts to tame capitalism stop here, and
it remains, inter alia, a barrier to the realisation of global social justice.121
Since classical economics is not fundamentally different from vulgar eco-
nomics, inasmuch as it too results in an objectual world, a critique of the former
is as indispensable as a critique of the latter. Classical economics justifies the
objectual world and its laws as if they were the real world. In this transference to
unreason as the reason of capitalist society, what may be called the unreasonal
realisation of reason,122 this unrealness is transposed to the individual level as
well. Only an operative individual, that is, an individual functioning in the sys-
tem, is taken to be a real individual. A reified individual, defined in the sense of
being a circumscribed one, is required by a reified system. The apparently inde-
pendent agent of Cartesian rationalism becomes dependent and subjugated to
its products. In contrast to such a reason, ‘the dialectical reason not only seeks
to know reality reasonably but also, and in particular, to shape it reasonably’.123
According to this reading, the subject, an ontologically and not just theoretic-
ally conscious worker, who acts according to collective ‘economic rationality’,
learns under capitalism to pursue his interests collectively and turns into the
agent of revolution.
Rationalist reason is irrational in two senses: it cannot grasp the ultimate
sense of existing reason in its totality and contradictions, which cannot abide
by or be controlled by the same reason; and it forms this irrational reality as the
realisation and existence of what it takes to be its rational form. Rational reason

121 This is a paraphrase of a text published previously on the occasion of the People’s Social
Forum in Ottawa in January 2013; see Boveiri 2013.
122 Cf. Marx’s letter to Arnold Ruge in September 1843: ‘Reason has always existed, but not
always in a rational form’ (Marx 1843).
123 Kosík 1976, p. 57.
74 chapter 4

thus gives the ‘efficient’ (Racionelní) instead of the ‘rational’ (Racionální).124

This is how scientism goes hand in hand with this efficiency-oriented rational-
ism, which is in fact irrationalism, since mere efficiency becomes the criterion
of rationality. Against this dominance of efficiency and goal-orientedness, dia-
lectics asks whether such goals are rationally justifiable. It is a dialectical return
from τέχνη to ἐπιστήμη, but this time ἐπιστήμη is oriented by revolutionary
praxis. Dialectical reason implies the recognition of negativity125 and contra-
diction, postulating and sursuming them, all of which is absent in such a rati-
ocinating reason. Here, instead of the one-sided movement of rational reason,
we have a dialectical movement between the moments phenomena-essence,
part-whole, and relative-absolute, where all is reversible.
As the antidote to one-sided abstraction, there is little similarity between
revolutionary praxis oriented toward the destruction of the pseudo-concrete
and abstraction, for the latter is at best merely critical rather than practical-
critical.126 The destruction of the pseudo-concrete is indeed the destruction
of the real abstraction, which cannot be accomplished merely theoretically,
since the existence of this abstraction – the pseudo-concrete – is not limited
to theoretical existence.127 It does not entail, however, that such a praxis is
without a theoretical aspect. What entails the emancipation from all this is the
economic structure that arises from the sursumption of the pseudo-concrete,
namely, communism. This entails emphasising the role of political orientation,
the importance of political praxis, class in itself, and class for itself, in contrast
to pseudo-praxis in social life.
Praxis is the unifying agent between the apparently dual totalities of nature
and human, the natural and the social. Such an absolute duality can be envis-
aged before praxis, but not after. The given then no longer exists as a mere given:
the given for the contemporary human is already minimally transformed. But
this praxis is different from revolutionary praxis. The mere existence of a
human being is praxis-laden; its being is praxis. This praxis is not limited to
labour, if labour is understood as the transformation of the material to make

124 Kosík 1976, p. 58. Cf. Von Neuman and Morgenstern 1953, p. 9: ‘The individual who attempts
to obtain these respective maxima is also said to act “rationally” ’.
125 It will be later seen that such an approach towards negativity in relation to contradiction
and totality is more fruitful than that of Raya Dunayevskaya (2002).
126 Cf. Albert Camus’s observation in La peste: ‘To fight against abstraction one has to be a
little like abstraction’ (Camus 2013, p. 550, my translation).
127 Kosík 1976, p. 113: ‘Only the proof that economic categories are historical forms of man’s
objectification and that as products of historical praxis they can be transcended only by
practical activity, will indicate the limits of philosophy and the point where revolutionary
activity takes over’.
on kosík’s totality 75

it usable by human beings. Such a labour has a dual function: if reduced to

abstract labour it brings along real abstraction. Praxis, if limited to the exist-
ence in oneself, also leads to the change of the world and to self-change, but this
change–self-change is not yet revolutionary. This is how I believe the ‘revolu-
tionary’ in Marx is to be understood. This necessitates revolutionary praxis in
the sense of mobilisation to put an end, inter alia, to alienating and alienated
praxis. But this political mobilisation goes further than being just conjoined
with revolutionary praxis. Given that ‘political’ here means ‘having to do with
the state’, revolutionary praxis is political mobilisation. Without a political class
for itself, what remains of praxis is just the pseudo-praxis of manipulation.
This is how the comprehension of totality, and the revelatory characteristics
of concepts (in contradistinction to ideas) lead to a conscious transformation
in the pseudo-totality. Unless this is done, the pseudo-totality continues to
exist, but dialectically, bearing contradictions and the possibility for such trans-
formative orientation. Unfortunately, this need for the political mobilisation of
the proletariat is almost utterly absent in Kosík’s scenario. The absence of this
point in Marx’s theses on Feuerbach is understandable, given that they were
not meant for publication, but this absence cannot be justified in Kosík’s oth-
erwise exemplary account.128

9 Conclusion

The Kosíkian conception of totality contains distinctions and improvements

that Kosík himself sometimes does not realise.129 Nonetheless, it leaves room
both for the development of a genuinely Marxian conception of totality as well
as a defence of it (which is the task of the chapters to follow). By way of con-
clusion, here I simply sketch out the main findings of this chapter.
Kosík tells us two things at the end of his book:

Dialectics is after the subject matter. But the ‘subject matter’ is no ordin-
ary thing; actually, it is not a thing at all. The ‘subject matter’ that philo-
sophy deals with is man and his place in the universe or, in different

128 Philosophically I mean. This is understandable if we remember that he was living in the
Post-October era, hence both enjoying this era, and also suffering from the difficulties the
Revolution faced. Compare Kosík’s letter to Sartre and Sartre’s response, found in ‘Postface
pour l’édition de 1978’, in Karel Kosík, La dialectique du concret, trans. Roger Dangeville
(Paris: F. Maspero, 1978), pp. 173–78.
129 For elaboration on this difference with respect to Lukács’s own context, see Chapter 3.
76 chapter 4

words: it is the totality of the world uncovered in history by man, and man
existing in the totality of the world.130

Regarding this passage, I would like to reiterate that the Sache selbst accord-
ing to Hegel and in a Marxian approach are different! Hegel makes it clear that
for him the Sache selbst is the concept.131 However, Kosík does not mention
this difference. When he says that the Sache selbst as the quest of dialectics,
or even of philosophy, is ‘man’ as an ontocosmic existent, we should read this
as being restricted to a particular Marxian conception of totality. Materialist
dialectic and idealist dialectic have different subject matters, each with a dis-
tinctive detour [Oklika]. Put differently, neither Hegelian dialectical idealism
nor dialectical materialism, once limited to a few characteristics of this dia-
lectics, entails a Marxian conception of totality. In fact, as we have seen, some
characteristics of totality can be adopted by plainly anti-revolutionary repres-
entatives of the bourgeoisie. As we will see in the following chapter, it is only
a particular conception of totality that is a genuinely Marxian one, and only
such a standpoint brings about a normative conception of totality with which
the need for revolution is associated; only in this way can we witness the revolu-
tionary comprehension-formation of reality as totality. Nonetheless, along with
this comes also the increasingly nuanced grasp of totality through the differ-
ent phases of development in Marx’s thinking, but such a grasp is absent in the
Kosíkian reading. One thing that Kosík does not say is that there is a difference
between Marx’s standpoint regarding totality in the 1844 Economic and Philo-
sophical Manuscripts on the one hand, and the Grundrisse and Capital on the
other: in the 1844 Manuscripts, there is a more anthropological conception of
totality, whereas in his later work he develops a politico-economic conception.
But this difference, pace Althusser, does not entail that Marx’s thinking under-
went a coupure. I agree rather with Kosík that there is unity through different
phases of Marx’s thinking, but I disagree with him in his failure to see the dif-
ferences and development.132 Rather, to repeat an oft-cited dialectical slogan, I
show the similarity in difference, in the following chapters.
One further merit of Kosík’s standpoint is that it sees the unity of analysis
and critique in what Marx does. As Kosík puts it, ‘the analysis of economic

130 Kosík 1976, p. 153.

131 See Hegel 1969b, p. 29: ‘With the introduction of content in logical consideration, not the
things but the subject matter, the concept of things, becomes the object*’ (my translation).
132 See Kosík 1976, pp. 129–30, where he expresses his infatuation with the publication of the
Grundrisse, in which he sees Marx dealing with the themes already developed in the 1844
Manuscripts. A similar view is expressed by Schmidt 1971, p. 214.
on kosík’s totality 77

relations is a twofold critique’:133 that is, it is a rectification of the concep-

tion implied by classical economics, accomplished by showing what the real
categories are; but Marx’s work also ‘exhibits the real movement of economic
categories as a reified form of the social movement of people’.134 But given that
Kosík highlights the function of the method of inquiry in contradistinction to
the method of exposition, the question arises: At what point in Marx’s work
does this become possible? I will show in Chapters 5 and 6 that this is done
in different phases of the methods of inquiry and exposition, and it is only in
the latter that we find the categorial movement. In other words, it is not the
case that ‘the categories dialectically unfold the internal organization of a given
society’s economic structure’135 at every moment of investigation. This cannot
be done unless an intertwined starting point-categorial movement is already
established, which is the case only in Capital, but not in the Grundrisse.
Likewise, when Marx says that dialectic, in its reified form, was incorporated
by the Germans, this reification can apply equally to a materialist standpoint
or an idealist one. To deal with this issue, the inherent revolutionariness of the
dialectics claimed by Marx in the Afterword to the second German edition of
Capital Volume i requires further clarification. A more comprehensive concep-
tion of totality, which changes in different phases of Marx’s thought though it
persists from his earlier phases to the later phases, is the subject of the next
chapter.

133 Kosík 1976, p. 115.

134 Ibid.
135 Kosík 1976, p. 114.
 chapter 5

Marxian Totality Seen through His Works

This chapter aims to trace the development of the conception of totality in dif-
ferent periods of Marx’s works – a development that, like the development of
his position in general, is neither continuous nor smooth.1 It is thus a response
to one of the difficulties that arose from Kosík’s account of totality discussed
in the previous chapter: Kosík recognises a difference between the method of
enquiry and the method of exposition, but he overlooks how such a difference,
among others, may be traced back to Marx’s works regarding totality.2 Instead,
he gives a somewhat monolithic account of Marx’s conception of totality and
expresses his joy at the discovery of the Grundrisse as the text that puts an end
to the claim that there is a dichotomy between the works of the young and the
mature Marx.3
As an alternative, this chapter, by arguing for a developmental coherence in
Marx’s works, proposes a nuanced reading of his conception of totality. First,
it evaluates the suggestion that the later works of Marx may be considered a
dialectically honed restatement and development of the claims and themes
found in two of his earliest works, namely, the letter to his father and his poem
Epigrams (hereafter, Letter and Poem respectively), both written in 1837, when
Marx was only nineteen years old. In the next section, I underscore the themes
found in these two texts through a close textual analysis. In each of the follow-
ing sections, I will show how each of the texts from the Economic and Philo-
sophical Manuscripts of 1844 to Capital relates with these themes, what was
retained, what was added, and what was surmounted or completely discarded,
always in relationship with the conception of totality as my guiding thread.
The result of this chapter will thus be a demonstration of the development of
a Marxian conception of totality from a quasi-anthropological one in the Eco-
nomic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 to a concrete onto-formative one
in the Grundrisse and Capital, notwithstanding the difference between these
two.

1 See Heinrich 2016.

2 The other difficulty arising from Kosík’s account – the very distinction between the method
of enquiry and the method of exposition, and the function of these two in Marx’s works – will
be discussed in the next chapter.
3 Kosík 1976, pp. 129–30.

© Kaveh Boveiri, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004703971_007

marxian totality seen through his works 79

This chapter then argues against the reading that believes that ‘Any project
of “reconstruction”, in the sense of revealing a certain core of textual founda-
tions, to be used as a main source for uncovering the coherent kernel of Marx’s
critique, must fail when we take into account the totality and the inner con-
nections of the texts passed down’.4 The conclusion recapitulates some of the
characteristics of a Marxian conception of totality, which will be developed fur-
ther in Chapter 6.

A Note on the Difficulty and the Strategy Adopted

But before that, a note on the difficulty of the project represented by this
chapter. In a letter to Engels written on 31 July 1865,5 the perfectionist Marx
remarks that he cannot persuade himself to send what he has written for pub-
lication unless he has the whole subject in front of him. The advantage of the
result would be, he claims, a text that has a dialectical structure and that forms
an artistic whole. Of course, not analytical elegance but rigour, coherence and
empirical confirmation were Marx’s primary concerns. Nonetheless, his per-
fectionist attitude makes it challenging to discuss both his work in general and
the subject at hand, namely, ‘totality’ – indeed, all the more so, given that it is
estimated that we are still about a couple of decades away from the completion
of the critical publication of Marx-Engels Complete Works (mega2) in about
120 volumes.6
Among all the major works concentrated on here, only the first volume of
Capital has the characteristics endorsed by Marx – and that notwithstanding
all the digressions found in it. Published after all the works discussed here, but
not written after them, although placed first in the three volumes of Capital, it
must be taken as a sort of criterion-bearer, as that which holds the criterion, for
any discussion, all the more so given the general view that the latter, the more
developed is always to shed light on the earlier, the less developed. But even
here a challenging question arises: Which version of Capital is to be taken as the

4 Finelli 2009, p. 91.

5 Here is the full quote: ‘But I cannot bring myself to send anything off until I have the whole
thing in front of me. whatever shortcomings they may have, the advantage of my writ-
ings is that they are an artistic whole, and this can only be achieved through my practice of
never having things printed until I have them in front of me in their entirety. This is impossible
with Jacob Grimm’s method which is in general better with writings that have no dialectical
structure’ (Marx, letter to Engels, 31 July 1865, in Marx and Engels 1987b, p. 173).
6 Bellofiore and Fineschi 2009, p. 11.
80 chapter 5

source? Chronologically, the French translation, edited personally by Marx, was

published with his introduction on 28 April 1875, three years after the second
German edition; it would seem then that this version should be taken as his
last word. However, the difficulty arises as to the acceptability of those modi-
fications, generally minor as they may be. This is complicated by Marx’s advice
to native German-speakers to consult this French edition, even as he sugges-
ted that he has simplified the work in some parts.7 Another difficulty is the role
played by Engels, not only in editing the fourth edition of the first volume, but
also because of his substantial and much debated role in the second volume
and especially the third. As for the first volume, I adhere mainly to the fourth
edition.8 An alternative approach, integrating the French editions, and further
exploring the points made above about these editions, would make the project
unfeasible. As to the second and third volumes, I stick mainly to the texts edited
by Engels, and refer to the mega2 edition only when needed. In each case the
precise references will be given.
This starting point of the finalised text as the criterion does not mean that I
am ignoring the genesis of the first volume as criterion; nonetheless, this gen-
esis is also to be understood from the perspective of this criterion.9 The meth-
odological implication applied is that things are to be evaluated backward,
from Capital to the Grundrisse and then the so-called early writings. Given the
small number of the finalised texts at hand, a large amount of speculation is in
any case inevitable. All this makes the determination of a finalised text, as the
criterion according to which the other works should be evaluated, impossible.
This is one absolute theoretical obstacle to any Marxian study. Later, a practical
absolute obstacle to such a study will be discussed.

7 See Marx, letter to Danielson, 15 November 1878 (Marx and Engels 1991, p. 343). See also Hein-
rich 2016, p. 124. I say ‘this edition’ (i.e., the French translation by Joseph M. Roy, revised and
endorsed by Marx; available in reprint as Marx 1982), since the most well-known and most
cited French translation of Capital is the one by Jean-Pierre Lefebvre (Marx 1993). As far as I
know, the new translation into Persian (Marx 2008) is so far the only translation into any lan-
guage which has integrated both the fourth German edition and the French edition by Roy.
For further information, see Afary 2012.
8 That is Marx 1976 for English edition and Marx 1962a for the German edition.
9 See Bellofiore 2009, p. 179: ‘The most developed is the key for the knowledge of the less
developed, but we also have to understand the genesis of Marx’s exposition of the concept of
capital’.
marxian totality seen through his works 81

1 Prelude – The Poem and the Letter to His Father:10 Marx, a Diver in
Search of the Sache selbst in Life in the Street

In these two texts, The Poem and the Letter, and in his search for the sub-
ject matter [Sache selbst], to use a term highlighted by Kosík, Marx introduces
some themes whose development leads ultimately to a distinctive conception
of totality in Capital. Since the themes of these two texts overlap, I discuss them
thematically. I will show that while it may be rightly claimed that there is a sim-
ilarity between the style of these poems and Marx’s later works,11 the continuity
goes farther than this and the influence stays with Marx throughout his works.
Let us begin with a passage from his poem Epigramme on Hegel. In a part of
this poem, we read:

Kant and Fichte soar the ether

Seeking for some distant land,
I but seek to grasp profoundly
What I found up on the street.12

The metaphor of the street recalls social life, where things pass both neces-
sarily and contingently, an example of the realm of events. But what happens
on the street, contingent or necessary, has laws and also evinces exceptions
to those laws. Finding those laws and their exceptions necessitates analysis,
and once coupled with the ought-is opposition reflected in the letter (which
will be discussed later in this section), it furthermore involves action that goes
beyond observation, contemplation, and the merely empirical.13 What hap-
pens on the street and the judgement about what happens brings about both
the subjective and objective aspects of the street. The response to the ques-
tion, ‘What, “of” that which is of the street, is of concern?’ opens the door to
a twofold response, objective and subjective. Moreover, this ‘of’ (introducing
the object of discussion) will later be shown to be developed into the critique
‘of’ political economy: the critique of political economy is both the critique of

10 All the quotations from Marx’s letter to his father are from McLellan 2000, pp. 9–13.
11 See Johnston 1967, p. 260: ‘Yet an obvious continuity between Marx’s verse and his later
work lies in the style of his writing. His love of metaphor, his use of allusions, his construc-
tion of complex sentences all bear witness to his early exercises as a composer of verse’. It
is noteworthy that Johnston does not deny any similarity as to content.
12 My translation. German text in Marx 1968g, p. 608: ‘Kant und Fichte gern zum Äther sch-
weifen, / Suchten dort ein fernes Land,/ Doch ich such’ nur tüchtig zu begreifen,/Was ich –
auf der Straße fand!’
13 This diremption between ‘ought’ and ‘is’ is thought to be also the standpoint endorsed by
Hegel. See ‘Ausblick: Logik, Rechtsphilosophie und Marxsche Kritik’ in Theunissen 1980.
82 chapter 5

the subject being discussed, and the way it is analysed by political economy.
When we consider today what happened in the life of the same street yester-
day, history comes in. The street is equally the reflection of the materiality of
life, and its dialectic. Nonetheless, what happens on the street brings along with
it not only the metabolism of the life of the street, its reason and unreason, its
sociality, history-time, and the lawfulness and the contingency of what passes
on the street, but also the thought about the ‘tomorrow’ of the street; hence,
the importance of the future, a bedrock of the Marxian standpoint not only
distinct from Kant and Fichte as mocked here, but also from Hegel. In taking
such a standpoint, although it may not be wrong to say that Marx at this stage is
not a full-fledged materialist, this may be taken cum grano salis, as he criticises
simultaneously Kant and Fichte, as we have seen, and also finds Hegel ‘to be no
less fond than his predecessors of the “ether” and “the distant land”’,14 and cri-
ticises his intention by saying that even with his leadership one cannot plumb
the ocean of the subject matter [Sache selbst].

1.1 Methodology-Logic
The relation between Marx and Hegel, especially as regards their method or
logic, has been the subject of a myriad of books, dissertations, and articles. In
the Letter, Marx admits that Hegel’s system is distinctive: ‘for it had actually to
be a new logic’.15 Explanation of this logic and the relation between his own
work and Hegel’s logic is something that Marx never overlooks and yet unfor-
tunately never fully elaborates upon. That said, a becoming, a transformation
for which the objects are mere abstractions is the tenet to which he remains
loyal through and through.
As will be seen in the following chapter, one of the major claims to be made
here is the utterly new concept of starting point, that of investigation, put
forward by Marx. In this very letter, we can discern the germ of this new con-
ception, as Marx talks about a dialogue he wrote entitled ‘Cleanthes, or The
Starting Point and Necessary Progress of Philosophy’. About this dialogue, he
writes that art and philosophy, previously taken to be completely separate,
‘regained to some extent their unity’.16 The obsession with the starting point,
as well as the unification of human knowledge referred to here, remained with
Marx throughout his life. In this letter, we see the germ of the internal rela-
tion, or interconnectedness, which in the hands of some contemporary Marx-
ist philosophers became the principal characteristic of a genuinely Marxian

14 Johnston 1967, p. 262.

15 Marx, Letter to his father, in McLellan 2000, p. 12.
16 Marx, Letter to his father, in McLellan 2000, p. 12.
marxian totality seen through his works 83

approach.17 The young Marx on several occasions sees this interconnectedness

between ‘Jurisprudence and … philosophy’ and he searches for ‘an intellectual
activity that finds expression on all sides – in science, art, and personal mat-
ters’.18

1.2 Praxis in Methodology

We know an occasion, in The Phenomenology of Spirit, where Hegel finds a Zutat
from our (subjective) side to be superfluous19 – we must merely observe. Such
a standpoint is criticised in the two texts at hand. In the Poem, ‘The German
Public’, who is personified sitting in his armchair, is mocked for merely watch-
ing and remaining ignorant while events pass by. Although the Germans will
be later criticised for having accompanied freedom only at its funeral,20 Marx’s
criticism here is not limited to the German public, for the same can equally be
said of those who write books, that is, intellectuals. Thus, the criticism includes
not only the general public but also the smart-alecks, and professorial search-
ers after useless minute distinctions, in adopting what Hegel would attribute
to the role of philosophy: The owl of Minerva comes post factum, ‘And writes a
book: The Commotion Is Over’.21
Instead, what is needed is to adopt a standpoint affirming the unity of these
two poles in a totality: to take all social life, including, on the one hand, the
discussion of truth as a practical issue, and22 on the other, a practical method-
ology competent to resolve the problems and contradictions of the status quo
– a praxis to ‘dissolve the shit’, as Marx would put it some thirty years later.23
With this, we see the germ of the notion of truth which will be developed and
reformulated very succinctly in the Theses on Feuerbach. In putting forward this
point here, Marx is already distancing itself from seeing the truth as the cri-
terion of itself and of falsehood, which reminds one of Spinoza.24 This is also

17 For further development of this standpoint, see Ollman 2003.

18 Marx, Letter to his father, in McLellan 2000, p. 10.
19 Hegel 1980b, p. 77.
20 This is later underscored in the opening pages of his Introduction to A Contribution to the
Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right.
21 Marx 1968g, p. 607: ‘der Lärm sei vorbei’.
22 See Johnston 1967, p. 265.
23 Marx, letter to Engels, 30 April 1868 (Marx and Engels 1992c, p. 25).
24 ‘Truth is as little modest as light, and towards whom should it be so? Towards itself? Verum
index sui et falsi.* Therefore, towards falsehood?’ Marx 1975c, p. 112. The complete sentence
in Spinoza’s Ethics is as follows: ‘Sane sicut lux se ipsam et tenebras manifestat, sic veritas
norma sui et falsi est’ (As the light makes both itself and the darkness plain, so truth is
the standard both of itself and of the false; Spinoza 1985, p. 479). Given the theme of the
text, that is censorship, it may be said that here Marx, with his rather seemingly rhetorical
84 chapter 5

the reaction to the complete opposition between ‘ought’ and ‘is’ referred to in
the letter to his father discussed in this section. This practical-methodological
standpoint (a meta-methodology, so to speak), which is best reflected in an
authentic standpoint with regard to totality, is, as stated by Lukács, both the
result and the presupposition of the class struggle.25 If all questions of truth
ultimately find their answer in practice, this is par excellence true about such a
Marxian thought-praxis, and also about Marx’s methodology.
The relation between ‘is’ and ‘ought’ deserves further elaboration. In ref-
erence to this letter and such passages as ‘Here the same opposition of “is”
and “ought” which is the hallmark of idealism was the dominating and very
destructive feature,’26 David McLellan writes that Marx soon changed his belief
‘in a romantic opposition of what is and what ought to be’.27 In fact, it was as
soon as the following page in the same letter that he changed his mind: ‘[I]f the
gods before had dwelt above the earth, they had now become its centre’.28 As
will be seen, this is one of the bedrocks of The German Ideology.

1.3 Dialectics and Mathematics

One question regarding Marx’s works is the reason for the almost complete
absence of the application of mathematics in his investigation. This evalu-
ation must be revised once it is realised that he in fact did write Mathemat-
ical Manuscripts,29 and although he was admittedly not a mathematician, his
knowledge was probably good enough to apply mathematical concepts in his
works. But the issue runs deeper and has some similarity with Hegel’s stand-
point on mathematics. Hegel writes on one occasion that mathematics deals
with the abstractions of number and space, the non-existent sensibles.30 Marx,
reflecting this position, writes:

[F]rom the outset the unscientific form of mathematical dogmatism

where one circles round a subject, reasoning back and forth, without
letting it unfold its own rich and living content, prevented any grasp of

question, is being rhapsodic about truth. Cf. Milton’s Areopagitica: ‘Let her [Truth] and
Falshood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the wors, in a free and open encounter. Her
confuting is the best and surest suppressing’ (Milton 1918, p. 58).
25 The full quote, in which Lukács quotes a sentence by Marx to support his standpoint, can
be found in Lukács 1970, pp. 89–90.
26 McLellan 2000, p. 11.
27 McLellan 2000, p. 5.
28 Marx, Letter to his father, in McLellan 2000, p. 12.
29 Marx 1983c.
30 See Hegel 1980a, p. 70.
marxian totality seen through his works 85

the truth. The mathematician constructs and proves the triangle, but it
remains a pure abstraction in space and does not develop any further; you
have to put it beside something else and then it takes up other positions
and it is the juxtaposition of these different things that gives it different
relationships and truths. Whereas in the practical expression of the living
world of ideas in which law, the state, nature, and the whole of philosophy
consist, the object itself must be studied in its own development, arbitrary
divisions must not be introduced, and it is the ratio of the object [Vernunft
des Dinges] itself which must develop out of its inner contradictions and
find unity within itself.31

Accordingly, an organic totality goes beyond the mathematical system and can-
not be reduced to mathematical elaboration.32
The inability of mathematics to penetrate the Sache selbst and its content
reminds us of the form-content relationship in dialectics. It is well known that
a dialectical conception does not see this relationship as one between two
segregated poles. Marx here criticises his earlier understanding of this relation-
ship:

[Prior to this] I meant by form the necessary structure of the expres-

sions of an idea and by matter the necessary quality of these expres-
sions. The fault here was that I believed that the one could and must
develop itself independently of the other and thus I did not obtain a
true form but merely a desk into whose drawers I proceeded to pour
sand.33

This will have very important repercussions in the future development of his
work. First, as will be shown his treatment of categories is closer to Hegel than
to Kant, and in it the dialectical unity of form and content leads to the categorial
movement.34 The word ‘movement’ here is to be understood as what Marx
calls metamorphosis, that is, a simultaneous transformation and reproduction
of form.35 In the categorial movement, each category is transformed into the
one that succeeds it and also in so doing the succeeding category reproduces

31 Marx, Letter to his father, in McLellan 2000, p. 11.

32 See Fahey et al. 2009, p. 263.
33 Marx, Letter to his father, in McLellan 2000, p. 11.
34 See Hegel, The Science of Logic, Book 2, Part 1, Chapter 3, A. Absolute Ground 2 (Hegel
1969c, pp. 80–95; Hegel 2010, pp. 389–97).
35 See Reichelt 2007, p. 36.
86 chapter 5

the prior one at a different level. The second point indicates Marx’s suspicion
of definition, since it is a form of ‘subsumption’.36 In the same vein, although
he admits the importance of ideas, he criticises ‘purely formal art which has
no objects to inspire it and no exciting progress of ideas’.37 Moreover, as is well
known, Marx’s methodological endeavour – which he later calls the applica-
tion of the ‘power of abstraction’ – entails going beyond the phenomena. Here
he puts it metaphorically: by ‘diving off into the sea … to bring the pure pearls
up to the sunlight’.38
Although the themes introduced here are admittedly scattered, partly owing
to the nature of the texts, and partly owing to what I am trying to demonstrate,
a number of conceptions related to totality can be seen here. It remains to be
seen whether these themes find repercussions in the conception of totality in
Marx’s subsequent works. It is to this question that we now turn.

2 Marx in the Laboratory: Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts

of 1844

The first major point of elaboration on the conception of totality is undoubt-

edly the newly maturing, though still fragmentary, attempt where Marx first
criticises the previous theories in political economy and philosophy and begins
to develop his own – as if in a laboratory – namely the Economic and Philosoph-
ical Manuscripts of 1844. This elaboration can be identified in spite of the fact
that the work is no more than a gathering of notes, parts of which are no longer
available, written with self-clarification as their primary goal.
We witness here a critical approach towards a conception of totality, in the
form of an intertwined critique of political economy and of Hegel simultan-
eously. As to the former, Marx first plays the game of political economy and
aims at showing its shortcomings without questioning its premises. Then he
does what political economy does not do: he explains the movement of the
subject of political economy as it really is, this time while showing the short-
comings of the premises. A major flaw of political economy is that it does
not see the alienation intrinsic to the very nature of labour, which cannot be
overcome with the premises of political economy left unquestioned. As to a
central point on this text related to labour, namely alienation, Marx sees all

36 Marx 1963a, p. 228: ‘Es handelt sich nicht hier zum Definitionen, unter welchen die Dinge
subsumiert werden.’
37 Marx, Letter to his father, in McLellan 2000, p. 12.
38 Marx, Letter to his father, in McLellan 2000, p. 12.
marxian totality seen through his works 87

four moments of alienation as a whole. The result is the threefold alienation

of the worker: from the object* and the process of his labour (objective* ali-
enation), from himself as the subject of the labour (subjective alienation), and
from others, and from his species (intersubjective alienation). This particular
approach, in which no aspect is overlooked, even at this stage, provides the
germ of a conception of totality that will be fleshed out only in the future, a
conception that is neither objectivistic nor subjectivistic. Hence, although it
may rightly be argued that Marx develops an anthropology39 here (what leads
to further study of his works as an anthropologist)40 his attempt to distance
himself from what he calls anthropology in the limited sense should not be
overlooked. Through this attempt, Marx intends to adopt an ontological stand-
point, which is admittedly at this stage still of rather a biological cast, encrusted
with terms such as genus, species, etc.
At about the same time as these Manuscripts, Marx writes ‘Our products
would be so many mirrors in which we saw reflected our essential nature’.41
With reference to this, some commentators have found Marx’s conception of
totality in the Manuscripts to be similar to that of Leibniz, in which ‘unsur-
sumable [unaufhebbar] individuality’ is mirrored.42 Nonetheless, given that
individuals externalise their existence through labour, with reciprocity of their
activity as its quintessential characteristic, this similarity with monads as soul-
like immaterial entities may be taken cum grano salis. What comes right after
this passage is clarificatory: ‘This relationship would moreover be reciprocal;
what occurs on my side has also to occur on yours’.43
It may be helpful in this respect to consider another passage. In a part of
the Manuscripts we read: ‘Insofar as man is human, and hence also his feeling,
etc., is human, the affirmation of the object* by another is likewise his own
enjoyment’.44 The transindividuality of man is here confirmed; this is in con-
tradistinction to the standpoint of political economy, which takes the isolated

39 Grumley 1989, p. 43.

40 See Patterson 2009.
41 ‘Comments on James Mill’s Éléments d’économie politique’, Marx, Engels Collected Works
3, p. 228. ‘Our Productions would be just so many mirrors from which our essence reflects
itself’. Marx 1968a, p. 463 (my translation).
42 Arndt 2012, p. 38. A similar point is developed in Dardot and Laval 2012, pp. 352 and 740
n. 89.
43 ‘Dies Verhältnis wird dabei wechselseitig, von deiner Seite geschehe, was von meiner
gesch[ieht]’. Marx 1968a, p. 463.
44 Marx 1968d, p. 563: ‘[I]nsofern der Mensch menschlich, also auch seine Empfindung etc.
menschlich ist, ist die Bejahung des Gegenstandes durch einen andren, ebenfalls sein
eigner Genuß’ (my translation).
88 chapter 5

individuals in their segregation as economic subjects45 and deprives them of

the totality of their social relations by reducing them to the status of an indi-
viduated worker or capitalist. Marx mocks the treatment of political economy
in the following words: ‘In place of the wealth and poverty of political economy
come the rich human being and rich human need. The rich human being is sim-
ultaneously the human being in need of a totality of human life-activities – the
man in whom his own realisation exists as an inner necessity, as need’.46
Although this elaboration on totality is admittedly still not even as clear
as the assertion of an ‘ensemble of social relations’ as the essence of the
human (this will be discussed in the next section of this chapter), it paves the
way for this latter reformulation. To the same effect, along with underscoring
internal relations, a methodological characteristic, elaborated further in Cap-
ital Volume i47 (where it is claimed that the properties of an object do not stem
from other objects but find their activation or affirmation by being activated
in relation with others) has its background here. An excellent example of the
intertwinedness of the methodological and practical questions is also found in
this text: other objects are activations of the existence of one object, not of that
from which their existence stems; other humans are equally the activation of
each individual, and hence should not be taken to be the means of one another
reciprocally.48
The not yet full-fledged materialist character of these Manuscripts is well-
known.49 Understanding these Manuscripts as a materialist text, one may ask
in just what way they reveal Marx’s materialist stance. The text may be taken
as an attempt ‘to seek the idea in the real itself’.50 This undoubtedly has reper-
cussions for the conception of totality. As hinted at in the previous chapter, a
Marxian conception of totality is among other things a non-objectivistic mater-
ialism. If so, the idealist unity of thinking and being should be overcome51 in
order to propose such a materialist standpoint.
This is where Marx’s discussion of Hegel seems to be relevant. There Marx
shows not only Hegel’s achievement but also the shortcomings of his two major

45 Halbwachs 1937, p. 10.

46 Marx and Engels 1988, p. 111.
47 Marx 1976, p. 149.
48 Marx and Engels 1988, p. 128: ‘[I]nsofar as each becomes a means for the other …’
49 Cf. Marx and Engels 1988, p. 154: ‘[C]onsistent naturalism or humanism distinguishes itself
both from idealism and materialism, constituting at the same time the unifying truth of
both. We see also how only naturalism is capable of comprehending the act of world his-
tory’.
50 McLellan 2000, p. 12.
51 Marx and Engels 1988, pp. 105–6.
marxian totality seen through his works 89

works, The Science of Logic and The Phenomenology of Spirit. One point in
Marx’s elaboration on a distinctive conception of totality is a clarification of
the distinction between the status of an object* in itself, for itself, and for us.
This is a distinction that is recognised in Hegel’s system. To the same effect,
as will be seen in Chapter 6, Marx critically adopts Hegel’s term Moment. The
point is that whereas Hegel uses this term in the sense of ‘momentum’ (reflec-
ted in das Moment and avoiding der Moment, which has the temporal notion
of the term), at this stage Marx recognises and highlights this distinction in
Hegel’s system by seeing movement as the totality of moments.52 The rela-
tionship between moments of consciousness and the object*, for instance,
must be a relationship that involves the totality of the determinations of the
objects* and each of those determinations must be comprehended on its own
terms.53
To the same effect, to have a distinctive totality that is both materialist and
dialectical, as a distinctive characteristic of Marxian methodology, we need
a distinctive doctrine of abstraction, one that is not only distinct from Aris-
totelian abstraction and Lockean empiricist abstraction, but also from Hegel-
ian abstraction. This culminates methodologically in the well-known passage
in the preface to the first edition of Capital Volume i, in the recognition of
the power of abstraction in Marx’s methodological approach, as an appar-
atus that replaces a microscope and chemical agents. At this stage, Marx is
critical of Hegel’s abstraction. Marx gives him credit for having recognised in
the Phenomenology of Spirit the processual characteristic of the autogenesis
of the human being, its formation through labour, and its concomitant dia-
lectical negativity,54 and hence his highlighting the whole of human action
[Gesamtwirken der Menschen].55 He finds it erroneous, however, to equate the
essence of human being with consciousness. Furthermore, he somewhat sar-
donically introduces the moments of Hegel’s Science of Logic resulting in Abso-
lute Idee, which is nothing but the totality of all the already sursumed [aufge-

52 Marx and Engels 1988, p. 152. This will be seen later in the Grundrisse. Nicolaus elaborates
well upon this issue: ‘Hegel takes “moment” from Newton, despite the general disdain for
“mechanics”, he derives the sense of this rather central concept from the action of the
lever. … In Marx the term carries the senses both of “period of time” and of “force of mov-
ing mass”. He much improves on Hegel’s use; Hegel’s usage was more mechanical; and time
was absent from it’ (Martin Nicolaus’s foreword to the Grundrisse in Marx 1973, p. 29; see
also Gauthier 2010, pp. 69–75).
53 Marx and Engels 1988, p. 152.
54 Marx and Engels 1988, p. 149.
55 Marx and Engels 1988, pp. 149–50.
90 chapter 5

hobene] abstractions. Thus introduced, Absolute Idea is propelled to external-

ise itself as its exact pole of opposition, that is, nature.56
One important neighbouring concept of totality is undoubtedly unity. In the
Manuscripts, Marx proposes two important points. The first is the twofold unity
of nature and society on the one hand, and natural studies and social studies on
the other. The second is related to the possibility of ideal reflection of a totality
in a man, who in turn is a totality. Marx puts this in the following words:

Man, much as he may therefore be a particular individual (and it is pre-

cisely his particularity which makes him an individual, and a real indi-
vidual social being), is just as much the totality the ideal totality – the
subjective existence of thought and experienced society present for itself;
just as he exists also in the real world as the awareness and the real enjoy-
ment of social existence, and as a totality of human life-activity.57

We finish this section on this exploratory writing in Marx’s laboratory, by assess-

ing Marx’s standpoint regarding what makes possible the conception of totality
in our era, related to the unity of society and nature on the one hand and to the
study of these on the other. It has often been asserted that the concept of total-
ity was first elaborated in modern philosophy by Spinoza.58 A question that
arises is the reason for such an elaboration in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries. In this laboratory stage of his thought, Marx offers a reason for the
possibility of the scientific conceptualisation of totality in the capitalist mode
of production. In the era of developed industry, private property plays a medi-
ating role that enables individuals to collectively grasp the existing totality and
its inherent contradictions. A step forward at this stage is that, whereas polit-
ical economy and Proudhon see a contradiction between private property and
labour, Marx sees the contradiction within labour itself.59 This itself is the out-
come of the recognition of the practical activity of people, which equally brings
about the science of humans; with this, the essential nature of the human to
embrace totality is born. Thus, the tenets which put the human being outside

56 Marx and Engels 1988, p. 163.

57 Marx and Engels 1988, p. 105.
58 Kosík 1976, p. 17.
59 Marx and Engels 1988, p. 81: ‘Political economy starts from labor as the real soul of pro-
duction; yet to labor it gives nothing, and to private property everything. From this con-
tradiction Proudhon has concluded in favor of labor and against private property. We
understand, however, that this apparent contradiction is the contradiction of estranged
labor with itself, and that political economy has merely formulated the laws of estranged
labor’. This is further discussed in this chapter and the following.
marxian totality seen through his works 91

nature and also reduce the function of the human being to mere observation
utterly miss the point: their approach inevitably leads to the ascription of the
status of thing-in-itself to nature.60 Marxian totality is thus coincident with
humanity: man turns into simultaneously subjective and objective* totality, in
which subject and object are two moments of totality.
We will see why Marx in his later works takes it that revolutionising such a
totality, which I call pseudototality, becomes possible and also necessary. The
following section is one step in this direction.

3 Prototype-Genesis: Totality in the German Ideology and the ‘Theses

on Feuerbach’

In this section, I will show how the conception of totality is advanced in these
two texts; and how the ascertainment of totality and neighbouring concepts
by Marx and Engels in the German Ideology and by Marx in the ‘Theses on
Feuerbach’ pave the way towards the maturation of those concepts in the fol-
lowing sections.
Marx and Engels give Hegel credit for not merely registering the objects
of thought but also exposing the act of production of the objects.61 Notwith-
standing this, their book is, to a large extent, a polemical work against the
tendency of the young Hegelians to simply prolong his enterprise – that is,
for not being adequately critical of his views.62 One significant component of
Marx and Engels’s positive alternative here is their defence of a unified sci-
ence of history with its two inseparable facets, the history of nature and the
history of humans, which mutually condition each other. This unified stand-
point is simultaneously a criticism of Hegelian abstraction, which, with its
focus on consciousness and abstract ideas, is inevitably idealistically reduc-

60 Cf. Sekine 1998, p. 436: ‘We can only gain partial knowledge of the [behaviour of the
nature] by constantly observing it from outside. … The thing-in-itself of nature always
remains beyond our reach.’ On another occasion, Sekine surprisingly writes: ‘Since we are
ourselves not the creator of nature, we cannot hope to know it totally’ (Sekine 1997a, p. 3,
emphasis added). This may remind the reader of a famous passage in Hume’s Dialogues
concerning Natural Religion (Hume 2007, p. 25): ‘[I]s a part of nature a rule for another
part very wide of the former? Is it a rule for the whole? Is a very small part a rule for the
universe? Is nature in one situation, a certain rule for nature in another situation, vastly
different from the former?’ We have seen previously how a Kosíkian reading can give a
satisfactory response to this dilemma: see Chapter 4, section 1 above.
61 Marx and Engels 1978, p. 14.
62 Dardot and Laval 2012, p. 137.
92 chapter 5

tionist.63 Marx and Engels’s alternative, underscoring the material activity of

individuals through material interactions among one another, the language
of the effective life as the concretisation of the subject matter [Sache selbst],
replaces an idealist treatment of ideology with a new scientific one.64 To the
same effect, given that according to the alternative reading given by Marx and
Engels, ‘[c]onsciousness cannot exist as anything other than a being that is con-
scious’,65 which in turn boils down to the being’s real-life process, the cause of
the upside-down character of false consciousness should be sought in real life.
This emphasis on the role of the individuals and on stripping history of its
ideality should not be taken as a rejection of history as a holistic process that
embraces a totality consisting of both nature and history.66 It instead brings
real individuals, the producers of material life in their life process, back onto
the stage as the only history makers,67 recognising their inherent dynamic rela-
tionship with the totality of social life.
After the criticism of Hegelian abstraction, and its idealism, putting it back
on its feet, this is the second front of Marx and Engels’s criticism: against a
reductionist empiricism that reduces all relations to what can be experienced.
Put differently, their emphasis on empirical observation in a political-social
context, should be taken as a warning against mystification and speculation.68
Hence the inference of the abstraction from the empirical does not entail redu-
cing those abstractions to what can be sensibly experienced.69 This twofold cri-
ticism, in enhanced form in later works, leads to a specifically Marxian abstrac-
tion that gives rise to a specifically Marxian version of totality.
The starting point introduced here is the activity of people’s material life –
not what they say, think, or imagine, but the actual life process in its mater-
iality.70 Ideology, thought, morality, religion, and imagination are taken to be

63 This is also criticised by Marx and Engels in The Holy Family, particularly the chapter ‘Das
Geheimnis der spekulativen Konstruktion’ (Marx and Engels 1962, pp. 59–63).
64 Marx and Engels 1978, p. 18.
65 The subtlety and beauty of the phrase cannot be adequately translated into English: ‘Das
Bewußtsein kann nie etwas Andres sein als das bewußte Sein’ (Marx and Engels 1978,
p. 26).
66 Grumley 1989, p. 48. ‘The totality of history has no immanent meaning aside from that
created and ascribed to it by the practices of living, concrete individuals’.
67 Marx and Engels 1978, p. 25. This will be developed by Marx into the guiding thread of his
subsequent works; see Marx 1961c, p. 8.
68 Marx and Engels 1978, p. 25.
69 Arndt 2012, p. 59: ‘It derives its abstractions from the empirical experience [das Empirie],
without reducing them to what is sensually experienceable’ (my translation).
70 As will be seen later, the starting point becomes more nuanced and complex in later works
but the materiality introduced here is kept through and through.
marxian totality seen through his works 93

rather like the epiphenomena of this life, which are often nothing more than
illusion [Schein], and have illusory independence. An ascending movement
from the concrete to the abstract, here in the form of the movement from earth
to heaven, will take the place of the descent from the abstract to the concrete,
from heaven to earth, reminiscent of what was seen in the previous section with
its focus on street life. This is an anti-metaphysical methodological movement:
going from the material life of individuals as the producers of consciousness
to consciousness, instead of from the consciousness of individuals to them as
individuals. While the former movement concentrates on history and its devel-
opment, the latter focuses on the epiphenomena of the former. That is how the
German Ideology comes up with the well-known slogan that it is not conscious-
ness – with the clarification seen here – that determines the life, but life that
determines consciousness.71
Here a series of presuppositions are introduced for such a standpoint. In
introducing them, the German Ideology distances itself from a Hegelian stand-
point, as found in the beginning of the Science of Logic, where being presup-
positionless and having presuppositions are both shown to be wrong starting
points, and the beginning is a presupposed-presuppositionlessness. That said,
it seems to be difficult to introduce an objection against the presuppositions
proposed by Marx and Engels here. These presuppositions are, put briefly, the
existence of individuals and their relations to nature to meet their needs; these
relations bring up newer needs; with that comes the need to produce pro-
geny; this entails a twofold natural-social relationship. These are what the later
works take as already established points. This is the earthly basis that should,
as a whole, be taken into consideration in any historical treatment of a soci-
ety.72
As seen in Chapter 4, a distinction is made here between history as the real
historical subject of study, and history as the sum of dead facts. What turns
the real history into the sum of dead facts is the active living process of the
individuals. This is the precise twofold criticism seen previously: neither the
abstract individual proposed by Feuerbach, nor the haughty Subject of the
idealists can do the job of displaying the real historical process.73 Nonetheless,
mere criticism is insufficient, and this is one of the dictums of the German Ideo-
logy: the impetus, the driving force of the history of religion, of philosophy or
any other theory is the revolution not the critique.74

71 Marx and Engels 1978, p. 27.

72 Marx and Engels 1978, p. 28.
73 Marx and Engels 1978, p. 27.
74 Marx and Engels 1978, p. 38.
94 chapter 5

As to the relationship between the role of revolution and communism, com-

pared with the Manuscripts of 1844 a more nuanced account is being developed
here. Whereas communism, ‘the position that is the negation of negation’, was
introduced in the Manuscripts of 1844 as the mystery and solution to the status
quo,75 a mediating step needed towards socialism, communism is here intro-
duced not as a state of affairs to be realised, nor as a teleologically envisaged
ideal, but as the daily effective real movement whose conditions stem from the
current situation. Interestingly, whereas in the Manuscripts communism was
taken to be closer to sursumed [aufgehobene] totality, here it is closer to the sur-
suming totality [aufhebende], on account of the moving character attributed to
communism.76 In the search for the subject matter [Sache selbst] in its totality,
underscoring of the process of the genesis [Entstehungsprozeß]77 of history is
intertwined with the highlighting of the social praxis of individuals as the only
makers of that totality. This is in contradistinction to the mere criticism that
is said to be necessary but inadequate. It is the clarification of ideas according
to social and material praxis and also the amplification of praxis according to
ideas, while priority is given to social-material life.
Two points are being simultaneously accentuated here to reinforce this con-
ception of a materialist totality: a totality of social life instead of their ideal
repercussions and the reciprocal relationship between the individuals and cir-
cumstances in this totality. The sum total of the forces of production and social
forms of intercourse [Verkehrsformen], replaces substance and essence. This
new dispersed or, so to speak, decentralised essence, is to be sought in the social
totality. This has two intertwined consequences: first, an immanent historical
criterion [Maßstab] must be adopted for any genuine analysis; and second, a
total radical change [totale Umwälzung] of such a totality, its metabolism, and
its contradictions is needed. This view, which incorporates the relationship of
man with nature in history, will provide us with the reality of each historical
period and history in its totality instead of an illusion. The ability to have such
a conception of totality – the forces and the relations of production – is the res-
ult of the independence of these forces and their development. One can see the
capitalist system of production and its inherent contradictions in their total-
ity; one sees how the forces of production – individual producers and means
of production – come into an insurmountable contradiction with social rela-
tions. These individuals are no longer just abstract constituents of the totality,

75 Marx 1968d, p. 546; Marx 1968d, p. 536.

76 Marx and Engels 1978, p. 37.
77 Marx and Engels 1978, p. 38.
marxian totality seen through his works 95

as found in the individualism of Feuerbach, but have effective living content

[wirklichen Lebensinhalt].78
The appropriation of the totality of the means of production by individual
producers is not only to activate themselves, but also to affirm their exist-
ence. This appropriation is principally conditioned by appropriation of the
object* – the productive forces which are developed into a totality and exist
only within an existing universal interaction.79 The universal relationship of
this appropriation gives it a universal character. This appropriation in turn is
nothing but the result of the development of the capacity of the corresponding
means of production. The appropriation of the means of production is there-
fore already an expression of the development of a totality of the capacity of
the very individuals,80 which will in turn be conditioned by the appropriating
individuals (anticipating a distinctive Marxian totality that will be developed
later).
The individuals capable of appropriating this totality and of playing the role
of the revolutionary agents of the radical change of this status quo are simply
the proletarians, no longer restricted like other suppressed classes in the past.
This absence of previous restrictions makes it possible for the first time for
these new individuals to subdue the minority under the new rising majority,
of which they are the constituents. As conscious beings, who find the contra-
dictions of the existing totality to be inherent to its nature, proletarians, as the
collective agent, are the bearers of the new totality – and this with a revolu-
tionary approach, given that communism as a movement would have to erupt
in a revolution [in einer Revolution eklatieren].81 They do not replace just one
characteristic of this totality in its global relations [Weltverhältnisse], nor each
characteristic in its abstraction and isolation from others, but the totality of its
characteristics engenders this new totality. This is realised in practical, social,
and political life, and not merely in contemplation on the will of individuals, or
in conceptual hairsplitting.82 This genesis of the new totality arising from con-
templations is impossible, since contradictions in reality have to be dealt with
in reality and cannot be simply theorised away.83

78 Marx and Engels 1978, p. 67.

79 Marx and Engels 1978, pp. 67–8.
80 Marx and Engels 1978, pp. 67–8: ‘Die Aneignung einer Totalität von Produktionsinstru-
menten ist schon deshalb die Entwicklung einer Totalität von Fähigkeiten in den Indi-
viduen selbst’.
81 Marx and Engels 1978, p. 74.
82 Marx and Engels 1978, p. 245.
83 See Bourdieu 2007, p. 598.
96 chapter 5

Marx and Engels here draw an essential distinction between two types of
totality in order to elaborate on the relationship between theory and social life.
The contentful totality of a theory is saturated with the positive content of the
developed social life and its struggles, as found in England and in the works
of Bentham and Mill. What may be called the contentless totality of a theory,
on the other hand, comes with an undeveloped struggle of the bourgeoisie,
as found in pre-revolutionary France, and leads to a mere philosophising of
social life, as found in the works of Helvetius and Holbach.84 To the same effect,
although an organic totality in thought is what will be advocated, particularly
in the works that are discussed in the next section, in the German Ideology
Marx and Engels mockingly criticise any mystification, as in their criticism of
Karl Grün, as attaining such totalities in appearance only, and they denounce
any erroneous ascription of organic relation among and between irrelevant ele-
ments.85
Along the same lines, in their criticism of True Socialism, they find it unreal-
istic to say that the future communism connects atoms in an organic whole and
say instead that the connection of atoms to the organic whole is as impossible
as that of a square to a circle.86 What they seem to imply is the substitution of
molecules for atoms. This analogy, which is accurate in chemistry – since it is
not the atom of a substance but the molecule that is the smallest representative
of its existence – is another example of a wrong generalisation of individuals
and society as a whole.87 The criterion for the distinction between a personal
individual who plays a role in a given society as a totality, on the one hand,
and an incidental individual, on the other, is not a conceptual difference but a
historical fact.88
This is the place that the discussion of totality in the German Ideology may be
related to the ‘Theses on Feuerbach’, which unlike the former was not intended
for publication. The absence of the word ‘totality’ in the ‘Theses on Feuerbach’
is a textual fact. This has led to what I consider to be two imprecise interpret-
ations. On the one hand, Lucien Goldmann89 takes this absence to be a by
no means negligible lacuna in a project that aims at the construction of dia-

84 Marx and Engels 1978, p. 397.

85 Marx and Engels 1978, p. 501.
86 Marx and Engels 1978, p. 446. As will be seen, particularly in the section on Capital, cellule
is used instead of atom to draw a more precise analogy.
87 Cf. Marx and Engels 1978, p. 469.
88 Marx and Engels 1978, p. 71. This is a difference that will be discussed in the following
pages.
89 This is the full quote in original: ‘Il manque seulement pour la formulation globale du
matérialisme dialectique le concept de Totalité, ce qui est évidemment une lacune non
négligeable’ (Goldmann 1968, p. 43).
marxian totality seen through his works 97

lectical materialism. In making this argument, Goldmann does not fully recog-
nise the role the appearance of the word ensemble in thesis 690 may play as a
term that is very close to ‘totality’, particularly when the interactive relation-
ship between subject and the environment or conditions is already straight-
forwardly advanced in the third thesis,91 in contrast with other doctrines that
overlook this mutual relationship between subject and environment and treat
their relationship one-sidedly.
In another interpretation of the third thesis, Pierre Macherey92 takes the
usage of the word ensemble as das ensemble in its French usage, with lower-case
e, instead of das Ensemble, as an indication of the absence from the German
language of a word that expresses the grouping, collection or association of the
elements which are simply collected or reunited, and hence put in an ensemble,
without having to constitute a totality in itself. The word ensemble, according to
this reading, implies a multiplicity that is indefinitely open and avoids a form
closed on itself. For Macherey, the term das Komplex may be used as a syn-
onym for ensemble here to reflect a sum of elements that exist without being
unified in a totality. This is, according to this reading, the reason why Marx
avoids the terms das Ganze, die Ganzheit, and die Totalität and the closure they
imply.
I would suggest, instead, that the term ensemble introduced here, in a dictum
that is valid in a transhistorical manner, is the prototype of a particular open
totality; the particular analysis of this totality and the criticism showing its con-
tradictoriness are left to be elaborated on in the later works. At stake is the
ensemble of the social relations of a given society at a given time. What con-
nects these social relations is that they are all existing social relations in their
dynamicity. If so, one may read the tenth of the theses on Feuerbach93 as a sug-
gestion of one open totality, namely, humanised society or socialised humanity
as an alternative to bourgeois society. The contradictory characteristic of this
society is inseparably intertwined with it as a totality, which both makes its
transformation inevitable and a particular revolutionary sursumption possible.
By using the word ensemble, in saying that the essence of the human is in effect
the ensemble of its social relations, with its real-material world, Marx iterates
also the dispersed-decentralised totality seen above. Thus, Marx’s usage of the

90 Marx 1978e, p. 6.
91 Marx 1978e, p. 6.
92 Macherey 2008, pp. 150–1. See also Harvey 2010, p. 196.
93 Marx 1978e, p. 7 ‘Der Standpunkt des alten Materialismus ist die bürgerliche Gesell-
schaft, der Standpunkt des neuen die menschliche Gesellschaft oder die gesellschaftliche
Menschheit’.
98 chapter 5

term ensemble here is not because he wanted to avoid ‘totality’ or similar terms,
but because he was still unable to present his own totality or incorporate it into
his account.94
As mentioned in the first section of this chapter, one important aspect of the
discussion of totality is its relationship with truth put forward in the second
thesis. Here Marx introduces three aspects of the truth of human thought:
this-sidedness, power, and reality. Undeveloped as it is, this is a step beyond a
correspondence theory of truth. An expanded discussion and detailed elabor-
ation of this open totality will be presented in the following sections on totality
in the Grundrisse and Capital. It will be shown that such a totality is something
quite different to a simple juxtaposition of the elements that make it up.

4 Totality in Oscillation: The Grundrisse

By the end of The German Ideology, unpublished as it was, the break with Hegel
and his incongruous disciples is achieved, although methodologically it will
continue to be further honed. A critique directed against political economists
actualises another break. In this section, I am going to untangle the way the
conception of totality is discussed in the texts known as the Introduction and
the Grundrisse of the Critique of Political Economy, or, what Marx once thought
to be an appropriate title for this work, Critique of Economic Categories.95 To
do this, I first elaborate on the methodological findings in the Introduction that
relate to totality, then move to see how the same conception is dealt with in the
notebooks under the titles of the ‘Chapter on Money’ and ‘Chapter on Capital’.
In the treatment presented here, although I cannot go so far as to say that these
two chapters along with the Introduction form an ‘organic whole’,96 I would say
that, as the ‘core’ of the book, these texts can be discussed together as essen-
tially a single more or less coherent text.

94 This opens a new horizon of the discussion. In Chapter 2, I argued for the distinction to
be drawn between the whole and the totality; ensemble is added here. The members of
the ensemble do not have to have any relation (like the mechanical-chemical-organic) to
one another apart from their membership of that ensemble; put differently, they do not
necessarily form a whole. Cf. Hall 2003, p. 136: ‘The relations of production of a mode of
production are articulated as an ensemble’.
95 Marx, letter to Ferdinand Lassalle, 22 February 1858 (Marx 1978c, p. 550). Perhaps because
of this alternative title, there has been a somewhat reductionist view of Marx’s works in
general. See, e.g., Hall 2003, p. 145: ‘The whole of Marx’s mature effort is, indeed, the cri-
tique of the categories of Political Economy’ (emphasis added).
96 Marx 1973, p. 13.
marxian totality seen through his works 99

4.1 Introduction to the Grundrisse

Written between 23 August and mid-September 1858, what is known as the
Introduction to the Grundrisse is a very rich and extremely complex text. Its
importance lies also in the fact that this is the longest text on method that
Marx ever wrote. However, more than answers and clarification, it provides us
with material for further thought and paths to take. Marx builds up on what
he has already developed. Sometimes some passages are very similar to works
written some ten years earlier. In his discussion on method, for instance, his
thematic repetition of the themes developed in the Poverty of Philosophy is
remarkable.97 Here, I attempt merely to follow the features of the text, elabora-
tion upon which can help us see Marx’s treatment of the conception of totality.
The text is in a sense an attack on abstraction and hence on what we may call
non-concrete, a response to the question: What is concrete? With reference to
Chapter 4, we may say that Marx evades whatever method leads to a false total-
ity, abstract totality, bad totality, empty totality, or the pseudo-concrete instead
of a real concrete.98 So while it is right to say that an abstraction that leads to
‘fixation of the unity against multiplicity’ and also ‘fixation of the differences
in relation to the unity’99 is an erroneous abstraction, this is equally true of
other modes of abstraction. Instead, Marxian abstraction must lead to nothing
but concrete totality, ‘a rich totality of many determinations and relations’,100
a concrete totality [konkrete Totalität], a thought totality [Gedankentotalität].
This is why Marx says: ‘[T]he rise of the method of abstract to concrete, is just
the way of the thought, to appropriate the concrete, to reproduce mentally the
concrete’.101 Later, in the Afterword to the second edition of Capital, he gives
a nuanced version of this: appropriation of the world does not stop at merely
collecting the data, but also brings about the accommodation of the social sub-
ject, that is modern bourgeois society. This is the movement from the chaotic
given totality, as the realm of the intuition, to the thought totality as the con-
cretisation, reproduction of that totality by that subject. This is how one may
understand the point that the Introduction actualises the duty of the recom-
mended method of political economy and links it to totality.102
The revolutionary nature of the Introduction is twofold. On the one hand, it
goes against the idealisation of social life found in Hegel; and on the other hand,

97 The following passage is just one example: Marx 1977, p. 126.

98 See Chapter 4, section 1 above.
99 Arndt 2012, p. 133, my translation.
100 Marx 1973, p. 100.
101 Marx 1973, p. 101.
102 See Arndt 2012, p. 129.
100 chapter 5

it goes against taking social laws in general, and the laws of material produc-
tion in particular, as ‘inviolable natural laws’ as political economists preceding
him mainly did. The structure of the elements of political economy is discussed
physiologically, so to speak: A physiological critical analysis that unlike the one
suggested by Ricardo proposes in later works a different starting point: ‘Marx
showed that Ricardo’s starting point of his physiology of bourgeois system was
problematic’.103
This is why the term Moment is brought up here. The social praxis initi-
ated by the thinking head is distinguished from the self-generating action of
the concept, which Marx finds in Hegel. It is demonstrated in the Introduction
that the totality of the moments of the capitalist mode (production, reproduc-
tion, distribution, exchange, consumption of commodities, service and inform-
ation) are neither essential to social life in general nor natural nor eternal. They
are particular to this mode, and they have a historical genesis, a development
which entails their inevitable disappearance at some point in the future. The
moments of this mode do not merely form coherent organic moments but
more than that, they are dialectical, contradictory moments in incessant ten-
sion.104
To avoid treating dialectics as the counterbalancing of concepts, to grasp the
real relation, the path recommended is to go from reality to textbooks instead
of the other way around. This entails prioritising the social-material over the
ideal and purely theoretical. But this move from the status quo, from reality to
theory, which reminds us of Marx and Engels’s dictum in the German Ideology,
is further developed here.
The move from the abstract to the concrete, which presupposes the empir-
ical appropriation of the concrete and its reproduction in the mind,105 is not
a move from the universal, analysing the riches of the concrete, decomposing
it into its elements, and arriving at particulars. On the contrary: the move has
to be from the simplest and the uncomposed to the most composed; from the
initial product of the Marxian abstraction to the enriched concrete; from the
more or less fixed and simple single moments such as labour, division of labour,
need, and exchange value, rising to the state, exchange among nations, and the

103 Arndt 2012, p. 140, my translation.

104 The distinction between the organic and the dialectical is underscored by Lukács in his
response to Luxemburg. Particularly in the chapters ‘The Marxism of Rosa Luxemburg’
and ‘Critical Observations on Rosa Luxemburg’s “Critique of the Russian Revolution”’. I
elaborate on this in Boveiri 2018.
105 Marx 1983a, p. 35.
marxian totality seen through his works 101

world market;106 from the dumbness of the lived concrete – another way of put-
ting Marx’s chaotic whole – to the enriched whole. The result of the Marxian
abstraction, the enriched whole arrived at, will not be well-defined, because
of its tension-laden characteristic; but it will be rich, unlike an abstractionist
universal that is well-defined but poor.107
To search for a clear-cut, ideal definition of capital, or of any of the categor-
ies discussed by Marx, is doomed to result either in a ridiculous schematisa-
tion or in stripping reality of its dialectical character. Like graphic illustrations,
such efforts can only camouflage the abstractness of the abstraction.108 This
precision through definitions is the procedure adopted by the metaphysician,
unable to face and understand the contradictoriness of the subject of study.109
The attempt should be instead to grasp the complexity of each category, as a
totality that is simultaneously das-der Moment of the contradictory Totality,
namely, the capitalist mode of social life: that is simultaneously the dynamic,
with das Moment, but also the temporal entity, with der Moment, in each total-
ity. I say in each totality of the Totality because the capitalist mode of social
life as a Totality is composed of constituents, each of which is itself a totality.
An analogy between the whole body and the organs of the body and the cells
constituting each is clarificatory.110 In the same way that there is nothing over
and above concreta, there is no production over and above concrete produc-
tions. Instead, any considered production can be taken as either a particular
branch of production or the totality of particular productions. The generalisa-
tion of those particular productions, agriculture, manufacture, etc., that is, the
generalisation of those concreta, constitutes universal production.
What appears to the single individual in everyday life to be the determin-
ant realm of social-economic law is not production but distribution. To see
the reality of distribution as an aspect of capitalist society in its totality and
as a moment in the totality of production, the individual must go beyond
what appears as it does, to destroy the pseudoconcrete, to repeat a Kosíkian
phrase. In so doing, the individual no longer sees the moments as quasi-
independent moments, dictated by the dominant ideology of this mode of
social life, but as internally related, as in any other organic totality. As for this

106 Marx 1983a, p. 35. It is notable that the starting category of Capital, namely the commodity,
is not in this list.
107 Lobkowicz 1968, p. 484.
108 This is further illustrated in Ilyenkov 1982, p. 101. Cf. a passage from Capital Volume ii
referred to earlier, Marx 1963a, p. 228.
109 Ilyenkov 1982, p. 262.
110 See 1. 2 above.
102 chapter 5

quasi-independence of the particular moments of distribution, the scientific-

ally enlightened individual sees this as the threefold complex of the distribu-
tion of the products of production, the distribution of the means of production,
and the subsumption of the individuals in the society (including that indi-
vidual too) within the relations of production of social life in its entirety.111 This
interdependence of the moments, which is simultaneously distinct from taking
them as identical moments (something ascribed by some to a Hegelian total-
ity),112 also counters a quasi-independence of the moments, and leads to the
introduction of their unity as differentiated but interrelated moments which
are the constituents of an organic Totality. The analogy between the organic
totality on the one hand, and the members of the whole and their mutual co-
constitution on the other, is emphasised in the Introduction. Nonetheless, more
than being merely organic, this mode, namely, the capitalist mode of social life,
is also contradictory, a characteristic left unelaborated in the Introduction but
further developed by Marx on numerous occasions.
In this totality, production and consumption, traditonally seen as separate
moments, are here shown to be in an organic relationship. This is against a read-
ing influenced by the dominant ideology of the capitalist mode of production,
in which they are thought of as opposing poles, the endpoint and the starting
points of a study. Instead, they mediate each other: production mediates con-
sumption since it provides consumption with what-is-to-be-consumed; con-
sumption mediates production, because it is only consumption that creates
the subject who will use the products produced by production. Far from being
the endpoint of a discussion of capitalist society, consumption gives rise to the
object of production in a subjective form; it creates the impetus for produc-
tion, and actualises production; the reality of production is thus accomplished
in consumption. This is how a social product, a commodity for instance, is dis-
tinguished as an object* from a natural object.
The complexity of production, and production during the process of ex-
change, as far as it can be so called, is to be left for Capital; nonetheless,
the point that the prioritisation of any of these mediating but also mediated
moments (production, distribution, exchange, consumption) over others in the
totality, what is necessary for the existence of all moments, is a methodological
error, and the result of an ‘empty abstraction’ [leere Abstraktion]113 with clear
political implication, is accentuated in the Introduction. One economist who

111 Marx 1983a, p. 31.

112 See Althusser 2005, p. 206.
113 Marx 1983a, 31.
marxian totality seen through his works 103

took a standpoint akin to the one outlined here is Ricardo. Known as an eco-
nomist who stressed the importance of production, he was unable to find the
proper mechanism of production as a moment in totality in organic relation
with other moments (distribution, exchange, and consumption); he was thus
led to introduce distribution as the exclusive subject matter of economics. In
the contemporary world, a counterpart political alternative is the view hold-
ing that the problem of capitalist society does not lie in its totality but in the
organisation of distribution.114
This is true about all other moments of the capitalist social mode115 besides
production, namely, distribution, exchange, and consumption, which are all
moments in movement and moments of an overall movement.116 Socialisa-
tion of the moments then means their totalisation as moments of an organic
whole. In all this totality of processes, the subject (the capitalist, the worker)
always plays an active role. This is notwithstanding the fact that some passages
taken in isolation may convey the issue differently. Take for instance the point
that ‘the articulation [Gliederung] of distribution is entirely determined by the
articulation of production’.117 Another example is where Marx compares pro-
duction with ether,118 which was thought to be a particular determining gravity
for all other moments. This has led some to attribute over-determinacy to pro-
duction.119 As an alternative reading, I propose that such sentences must be
read along with the passages which accentuate equally the determining roles of
all the moments of totality, which is the case in any living organ. Take the claim
that production showcases [darbietet] the object* of consumption externally,
whereas consumption posits the object* of production ideally, as the inner
image, need, impetus, and goal.120 The examples given by Marx to illustrate
this point are numerous: houses, railroads, and clothes left unused and uncon-
sumed are not houses, railroads, or clothes; they remain only unactualised

114 This emphasis on distribution has been criticised in Postone 2003.

115 I avoid using the term ‘mode of production’ to incorporate the idea that the mode com-
prises all moments (production, distribution, exchange, and consumption). The more
common word ‘system’ is perhaps more accurate, since it may be argued that it adds ‘super-
structure’ to ‘forces and relations’ already implied by ‘mode’. But I avoid using it following
the criticism of system theory in Chapter 4.
116 Hall 2003, p. 119.
117 Marx 1983a, p. 30; or as another one, take Marx’s assertion that the question of the relation-
ship between the distribution that determines the production and the production itself
lies obviously within the production (Marx 1983a, p. 32).
118 Marx 1973, p. 107.
119 For one such reading, apart from Althusser, see Hall 2003, p. 128.
120 Marx 1983a, p. 27.
104 chapter 5

entities, as potentialities. Similarly, the metaphor of ether used here should not
be taken to mean that it can actualise its function without the needed milieu.
Hence one may talk of codetermination instead.
This does not, then, involve an absolute totality that determines all its con-
stituents, with a function for each of the members. That would be an idealist-
religious totality. This is true about all totalities, as in orchestras, and even the
biological totalities.121 Following this, the claims similar to the following need to
be nuanced: ‘Each of the aspects and elements of the structure of the capitalist
organism found therefore its concrete theoretical expression, and was reflected
in a concrete historical abstraction’.122 If this is taken seriously, the result will
be a Hegelian, closed totality.
In the same vein, it should be clear that, just as the concrete appeared in two
types, we also have two types of totality: a real totality and the mental reproduc-
tion of a real totality: the real movement and the exposition or representation
thereof in the movement of categories.123 These two, and the search for them,
should not be conflated. A similar search for a totality in the former just as in
the latter is an example of this conflation.124
An explication on the Introduction in general, and with regard to totality in
particular, cannot leave out an elaboration on a well-known Marxian aphor-
ism: ‘The anatomy of man is a key to the anatomy of ape’.125 First, it should be
noted that the introduction was written just a few weeks before the publication
of Darwin’s On the Origins of Species (published 24 November 1859). One can
speculate as to how Marx would have reformulated this sentence after reading
Darwin’s book. That said, the corollary of this dictum is to take the present as
the starting point of an analysis of the past.126 Nonetheless, this can be taken
a bit misleadingly as well. An anatomist studying the anatomy of apes does
not refer to human beings to affirm his knowledge of apes, unless a diachronic
evolutionary knowledge of the anatomy of ape becomes requisite.

121 See Lewontin 2000, p. 81: ‘It is by no means true that every part serves a function. Many
features of organisms are the epiphenomenal consequences of developmental changes or
functionless leftovers from remote ancestors. Only a quasi-religious commitment to the
belief that everything in the world has a purpose would lead us to provide a functional
explanation for fingerprint ridges or the patches of hair on men’s chests’.
122 Ilyenkov, 1982, p. 220 (emphasis added).
123 This will be further elaborated in 5.
124 For a search of totality in literary works, see Jameson 2016.
125 Marx 1983a, p. 39: ‘Die Anatomie des Menschen ist ein Schlüssel zur Anatomie des Affen’.
126 Cf. Deleuze and Guattari, 2005 p. 168: ‘We do not write with the memories of childhood
but through the blocs of childhood that are the becoming-child of the present’ (my trans-
lation).
marxian totality seen through his works 105

This is, however, true about social sciences: social development necessitates
taking a more advanced phase as the point of departure for a non-advanced
phase. Put differently, except in a unique set of circumstances, the ape does
not necessarily evolve into a human being, but feudalism does necessarily pass
over to some more developed stages of the development of means and rela-
tions of production and distribution. That is, while capital is needed for the
understanding of rental revenue, for instance, the anatomy of the human being
does not need to be considered in order to understand the anatomy of the
ape. Otherwise, taken literally, this aphorism makes the role the ape plays here
similar to Hegel’s owl of Minerva. As is well known, with this analogy in the
introduction to The Philosophy of Right,127 Hegel declares that the function of
philosophy is post factum, that is, it comes after the complete accomplishment
of the social development. Nonetheless, the similarity between these two pas-
sages is deceptive. Notwithstanding the limits to knowing the subject at hand,
for Marx, a conscious change of the world comes first, whereas for Hegel, the
only function philosophy can play is confined to the time after the new status
quo has established itself. It is a contemplation, a reflection of the past. The
philosopher is always a belated teacher, whose role in the change of the status
quo is nil.128
That said, the Marxian aphorism introduces intrinsic and absolutely unsur-
mountable theoretical and practical barriers to knowing the phenomena at
hand. Since we are not living in the aftermath of capitalist society,129 our abil-
ity to grasp these phenomena is limited, and to grasp them fully an orientation
to further conscious changes, based on the contradictions we recognise in the
subject matter, is inevitable. The desire to fully grasp the capitalist mode of
social life entails the desire to transform it, whereas the desire to transform
it should be actualised without the possibility of full comprehension of this
mode. Of course, this is possible only if a particular relationship between total-
ity and history is adopted in defence of historism against historicism, namely,
the iteration of concrete historicism in contradistinction to abstract histor-
icism, as Ilyenkov puts it,130 or even better put, the defence of historism against
historicism as elaborated by Kosík. The only methodological point I would like
to put across is the dialectical relationship between diachrony and synchrony
within totality as the differentiated unity of all the moments: whereas historism

127 Hegel 1989, p. 28.

128 Hegel 1989, pp. 27–8.
129 This is the practical aspect of the absolute barrier in any Marxian study.
130 See Ilyenkov 1982, pp. 212–22. A similar distinction is introduced by Stuart Hall (2003,
p. 133), in distinguishing the historical and historicism.
106 chapter 5

enables us to see the totality and its inherent contradictions, and hence offers
an objective* vantage point for viewing its transformation, historicism, by giv-
ing the dominant role to conditions, fails to do so.131 This is also the response
to the mistakenly posed dichotomous question of whether capitalism should
be studied logically or historically, a point that will be elaborated upon in the
following chapter.

4.2 The Chapter on Money in the Grundrisse

We turn now to the notebooks that constitute the principal text of the Grund-
risse. The first notebook of the Grundrisse, written in October 1857, is entitled
‘The Chapter on Money’, and continues into the second notebook, written in
November of the same year. The starting point in money follows from the pro-
position that since capital ‘comes initially from circulation … [I]ts point of
departure is money’.132 Even in the most extensive elaborations on the relation-
ship between totality and money, this relationship is not adequately discussed.
In Fred Moseley’s brilliant book Money and Totality, for instance, there are
two insufficiencies related to our discussion: first, it supplies hardly any inde-
pendent discussion of totality; second, on the two occasions where Moseley
discusses money with some textual reference to the Grundrisse, one sees hardly
any reference to totality,133 and the other is too short and contents itself with
several references without elaboration.134 Moseley’s extensive discussion in the
book on money and all the interpretations of the transformation problem does
not meet this requirement of discussing money in relation to totality. This may
be owing to the fact, rightly stated, that ‘[t]he Grundrisse is almost entirely at
the level of abstraction of capital in general’,135 but this should not obstruct
an elaboration on money and totality and their relationship as found in the
Grundrisse’s ‘Chapter on Money’.
The same shortcoming can be seen in the most recent collective work pub-
lished on the Grundrisse, entitled In Marx’s Laboratory.136 There is no chapter
devoted to the relationship between money and totality, and in Part ii of the
book, dedicated to ‘Abstract Labour, Value and Money’, this relation is barely

131 See Chapter 4, section 6.

132 Marx 1973, p. 253. The beginning of the Grundrisse carries ambiguities resulting from
indefiniteness of this moment of investigation. On one occasion, the socially determined
individuals as producers in society are said to be the natural starting point of material
production (Marx 1983a, p. 19).
133 Moseley 2015, pp. 47–55.
134 Moseley 2015, pp. 121–3.
135 Moseley 2015, p. 47.
136 Bellofiore, Starosta et al. 2013.
marxian totality seen through his works 107

discussed. All this necessitates a textual analysis on the relation between the
category of money and totality as presented in this chapter of the Grundrisse.
The present section aims at filling this lacuna.
The question is: How can the totality under discussion in this chapter,
namely, money, which is generally thought of as something fixed and solidified,
be grasped in its processual determination, rather than as a simple thing? Gen-
erally counterposing totality against purity but also against abstraction, Marx’s
response comes with his discussion of the three functions ascribed to money
in the text. Money can be the measure of value; it can be the medium of circu-
lation; and it can represent all commodities, and hence it can be the material
representative of wealth, or simply put, it can be money as money.137
As a criterion, or measure of value, money represents the exchange value
of any singular commodity. Money itself does not have any use value per se:
you cannot eat it or dress yourself in it, nor is any other function related to its
substance, for the characteristic of money, as representing the exchange value
of every other commodity, obstructs such use. What remains then is money’s
exchange value – the only value it can have. The complexity here lies in the
fact that the exchange value of money itself, unlike that of other commodit-
ies, cannot be calculated according to the well-known criterion introduced by
Marx, namely, the number of abstract socially necessary labour hours put into
it, a concept that is elaborated on in Capital. The characteristic of money as the
criterion of value lies in admitting these peculiarities.
In its role as the medium of exchange, an undetermined exchange value,
once determined – that is, once its price is found – can be compared with
money or expressed in money terms. The social consequences of this func-
tion are better seen when money is counterposed to the value-producing cause,
that is, labour. The corresponding opposite of money, labour, the creator of val-
ues, is, unlike money, merely a movement; hence the natural measure for it is
time.138 Money as the general equivalent makes the outright division of labour
possible. It can do this because of its independence from the specific product
it exchanges for, from the immediate use value of its product for it. Along with
this division comes a worker, who is the producer of the exchange value repres-
ented by this general equivalent, with ever more and more particular products,
though this worker possesses an ever-smaller role in production.

137 The two first functions are also discussed later in the Notebooks (Notebook vii, Marx 1973,
pp. 789–819). This is itself a support for the suggestion of the oscillation of categories in
the Grundrisse and the categorial movement in Capital.
138 Cf. Aristotle 1993, 219b1 (p. 44): ‘Time is the number of change in respect of before and
after’.
108 chapter 5

The whole social movement is reflected in circulation as a process, or rather

as the totality of all economic processes. Circulation is thus the first form in
which something appears not only in its money or exchange value forms, but
also in its totality. The only medium through which the circulation of all par-
ticular exchange values can be accomplished is money, but exchange value as
what forms the substance of money is itself wealth. It is the totality of these
particularities which each commodity finds in the opposing pole of money
in exchange; the totality of these particular substances form the substance of
money as the general representative of wealth. Thus, the third function comes
onto the scene.
Like every other issue, in order to be expressed relationally, money has to be
put into relation, and it cannot have a universal relation unless put into relation
with a universal. Once production in its totality is taken into consideration, the
money relationship is itself related to the production relation. With the func-
tion of money as the abstract representation of wealth, it turns into the god of
commodities; the totality that exists as the epitome [Inbegriff ] of all commod-
ities. It is hence the material representation of the totality of wealth as well as
the universal form of the totality of wealth. This twofold representation, once
taken individually, is happenstance, but it gains significance only if taken uni-
versally; for instance, there is nothing inherent in a twenty-dollar bill which
makes it a representative of this unit of wealth. Nevertheless, in its totality as
the universal, wealth gains a significance that it lacks in a singular case of value:
a billionaire gains power and social status according to the accumulation of
these individually random components of the totality of wealth. The relation
money has to all other commodities, or to the whole world of wealth, consti-
tutes wealth as such. In money, universal wealth not only finds a form but also
a content. To the claim that ‘money … stands in a logical, rather than material
relation to commodities’139 the chapter reacts as follows: in money the price is
realised, and the substance is wealth in abstraction from its particular modes
of existence, and also in its totality. The realisation of the price in exchange and
the criterion of wealth, however, do not overlap. Regarding price, commodities
are exchanged according to the labels they bear; regarding value, they demon-
strate the number of hours put into their production as exchange values. These
two barely coincide.
This is the complexity that is overlooked quite often by the representatives
of political economy. Such misconceptions of totality criticised by Marx, the
overlooking of money in all its moments, with regard to the function of social

139 Arthur 2004, p. 9.

marxian totality seen through his works 109

exchange in general and the usage of the means of this exchange, money, in
particular, can probably be best understood in his criticism of Adam Smith.
It shows how the relationship between the individual and the society as a
whole, once mispresented, can justify the status quo. Such a standpoint implies
the following abstract axiom: in the pursuit of his individual interest in social
exchange, the individual unintentionally and unconsciously promotes the uni-
versal interest of society in its totality. Marx, however, argues that from such
an abstract axiom, one can equally argue that this conflict of interest can lead
to universal negation in the form of a war of all against all. Such a standpoint
ignores the fact that the form and the content of the pursuit of individual
interest are given by social conditions that are independent of the individual.
If such a concrete totality were brought into the discussion, it would be clear
that, since individuals are the producers of the general equivalent, best found
in money, they have a reciprocal indifference towards each other in society as
a whole. This generalised indifference has its roots in the constant need for
exchange that is based on the production of commodities, with the primary
motive being their exchange values.
In the same vein, as was seen above, the means of the social bond and
the social power of the individual in the pocket, the incarnation of exchange
value as an ‘all-sided mediator’ [Tauschwert als allseitigem Vermittler],140 that
is, money, does not constitute any use value for any individuals in the society; it
is, however, the result of what each individual does as a producer of exchange
value. Nonetheless, the power of the medium of exchange is in inverse relation
to the social bond that relates the individuals to each other in the totality of
the society. The relation between individuals is metamorphosed into a relation
between things. Since the capacity for the activity of each individual is meas-
ured by other individuals as that individual’s capacity to produce money, the
individual’s personal capacities, their personal intersubjective dependence,
turns into, but also is subordinated to, an interdependence among things.
Methodologically, common-sense bourgeois apologists are not able to see
the dual contradictory relationship between money and other commodities.
To them, they are either essentially different or else there is no distinction at
all between money and other commodities. This goes along with the inability
of such apologetics to understand how, for money, its entering into circula-
tion must itself be a moment of its remaining with itself and its remaining
with itself a moment of entering into circulation. That is, money, as realised
exchange value, must simultaneously posit itself as a process in which the

140 Marx 1983a, p. 90.

110 chapter 5

exchange value is already realised. Politically, they do not want to affirm that
within this lies the potential crisis of this contradictory totality, namely, cap-
italism. Money, as the actualised exchange value, must simultaneously posit
itself as price, in which the exchange value is already actualised. Thus, money
is simultaneously the negation of itself as a purely thing-like form.141 They are
not ready to admit that this contradictory unity, which is merely generalised
by the no longer slave-like function of money, as a ‘necessarily displaced social
form’,142 turns into the cause of the subordination of the individuals under the
autonomous relation of the products of their labour, and their alienation; this
turns the relations between them into a relation among things, and this con-
tradiction can be externally manifested only through violent explosion. This
violent explosion cannot be ultimately avoided through reforms or any ameli-
oration in circulation, ignoring the relationship between the threefold role that
money plays in its organic relationship with production, and the totality of
the capitalist social mode of life; this is why totality under this mode of social
life is simultaneous totalisation and detotalisation. In noting this, Marx here
shows, at least schematically, that the three functions of money represent the
three moments of singularity, particularity, and universality, each a totality, and
shows how the last one will lead the reader to the discussion of capital as the
Totality. The last point reflects Marx’s always political attitude in his analysis-
criticism, even in a highly abstract discussion.
That said, his discussion of money presented here suffers from two short-
comings. Although he names metallic money, paper money, credit money, and
labour money, there is no account of coin and paper money; but more import-
antly, the circuit of commodity-money-commodity, mediated by money, that
is, C-M-C, remains undeveloped. The transition from the third function of
money – namely, money as the representative of wealth – to capital is not
developed here.143 Starting from this point, the discussion of money in ‘The
Chapter on Capital’ at the end of the second notebook (titled by Marx ‘Money
as Capital’) is introduced. This is the way ‘the all-dominating economic power
of bourgeois society’, that is, capital, is introduced. This is what we come to
now.

141 Marx 1983a, p. 161; or that modern credit systems are both cause and effect of the concen-
tration of capital. Marx 1983a, p. 58.
142 Murray 2005.
143 For further development of this along these lines see Rosdolsky 1977, p. 149; Moseley 2015,
pp. 121–22.
marxian totality seen through his works 111

4.3 The Chapter on Capital in the Grundrisse

‘The Chapter on Capital’ consists of what Marx wrote between November 1857
and June of 1858. It begins a few pages into Notebook ii, where ‘The Chapter
on Money’ (or what Marx entitled ‘The Chapter on Money as Capital’) ends;
this chapter finishes with Notebook vii.144 Although money is ‘the first form
in which capital as such appears’,145 capital cannot immediately follow from
money as such.146 A mediating step is needed: capital must first posit itself as
‘money as capital’. In positing itself as capital relying on the third function of
money, seen in the previous section, money goes beyond its simple character
as money.147 This is the reason behind introducing ‘The Chapter on Money as
Capital’ between ‘The Chapter on Money’ and ‘The Chapter on Capital’.
Historically as well as conceptually, money as a category takes precedence
over capital. Historically, there are societies with money but without capital.
Nonetheless, if capital exists in a society, so does money. Conceptually, where
both synchronically exist, the understanding of capital makes the thorough
understanding of money possible.
‘The Chapter on Capital’ is divided into three sections: i. ‘The production
process of capital’; ii. ‘The circulation process of capital’; and iii. ‘Capital as the
fructifier or fruit-bringer [Frucht-bringend]. Interest, profit (production costs,
etc.)’.148 Marx aims not to deny the contradictions within each moment, but to
demonstrate and develop the contradictions in each of these three moments
of totality, each in turn shown to be a totality.149 This demonstration must be
done in order to go beyond an ‘empty negation’, since in that case the negation
would remain barren.

144 I am not discussing the few pages entitled Batistat and Carey.
145 Marx 1973, p. 253.
146 This is the miscomprehension that follows from the translation of the sentence ‘Inner-
halb des Systems der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft daher folgt auf den Wert unmittelbar das
Kapital’ (Marx 1983a, p. 177) as ‘Within the system of bourgeois society, capital follows
immediately after money’ (Marx 1973, p. 252).
147 Marx 1973, p. 250: ‘Money as Capital is an aspect of money which goes beyond its simple
character as money’.
148 In Marx 1983a, this goes from page 165 to page 670, after which Marx introduces supple-
ments to the chapters on money and capital.
149 Marx 1973, p. 351: ‘We are the last to deny that capital contains contradictions. Our pur-
pose, rather, is to develop them fully’. Cf. Engels, Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy
(Engels 1975, p. 421): ‘In the critique of political economy, therefore, we shall examine the
basic categories, uncover the contradiction introduced by the free-trade system, and bring
out the consequences of both sides of the contradiction’.
112 chapter 5

4.3.1 The Production Process of Capital

Along with the general emphasis on the point that the subject matter [Sache
selbst] must be taken as a process not as a thing, the totality of capital is posited
here as the moment of the production process of capital. However, that total-
ity – that is, the totality of capital – presupposes production, circulation, and
the unity of these two; any other standpoint according to Marx is merely ‘empty
chatter’.150 The discussion of this first moment will then be possible only if one
makes this complex presupposition of the totality of the totalities – namely,
capital, or more precisely the capitalist mode of social life.
In capital, exchange value posits itself for the first time as exchange value. It
does not become deprived of substance; rather, it actualises itself as the total-
ity of all substances. Nor does it lose its form determination; rather, it preserves
its identity in all the various substances. It is then not any particular commod-
ity but the totality of commodities or totality of the particularities. For each
commodity, its ‘Exchange value posited as the unity of commodity and money
is capital, and this positing itself appears as the circulation of capital’, which
does not form a circle, but a ‘spiral, an expanding curve’.151 Through the pro-
cess of differentiation of capital from labour, with its role as the yeast which
causes the fermentation of the process, capital becomes a process. Labour as
well as capital bears totality and abstraction: the totality of all labour stands
potentially against capital and it is circumstantial against which capital in par-
ticular it stands.152 In its confrontation with capital, labour as the living source
of value – which, given that it is an activity, experiences inactivity as death –
bears a contradiction: it is the absolute poverty once turned into an object, but
also ‘the general possibility of wealth’. Marx here continues what he saw as early
as his dissertation regarding the relationship between totality and contradic-
tion.153 This is a two-step exchange: the worker sells his only commodity, labour
(introduced later as labour power) with a use value and a price, and receives a
specific sum of money; then the capitalist obtains labour, which, as an activ-
ity, posits value, which is the productive labour that not only maintains capital
but multiplies it. While the first exchange is ordinary exchange and falls within
familiar circulation, the second one is a formally and qualitatively different one
that belongs to an essentially different category; it is named exchange only ‘by

150 Marx 1973, p. 266.

151 Marx 1973, p. 266. See also Gauthier 2010, p. 98, where Hegel’s System der Wissenschaft is
depicted as a circle of circles.
152 Marx 1983a, p. 218: ‘[D]ie Totalität aller Arbeiten steht ihm δυνάμει gegenüber, und es ist
zufällig, welche ihm gerade gegenübersteht’.
153 Marx 1973, p. 296. The significance of this dual aspect is neglected by some commentators
(Postone 2003) in quoting Marx that being a worker is a miserable thing.
marxian totality seen through his works 113

misuse’.154 With this, the capital which was considered until this step only in its
material form, in terms of the simple production process, is from the side of its
form determination the process of self-valorisation.
We have seen in the Introduction that the co-constitution of all the moments
of capital (production, distribution, exchange, and consumption) is, like all
organic totalities, not a causal one. The liver does not create the kidney, nor
does the kidney create the liver.155 Rather, the moments co-constitute each
other as different totalities within another totality; they constitute the total-
ity, but are also constituted by that totality – in this case capital.156 It should be
seen now how production is related to another moment, namely, circulation.

4.3.2 The Circulation Process of Capital

In the second section, the totality of capital is posited as the circulation pro-
cess of capital itself as totality. The reciprocal relation between production
and circulation is noteworthy here. Whereas originally capital-based produc-
tion starts off from circulation, we witness how production has circulation as
its own condition, and the production process in its immediacy is a moment
of the circulation process; just as much, the circulation process is a moment of
the production process in its totality. In this way ‘The totality of the moments
of its circulation are themselves moments of its production – its reproduction
as well as its new production’.157
The circulation process of capital is the moment of realisation of the sur-
plus value already created in the moment of the process of the production of
capital. Capital – taken as the production that relies entirely on wage labour
as the subjective condition of production unified with the objective [objekt-
iven] conditions of production, material and instruments aiming at having
the surplus product in its totality – objectifies [objektivierend] the surplus
labour in its totality158 and posits circulation as the necessary moment of the
whole movement.159 This is an externalisation of labour power, of which every
particular moment stands as the totality.160 ‘The totality of the free worker’s

154 Marx 1973, p. 275.

155 Of course, I mean synchronically; diachronically, the bud does create the blossom and the
latter the fruit, to use a classic example from Hegel (1980, p. 12).
156 Marx 1973, p. 278. See Kosík 1976, p. 29: ‘totality concretises itself in the process of forming
its whole as well as its content’.
157 Marx 1973, p. 516.
158 Marx 1973, p. 451.
159 Marx 1983a, p. 328.
160 Marx 1983a, p. 377: ‘[Ü]ber jeder besondren Äußerung steht das Arbeitsvermögen als Total-
ität’. In Marx 1973, p. 464, oddly enough, this sentence is translated as follows: ‘labour
capacity as a totality is greater than every particular expenditure’.
114 chapter 5

labour capacity appears to him as his property, as one of his moments, over
which he, as subject exercises domination, and which he maintains by expend-
ing it’.161 Throughout this process, while the individual worker is alien to the
combination of different types of labours as their totality, the entirety, as the
totality of workers, find themselves equally alien to this totality of labours
and, along with that, alien to the product of their labour.162 The result of this
totality of the development [diese Totalität der Entwicklung] of this power, is
its universal objectification, which appears as the total emptiness of human
innerness.163 Through this totalisation of capital as totality, in contradistinc-
tion to the previous moment, a step farther in the discussion is taken. A step
that equally tends to help along the impartial objective [objektiven] contradic-
tions.164
Regarding the relationship between the totality of this moment, that is, cir-
culation and the totality of capital, a clarificatory point is needed. It is related
to the following passage by Marx: ‘[W]hen we take circulation as a totality, as a
self-enclosed process, C-M-M-C [commodity-money-money-commodity], then
the matter stands differently’.165 Here, as elsewhere when Marx talks about
closed, or self-enclosed totality, this is notwithstanding the fact that ontologic-
ally such a totality does not exist. This is just an assumption, in the same way
that in studying the fall of an apple, the physicist ignores the existing influence
of Jupiter on this fall. That is, in this case the totality is taken to be close so that
an elaboration of the process may be possible.
The constituents of constant capital need clarification. The part of constant
capital continually used and replenished is circulating or floating capital; this
consists of raw materials, etc. Another part of constant capital is more fixed
and its use involves a change of form of the material but it is not used up;
this is the fixed capital. The production of capital appears as the production
in definite portions of circulating capital and fixed capital, so that capital itself
produces its double way of circulating as fixed capital and circulating capital.166
In this circulation, however, unlike the Hegelian circulation of concepts, so to
speak,167 capital as value in process, does not stop at merely sustaining itself

161 Marx 1973, p. 465.

162 Marx 1983a, p. 382.
163 Marx 1983a, p. 396. With regard to alienation, a comparison with the Manuscripts of 1844 is
interesting; see section 2 above. As can be seen, Marx does not ignore it here. For a critical
evaluation of this standpoint see the discussion below in section 4.3.3.
164 Marx 1983a, p. 319.
165 Marx 1973, p. 201, emphasis added.
166 Marx 1973, p. 722.
167 Cf. Hegel 1980a, §161, p. 309.
marxian totality seen through his works 115

formally, but realises itself as value, reproduces the value, and adds new value
to the already existing value.168

4.3.3 Capital as the Fruit-Bearer: Transformation of Surplus Value into

Profit
In the third section, the totality of capital is posited as the unity of the process of
production and circulation of capital, as a social relation the individual produc-
tion of which – like the individual production of language – is an absurdity or
‘non-thing’ [Unding].169 In the first step, the first section here in the production
process of capital (where this totality was simply presupposed), surplus value
is created through labour, which plays the role of the fermenter. This does not
mean that it is realised; that realisation was accomplished in the previous sec-
tion. In the third step, capital as the unity of these previous steps, in its totality,
both reproduces itself as value, and also as value which generates value.170
The way capital posits itself is put in a nuanced way. Although in its total-
ity, capital is posited in the money market, while forming a syllogism with
other sources of the other classes of society, namely, the workers with wages
and landowners with rent, capital must always hold the position of the active
middle term.171 This centrality of the antithesis (so to speak) is an import-
ant methodological difference between Marxian and Hegelian dialectics over-
looked by some commentators.172
The result of the alternative reading is the recognition of an organic inter-
connection between natural life and social life. Marx makes the point in the
following passage:

Nature builds no machines, no locomotives, railways, electric telegraphs,

self-acting mules etc. These are products of human industry; natural
material transformed into organs of the human will over nature, or of
human participation in nature. They are organs of the human brain, cre-
ated by the human hand; the power of knowledge, objectified. The devel-
opment of fixed capital indicates to what degree general social knowledge
has become a direct force of production, and to what degree, hence, the

168 Marx 1973, p. 536.

169 Marx 1983a, p. 398 ‘Sprache als das Produkt eines einzelnen ist ein Unding’. Nicolaus trans-
lates Unding as ‘impossibility’ (Marx 1973, p. 490).
170 Marx 1973, p. 745.
171 Marx 1983a, p. 201.
172 See Smith 1993a, pp. 13–22. The criticism of this standpoint will be given further in a forth-
coming book. For a discussion of Hegel’s syllogism and the floating character of the middle
term, see Gauthier 2010, pp. 73–5.
116 chapter 5

conditions of the process of social life itself have come under the con-
trol of the general intellect and been transformed in accordance with it.
To what degree the powers of social production have been produced, not
only in the form of knowledge, but also as immediate organs of social
practice, of the real life process.173

This is how, through the assimilation-accommodation of the external world

by the subject, the external world is internalised whereas the internal world
is externalised. However, the priority of the world of thoughts over the world
of external reality in their joint totality should not be taken mechanically. The
idea of an as-yet-non-existent house yields place to the house once it exists.174
Nevertheless, the idea of a house is not possible without the existence of the
external world in its entirety; hence, the general materialist dictum of the
primacy of matter, or objectivity over consciousness is recognised.
In this process, however, one distinctive characteristic of the Marxian total-
ity, in contradistinction to the Hegelian totality, should always be borne in
mind. The ‘dominance’, and not the absolute dominance, of a category suf-
fices for a Marxian analysis. Notwithstanding the fact that Marx does on one
occasion introduce capital as ‘the all-dominating economic power of bourgeois
society’,175 this should not be taken in the Hegelian sense developed in his sys-
tem, outside of whose realm nothing exists.176 Overlooking this can lead to
misinterpretations, and all the more so once it is recalled that the processual
unity of the production and realisation of capital is linked to external condi-
tions as well.177 For instance, although it is true that the study of wage labour
is possible after the study of capital, the absolute dominance of wage labour,
the transformation of all the producers into wage labourers, is not necessary
for capital to posit itself.178

173 Marx 1973, p. 706.

174 Ilyenkov 1982, p. 252.
175 Marx 1973, p. 107.
176 Cf. Finelli, 2009, p. 106: ‘In the whole of the Grundrisse manuscript, Marx identifies the
essence of capital, following Hegel, in terms of what I suggest a definition of as “the circle
of presupposition and posit” (Bellofiore and Finelli, 1998, pp. 48–51). That is, in the sense
that the nature of capital is totalitarian, tending to not leave anything that has autonomous
logic outside of itself. Capital tends to translate all external “presuppositions” into products
(to “posit”) within its own logical course’ (emphasis after ‘totalitarian’ added).
177 Marx 1973, p. 407.
178 This is elaborated in Rosdolsky 1977, p. 39: ‘However wage-labour, although it represents
both conceptually and historically the fundamental condition for capital and the cap-
italist mode of production, requires for its full development the precondition that this
mode of production has taken hold of the totality of social relations and transformed
marxian totality seen through his works 117

The ‘totality of production’ now incorporates the objective* incompatibility

between the productive development of society and its existing relations inher-
ent in the totality of capital, in which contradiction the growth of ‘scientific
power’ also plays a role. At a certain point, this objective* contradiction turns
into an insurmountable barrier [Schranke], makes the self-preservation of cap-
ital no longer possible, leads to explosions, and necessitates ‘a higher state of
social production’.179 That the principal barrier to the existence and expansion
of capital as the totality is capital itself, stems from the production of surplus
value;180 and although it seems that it can overcome the barriers posed by cap-
ital itself ideally (i.e., according to the picture presented by bourgeois political
economy), it does not do so in reality.181 This totality, capital, or rather the cap-
italist mode of social life, is thus a contradictory totality, and the world market
is where production is posited as a totality together with all its moments and
also all its contradictions.182
This contradiction, as a fundamental contradiction between the foundation
of bourgeois production (value as measure) and its development, and between
its relation to the totality of forces of production and social relations, is elabor-
ated on by Marx as follows:

Capital is itself the processing contradiction [prozessierende Wider-

spruch], [in] that it strives to reduce labour time to a minimum, while
it posits labour time, on the other side, as sole measure and source of
wealth. Hence it diminishes labour time in the necessary form so as to
increase it in the superfluous form; hence posits the superfluous in grow-
ing measure as a condition – question de vie et de mort [question of life
and death] – for the necessary. On the one side, then, it calls to life all the
powers of science and of nature, as of social combination and of social
intercourse, in order to make the creation of wealth independent (relat-

even the rural producers into wage-labourers. Consequently, we can only study this cat-
egory exhaustively after we have studied capital and landed property’. Notwithstanding
some sweeping negative evaluations of this book (e.g., Dunayeskaya 1978), Rosdolsky’s
book remains, in my judgement, a powerful forerunner of the existing interpretations of
the Grundrisse. For a more nuanced judgement see Martin Nicolaus in Marx 1973, p. 23
n. 16. According to Callinicos, Rosdolsky’s book is one of the few commentaries to ‘have
passed the test of time, setting standards for their successors to match up to’ (Callinicos
2014, p. 19).
179 Marx 1973, pp. 749–50.
180 Marx 1973, p. 408.
181 Marx 1973, p. 410.
182 Marx 1973, pp. 227–8.
118 chapter 5

ively) of the labour time employed on it. On the other side, it wants to
use labour time as the measuring rod for the giant social forces thereby
created, and to confine them within the limits required to maintain the
already created value as value. Forces of production and social relations
– two different sides of the development of the social individual – appear
to capital as mere means, and are merely means for it to produce on its
limited foundation. In fact, however, they are the material conditions to
blast this foundation.183

As can be seen here, in the Grundrisse Marx reiterates, though in a manner

different from his previous works, the contradiction paradigm; hence the idea
that there is a shift in the Grundrisse from ignoring the paradigm of contra-
diction in works preceding the Grundrisse to the paradigm of abstraction in
the Grundrisse does not bear scrutiny.184 The paradigm of contradiction, the
inherent contradiction of capital, further elaborated on in Capital, is under-
standable solely through the Marxian abstraction presented here. Along the
same lines, the claim that there is a shift of negative connotation from con-
tradiction to abstraction, as from ‘alienated labour’ to ‘abstract labour’,185 is
equally inaccurate. What is added to the alienatedness of labour in The Eco-
nomic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 is its being abstract. The reading

183 Marx 1983a, pp. 601–2: ‘Das Kapital ist selbst der prozessierende Widerspruch [dadurch],
daß es die Arbeitszeit auf ein Minimum zu reduzieren strebt, während es andrerseits die
Arbeitszeit als einziges Maß und Quelle des Reichtums setzt. Es vermindert die Arbeit-
szeit daher in der Form der notwendigen, um sie zu vermehren in der Form der über-
flüssigen; setzt daher die überflüssige in wachsendem Maß als Bedingung – question de
vie et de mort – für die notwendige. Nach der einen Seite hin ruft es also alle Mächte
der Wissenschaft und der Natur wie der gesellschaftlichen Kombination und des gesell-
schaftlichen Verkehrs ins Leben, um die Schöpfung des Reichtums unabhängig (relativ)
zu machen von der auf sie angewandten Arbeitszeit. Nach der andren Seite wie es diese
so geschaffnen riesigen Gesellschaftskräfte messen an der Arbeitszeit und sie einbannen
in die Grenzen, die erheischt sind, um den schon geschaffnen Wert als Wert zu erhalten.
Die Produktivkräfte und gesellschaftlichen Beziehungen – beides verschiedne Seiten der
Entwicklung des gesellschaftlichen Individuums – erscheinen dem Kapital nur als Mit-
tel und sind für es nur Mittel, um von seiner bornierten Grundlage aus zu produzieren.
In fact aber sind sie die materiellen Bedingungen, um sie in die Luft zu sprengen’. Marx
1973, p. 706, modified translation, emphasis added. Cf. ‘Thus, growing wealthy is an end in
itself. The goal-determining activity of capital can only be that of growing wealthier, i.e.
of magnification, of increasing itself’. Marx 1973, p. 270.
184 Finelli 2009, p. 107.
185 Cf. Finelli 2009, p. 105: ‘In short, in my opinion, the negative connotation of labour changes
from Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts to Grundrisse, from a definition of “alien-
ated labour” to that of “abstract labour”’.
marxian totality seen through his works 119

presented here in these two cases is more dialectical-integrative, as it shows

how these two moments of Marx’s thought may be put in relation to one
another.
It needs to be emphasised that capital as a totality should be understood
as more than a concept; hence in its analysis and criticism both a twofold sys-
tematic and a historical exposition is necessary.186 It is of course a concept.
However, this concept is the concept of an objective* entity bearing object-
ively* all its inherent contradictions.187 Capital, as that entity, is according to
Marx the foundation of bourgeois society, and its concept the fundamental
concept of modern economics, with the concept as merely the counter-image
[Gegenbild] of the entity. This of course merely repeats what is found in the
Grundrisse,188 where Marx also criticises Sismondi for the misconception of
taking capital as a commercial concept.189 This would leave the reader puzzled
as to how a concept ‘presses to reduce labour time’, as we see in this passage.
This is also a repercussion of the claim I advanced in Chapter 4, that for a
Marxian dialectics, the subject matter [Sache selbst], unlike in the Hegelian
dialectic, is not a Begriff. In this reading the contradictions of the totality under
study as well as the very totality itself are both objective* and social.190
Another noteworthy point that should be highlighted in the Grundrisse with
reference to the terms used in this passage is related to what is really at stake,
namely, determinations [Bestimmungen] and relations [Beziehungen]. Unlike
the translation given by Nicolaus, who translates Bestimmungen und Beziehun-
gen correctly as ‘determinations and relations’, in the translation of the same
passage in Rosdolsky’s seminal Making of Capital, we read ‘definitions and rela-
tions’.191 Stressing this point is important not only because of the difference
between these two terms in Marx and Hegel, but also because some readings of
Marx’s works discuss them as if the whole project can basically be summed up
as an effort to provide the reader with definitions.192 Whereas determination is

186 Bellofiore, 2009, p. 179: ‘As a totality, capital has to be known as a concept, and hence through
a systematic exposition’ (emphasis added). Cf. Marx 1973, p. 310:
‘This dialectical process of its becoming is only the ideal expression of the real move-
ment through which capital comes into being’.
187 We will return to the objectiveness of the contradictoriness in the following section on
Capital.
188 Marx 1973, p. 331.
189 Marx 1983a, p. 230, as he quotes Sismondi saying: ‘Das Kapital ist ein kaufmännischer
Begriff’.
190 Cf. Weston 2012. This subject will be later discussed.
191 Rosdolsky 1977, p. 27.
192 For one example of this kind, see Finelli 2009.
120 chapter 5

to be taken, along with totalisation and concretisation, as a metacategory that

is practically quasi-omnipresent in any genuinely dialectical work, this is not
true of definition.193

4.4 Conclusion
While it is correct to say that the Grundrisse is of inestimable value in that it
allows us to see the method of inquiry being implemented,194 the drawback
of the book would be the impossibility of an exposition; the exposition that
cannot be performed without the inquiry being performed here.195 What we
witnessed here, after the Introduction, was not the exposition of totality as a
metacategory, nor the exposition of the categorial movement of categories,
but an oscillation between two major categories, namely, ‘money’ and ‘cap-
ital’ (with a return to the discussion of money near to the end of the Note-
books), to each of which a chapter was allotted. Among the instances of the
absence of categorial movement in the Grundrisse, the following are perhaps
noteworthy. Whereas in Section Two of the Grundrisse, ‘The Circulation Pro-
cess of Capital’, the discussion of both constant and variable capital appear,
these are presented in different moments of the discussion, constant cap-
ital and variable capital in Volume i, fixed capital and circulating capital in
Volume ii.
Exposition of the Sache selbst is then left for Capital. Hence, it is right to say
that the key elements of Marxian development and overthrow of the Hegelian
philosophy (although ‘overthrow’ is a bit too strong) are found here. A philo-
sophical conception of the bourgeois totality is taken up,196 but the language
remains to a large extent within the frame of the Hegelian dialectic, so much
so that it is not wrong to say that ‘[a]lmost every sentence in the Grundrisse
(Rough Draft) is reminiscent of this prototype [i.e., Hegel’s philosophy] in the
choice of words’.197 With all that said, for a dialectical exposition of totality, one

193 This is the case not only in Marx’s works, but also in Hegel, best seen, I think, in the Science
of Logic. For further elaboration on this, see Boveiri 2016b.
194 Marx 1973, p. 7.
195 The development of this relationship is the subject of the following chapter.
196 Schmidt 1971, p. 214: ‘A study of this work [i.e., the Grundrisse] can contribute in particular
to the demolition of the legend, which still presses heavily on discussions of Marx, that
only the thought of the ‘young Marx’ is of philosophical interest, and that the later, factu-
ally economic, problematic buried all the original impulse of real humanism’. As we have
seen in Chapter 4, this is admitted also by Kosík.
197 Reichelt 2001a, p. 3: ‘Fast jeder Satz in den Grundrissen (Rohentwurf) erinnert in der Wort-
wahl an dieses Vorbild’ (my translation).
marxian totality seen through his works 121

must refer to Capital. What is seen in the Grundrisse at the surface is built into
the exposition in Capital.198 Nevertheless, we must disambiguate a point first.
In a letter to Lassalle of 22 February 1858, in which he calls the work Critique of
Economic Categories, Marx says that it is simultaneously an exposition of the
capitalist system, and through this exposition, a critique of it.199 I suggest that
the term ‘exposition’ [Darstellung] should be taken in a non-technical sense to
mean simply exposition of research. For the exposition of the exposition, so to
speak – that is, for the method that must be formally distinguished from the
method of inquiry – one has to wait for Capital. As Marx himself puts it on
another occasion, what is at hand in the Grundrisse is the ‘method of elabora-
tion’.200
In this section, up to this point, we have depicted the material introduced
in the Introduction and in the Grundrisse, but only with reference to the brief
guidelines on method in these works; no attempt could be fully realised to elab-
orate on method without a reference to other equally succinct points presented
in the Afterword to the second edition of the first volume of Capital. It what fol-
lows, it will be more clearly shown that the threefold function of the method of
inquiry, as elaborated by Marx in the Afterword, is also found in the Grundrisse,
and is retained in his manuscripts as long as they are not intended for pub-
lication: the material is incorporated in detail, the forms of the development
of the material are analysed, and some unity is implied in these forms. That
said, the movement from the abstract to the concrete involves some exigencies
that the structure of the Grundrisse, notwithstanding the common dialect-
ical terms found therein – and insofar as a structure may be ascribed to it –
necessarily fails to meet. Politically, once the discussion has been enriched by
the concretisation-totalisation discourse which is the result of the exposition
[Darstellung] of the totality of capital, the utopian optimism of the Grundrisse
should also be overcome. Furthermore, whereas the ‘historical and dialectical
[exposition] are still treated as parallel in the Grundrisse’,201 we will see that
Marx recognises their difference, notwithstanding their interrelatedness, in the
three volumes of Capital. Hence in Capital, historical exposition follows theor-
etical exposition. The interrelatedness of the two moments lies in the fact that
the systematic theoretical exposition has the historical premise behind it and
vice versa.202

198 Marx 1973, p. 60.

199 Marx 1978c, p. 550.
200 Marx 1978b, p. 260.
201 Reichelt 2007, p. 37 n. 119.
202 C.f. Stuart 2003, 139.
122 chapter 5

In the last one and a half pages before the text of the manuscript breaks off,
at the very end of Notebook vii, titled ‘Value’, Marx writes, ‘Dieser Abschnitt
nachzunehmen’.203 Nicolaus translates this as: ‘This section to be brought for-
ward’. It can also mean: ‘This section to be taken [into consideration] further’.
Marx does both: he brings it forward and elaborates on it. He follows this phrase
with a disclosure: ‘The first category with which the wealth of the bourgeoisie
exposes itself is that of a commodity’.204 This may be identified as the fruit
of the Odyssey of the Grundrisse, the result of the method of inquiry in the
Grundrisse. It is still to be seen how this starting point, this object* [Gegen-
stand], carries along the categorial movement with itself. For that, one must
wait for Capital205 – the subject of the following section.

5 Totality in Categorial Movement: Capital

This section argues for a process of totalisation-concretisation of the categor-

ies in Marx’s Capital, where this process of totalisation-concretisation is shown
to be at the same time the process of socialisation of the categories.206 This
entails a movement from one totality – namely, ‘commodity’, the cellular bearer
of the Totality – to another totality, namely, ‘classes’, or a movement from what
is primarily a thing to history. We witness the socialisation, totalisation, and
concretisation of the commodity. This is the movement through which the syn-
thesis that begins from the moment of the Process of Production in Volume i,
passes through the moment of the Process of Circulation (distribution and
exchange) in Volume ii, and culminates in Configurations of the Total Produc-
tion [Gestalltungen des Gesamtprozeßes] in Volume iii. All this development
has a peculiar characteristic: in contrast to what was seen in the Grundrisse, the
three volumes of Capital barely discuss totality per se. This does not, however,
entail that this is not dealt with. Quite to the contrary! In the same way, the

203 Marx 1983a, pp. 767–8.

204 Marx 1983a, p. 767: ‘Die erste Kategorie, worin sich der bürgerliche Reichtum darstellt, ist
die der Ware’.
205 There are still further intermediary passages between the Grundrisse and Capital. Take
the following widely quoted passage from Zur Kritik der politischen Ökonomie as an
example: ‘Die Gesamtheit dieser Produktionsverhältnisse bildet die ökonomische Struk-
tur der Gesellschaft, die reale Basis, worauf sich ein juristischer und politischer Überbau
erhebt, und welcher bestimmte gesellschaftliche Bewußtseinsformen entsprechen’ (Marx
1961c, p. 8, emphasis added).
206 The term ‘socialisation’ is what I prefer to ‘externalisation’ to characterise Marxian cat-
egorial movement, as suggested by Callinicos 2014, p. 124.
marxian totality seen through his works 123

word ‘biology’ might not appear in a book on biology, but it would certainly
appear in a book that explains what biology is.207 The relationship between
the former and the latter is somewhat analogical to the relationship between
Capital and the Grundrisse. Whereas the totalities in the Grundrisse are far
from a haphazard potpourri, they are equally far from a categorial movement
involving socialisation-concretisation-totalisation.
By demarcating the differences between these two works, this section of the
book paves the way for what will be argued in the next chapter, which I ven-
ture to propose is its contribution to contemporary Marxian studies. To do this,
I begin with an analysis of the first paragraph of the first volume of Capital.
From this analysis, drawing on an explanation regarding the role each of the
three volumes plays in Marx’s total exposition as found at the beginning of the
third volume of Capital, I accentuate the points where Marx’s explanation gives
support to the strategy I adopt, in arguing for the view that there is in Capital
a threefold categorial movement of totalities. By linking this with the last cat-
egory in Marx’s Capital at the end of Volume iii, namely, ‘Classes’, I show how
the moments between these two beginning and ending moments support my
view regarding the totality in categorial movement. In this way we will see how
the first totality, namely, commodity, is concretised, totalised, and socialised.
That said, this section does not aim at depicting all the categories or determ-
inations found in the three volumes of Capital. This would be neither helpful
nor necessary. It would not be helpful, because similar efforts, aiming at dif-
ferent problems, already exist in the literature.208 It is not necessary, since my
goal here is different, namely, to reveal the quasi-omnipresence of the meta-
category of totality and its major characteristics in these three books. One of
the theses proposed in this chapter is that Capital, unlike all of Marx’s other
works, has a definite starting point that is necessary, absolute, and mediated,
and which constitutes a categorial movement and is in turn constituted by this
movement. The following pages are devoted to arguing for this claim.

5.1 Categorial Movement in Capital Volume i

5.1.1 The Opening Passage of Capital Volume i
The beginning of Volume iii of Capital elaborates on the role attributed to each
of the three volumes as a whole.The elaboration on this passage functions as
the ‘leading thread’ of the account which follows here.

207 Cf. Althusser’s (2005, p. 205) claim that the Hegelian terms appear rarely in Capital, and
hence this book is not a philosophical but a scientific work.
208 Sekine 1997a, 1997b; Smith 1990.
124 chapter 5

Regarding the first volume, we read:

Volume 1 of Capital investigated the appearances [Erscheinungen] exhib-

ited by the capitalist production process, taken for itself [ für sich], i.e. the
immediate production process, in which connection all secondary influ-
ences external to this process were left out of account.209

This is then an incomplete moment of a larger account towards recreation of

the reality at hand, namely, the capitalist social mode. This analysis is done by
taking the production process

both as an isolated event and as a process of reproduction: the produc-

tion of surplus-value, and the production of capital itself. The formal and
material changes undergone by capital in the circulation sphere were
assumed, and no attempt was made to consider their details. It was, there-
fore, assumed both that the capitalist sells the product at its value and that
he finds in the circulation sphere the material means of production that
he needs to begin the process anew or to continue it without a break. The
only act within the circulation sphere which we had to dwell on in that
volume was the purchase and sale of labour-power as the basic condition
of capitalist production.210

As noted before, however, at the very end of the seventh notebook, after writing
that this section has to be brought forward, Marx writes: ‘The first category with
which the bourgeois wealth exposes itself is commodity.’211 Interestingly, this is
said to be how this wealth [Reichtum] is exposed. This needs apparently little
modification to suit the wording of Capital. Let us quote the first paragraph in
full:

Der Reichtum der Gesellschaften, in welchen kapitalistische Produktion-

sweise herrscht, erscheint als eine ‘ungeheure Warensammlung’, die ein-

209 Marx 1991a, p. 117 (translation modified). ‘Im ersten Buch wurden die Erscheinungen
untersucht, die der kapitalistische Produktionsprozeß, für sich genommen, darbietet, als
unmittelbarer Produktionsprozeß, bei dem noch von allen sekundären Einwirkungen
ihm fremder Umstände abgesehn wurde. Aber dieser unmittelbare Produktionsprozeß
erschöpft nicht den Lebenslauf des Kapitals’. Marx 1964, p. 33.
210 Marx 1992a, pp. 428–9.
211 Marx 1983a, p. 767: ‘Die erste Kategorie, worin sich der bürgerliche Reichtum darstellt, ist
die der Ware’.
marxian totality seen through his works 125

zelne Ware als seine Elementarform. Unsere Untersuchung beginnt da-

her mit der Analyse der Ware.212

In this paragraph, which is left unchanged from the first edition,213 we witness
several important methodological points. The first important word of the para-
graph, ‘wealth’ [Reichtum], reminds the reader of Adam Smith’s The Wealth of
Nations; however, Marx’s subject is not the wealth of nations, but the wealth of
societies. The reason is clear: several nations can be constituents of the capital-
ist mode of social life; the nations composing societies are then to be discussed
according to the similarities prevailing throughout a society, which can be com-
mon among various nations. The concept of society (in this respect, like nation)
carries within it the notion of contingency different from that found in natural
objects, a consequence of the distinction between object and object* we dis-
cussed earlier.214 To confirm this interpretation, the paragraph following this
uses the word object* [Gegenstand].
The next noteworthy phrase is ‘the capitalist mode of production’. As I sug-
gested before, I think we may ignore ‘production’, and say instead ‘the capitalist
mode of social life’ to be able to stop focusing just on production. In so doing,
we will be able to incorporate all the moments of a capitalist society, and not
just production, distribution, exchange, and consumption, as was suggested in
the Introduction of the Grundrisse and discussed in the previous section, but
also the superstructural as well as the technological features (forces of pro-
duction) of capitalist society. The word ‘dominates’ [herrscht] also implies an
important distinctive point in the Marxian approach. One is related to the con-
sequences of this domination. The domination (or generalisation) of this form
of production brings about the contradictory characteristics in the totality of
social life which stem from the basic contradiction within this cellular form.
The social totality is constituted by the determination of the commodity by
this ‘smallest social form in which the labour product is exposed in the cur-
rent society’.215 The logic of the necessity of this generalisation imposes itself
on all aspects of the totality. There are limits to this analysis: only those societ-
ies which share those characteristics can be discussed here, and some societies

212 Marx 1962a, p. 49 (emphasis added).

213 Marx 1983b, p. 17: ‘Der Reichthum der Gesellschaften, in welchen kapitalistische Produk-
tionsweise herrscht, erscheint als eine “ungeheure Waarensammlung”, die einzelne Waare
als seine Elementarform. Unsere Untersuchung beginnt daher mit der Analyse der Waare’.
214 See Chapter 4 and section 1 above.
215 Marx 1987b, p. 369: ‘einfachste gesellschaftliche Form, worin sich das Arbeitsprodukt in
der jetzigen Gesellschaft darstellt’.
126 chapter 5

therefore remain outside the scope of the discussion. Empirically, the life of
the natives per se (in their own societies) cannot be discussed in this ana-
lysis, nor can societies where what is dominant is not the capitalist mode of
social life. Take Occupied Palestine for instance: the relationship among people
in that territory cannot be analysed with reference to the Marxian approach
presented here, because the characteristics of such relationships are them-
selves overshadowed by the relations of the occupation. These relationships
among people can, of course, be analysed in their relation to the totality of this
mode, insofar as it influences or even creates them, as is arguably the case in
Occupied Palestine. What is at hand, then, is an open totality that incorporates
the externality216 as well.217
All this wealth, the text goes on, ‘appears’ [erscheint] as an amalgam of com-
modities. From a methodological point of view, the word ‘appears’ is more
precise than the word ‘exposes’ that we saw at the end of Notebook vii of the
Grundrisse. It ‘appears’ so only to those who have already finished their inquiry,
and equally to those familiarised with this exposition. The idea is that this
tremendous mass of commodities will be shown to be far from a haphazard
potpourri. Not only because, as can be instantly known, these are not natural
but man-made objects*, but also because each, as a thing, is a false abstraction
which detaches whoever focuses on it from the processual life of the society
dominated by the capitalist mode. This is a reminder that a commodity is a
totality ‘of capitalism’s abstract and undeveloped determinations’218 in capital-
ism as the Totality. The question that arises immediately is whether it is also as
it appears. This duality of appears-is, or let us say appearance-essence, remains a
crucial point through the three volumes of Capital. Given that equating appear-
ance and essence is, to say the least, not always correct, an effort is necessary.
This reminds us of the detour or bypass [Oklika] underscored in Chapter 4.
The equivalent of this [Oklika] here is the [Untersuchung], or investigation,
which begins with the analysis of the commodity. The analysis [Analyse] itself
is what the investigation begins with. The commodity, introduced as an ele-
ment, is later known to be the product of this mode, the particular existence
of which constitutes the capitalist mode in its totality, as its element. Being a

216 The term ‘externality’ is an alternative proposed by Enrique Dussel (2001) in preference
to ‘totality’.
217 Then, those claims miss the point that go so far as to say ‘there can be absolutely no aspect
of human existence that does not become determined as an instance of this metabolic
interaction inverted as an attribute of capital. However, inverted in its form, this is the
mode in which the materiality of human life exists. As a consequence, there can be no
exteriority to its movement’ (Starosta 2016, p. 202, emphasis added).
218 Kosík 1976, p. 109.
marxian totality seen through his works 127

totality, it also has the germ of all the contradictions inherent in wealth, but also
of the whole capitalist mode; this is why, therefore [daher], the analysis must
begin with that.219 Being an elementary form [Elementarform] is for a commod-
ity true in two senses: it is the starting point, and it is also the smallest cellular
form of this mode or this apparent wealth. It also appears as only an element-
ary form. Since this form is not an empty form, it has a content; moreover, given
that form, according to Marx, is the mode of material existence, in this case the
cellular form is simultaneously the cellular mode of material existence of that
totality, namely, the capitalist mode.
However, the goal is not mere analysis of this mode, but as the title of the
book implies, its critique. Hence, showing the contradictions of this mode
within this cellular form is what Marx’s masterpiece begins with: contradic-
tions within this cellular form of totality represent the contradictions of this
mode of social life in its totality once they have passed through subsequent
steps shown to be also inherently related to all other moments-totalities. What
we witness in this paragraph is then the movement from totality to Totality,
where totality is the commodity and Totality the capitalist mode of social life,
the contradictions of which will be revealed through the movement between
the commodity and how commodity appears as wealth. Each moment of this
Totality, then, is at the same time a totality.
The question that remains to be answered is: If the starting point of investig-
ation is supposed to be the commodity, why does such a precise starting point
appear in this book, and not in the Grundrisse? While an adequate response
to this question cannot be given here – for that the reader must wait until the
following chapter – it may be accepted for the time being that perhaps in the
Grundrisse Marx was dealing with a somewhat different problem, namely, the
method of inquiry. Last but not least, one further word that does not appear
in this text, and that is of utmost importance, is the word ‘process’, a word
repeated in the subtitle of all three volumes of Capital: the categories discussed
are not things but the processes of which their thing-likeness is just an abstrac-
tion.
However, the introduction of the very starting point, the first category, name-
ly, the commodity, comes as the introduction of the horizon to which the
moment of this category leads, namely, the capitalist mode of social life; it can
even be said that this starting point is the result of envisaging such a horizon.
This very starting point, however, is the result of the recognition of a contradic-
tion lying in this very category, namely, its dual existence, made up of realities

219 This will be further elaborated in Chapter 6.

128 chapter 5

which repel each other but also cohere.220 According to this reading, all other
categories, including abstract labour, which produces the exchange value of
each commodity, are categories and determinations that will be derived from
the commodity as the starting point.221
The claim presented here regarding the existence of systematic dialectical
method in the form of categorial movement in Capital does not entail that this
movement is smooth. More precisely, the fact that there are moments of dis-
cordant or out-of-tune analysis222 in Marx’s account in Capital in general and in
the first volume in particular, does not entail the absence of such a movement.

5.1.2 Categorial Movement in Capital Volume i

It has been argued previously that a truly genuine dialectical conception of
totality gives weight equally to the whole and to the parts in an organic relation-
ship. In Capital Volume i, Marx elaborates on the topic of heterogeneous and
organic manufactures: discontinuous processes involving workers with many
different skills as in manufacturing locomotives, and ‘organic’ continuous man-
ufacturing. Whereas in the former the cooperation is scattered and loosely con-
nected, this is not the case in the latter: direct cooperation of all the workers is
absolutely necessary. He emphasises a totality in the latter type of manufactur-
ing, in which each worker keeps the other workers busy, and the relationship
is such that the whole crumbles when one member or group that is constitu-
ent of the totality, as an ‘organ of a single organism’, functions improperly: ‘the
whole body is paralysed if only one of its members is missing’.223 ‘The collect-
ive worker, from the combination of the many specialised workers’,224 turns the
homogeneous abstract labour (as that which produces exchange value) and the
heterogeneous concrete labour (as that which produces use value) into a total-
ity in the action of the individuals working together as a whole. The result is
the objective* world of commodities, possessing the dual characteristics of use
value and exchange value.

220 Cf. Hegel 1969c, p. 556: ‘Die konkrete Totalität, welche den Anfang macht, hat als solche in
ihr selbst den Anfang des Fortgehens und der Entwicklung’.
221 Cf. Smith 1990, p. 59: ‘Abstract labour … is the starting point in the reconstruction of the
capitalist mode of production proposed by Marx’.
222 The examples abound in the literature. Paul Mattick, Jr. argues that in Capital the neces-
sity of money as ‘the necessary form of the appearance’ of abstract labour is not derived
through a logical argument but practical requirements; see Mattick 1993, pp. 115–34. In the
same volume where Mattick’s paper appears, Geert Reuten (1993) argues that the deriva-
tion of labour is not a dialectical but rather an analytical or reductive abstraction.
223 Marx 1976, p. 466.
224 Marx 1976, p. 464.
marxian totality seen through his works 129

In further elaborating on the objectivity of this totality, in his discussion in

the third section of the first chapter, on the Value Form or Exchange Value,
Marx introduces an objectivity* [Gegenständlichkeit] to contradistinguish this
from the objectivity found in physical objects. In the former, there is not even
one atom found in the commodities as physical objects, when considered with
respect to their ‘value objectivity’* [Wertgegenständlichkeit].225 Its immaterial-
ity, however, should not be taken to entail the absence of objectivity, nor should
it be taken as evidence against Marx’s being a materialist; rather, it indicates
not only that Marx’s materialism ‘centers on material practices in the social
world’,226 but also attributes this materiality to the material world, as seen in
his discussion regarding contradictions in nature. Given that value is a social
relation, the fact that you cannot ‘see, touch or feel’ it227 does not entail that it
is not objective*.
Notwithstanding the difference in objectivity or materiality that Marx intro-
duces here in the context of the distinction between use value and exchange
value, or social objectivity* versus natural objectivity, this difference should
not be taken to interrupt objectivity, let alone to express any sweeping denial
of objectivity,228 or, following from that, the objectivity of the contradictions
themselves. If one recalls the sociality of the commodity, it is not surpris-
ing that such a standpoint leads to claims like that of the non-existence of
society,229 found also in the mouths of the founders of the current neoliberal
era.230 Marx’s approach is quite different. According to him, the same law of the
transformation of quantitative changes into qualitative changes at a particular
point, the law that is true of natural phenomena, holds equally true in society
and social history.231 These contradictions constitute an objectively* contra-

225 Marx 1976, p. 138: ‘Not an atom of matter enters into the objectivity* of commodities as
values; in this it is the direct opposite of the coarsely sensuous objectivity* of commod-
ities as physical objects’. In this, Marx iterates the standpoint already put forward in the
Grundrisse: ‘Das Kapital ist seinem Wesen nach immer immateriell’ (Marx 1983a. p. 230).
226 Smith 1993b, p. 17.
227 Harvey 2010, p. 33.
228 Cf. Žižek 2002, p. 181: ‘“There is no world” means: there is no “true objective reality”, since
reality as such emerges from a distorted perspective, from a disturbance of the equilibrium
of the primordial Void-Nothingness’ (emphasis added).
229 Žižek 2002, p. 182.
230 Cf. Thatcher 1987: ‘They are casting their problems at society. And, you know, there’s no
such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families. And
no government can do anything except through people, and people must look after them-
selves first’.
231 Marx 1962a, p. 327: ‘Hier, wie in der Naturwissenschaft, bewährt sich die Richtigkeit des
von Hegel in seiner Logik entdeckten Gesetzes, daß bloß quantitative Verändrungen auf
130 chapter 5

dictory totality, and they can only be transformed objectively*. The expression
of contradiction found in prices, for instance, is the reflection of the real object-
ive* immanent contradiction in this mode of production.232 In Chapter 3 of
Capital, in the discussion of the metamorphosis of commodities and inherent
contradictions, Marx refers to a specific natural phenomenon, that of planetary
motion. The realisation of contradictions and their resolution in the exchange
process of commodities is claimed to be similar to the realisation and resol-
ution of the contradiction between momentum and gravitation in elliptical
motion.233
As to the elementary form of this totality with ‘its sensuous characterist-
ics extinguished’,234 since no matter how and how many times a commod-
ity is turned and twisted around, its value-possessing character cannot be
sensuously grasped at all, it is particularly this objectivity* which deprives
the commodities of qualitative difference;235 thus their exchange value (the
only characteristic left to them) necessitates the application of the power of
abstraction as the only available means for their analysis. To call this activ-
ity a ‘method’ of solving contradictions, as Marx does, is what permits me to
say that the Marxian method is in a sense a metamethod, in that it admits the
impossibility of solving contradictions simply in theory, and instead searches
for a resolution of the contradictions in the only remaining manner: praxis
in the objective* sphere of the contradictions. This is the repercussion of
the second thesis of Feuerbach, in which the role of praxis in truth is high-
lighted.
The totality thus taken has different representations. ‘The totality of het-
erogeneous use-values or physical commodities reflects a totality of similarly
heterogeneous forms of useful labour, which differ in order, genus, species,
and variety: in short, a social division of labour’.236 The individual labourer
owns a constituent part of the totality of the labour power, and comes into

einem gewissen Punkt in qualitative Unterschiede umschlagen’. Cf. p. 623: ‘[D]er Hegel-
sche Widerspruch [ist] die Springquelle aller Dialektik’.
232 Marx 1976, pp. 322–3: ‘If, therefore, such expressions as “£ 90 variable capital” or “such
and such a quantity of self-valorizing value” appear to contain contradictions, this is only
because they express a contradiction immanent in capitalist production’.
233 Marx 1976, p. 198.
234 Marx 1976, p. 128.
235 Marx 1976, p. 128: ‘As use-values, commodities differ above all in quality, while as exchange-
values they can only differ in quantity, and therefore do not contain an atom of use-
value’.
236 Marx 1976, p. 132. This twofold totality overlooked by some commentators leads to drastic
consequences. For an example see Postone 2003.
marxian totality seen through his works 131

relation with other labourers; this has a social form only once they exchange
their labour power for money or for means of subsistence.237 Their relationship
with each other turns into a relationship with things, which entails spectre-like
objectivity* [gespenstige Gegenständlichkeit].238 Furthermore, in the perpetual
need for self-alienation, they lose their identity in its totality.239
In Marx’s treatment of the cause of the distinction between labour and
labour power, the elaboration on this category takes us beyond the point that
had been reached in The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844. Here
in Capital, he repeats the interconnection between the earth and work, as a
twofold source of wealth. Whereas ‘labour-power itself is, above all else, the
material of nature transposed into a human organism’,240 what is provided by
nature is the material substratum that remains once all the useful labour is
subtracted from any commodity.241 This twofold source of use values is the
finding to which Marx remains loyal in his later works.242 After having ‘illus-
trated the movement of surplus-value sufficiently in Volume i’243 of Capital,
this discussion must find its place in relation to circulation – which it does in
Volume ii.

237 Marx 1976, pp. 165–6: ‘Objects of utility become commodities only because they are the
products of the labour of private individuals who work independently of each other.
The sum total of the labour of all these private individuals forms the aggregate labour
of society. Since the producers do not come into social contact until they exchange the
products of their labour, the specific social characteristics of their private labours appear
only within this exchange. In other words, the labour of the private individual manifests
itself as an element of the total labour of society only through the relations which the act
of exchange establishes between the products, and, through their mediation, between the
producers. To the producers, therefore, the social relations between their private labours
appear as what they are, i.e. they do not appear as direct social relations between persons
in their work, but rather as [thing-like] [dinglich] relations between persons and social
relations between things’.
238 Marx 1962a, p. 52.
239 Hegel 1989, §67, pp. 144–5: Quoted in Marx 19762a, p. 272.
240 Marx 1976, p. 323.
241 Marx 1976, p. 133: ‘If we subtract the total amount of useful labour of different kinds which
is contained in the coat, the linen, etc., a material substratum is always left. This sub-
stratum is furnished by nature without human intervention’.
242 See Marx 1987b, p. 15: ‘Die Arbeit ist nicht die Quelle alles Reichtums. Die Natur ist
ebensosehr die Quelle der Gebrauchswerte (und aus solchen besteht doch wohl der sach-
liche Reichtum!) als die Arbeit, die selbst nur die Äußerung einer Naturkraft ist, der
menschlichen Arbeitskraft’.
243 Marx 2016, p. 83.
132 chapter 5

5.2 Categorial Movement in Capital Volume ii

Regarding the second volume, we read:

But this immediate production process [discussed in the first volume]

does not exhaust the life cycle of capital. In the actual world, it is supple-
mented by the circulation process, and this formed our object* of investig-
ations [Gegenstand der Untersuchungen] in the second volume. Here we
showed, particularly in Part Three, where we considered the circulation
process as it mediates the process of social reproduction, that the capital-
ist production process, taken as a whole, is a unity of the production and
circulation processes.244

The categories introduced here therefore are to be set free from the immediacy
found in the first volume. What was ‘left out of account’ is brought back in it.
The general movement in this volume aims at depicting how the circulation
process totalises itself in unity with the production process: from the meta-
morphoses of capital in the first part to the turnover of capital in the second
part, culminating in the reproduction and circulation of the totality of social
capital.
Loyal to the distinction introduced in the ‘Theses on Feuerbach’, Marx avoids
the word Objekt and introduces Gegenstand, which I have been indicating up
to here as object*.245 Considering this object* by setting aside the assump-
tions necessary just for the ‘formal manner of exposition’ [nur formelle Manier
der Darstellung]246 of the totality found in the first volume, the real move-
ment of the subject matter [Sache selbst] can be laid out. This new moment of
exposition brings with it the openness of totality that is characteristic of the
Marxian totality introduced before in this book, one of the principal theses
argued for here,247 which is elaborated on in Capital Volume ii, and could
only find its place in that volume. The point is that, although the capitalist
mode has this tendency to ‘transform all possible production into commod-
ity production’, it is equally conditioned by ‘modes of production lying outside
its own stage of development’.248 Whereas Parts i and ii of this volume focus
on the individual capitalist, part iii examines circulation and reproduction,

244 Marx 1991a, p. 117, translation modified. Marx 1964, p. 33.

245 See Chapter 4, section 3 above.
246 Marx 1963a, p. 393; Marx 1992a, p. 470.
247 Cf. Starosta 2016, p. 202 where he denies the exteriority.
248 Marx 1992a, p. 190.
marxian totality seen through his works 133

this time no longer from an individual but from a social perspective, with the
final chapter (Chapter 21) discussing reproduction on a large scale.249 The con-
stituents of capital introduced in the first volume as constant and variable
capital are developed further in this volume by introducing departments of
production, as well as by elaborating on constant and variable capitals, and
the account is also enriched with the addition of fixed and circulating capital
in Chapter 20.
Regarding these two latter terms, one point is noteworthy. In the ‘Theses
on Feuerbach’, we saw that the essence of the human is asserted to be the
ensemble of the social relations constituted. This characteristic is not limited
to human beings. The same object* found in different relations with its milieu
goes from one category to another. Whereas fixed and circulating capital are
at first glance mutually exclusive, the same entity – an ox, for instance – as a
means of labour is fixed capital, but once it is slaughtered, it becomes circulat-
ing capital. Likewise, the change in the relation of the constituents of a totality
to the Totality changes not only those constituents, but also the Totality at hand.
A house can be a place of work, and therefore a constituent [Bestandteil] of
productive capital, but once it turns into a dwelling place it loses this func-
tion.250
Regarding the constellation of categories presented here, further discus-
sion is necessary. The same category, namely, simple reproduction, discussed
in Chapter 21 of the first volume, is taken up here under the circulation of
surplus value (Chapter 17), and its role in reproduction and circulation is
elaborated (Chapter 20), this time incorporating it into extended reproduc-
tion (Chapter 21), thus giving a more comprehensive account of total cap-
ital. Whereas up to here in the discussion of Capital (both Volumes i and ii),
capitalists have been considered mainly in their role as non-consumers, here
(Chapter 20) they are considered as consumers. Marx does this by introducing
two departments of social production. Department i of social production pro-
duces new means of production – those produced to be put into the production
of commodities. Department ii of social production produces other commodit-
ies to be consumed by capitalists and workers. This latter department is divided
into two subdivisions: necessary means of living, and luxury goods. Once the
scene is set, Marx moves from constant capital in Department i, to variable
capital and surplus value in both departments, and then constant capital in
both departments. Without the discussion presented in Chapter 20, Marx could

249 Cf. Fox 1985.

250 Marx 1992a, pp. 280–1. The twofold essence of the Sache selbst is emphasised here.
134 chapter 5

not move to accumulation in both departments and extended reproduction in

Chapter 21. With this, Marx has brought circulation into unity with production
in the totality of the capitalist mode.
We saw in a previous section the contradictions found in relation to money
in the ‘Chapter on Money’ in the Grundrisse. Now an elaboration on the way
money is treated in this volume can be useful – this time, in contrast to the
first volume, in money’s role in circulation. Turned into money-capital, money
demonstrates characteristics that were not shown in the first volume.251 In the
fourth chapter, money is considered together with the natural and the credit
economy and their intertwined character in the totality of capital is emphas-
ised.
We saw previously252 that one characteristic of a genuinely dialectical total-
ity is the reciprocal determination of parts and the whole, which is also stressed
in the Introduction to the Grundrisse.253 This is more concretely discussed in
the second Volume of Capital. In Chapter 4, Marx first introduces the three fig-
ures of the circuit process [die drei Figuren des Kreislaufprozesses]:

(i) M–C … P … C’–M’

(ii) P … Tc … P
(iii) Tc … P (C’).

where M and C stand for money and commodity, M’ and C’ for newer money
and commodity, P for production or the valorisation process, and Tc for the
total circulation, or valorised value. All these three circuits have the valorisa-
tion of value as their goal and impetus or driving motif [treibendes Motiv].
In this account in which the third circuit is the unity of the first two, thus
introducing the process in its totality, Marx goes further than the similar dis-
cussion in Volume i; here he aims at a dialectical sursumption [Aufhebung] of
the inevitably formal discussion presented there,254 further incorporating the
complexity of the real. Only when this is done can he write: ‘The total circuit
presents itself for each functional form of capital as its own specific circuit, and
indeed each of these circuits conditions the continuity of the overall process;
the circular course of one functional form determines that of the others’255 –
‘and is determined by others’, one may add.

251 Marx 1992a, p. 429.

252 See Chapter 1.
253 See the previous section.
254 Volume i, Chapters 2 and 3.
255 Marx 1992a, p. 184.
marxian totality seen through his works 135

The constant presence of the different moments of capital (commodity cap-

ital transformed into money; money capital transformed into productive cap-
ital; and productive capital transformed into commodity capital) is mediated
by the circuit of the total capital. Taken as a processual whole instead of a static
thing,256 the totality of capital is thus constituted by the presence of all these
fluid moments and the codetermination of these among themselves, and this
also determines the total capital.257 This is how two processes, the production
process and the circulation process, which are mutually exclusive in time,258
form a unity in the last chapter.
The purchase and repurchase of labour power is the subject matter [Sache
selbst] of the circulation process discussion, with labour acting as the ‘work of
combustion’ being ‘a necessary moment of the totality’ of capitalist produc-
tion. It is only now that Marx can write: ‘This labour … is a necessary moment
of the capitalist production process in its totality, and also includes circulation,
or is included by it’.259 We have seen previously how Marx speaks of this as the
fermenting agent; here he uses as an analogy the combustion that sets some
material alight.260
The clearest account of totality is probably given in Chapter 18. Each singular
commodity constitutes an organic member or limb of the total social capital,
and each is likewise a singular capital:

The movement of social capital consists of the totality of independent

fragments, the turnover of the individual capitals. In the same way that
the metamorphosis of a singular commodity is a member of the series
of the metamorphoses of the commodities in their totality, so the meta-
morphosis of each singular capital, its turnover, is a member of movement
circle of the social capital.261

256 Marx 1992a, p. 185.

257 Marx 1992a, p. 184.
258 Marx 1992a, p. 203: ‘Circulation time and production time are mutually exclusive. During
its circulation time, capital does not function as productive capital, and therefore pro-
duces neither commodities nor surplus-value’.
259 Marx 1992a, p. 208.
260 Marx 1992a, p. 208.
261 Marx 1963a, p. 352: ‘Die Bewegung des gesellschaftlichen Kapitals besteht aus der Total-
ität der Bewegungen seiner verselbständigten Bruchstücke, der Umschläge der individu-
ellen Kapitale. Wie die Metamorphose der einzelnen Ware ein Glied der Metamorph-
osenreihe der Warenwelt – der Warenzirkulation – ist, so die Metamorphose des indi-
viduellen Kapitals, sein Umschlag, ein Glied im Kreislauf des gesellschaftlichen Kapit-
als’. Marx 1992a, pp. 427–8 (translation modified). Cf. 1963a, pp. 353–4; 1992a, pp. 429–
30.
136 chapter 5

This total process embraces consumption at both the individual and the social
level; the individual seller of labour power constitutes a class at the social level,
dealing with the buyer of this labour power.262 This circulation, which prior
to this was the circulation of the commodity capitals, turns into circulation
of surplus value. As Marx puts it: ‘Thus, the circuit of the individual capitals,
therefore, drawn into the social capital, i.e. considered in their totality, do not
embrace just the circulation of capital, but also the general commodity circu-
lation in general’.263
This is quite a novel treatment of the totality of social production in unity
with circulation. It is radically different from a standpoint, like that of Proud-
hon, who in taking the production en bloc fails to see the distinction of the
moments of that totality, with their historical and economic characteristics.264
This particular treatment paves the way for a still more comprehensive account
in Volume iii. This is what we turn to now.

5.3 Categorial Movement in Capital Volume iii

Following some commentators,265 in my discussion I prefer the title originally
given by Marx, namely, Gestaltungen des Gesamtprozeßes, or the Configura-
tions of Total Production, rather than the modified version chosen by Engels,
Der Gesamtprozeß der kapitalistischen Produktion, or The Total Process of the
Capitalist Production. For whereas the former title leaves some room for the
less definite elaboration presented in the work and also permits the openness
of the account, the latter misses this in suggesting the completion of the pro-
ject.266 This is misleading not only in relation to what are generally agreed to
be very sketchy passages, such as the one dealing with classes, but also with
respect to some others in which the issues are discussed in more detail, such as
the discussion of competition.267 That said, I refer to the mew edition and the
translation of Marx’s manuscripts for Capital Volume iii. Given the debates on
the negative influence of Engels on the overall text intended by Marx, I provide
in Appendix ii other versions of some of the passages discussed here.268 Non-

262 Marx 1963a, p. 353.

263 Marx 1992a, p. 428.
264 Marx 1992a, p. 509.
265 Callinicos 2014, p. 41; Heinrich 1996–7, pp. 452–66. For a detailed account regarding the
differences between the published text as Volume iii of Capital and the Manuscripts, see
Fred Moseley’s Introduction in Marx, 2016, pp. 1–44.
266 Heinrich 1996–7, p. 457.
267 On the incompleteness of the third volume of Capital concerning competition, see Mose-
ley 2014, p. 116.
268 That is: what is known as Capital Volume iii (Marx 1991a); the original text in German in
marxian totality seen through his works 137

etheless, to facilitate the discussion, I will continue to refer to the text discussed
here as Capital Volume iii. Throughout the discussion, I completely avoid what
Engels added as the ‘Supplement and Addendum’ at the end of the book,269
since this is widely thought to offer an interpretation different from Marx’s
own.270
Regarding the third volume, the text says that after having already shown
that the process of production is the unity of both the production process and
the circulation process:

It cannot be the purpose of the present book to make general reflections

on this ‘unity’. What is necessary is rather to discover and present the con-
crete forms [Formen] which grow out of the process of capital, considered
as a whole. (In their actual movement, capitals confront each other in
certain concrete forms, for which both the shape of capital in the dir-
ect production process and its shape in the process of circulation appear
merely as particular aspects of their movement. The forms [Gestaltun-
gen] of capital, as we develop them in this book, thus come closer, step
by step, to the form [Form] in which they appear at the surface of soci-
ety, in the everyday consciousness of the agents of production themselves
and finally in the action of the different capitals upon each other, namely
competition.)271

We see then a movement from abstract to concrete as the promising path

advised in the Introduction to the Grundrisse, a movement from essence to
its apparent form. This means arriving at the phenomenal forms after this
long exposition of the categories, which can be realised only at this stage.
In adopting a movement from essence to the apparent forms of social total-
ity, the Marxian standpoint is radically different from that taken by the vul-
gar economists who take the phenomenal forms as their starting points. This
is why it is only at this point that Marx can write: ‘At last we have arrived
at the forms of manifestation which serve as the starting point in the vul-
gar’.272

Das Kapital iii, in mew 25 (Marx 1964); the translation of the manuscripts of 1861–3 (Marx
2016) on the basis of which Engels prepared Capital Volume iii; and the original text of
these manuscripts in mega2 ii. 4.2, Teil 2 (Marx 1992b).
269 Marx 1964, pp. 895–922; 1991a, pp. 1027–47.
270 For one example, see Callinicos 2014, pp. 38–43.
271 Marx 2016, p. 49; Marx 1992b, p. 7.
272 ‘Endlich sind wir angelangt bei den Erscheinungsformen, die dem Vulgär als Ausgang-
138 chapter 5

The totality so far shown in more theoretically abstract forms is here demon-
strated to function at the concrete level. For instance, after having discussed
the totality of value and the rate of surplus value, it will be shown here how
these are transformed into profit and rate of profit. More concretely, whereas
up to here we have discussed the relationship among values in totality, what
is at stake here is to show how prices reciprocally interact in a totality, along
with production and circulation, and with industrial capital and commercial
capital among the other forms which capital takes.273 The individual produc-
tion price of a commodity is not the same as its value, but once the prices are
taken in their totality, and attention is turned to the total value of commodities
in a branch of production, the price is determined relatively by the value.274
Whereas the relationship between different single values and single prices is
generally contingent and depends on myriads of coincidences, this is not the
case when a whole branch of production is taken into account. In that case, the
sum of prices coincides with the sum of values.275
An excellent example of the concrete form of presenting the unity of dif-
ferent moments of the capitalist mode can be seen in Marx’s discussion in
Chapter 10 of the role of competition. Competition, which belongs to a dif-
ferent moment of totality from production, plays the role of the distributor of
the total capital. In this process, ‘equal amounts of capital’ ultimately ‘receive
equal shares of the totality of surplus value that is produced by the total social
capital’.276 In the same vein, once the transformation of the surplus value into

spunkt dienen …’ Marx and Engels 1974, p. 74. The Collected Works adds ‘conception’ to the
text. Marx, letter to Engels, 30 April 1868, in Marx 1992c, p. 74 (first emphasis added). See
Postone 2003, p. 137.
273 See, Luxemburg 2013, p. 246: ‘For the totality of all branches of production the rise in prices
in one case and the fall in prices in another compensate for one another, and as a whole
the outcome will be what theory has shown us’ (emphasis added).
274 Marx 1992b, p. 700; Marx 1964, p. 766.
275 Marx 1992b, p. 236. Marx 2016, p. 271.
276 Here is the full quote: ‘Competition distributes the social capital between the various
spheres of production in such a way that the prices of production in each of those spheres
> (disregarding the question of how large a portion of the fixed capital goes into these
prices for wear-and-tear) < are equal to the prices in the spheres of mean composition,
i.e., k + p, > where k is the cost price, but a variable magnitude, and p is a constant mag-
nitude, namely is equivalent to the magnitude of the < percentage profit in that sphere
(which in the sphere of mean composition coincides with the surplus-value). The rate
of profit is thus the same in all spheres of production, because it is adjusted to that in
those branches of production where the average composition of capital prevails. The sum
of the profits for all the different spheres of production would then be equal to the sum
of surplus-values, and the sum of the prices of production for the total social product
would then be equal to the sum of its values. It is evident, however, that the equalisa-
marxian totality seen through his works 139

profit and the rate of surplus value into rate of profit is established, a change
happens that goes further than the formal difference.277 The final configura-
tion of the economic relation concealed in its essential form, the kernel form
of the commodity, comes to the surface in a quite different and even reversed
form.278
The stepwise incorporation of social contingency in the totality of this mode,
‘the underlying unity of seemingly diverse and incoherent movements’279 and
moments, is also quite remarkable at this stage. On one occasion Marx presents
a law as the cause of crises (the law of the tendential fall of rate of profit).
He puts this law, the discovery of which he takes to be his own contribu-
tion,280 in very simple terms: ‘[T]aking any particular quantity of average social
capital, e.g., a capital of 100, an ever greater portion of this is represented
by means of labour and an ever lesser portion by living labour’.281 Thus, ‘the
worker finds him or herself in a vicious circle in which the increases in pro-
ductivity turn against him or her in creating unemployment that functions as
a lever to the intensification of labour’.282 Following its exposition, the dis-

tion between spheres of production of different composition > (whether these differences
are based simply on differences in the ratio between constant and variable capital, or
also arise from variations in circulation time) < must always seek to adjust these to the
spheres of mean composition, whether these correspond exactly to the social average or
just approximately. Between those spheres that approximate more or less to the social
average there is again a tendency to equalisation, which seeks a possibly ideal mean posi-
tion, i.e., a mean position which does not exist in reality. In other words, it tends to shape
itself around this ideal as a norm. In this way there prevails, and necessarily so, a tend-
ency to make production prices into mere transformed forms of value, or to transform
profits into mere portions of surplus-value that are distributed, not in proportion to the
surplus-value that is created in each particular sphere of production, but rather in pro-
portion to the amount of capital applied in each of these spheres, so that equal amounts
of capital, no matter how they are composed, receive equal shares (aliquot parts) of the
totality of surplus-value produced by the total social capital >’ (Marx 2016 p. 284; Marx
1992b, p. 249).
277 Marx, letter to Engels, 30 April 1868, in Marx 1992c, p. 22: ‘[W]hile profit is at first only
formally different from surplus value, the rate of profit is, by contrast, at once really differ-
ent from the rate of surplus value, for in one case we have m/v and in the other m/(c + v),
from which it follows from the outset, since m/v > m/(c + v), that the rate of profit < than
the rate of surplus value, unless c = 0’.
278 Marx 1992b, p. 279; Marx 1964, p. 219.
279 Harvey 1999, p. 405.
280 Marx 2016, p. 322.
281 Marx 2016, p. 324.
282 My rather free translation from Dardot and Laval 2012, p. 274: ‘Le travailleur est pris dans
un cercle vicieux dans lequel les hausses de productivité se retournent vers lui en créant
un chômage qui sert de levier a l’intensification du travail’.
140 chapter 5

cussion of the law is immediately followed283 by a whole number of coun-

teracting influences which check, delay, and condition that law.284 Although
‘the law in its generality [Allgemeinheit] is independent of that division [of
profits] and of the mutual relationships of the categories of profit deriving
from it’,285 when it comes to the level of particularity it faces these counter-
influences.
A more illustrative example of the discussion of totality is in the famous trin-
ity formula.286 Here, we are reminded that the totality of dual relationship of
subjects or members of society with nature and with each other forms the soci-
ety.287 We see in that chapter how the sources of income – capital in the form of
interest-profit, land in the form of ground rent, and labour in the form of wages
– once shown in organic relation to each other, and with the whole process dis-
played in its totality with labour together with nature as the ultimate source of
wealth, make possible a concrete analysis of the process of production in its
most general form.288
To remain a revolutionary account, with an echo of the ‘expropriation of
the expropriators’ in Volume i, the discussion of book three must end with a
discussion of classes289 to reflect the fact that contradictions, seen from the
very beginning, cannot be simply theorised away.290 Marx does not search for
a formal and logical consistency in something which is essentially inconsistent,
which is also the theme in those passages where he criticises James Mill.291 In
his discussion of crises, Marx deals with the way the limits and barriers inher-
ent in a capitalist society lead to crises. Crises, always inherent in the capitalist
mode, become apparent to the eyes of the non-dialectical researcher, who must
either take the crisis as an exception to a law or a cognitive mistake – not a

283 This is found in the Manuscripts under the title ⟨chapter three The Law of the Tenden-
tial Fall in the General Rate of Profit⟩ with the Advance of Capitalist Production Marx 2016,
p. 320. In Marx 1991a, Chapters 13 and 14.
284 The most general counteracting causes include: 1. More Intense Exploitation of Labour; 2.
Reduction of Wages below their Value; 3. Cheapening of the Elements of Constant Capital;
4. The Relative Surplus Population; 5. Foreign Trade; 6. The Increase in Share Capital, Marx
2016, p. 337. See also pages 375 in Marx 2016 and Capital iii, p. 375, where he introduces
other aspects that condition the falling rate of profit.
285 Marx 2016, p. 322.
286 Chapter 48 in Marx 1991a, Marx 2016, p. 528 and p. 445.
287 Marx 2016, p. 528, Marx 1991a, p. 957.
288 Marx 2016, p. 898. Marx 1991a, Chapter 49.
289 Marx 2016, p. 949ff. Marx 1991a, Chapter 51.
290 Cf. Hall 2003, p. 121.
291 Marx 1968e, p. 29.
marxian totality seen through his works 141

real crisis but a merely apparent one. According to Marx, on the other hand,
being a contradictory totality objectively makes theorising away this contra-
diction ridiculous.292 For him, these contradictions inhere in objective* reality,
and the only way to do away with them is through revolutionary praxis, echo-
ing the ‘Theses on Feuerbach’.293 Now that it has not only been stated but also
demonstrated that the true barrier holding back the capitalist mode as a trans-
itory and historical and not a natural eternal mode is capital itself,294 a mode
the development of which comes into contradiction with its own development,
it may be said that there is an objective* need to revolutionise this contradict-
ory totality. As Marx writes to Engels seven months after the publication of the
first volume of Capital, now that the movement in its totality in its apparent
form is depicted,

[S]ince those 3 items (wages, rent, profit (interest)) constitute the sources
of income of the 3 classes of landowners, capitalists and wage labourers,
we have the class struggle, as the conclusion in which the movement and
disintegration of the whole shit resolves itself.295

5.4 Conclusion
One may say that what we witnessed in the three volumes of Capital is a partic-
ular movement: a movement from one aspect of reality, concretely abstracted
totality, abstracted reality in its kernel, germinal form, namely, commodity, to
the level of the totality that is concretised-socialised-totalised; a movement
from a rather monocular perspective of reality to an increasingly panoptic
perspective of reality. Through this movement, the more formal differences
(e.g., between profit and interest) turn into real social differences in the form
of the antagonistic conflict between the two sides of the class struggle. This
is equally a movement from a level where several points were neglected or
assumed because of their off-topic insignificance, or because they could not be
discussed at that particular moment, notwithstanding their effects on what was
discussed, to this particular moment in the third volume, where those influ-
ences are reincorporated and their influence, and the contingency that they
carry along with them, can be dealt with.296 The fact that this categorial move-

292 Cf. Ilyenkov 1982, p. 239.

293 This will be discussed further in the following pages.
294 Marx 1992b, 324; Marx 2016, p. 359.
295 Marx, letter to Engels, 30 April 1868 (in Marx 1992c, p. 25).
296 For a discussion of the movement of the assumptions and their role in economic meth-
odology, see Musgrave 1981.
142 chapter 5

ment does not embrace a teleological movement is one distinctive aspect of

the Marxian standpoint.297
One technical point before presenting the conclusion of our discussion: my
collation of the passages in mega2 and mew on the one hand, and the transla-
tion of the Manuscripts and Fernbach’s translation on the other, leads me to the
conclusion that the difference between the passages does not harm the argu-
ment developed here.298 Hence similar results could be inferred from either of
these two sources or their translations.

6 Conclusion

In discussing the developments, a general idea holds: ‘No straight, unbroken

path exists from simple to more complex development, either in thought or his-
tory’.299 Thus, in the development of the conception of totality discussed here,
it is natural to witness a porous and unsmooth path. At the end of this jour-
ney, the reader can see how the conception of totality and its neighbouring
concepts found their way into Marx’s works, from the letter of the nineteen-
year-old Carel to the notes of what is often known as the third volume of Cap-
ital.
That said, it may be legitimately asked why many works in which totality is
developed in one way or another are here left undiscussed.300 One reason is
space: integrating all these texts into the discussion would make this already
long chapter even longer. More importantly, however, is the belief that the
works discussed here represent the evolution of this conception adequately
enough to give an accurate account of its genesis and evolution. That said, the
developmental, dialectical coherence argued for here should not be equated
with completeness. Hence many aspects need further development.301
We have seen previously that, according to Kosík, ‘[t]he method of explic-
ation is no evolutionist unravelling, but rather the unfolding, exposing, “com-
plicating” of contradictions, the unfolding of the thing by way of contradic-
tions’.302 Kosík is right; however, the proposition that the method of exposition

297 Cf. Arndt 2012, p. 135: ‘The criticism of Hegel builds up the construction of a teleological
model of history’ (my translation).
298 The reader can verify this by referring to Appendix ii, where some of the discussed pas-
sages in different versions are given.
299 Hall 2003, p. 133.
300 One interesting example is Marx’s doctoral thesis, particularly Notebook 1.
301 See Lebowitz 1998.
302 Kosík 1976, p. 16.
marxian totality seen through his works 143

is no evolutionary unravelling does not entail that Marx’s conception of totality

cannot be evolutionary. The latter claim has been elaborated upon and argued
for in this chapter.
That said, the relation between the way this movement is distinct and what
the Grundrisse and Capital achieve is left undiscussed. This second problem,
raised at the end of Chapter 4 as one of the shortcomings of Kosík’s account of
Marx’s standpoint on Totality, is the topic of the next chapter.
 chapter 6

The Relationship between the Grundrisse and

Capital and between the Method of Enquiry and
the Method of Exposition

*The fact that Marx never wrote a text on the ‘laws of dialectic’ that would
show how to ‘strip’ it of the ‘mystical form’1 in Hegel’s method is undoubtedly a
cause of the misconceptions and long-standing disagreements on the distinct-
ive nature of his own method. In 1955, in the foreword to his groundbreaking
The Making of Marx’s Capital, Roman Rosdolsky wrote: ‘Of all the problems in
Marx’s economic theory the most neglected has been that of his method, both
in general and, specifically, in its relation to Hegel. Recent works contain for the
most part platitudes which, to echo Marx’s own words, betray the authors’ own
“crude obsession with the material” and total indifference to Marx’s method’.2
The literature on Marx’s method has developed enormously since Rosdolsky
wrote these lines. In a work written some thirty years later, we read: ‘Surely
no ground within the terrain of historical materialism has been trodden more
often than method’.3 But as the literature has grown, so too have the disagree-
ments, and so have the accounts that attribute a rupture to Marx’s works. This
chapter elaborates on one of them.
The idea that there is an epistemological rupture in Marx’s works is not lim-
ited to Althusser’s thesis that there is such a rupture between the works of
the young Marx and those of the mature Marx who was the author of Capital.
Jacques Bidet believes that the rupture is actually lies between the Grundrisse
and Capital.4 Thus, unlike what is found even in some most recent works on

* An earlier version of this chapter was presented at the conference Materialistische Dialektik
Marx-Lektüren im Dialog in Berlin in 2015, and published in German in Breda, Boveiri et al.
2017.
1 Marx, letter to Joseph Dietzgen, 9 May 1868: ‘When I have shaken off the burden of my eco-
nomic labours, I shall write a dialectic. The correct laws of the dialectic are already included
in Hegel, albeit in a mystical form. It is necessary to strip it of this form’ (Marx, 1992d, p. 31).
2 Rosdolsky 1977, p. xii.
3 Horvath and Gibson 1984, p. 12.
4 Bidet 1984. See also Callinicos 1978; 2014.

© Kaveh Boveiri, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004703971_008

the relationship between the grundrisse and capital 145

Marx’s method,5 the claim of the inner unity and coherence as to Marx’s meth-
odology needs seriously to be argued for.
In light of the discussion of the conception of totality in Capital and the
Grundrisse in the two last sections of the previous chapter, this chapter will
argue against the view that there is a rupture in Marx’s works, and proposes
instead that the relationship between the Grundrisse and Capital is that be-
tween the method of enquiry and the method of exposition.6 On this view, the
Grundrisse accomplishes the threefold task that Marx introduces as the func-
tion of the method of enquiry – namely, ‘to appropriate the material in detail,
to analyse its different forms of development and to track down their inner
connection’7 – and thus makes the method of exposition in Capital possible.
In proposing this view, I will suggest a solution to the long-standing problem
of the relationship between the method of enquiry and the method of exposi-
tion.8 To do this, I describe in the first section the roots of the thesis of a rupture
between the Grundrisse and Capital; in the second section, I state and criticise
the passages in the contemporary literature which argue for a rupture between
the Grundrisse and Capital; finally, I put forward an alternative reading of this
relationship.

1 The Roots of the Thesis of a Rupture in Marx’s Works

It may be correctly argued that the idea of such a dichotomy principally stems
from the apparent incoherence between what Marx writes in two texts. In
his Introduction of 1857, which was later published at the beginning of the
Grundrisse,9 he writes:

5 See, e.g., Starosta 2016, p. 17: ‘The existence of an inner unity underlying the different
phases of Marx’s intellectual project is now part of the “abc of Marxism”’. For a critical
review of this book, see Boveiri 2020.
6 Here, as in Marx’s German text, the words Methode and Weise are used interchangeably
(Marx 1962a, pp. 25 and 27). They are both translated as ‘method’ in the Penguin trans-
lation (Marx 1976, pp. 100 and 102), and as méthode in the French translation edited by
Lefebvre (Marx 1993, pp. 15 and 17). In the French edition of Joseph Roy, however, the only
one supervised and modified by Marx, Methode is translated as méthode and Weise as pro-
cédé; see Marx 1982, p. 350.
7 Marx 1962a, p. 27; 1976, p. 102.
8 Hoff, Petrioli et al. 2006, p. 29.
9 I discussed elements of this passage in Chapter 5, section 4.1 above. Here I link the dis-
cussion to the methodological question of this chapter, about the relation between the
method of enquiry and the method of exposition.
146 chapter 6

The concrete is concrete because it is the concentration of many determ-

inations, hence unity of the diverse. It appears in the process of thinking,
therefore, as a process of concentration, as a result, not as a point of
departure, even though it is the point of departure in reality and hence
also the point of departure for observation [Anschauung] and concep-
tion. Along the first path the full conception was evaporated to yield an
abstract determination; along the second, the abstract determinations
lead towards a reproduction of the concrete by way of thought … whereas
the method of rising from the abstract to the concrete is only the way in
which thought appropriates the concrete, reproduces it as the concrete in
the mind. But this is by no means the process by which the concrete itself
comes into being.10

What is emphasised here is the so-called logical movement that seems to be

independent of phenomena and their temporal and historical succession. The
achievement of concrete determinations does not bear any sign of the tempor-
ality of the object* (Gegenstand).11 With such an elaboration, what we witness
is akin to what is found in Hegel’s Science of Logic.12 Later in the text Marx says
explicitly: ‘It would therefore be unfeasible and wrong to let the economic cat-
egories follow one another in the same sequence as that in which they were
historically decisive. Their sequence is determined, rather, by their relation to
one another in modern bourgeois society, which is precisely the opposite of
that which seems to be their natural order or which corresponds to historical
development’.13
This account sounds problematic if read together with what Marx writes
later. In the Afterword to the second edition of Capital, on 24 January 1873, Marx
quotes an article by I.I. Kaufmann – a text that includes quotations from Marx
himself – that appeared in the Europäischer Bote in Saint Petersburg. The art-
icle is written in support of the thesis that the method used in Capital really
is dialectical (though Marx argues that Kaufmann does not understand this).
In this article, from which Marx quotes, Marx first admits that the method of
Capital has been the subject of ‘conceptions that contradict each other’.14 Fol-

10 Marx 1973, p. 101.

11 The reader may refer to Chapter 4, section 4 and above where the distinction is elaborated
upon.
12 See Hegel 1969c, p. 511: ‘Das synthetische Erkenntnis geht auf das Begreifen dessen, was
ist, d.h., [darauf], die Mannigfaltigkeit, von Bestimmungen in ihrer Einheit zu fassen’.
13 Marx 1973, p. 103.
14 Marx 1976, p. 99. In German: ‘einander widersprechenden Auffassungen’ (Marx 1962a,
p. 25).
the relationship between the grundrisse and capital 147

lowing this comes a passage that is particularly important for our discussion,
since Marx affirms that it describes what he takes to be a dialectical method:

The one thing which is important for Marx is to find the law of the phe-
nomena with whose investigation [Untersuchung] he is concerned; and it
is not only the law which governs these phenomena, in so far as they have
a definite form and mutual connection within a given historical period,
that is important to him. Of still greater importance to him is the law of
their variation, of their development, i.e. of their transition from one form
into another, from one series of connections into a different one. Once he
has discovered this law, he investigates in detail the effects with which it
manifests itself in social life … Consequently, Marx only concerns himself
with one thing: to show, by an exact scientific investigation [wissenschaft-
liche Untersuchung], the necessity of successive determinate orders of social
relations, and to establish, as impeccably as possible, the facts from which
he starts out and on which he depends … A critique of this kind will confine
itself to the confrontation and comparison of a fact, not with ideas, but with
another fact. The only things of importance for this enquiry are that the
facts be investigated as accurately as possible, and that they actually form
different aspects of development vis-a-vis each other. But most important
of all is the precise analysis of the series of successions, of the sequences and
links within which the different stages of development present themselves.15

After this passage, Marx writes that what the author of the article calls his real
method is nothing else but the dialectical method, and that Kaufmann’s depic-
tion of it is ‘striking [treffend]’ and ‘generous [wohlwollend]’.16
As we see here, the significance of the phenomena is underlined, and by
attending to the succession of phenomena the laws of this succession are dis-
covered. The phenomena that are the objects* of the critique of political eco-
nomy – commodity, production, money, etc. – both exist in time and have a
history. It may be said that their time-bound historical aspect turns out to be
the subject of the study, and any logical succession to follow the succession of
the phenomena results, so to speak, from their sequence.
Different readings have been given regarding the relation between these
two passages. Rosdolsky, for instance, does not seem to see a significant differ-
ence between the Grundrisse and Capital. In reference to this passage in the

15 Marx 1976, pp. 100–1, emphasis added.

16 Marx 1962a, p. 26.
148 chapter 6

Grundrisse he writes: ‘[O]utline (as did Capital later) follows the path from
abstract definitions to the concrete’.17 Tony Smith, on the other hand, does
recognise this difference. Like Rosdolsky, Smith supplies only meagre com-
mentary, but unlike Rosdolsky, he does suggest a sort of solution, or rather some
reasons to prioritise a systemic view.18 But before proposing an alternative read-
ing, let us first review the idea in the contemporary literature that there is a
rupture between these two books.

2 The Idea of a Rupture between the Grundrisse and Capital

Here I discuss the two major texts which see a rupture between the Grundrisse
and Capital. I begin with a passage by Bidet where he formulates the last ver-
sion of his thought:

The ‘epistemological rupture’ to be considered is not so much the one

which distinguishes the mature Marx from the young Marx, it is rather the
one that separates the Grundrisse from Capital. In his first draft, Marx sys-
tematically works with the help of Hegelian logic. In his published work,
he gradually gets rid of its formal support, [comes up with] the theoret-
ical exposition that imposes its particular logic, which is based on a new
conception, one for which some dialectical tools show themselves unsuit-
able. The ‘dialectical superiority’ of the Grundrisse to Capital does not
give it any theoretical superiority. This superiority does not warrant the
usage of the ‘logic’ of the first presentation for the interpretation of the
second. It is more convenient to resist fascination, and take all the theor-
etical progress into consideration, from the very first draft up to the very
last version, namely, the French edition of Capital. Progress that does not
arise from points of detail but from principle.19

17 Rosdolsky 1977, p. 27.

18 See Smith 1993, Chapter iii.
19 Bidet 2005, p. 1, my translation. The original reads: ‘[L]a “rupture épistémologique” à con-
sidérer n’était pas tant celle qui distingue le Marx de la maturité du jeune Marx, que
celle qui sépare les Grundrisse du Capital. Dans sa première esquisse, Marx travaille sys-
tématiquement à l’aide de la logique hégélienne. Dans son œuvre publiée, il s’affranchit
progressivement de son support formel, l’exposé théorique imposant sa logique propre,
fondée sur une nouvelle conceptualité, à laquelle certains instruments dialectiques s’avèr-
ent inadéquats. La “supériorité dialectique” des Grundrisse sur Le Capital ne lui confère
donc aucune supériorité théorique. Elle n’autorise pas à recourir à la “logique” du premier
exposé pour l’interprétation du second. Il convient plutôt de résister à sa fascination, et de
the relationship between the grundrisse and capital 149

Regardless of the duality between the theoretical and the dialectical found in
this passage, Bidet does not tell us what is meant by dialectical superiority. He
talks about the theoretical superiority of Capital but is silent regarding what, if
anything, Grundrisse passes on to Capital. Following the chapter on totality in
the Grundrisse, I think it is plausible to claim that what is seen in the Grundrisse
is in fact not the reflected dialectic – and this notwithstanding the dialectical
terminology.
In another passage Bidet writes: ‘In Capital, Marx, under a decisive theor-
etical constraint, frees himself from the dialectical presentation that was his
in the Grundrisse, but without being in a position to draw all the conclusions
imposed by this’.20 I think it is wrong to read this line as Bidet’s negation of
what is thought to be ‘the “soul” of Marx’s method of political economy – his
dialectic!’21 That said, in this regard, I think that what is missing in Capital is
not the dialectical representation or rather exposition but dialectical enquiry,
which is achieved, as far as it can be, in the form of the manuscripts not inten-
ded for publication, which are found in the Grundrisse. This is one major thesis
of this chapter.
In his elaboration on the difference between Capital and the Grundrisse Call-
inicos writes: ‘Marx follows “the method of rising from the abstract to concrete”
in Capital. In other words, he starts from highly abstract determinations … and
from them develops … more complex determinations’.22 Indeed, Marx asserts
in the Grundrisse that the ascent from the abstract to the concrete is the ‘scien-
tifically correct method’23 of political economy. Once it is agreed that this is not
what we find in the Grundrisse, the question then arises regarding the function
of the Grundrisse, if any, in making this ascent in Capital possible.
With regard to the scientific character of Capital, Callinicos writes: ‘By the
time that Marx writes the manuscripts that have come down to us as Capital,
he has rejected the idea, common to both Hegel and the classical conception
of science, that the content of science is implicit in the starting point’.24 As

prendre toute la mesure des progrès théoriques qui se manifestent d’une version à l’autre,
de la toute première esquisse jusqu’à la toute dernière version, française, du Capital. Pro-
grès qui ne relèvent pas du détail, mais du principe’.
20 Bidet 2005, p. 2, my translation. The original reads: ‘Marx, dans Le Capital, sous une con-
trainte théorique décisive, se détache de la présentation dialectique qui était la sienne
dans les Grundrisse, sans être cependant en mesure d’en tirer toutes les conclusions qui
s’imposent’. Bidet 2005, p. 2 (my translation).
21 Rosdolsky 1977, p. 562.
22 Callinicos 2014, p. 72.
23 Marx 1983, p. 35.
24 Callinicos 2014, p. 133.
150 chapter 6

we saw in our discussion of the categorial movement in the three volumes of

Capital, this is acceptable with regard to the method of enquiry but incorrect
regarding the method of exposition.25 Since Callinicos does not take note of
this difference, he poses the following question: ‘If the movement from abstract
to concrete is something that unfolds within thought, how does Marx’s theoret-
ical discourse acquire factual content?’26 Regarding this question, I would like
to note, first, that Marx needs the factual (sachlich) content to distance him-
self from Hegelian Idealism. Apart from that, there is a confusion regarding the
fact that for Marx the concrete is of two types: the real concrete and the thought
concrete (Gedankenkonkrete). This will be elaborated on in the following sec-
tion.
Callinicos writes in another comment on Capital, this time in his critique of
Althusser’s dichotomy claim, that ‘[t]he difficulty that [Althusser’s] approach
has is the presence of the Hegelian terminology in the work that Althusser
identifies as the pinnacle of Marx’s scientific achievement, namely, Capital
itself’.27 Regarding this, it is noteworthy that Althusser is generally right when
he says that Hegelian terminology is not as prominent in Capital as it is in the
Grundrisse: indeed, it abounds in the latter, but not in the former.28 The prob-
lem just lies elsewhere. As seen from the preceding chapter, what is missing in
the Grundrisse is the categorial movement. In Capital we do see the categorial
movement of the categories – which is both similar to and different from a
Hegelian categorial movement. What is not found in Capital is the conspicu-
ous recourse to such terminology that is apparent in the Grundrisse.
More specifically, as regards the relationship between the method of enquiry
and the method of exposition, Callinicos criticises the idea, put forward by Ern-
est Mandel (inter alios), that a difference can be seen between these methods,
such that the one exhibits the movement from concrete to abstract, and the
other the movement from abstract to concrete.29 Firstly, it should be noted that
this does not represent precisely what Mandel says, as he also insists that these
two have to be seen as related methods.30 Moreover, the reading presented in
this chapter is partly in agreement with what Callinicos writes, as I think these
two moments of abstract and concrete are jointly coherent but also distinct.

25 See Chapter 5, section 5.

26 Callinicos 2014, p. 132.
27 Callinicos 2014, p. 71.
28 See Althusser 2005, p. 205. It should be said, however, that Althusser exaggerates the
absence of Hegel in Capital.
29 See Callinicos 2014, p. 73; Mandel 1975, p. 14.
30 Mandel 1975, p. 14.
the relationship between the grundrisse and capital 151

Thus, my reading adheres to the well-known dialectical principle, put forward

by Hegel, against arguing a case one-sidedly31 – a practice typical of reasoning
based on understanding instead of reason (Vernunft).
Following this criticism, Callinicos puts forward his own view by quoting Ily-
enkov in agreement: ‘[T]he method of presentation [i.e., exposition] of mater-
ial in Capital is nothing but the “corrected” method of its investigation’.32 The
principal thesis advanced by Callinicos, following Ilyenkov, is what may be
called the correction standpoint, or the postulation of a correction relationship
between the method of exposition and the method of enquiry. In the next sec-
tion, I criticise this interpretation, and show how a different understanding of
the relationship can begin to help us answer a long-standing question in the
Marxist literature, especially in the debates on Marxist methodology and epi-
stemology referred to previously.

3 The Alternative Reading

What is at stake seems to be, at least in part, resolving the problem of the appar-
ent incongruence of the synchronicity of political-economic categories on the
one hand and the diachronicity of the historical development of political-
economic entities on the other. My main critique of the idea of a rupture in
Marx’s thinking is that it overlooks the formal distinction between the method
of exposition and method of enquiry – a distinction that is already emphas-
ised by Marx.33 Not only is emphasising this distinction an attempt to respond
to a difficult and crucial problem in the history of philosophy, it also suggests
a solution to the problem of the relationship between the method of enquiry
and the method of exposition.
Up to this point, I have said a great deal about the important passage in the
Afterword to the second edition of Capital Volume i, but without quoting it. Let
us now read it in Marx’s own words:

Of course, the method of exposition must differ in form [ formell] from

that of enquiry. The latter has to appropriate the material in detail, to
analyse its different forms of development and to track down their inner
connection. Only after this work has been done can the real movement

31 Ilyenkov 1982, p. 138.

32 Ilyenkov 1982, p. 144.
33 This difference is correctly thought to be ‘of central importance for Marx’s own method-
ical understanding’ (Heinrich 1996–7, p. 457).
152 chapter 6

be appropriately presented. If this is done successfully, if the life of the

subject-matter is now reflected back in the ideas, then it may appear as if
we have before us an a priori construction.34

The threefold function of the exposition is formulated still more clearly by

Kosík: ‘Appropriating the material in detail, mastering it to the last historic-
ally accessible detail; Analysing its different forms of development; Tracing out
their internal connections, that is, determining the unity of different forms in
the development of the material’.35
The exposition will be possible once this threefold function of enquiry is
accomplished. In calling this a threefold function of the moment of the enquiry,
the reading presented here is distinct from that of Kosík, in that while he speaks
of three levels of enquiry and therefore enumerates these functions and implies
a tripartite procedure, this alternative reading, which sees them as a whole,
is explicitly more in harmony with Marx and Engels in the German Ideology,
where the partition of the whole is opposed.36 There are then not three levels
or stages, but three moments of the integrated method of enquiry. Another,
still more important, distinctive point of the reading presented here compared
with Kosík’s is that he does not see the Grundrisse as specifically exhibiting the
method of enquiry.37

34 Marx 1976, p. 102 (emphasis added in the second sentence). The German text reads: ‘Allerd-
ings muß sich die Darstellungsweise formell von der Forschungsweise unterscheiden. Die
Forschung hat den Stoff sich im Detail anzueignen, seine verschiednen Entwicklungsfor-
men zu analysieren und deren innres Band aufzuspüren’ (Marx 1962a, p. 27).
35 Kosík 1976, p. 15. (In quoting Kosík, I deliberately do not enumerate these steps.)
36 See Marx and Engels 1978, p. 29: ‘Übrigens sind diese drei Seiten der sozialen Tätigkeit
nicht als drei verschiedene Stufen zu fassen, sondern eben nur als drei Seiten, oder um
für die Deutschen klar zu schreiben, drei “Momente”, die vom Anbeginn der Geschichte
an und seit den ersten Menschen zugleich existiert haben und sich noch heute in der
Geschichte geltend machen’. English translation: ‘These three aspects of social activity
are not of course to be taken as three different stages, but just as three aspects or, to
make it clear to the Germans, three “moments”, which have existed simultaneously since
the dawn of history and the first men, and which still assert themselves in history today’
(Marx and Engels 1975, p. 43). One may go farther and claim that such an approach – tak-
ing different moments of enquiry that are unified and distinct but not separate – will be
always accepted for all different researches. For the application of such a standpoint in
the human sciences see Lemieux 2010, particularly the section ‘Mettre en énigme ce qui
paraît normal’. This is not apparently the case in Gramsci’s discussion, and he seems to
have overlooked this characteristic; see Gramsci 1971, p. 137. This is equally true in Dieter
Wolf’s discussion regarding the Grundrisse (Wolf 2016, p. 45).
37 See Nicolaus’s introduction to the Grundrisse in Marx 1973, pp. 8 and 25. Although Nic-
the relationship between the grundrisse and capital 153

After the above quotation, Marx goes on to say that once the function of the
method of enquiry is completely realised, and only then, the real movement of
the Stoff can be ideally mirrored.38 The simultaneous threefold function makes
possible rather a mediated starting point as well as a categorial movement.
This starting point is given only at the end of the last Notebook,39 where the
method of enquiry is most fully developed. As the previous chapter made clear,
in the Grundrisse itself there is no categorial movement, but rather oscillation
between the categories, principally between the main chapters on Money and
Capital.40 Oscillation is undoubtedly a movement but not a logically necessary
movement that leads each category inevitably to the next, as seen in Capital.
The absence of a mediated starting point goes hand in hand with the absence
of categorial movement: there is no categorial movement in the Grundrisse,
such as is found in Capital; nonetheless, the oscillation between the categor-
ies of money and capital in the Grundrisse is a sign that Marx is in search of a
categorial movement. This is an alternative to the readings that say the categor-
ies in the Grundrisse are not developed41 or, metaphorically, that they are not
‘flattened out’.42
It may be asked where in this account the moment of critique can be found.
Marx thinks that critique is intertwined with exposition, or that an exposition
cannot avoid being critical in the same way that critique cannot be exposi-
tional.43 This should not, however, be taken to mean that there is no critique
during the realisation of the threefold function of the method of enquiry. This
is just to say that, as can be seen in, so to speak, the submoments of the method
of investigation, the moment of enquiry tends to be more descriptive, explanat-

olaus recognises that the Grundrisse is the work where method of enquiry is developed,
he does not recognise the threefold function presented here.
38 See Marx 1962a, p. 27: ‘Erst nachdem diese Arbeit vollbracht, kann die wirkliche Bewegung
entsprechend dargestellt werden. Gelingt dies und spiegelt sich nun das Leben des Stoffs
ideell wider, so mag es aussehn, als habe man es mit einer Konstruktion a priori zu tun’.
Cf. Marx 1961, p. 398, where Marx stresses a unity between the exposition and reality.
39 Cf. Marx 1983, p. 127, where circulation is introduced as the first totality under the eco-
nomic categories. As we saw in Chapter 5, section 4, other starting points are introduced
on other occasions.
40 Cf. Smith 1993b, p. 16: ‘I believe that in Capital and elsewhere Marx did indeed make use of
systematic dialectical method similar to that found in Hegel’ (emphasis added).
41 Fineschi 2013, p. 72.
42 Negri 1991, p. 12.
43 See for example, Marx’s letter to Lassalle on 22 February 1858: ‘The work at hand is the
critique of economic categories or if you like, the system of bourgeois economy critically
exposed. It is simultaneously exposition of the system and through the exposition its cri-
tique’ (Marx 1978c, p. 550, my translation).
154 chapter 6

ory, and analytic. Moreover, it has been rightly pointed out that the Grundrisse
‘neither offers a more detailed explanation of what is meant by economic
categories, nor are these discussed in connection with the “exchange abstrac-
tion”’.44
In this way, the reading presented here is different from that of the authors of
the neue Lektüre45 who argue that ‘one can find a proper dialectical exposition
of categories only in that text [i.e., the Grundrisse], while the logical consist-
ency was weakened in subsequent writings’.46 What is proposed here is also in
harmony with the interpretation of Roberto Fineschi to the extent that he criti-
cises that viewpoint, but it diverges from his view that the dialectical exposition
is also found in the Grundrisse.47 What Fineschi overlooks here is the result of
the confusion between exposition tout court and exposition as a method that is
formally distinct from the method of enquiry. The shortcomings of his reading
are not limited to this however. Fineschi does not recognise the importance of
the method of enquiry. Moreover, he asserts, without elaboration, that Marx’s
method of exposition is similar to Hegel’s:

‘Mode of research’ [Forschungsweise] and ‘mode of exposition’ [Darstel-

lungsweise] are the expressions used by Marx to define his own method
in the afterword to the second German edition of Capital Volume i (in
Fowkes’s translation: ‘method of enquiry’ and ‘method of presentation’)
(Marx 1993, p. 102). The category ‘exposition’ (or ‘presentation’) is a crucial
one; in fact, the German term ‘darstellen’ does not simply regard the way
given results are presented, but the way the theory itself develops through
its different levels of abstraction toward totality. It is in fact explicit that
Marx is referring to Hegel’s Darstellung when he uses this word. The pro-
cess of exposition posits results.48

Fineschi seems to ignore the fact that Marx explicitly draws a particular dis-
tinction between the method of enquiry and the method of exposition which
is absent in Hegel. Thus, there are important differences between Marx’s and
Hegel’s views.
The alternative thesis is the considered result of the different interpreta-
tions of the relationship between the method of enquiry and the method of

44 Reichelt 2007, p. 8.
45 See Reichelt 2001 and Backhaus 1997.
46 Fineschi 2013, p. 72.
47 Fineschi 2013, pp. 71–2.
48 Fineschi 2013, p. 71 (emphasis added).
the relationship between the grundrisse and capital 155

exposition of the capitalist mode of production, distribution, exchange, con-

sumption of commodities, service, information, and capital. The unambiguous
realisation of the method of exposition is found in Capital,49 but between the
Grundrisse and Capital a step is taken in the direction of the realisation of
this exposition. The Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859) also
begins with the commodity, and hence is a partial realisation of the method
of exposition – partial because the developed categorial movement of Capital
is not seen there. It is only the co-constitution of a mediated, absolute, and
necessary starting point50 and the categorial movement found in Capital that
exhibits the coherent realisation of the method of exposition.
A comparison of the starting point of Capital with Hegel’s Science of Logic
is noteworthy here. Whereas Hegel argues at the beginning of that book that
a proper starting point is neither mediated nor immediate and must be both
mediated and immediate,51 Capital begins with a definite starting point that is
mediated, absolute, and necessary, namely, the commodity. This starting point
is mediated through the capitalist mode of social life as a totality; it is absolute
since there is no smaller divisible moment-category than the commodity, and it
is necessary because no other category can play this particular role. As the start-
ing point of the exposition of the critique of political economy, the commodity
is the integral processual moment of the social reality under study, and plays a
role similar to that of a morpheme, or word meaning as the smallest indivisible
meaning-bearer,52 in contradistinction to a phoneme, or that of a molecule as
opposed to an atom. The analogy is meant to imply that while such smallest
units bear a similarity in nature to the Totality of which they are component
totalities, this is not true of the other units. That which stems from the com-
modity as starting point (the subject at hand) goes further and affects not only
every other category, but also the Totality of the categories and the categorial
movement as a whole.
This is the horizon that such a particular present-time starting point opens.53
As was explained in section 4 in discussing the totality in the Grundrisse in
the previous chapter, such a starting point does not and cannot exist in the

49 Callinicos 2014, p. 64.

50 See Chapter 5, section 5.1.1 above.
51 See Hegel 2010, p. 46: ‘[T]here is nothing in heaven or nature or spirit or anywhere else
that does not contain just as much immediacy as mediation’.
52 For the development of ‘word meaning’ as the unity of thought and speech see Vygotsky
1986.
53 Harootunian 2015, p. 31: ‘[S]tarting from the commodity rather than its concept meant
also that one must start from the present rather than the past’. For a critical review of this
book, see Boveiri 2016c.
156 chapter 6

method of enquiry. But such a starting point, as the first totality and bearer of
the contradictions of the Totality, determines the categorial movement and is
also determined by the categorial movement. This is why there is not only no
starting point in the Grundrisse, but no categorial movement either. Without
the categorial movement of the Totality that entails and is entailed by a definite
starting point (after doubt and examination), namely, commodity as a totality,
and without the realisation of the method of enquiry (Grundrisse), a concrete
critique (Capital) integrating the empirical data cannot be undertaken. This is
also embodied by the introduction in Capital of the category of ‘socially neces-
sary labour time’, which is absent in the Grundrisse. This is seen from the use
of the verb ‘to appropriate’ (aneignen) in both texts: in the Grundrisse, Marx
speaks of the appropriation of the concrete, and in the afterword to Capital
he discusses in detail the appropriation of the material. The goal is to form a
concrete totality in thought by the application of the force of abstraction. The
method of enquiry anticipated the method of exposition, whereas the method
of exposition fulfils the plan set by the method of enquiry. Regarding this, in
one of the comments on the relation between the Grundrisse and Capital, we
read: ‘The question of logic of presentation [i.e., exposition] is resolved differ-
ently in the Grundrisse and Capital. Yet, the concept of totality presupposed
by his critical, immanent method which conceptualised capitalism as a self-
reproducing, dynamic and contradictory system remained constant in these
efforts’.54 The interpretation presented here modifies this claim on two points.
First, it is not the logic of exposition that is resolved differently in the two texts;
rather, in one we have the method of enquiry, and in the other the method
of exposition. Second, accordingly, the concept of totality is nuanced: in the
Grundrisse, we witness the totality as the oscillation of categories, whereas in
Capital we have categorial movement.
If this is correct, the relationship between the method of enquiry and the
method of exposition goes further than a simple, undialectical relationship
of correction, as some maintain. Callinicos and Ilyenkov, for instance, over-
look the threefold character of the method of enquiry introduced by Marx.
The thought that the difference of form between these two texts is related to
Marx’s personal familiarity with the ‘different circles of the capitalist hell that
is different from the one that corresponds to the law of their own development
and is presented in Capital’55 goes particularly off track. Such a perspective can
seem acceptable only if the difference between the enquiry and the exposi-

54 Grumley 1989, p. 59.

55 Ilyenkov 1982, p. 144; Callinicos 2014, pp. 73–5.
the relationship between the grundrisse and capital 157

tion, on the one hand, and enquiry, exposition and investigation, on the other,
is overlooked. According to this alternative reading, there is no moment of
investigation as such, but only the moments of investigation as enquiry and
exposition, with the differences textually elaborated on in the last two sections
in the previous chapter.
A reference to what comes after the passage in Marx’s Afterword quoted
above at the beginning of this chapter (see section 1) is illuminating. Marx con-
tinues his own quotation from the reviewer Kaufmann:

Marx only concerns himself with one thing: to show, by an exact scientific
investigation [wissenschaftliche Untersuchung], the necessity of success-
ive determinate orders of social relations, and to establish, as impeccably
as possible, the facts from which he starts out and on which he depends.56

This ‘scientific investigation’, according to the reading presented here, has two
moments: enquiry and exposition. Put differently, the method of investigation
shows itself as two distinct but also related moments, either as the method
of enquiry or as the method of exposition. If this is right, each of these two
moments is simultaneously der Moment of the investigation, and as such time-
bound (Capital comes after the Grundrisse), but also das Moment of the invest-
igation, since each is inwardly related to the other:57 The method of enquiry is
one das Moment and der Moment of investigation; the method of exposition
is also one das Moment and der Moment of investigation. In this way only may
one say that ‘the contrast between the logical and the historical is a pseudoal-
ternative’.58 In contrast, a reading that introduces the logical as a prerequisite
of the historical makes Marx’s methodology too Hegelian.59
The method of exposition makes it possible ‘that the development of the
capitalist mode of [social life] … can be followed through until it is grasped in
its totality.’60 However, this still does not and cannot provide us with a clear-

56 Marx 1976, pp. 100–1. The German text reads: ‘Demzufolge bemüht sich Marx nur um eins:
durch genaue wissenschaftliche Untersuchung die Notwendigkeit bestimmter Ordnun-
gen der gesellschaftlichen Verhältnisse nachzuweisen und soviel als möglich untadelhaft
die Tatsachen zu konstatieren, die ihm zu Ausgangs- und Stützpunkten dienen’ (Marx
1962a, p. 26).
57 Marx uses both das Moment (e.g., 1983, p. 140: ‘soweit nicht das Moment betrachtet wird’;
p. 248: ‘Das Moment der Lohnarbeit’) and der Moment (1967, p. 504: ‘Aber die Krise ist
grade der Moment der Störung und Unterbrechung des Reproduktionsprozesses’).
58 Arndt 2012, p. 136 (my translation).
59 See Dussell 2001, p. 210.
60 Rosdolsky 1977, p. 27.
158 chapter 6

cut, or let us say absolute definition of the categories.61 In the same vein, the
gap between subject and object, thought and being, does not entail a closure.62
It is rather an incessant process of gradual approximations.
There are some passages in the Introduction elaborating on the crucial ques-
tion of the relation between thought process and historical process. There is a
multitude of possibilities of relations between categorial development and his-
torical development. Since these two are neither homogeneous nor identical,
the categories and historical entities overlap, converge, diverge, and occasion-
ally correspond.63 The result cannot be reduced to positivism but neither to
‘historical epistemology’.64
In this way, through marking the differences between these two works, this
chapter of the book proposed to offer a twofold contribution to the contem-
porary Marxian studies: it is an attempt toward a solution to a problem that
the authors of the Das Kapital neu lesen have put forward, namely, the demon-
stration of an ‘inner relation between the method of enquiry and the method
of exposition’,65 notwithstanding the difference between these as moments
of investigation. On the other hand, it also rebuts the recent claim regarding
a rupture between the Grundrisse and Capital, as discussed in the preceding
pages.
On this reading of enquiry as equally distinct from but also related to expos-
ition, Marx, I think, contributes decidedly to a longstanding problem in the
history of philosophy brought forward in different forms by Parmenides, Aris-
totle, and Hegel.66 Put simply, to the problem of the starting point as posed by

61 Cf. Reichelt 2007, p. 8: ‘[In Capital] categories are defined, in all the clarity that could be
wished for, as “objective forms of thought”’. On the absence of ideal definitions in dialect-
ical investigation, see Boveiri 2016b.
62 Cf. Hall 2003, p. 130: ‘That is, until the gap between thought and being is closed in prac-
tice’. Hall does not seem to fully recognise the drastic consequences of referring to Paul
Vilar’s paper (1973) to his argument where the latter defends Engels’s idea of asympto-
matic approximation or progress of thought towards the real.
63 Marx 1973, p. 102: ‘To that extent the path of abstract thought, rising from the simple to the
combined, would correspond to the real historical process’. Hence, what Marx says in the
following passage from Capital Volume i must be understood along these lines: ‘Reflection
on the forms of human life, hence also scientific analysis of those forms, takes a course dir-
ectly opposite to their real development. Reflection begins post festum, and therefore with
the results of the process of development ready to hand’ (Marx 1976, p. 168).
64 See Hall 2003, p. 132.
65 Hoff, Petrioli et al. 2006, p. 29: ‘inneren Zusammenhangs von Forschung und Darstellung’
(my translation). This relationship is introduced also as a problem in need of further elab-
oration by the authors of Marx’s Method in Capital. See Moseley 1993, p. 12.
66 See Parmenides 2009, pp. 45–59; Aristotle, Physics 1.1, 184a16–20 (in Aristotle 2006) and
Metaphysics Z.3, 1029b3–12 (in Aristotle 1995); and Hegel 1969b, p. 502.
the relationship between the grundrisse and capital 159

these philosophers and many others, Marx responds that it is essential to first
clarify whether it is the question of the method of enquiry or the method of
exposition.
In the contemporary literature on the studies of human sciences in general
and philosophy in particular, we see recognitions similar to the thesis elabor-
ated on here with regard to the relationship between the method of enquiry
and the method of exposition – and this not necessarily by Marxist thinkers
or even dialecticians and in different contexts. Here, I limit myself to a few
examples. In an appendix to Pierre Bourdieu’s groundbreaking sociological
study, Distinction, we read: ‘The order of exposition takes as its starting point
the arrival point of [the order of] enquiry’.67 In The Conduct of Enquiry: Meth-
odology for Behavioural Science a similar distinction is recognised as the logic-
in-use, the distinction between ‘what is actually being done by scientists’ and
the reconstructed logic which comes thereafter.68 Such a difference is, I think,
more important than what platitude and truism acknowledge. With relation to
elaboration on philosophical texts, for instance, a distinction is made between
the order of the discovery of the text which is different from the order of com-
ment or elaboration on a text.69 Even in a handbook of English style, to give
another example, one can read: ‘Writing, to be effective, must follow closely the
thoughts of the writer, but not necessarily in the order in which those thoughts
occur’.70
Once enquiry and exposition are taken as two moments of the investiga-
tion, several difficulties can be clarified, not only in Marx’s own works but
also in the commentators. In what follows, I discuss some of them. Regard-
ing Marx’s works, a good example can be seen in Capital. In the opening pas-
sage, analysed previously for a different purpose,71 one reads: ‘Our investigation
[Untersuchung] therefore begins with the analysis of the commodity’.72 Taken
literally, this sentence leaves the relationship between investigation, enquiry,
and exposition indefinite, for Marx says here that the investigation begins
with the analysis of the commodity, but as we have seen above, he also holds
that the method of enquiry (Forschungsweise) and the method of exposition

67 Bourdieu 2007, p. 587, my translation. In the original: ‘l’ordre d’exposition … prend pour
point de départ le point d’arrivée [de l’ordre] de recherche’.
68 Kaplan 2009, pp. 10–11.
69 Choulet, Folscheid et al. 2018, p. 62. ‘The order of the discovery of the text which is not the
order of exposition (of explication or commentary)’ (my translation).
70 Strunk and White 2000, p. 26.
71 See section 5 in the previous chapter.
72 Marx 1976, p. 125, emphasis added. The German text reads: ‘Unsere Untersuchung beginnt
daher mit der Analyse der Ware’ (Marx 1962a, p. 49).
160 chapter 6

(Darstellungsweise) should be formally distinguished.73 According to the read-

ing presented in this chapter, Marx means here that the moment of exposition
of the investigation (Untersuchung) is the beginning of the investigation in
Capital. This is equally true in Chapter 18 of Capital Volume ii, when he speaks
of the object* of investigation.74
As for the commentators, I mention Kosík’s standpoint in the Dialectic of the
Concrete. What is suggested by him in this respect, taken literally and without
qualification, is an inconsistent account. On the one hand, we read: ‘[T]he start-
ing point of investigation must be formally identical with the result’.75 On the
other hand, Kosík also writes: ‘The beginning of the exposition and the begin-
ning of the investigation are two different things. The beginning of the invest-
igation is random and arbitrary, the beginning of the exposition is necessary’.76
The reading presented here suggests a solution for this apparent inconsistency:
the beginning of the exposition, that is, the commodity, is identical with the
result of the exposition, namely, the capitalist mode as a totality.77 As stated
before, this movement from one cellular totality to the Totality of the capital-
ist mode of social life is similar to the way a stem cell is taken in science to
potentially amount to the body as a whole. There is, then, a movement from
the first, the cellular, from the corporeal form, from the commodity, to the cap-
italist form as a whole. As another commentator, I would also like to mention
a passage in Andreas Arndt’s influential book Versuch über den Zusammen-
hang seiner Theorie. In his commentary on money as the starting point of the
Grundrisse, he writes: ‘Marx begins in the Grundrisse with the investigation
[Untersuchung] of money theories’.78 More precisely, one may say that it is the
enquiry (Forschung) into money theories.
It follows from my position that the claim that enquiry and exposition are
two moments of enquiry is untenable.79 Similarly, I find equally weak a some-

73 Marx 1976, p. 102; 1962a, p. 27.

74 ‘Gegenstand der Untersuchung’ (Marx 1963, p. 351), and also ‘Gegenstand der Unter-
suchungen’ (Marx 1964, p. 33). The latter phrase was referred to in Chapter 5, section 5.2.
75 Kosík 1976, p. 14.
76 Kosík 1976, p. 16. What Camus says in Le mythe de Sisyphe (‘Toutes les grandes actions et
toutes les grandes pensées ont un commencement dérisoire’; Camus 2013, p. 260) can be
just cum grano salis correct regarding Marx: it depends on whether we are talking about
the Grundrisse or Capital.
77 Dardot and Laval 2012, p. 326.
78 Arndt 2012, p. 140: ‘beginnt Marx in den „Grundrissen“ mit einer Untersuchung der Geld-
theorien[.]’ (my translation).
79 Cf. Negri 1991, p. 14.
the relationship between the grundrisse and capital 161

what mechanistic division of the moments of Marx’s project.80 Moreover, the

unified threefold function of the method of enquiry carries with it a criterion
for evaluating the enquiry, the application of which goes beyond the analysis of
the capitalist mode of social life. It is similar to, but also different from, the fam-
ous four steps introduced by Descartes,81 and this notwithstanding the claim
repeated by Marx and Engels that they avoid a recipe or a scheme.82
Whereas the threefold function of the method of enquiry may be applied to
all investigations (Untersuchungen), specifically in enquiry, this is not equally
true of the exposition (Darstellung). It is incumbent on those who draw a
strict (unbridgeable?) gap between nature and science83 – and hence call for
a restriction of the Marxian method to the critique of political economy – to
argue against the usage of the threefold dictum with regard to the method
of enquiry introduced by Marx. In other words, they should respond to the
following question: Why isn’t such a threefold function tenable in other enquir-
ies?84 I think a good answer to this question cannot be given. This is why I
think that in putting this forward Marx was attempting to respond to a long-
standing and complex question in the history of philosophy that goes beyond
the domain of the critique of political economy, namely, the problem of the
starting point in philosophical methodology, in the sense of movement from a
particular starting point. In so doing, Marx takes up the question: ‘With what
must the beginning of the science be made?’ He responds by suggesting that the
answer depends on whether the question is about scientific enquiry or expos-
ition. Such a question, as far as I can see, with the exposition as an a posteriori
endeavour, has not been put forward in the history of philosophy, not even by
Hegel, who provides us with the a priori derivation of categories in the Science
of Logic,85 notwithstanding some similarities.86 This a priori derivation of the

80 Paolucci 2011, p. 62.

81 Descartes 2000, pp. 88–90.
82 Marx and Engels 1978, p. 27; Marx 1962a, p. 25.
83 See Sekine 1997a, p. 3: ‘I wish to argue, on the contrary, that nature and society are two
altogether different things, and hence that we need different methods to study them’
(emphasis added). For a related reading, see Postone 2003.
84 I am not saying that the categories used are universal categories. Hence, I agree to a large
extent with Harvey that ‘[f]or the most part, Marx is emphatic that he is dealing only with
the conceptual categories formulated within and appropriate to a capitalist mode of pro-
duction’ (Harvey 2010, p. 111).
85 This has been shown with regard to the metacategory of totality in Chapter 2 above.
86 I thank George Di Giovanni, who kindly confirmed this point, and also for drawing my
attention to the importance of Fichte in the relationship between the method of expos-
ition and the method of enquiry. Cf. paragraph 246 in the Encyclopedia ii (Hegel 1986b,
p. 15.), Hegel 2010, pp. 45–55: ‘With what must the beginning of science be made?’, and
162 chapter 6

categories, which is characteristic of Hegel’s methodology, is exactly what Marx

eschews with his introduction of the twofold method of investigation. This has
been argued for here in relating this to the metacategory of totality.
As for the apparent inconsistency between the Introduction and the After-
word, the defence of the historical nature of phenomena and the derivation
of laws found in the Afterword should be coupled with the logical claim made
in the Introduction. The either-or is just faulty. The insertion (so to speak) of
history in Capital should be read as a concretisation-socialisation-totalisation
process achieved by the method of exposition; that is, whereas in the Afterword
Der Moment is stressed, in the Introduction Das Moment is given importance.
But seeing beyond Das Moment, the logical aspect of each Gegenstand to the
temporality of that Gegenstand is to be coupled with seeing beyond the Der
Moment of each Gegenstand to its inner logic, which does not entail their iden-
tity.87

4 Conclusion

Every genuine philosopher introduces not only a particular starting point from
which to philosophise, but also a particular approach with regard to that start-
ing point.88 Both characteristics are found in Marx. Not all the implications of
his thesis can be discussed here; therefore, I limit myself to a single case. This
discussion is connected with the question of limits and barriers in the method
of exposition and in the method of enquiry. I begin with a quotation by Frieder
Otto Wolf in which he offers his interpretation in this respect:

For Marx, because of these ‘limits of dialectical exposition’, which he con-

sciously acknowledges, there is no comparable route stepping through
speculative references to general dialectical patterns of thought. Just after
the particular individual objects* are ‘permeated’ in the process of en-
quiry, that is, after being worked out, through which working out struc-

Psychopedis 1992, who ascribes phenomenological Darstellung to Hegel’s Philosophy of

Right (p. 5); however, he overlooks the fact that Hegel does not recognise a similar distinc-
tion between Darstellung and Forschung.
87 Compare this with what Engels writes on the introduction to the Contribution: ‘The logical
method of treatment was hence the only appropriate method. But, in fact, it is nothing
else other than the historical method, just stripped of the historical form and its disturb-
ing coincidences’ (Engels 1971, p. 475, my translation).
88 See Deleuze and Guattari 2005, p. 21: ‘Descartes, Hegel, Feuerbach non seulement ne com-
mencent pas par le même concept, mais non pas le même concept de commencement’.
the relationship between the grundrisse and capital 163

tural causality lets itself be exemplified in the singular objects*, a limited

‘dialectical exposition’ of the discovered relationships becomes possible
for Marx.89

In the first place, it is noteworthy to mention that Wolf recognises the need
for a distinction between the method of enquiry and the method of exposi-
tion. However, he accepts that exposition presupposes enquiry. That said, as
a defender of the thesis that ‘there is no comparable route stepping through
speculative references to general dialectical patterns of thought’, Wolf should,
along with the viewpoints I criticised previously, argue against the application
of the threefold function of the method of enquiry generally.
It also follows from this discussion that the treatment of limits and barri-
ers cannot be methodologically the same in the Grundrisse and Capital. It is
therefore necessary to elaborate on the formal difference as proposed by Marx.
One aspect of this difference is that when one refers, as Wolf does, to the lim-
its (Grenze) of the method of exposition as distinguished from the method of
enquiry, one has to speak about the barriers (Schranke). Such barriers as found
in the Grundrisse prepare the path for the method of exposition in Capital,
where they are thrust into limits. One function of the method of enquiry is
then the way it introduces the barriers to be sursumed (aufgehoben) in the
book where the method of exposition is elaborated on, namely, Capital. These
barriers cannot be overcome in the method of enquiry, for the inherent char-
acteristics of the method of enquiry still do not disclose their nature; this
disclosure needs to be effected in the method of exposition developed in Cap-
ital.90
The development of the totality can finally be comprehended just at this
point. The similarity to Hegel’s limits and barriers stops at the point where all
such limits and barriers are both objective* and social. The forms they bear are,

89 Wolf 2006, p. 179, my translation. The original reads: ‘Für Marx gibt es – wegen dieser
von ihm bewusst beachteten “Grenzen der dialektischen Darstellung” – keine vergleich-
bare Marscherleichterung durch spekulative Rückgriffe auf allgemeine dialektische Den-
kfiguren. Allein nachdem im Prozess der Forschung die besonderen singulären Gegen-
stände “durchdrungen” worden sind, d. h. nachdem herausgearbeitet worden ist, welcher
Zusammenhang von strukturaler Kausalität sich an den singulären Gegenständen exem-
plifizieren lässt, wird für Marx eine begrenzte “dialektische Darstellung” des entdeckten
Zusammenhanges möglich.’ Admittedly, this reading has its roots in a title-like passage
from the Grundrisse. See Marx 1983, p. 42: ‘Dialektik der Begriffe Produktivkraft (Produk-
tionsmittel) und Produktionsverhältnis, eine Dialektik, deren Grenzen zu bestimmen und
die realen Unterschied nicht aufhebt’.
90 Cf. Kosík 1976, p. 16.
164 chapter 6

for Marx, not vacuous, but real forms. The function of the method of exposition
is thus not merely to set forth the research results, nor is it of merely literary
value91 and neither is it a revelation.92
Once more, the limits of the method of exposition are the result of the bar-
riers of the method of enquiry, as found in the Grundrisse. Such barriers –
remembering the barriers in Hegel’s Science of Logic – carry along with them
an ought (Sollen). In that book, the ought is concomitant with the ‘barriers’. In
Marx’s account the ‘ought’ makes the sursumption (Aufhebung) of the barriers
of the method of enquiry possible, but also manifests itself in the limits of the
method of exposition. The ought of ‘Expropriators will be expropriated’93 goes
further than theory.94 This is itself a sursumption of the judgements of facts, to
judgements of value and to judgements of injunction. A description-analysis
of the first type of judgements leads to a critique in the second, where an eval-
uation of the subject matter is offered, which leads in turn to an imperative
sentence with an explicit or implicit ought, be it in the form of ‘Workers of the
world unite’ or ‘The situation must be transformed’.
What Marx says in the so-called Urtext – ‘The dialectical form of exposi-
tion is correct, only when it recognises its limits’95 – must also be taken up
and put in relationship with the dual difference presented here, between the
limits and barriers on the one hand, and between the method of exposition
and the method of enquiry on the other. That is to say, the sentence must
be continued with ‘and also recognizes its barriers’, that is, the barriers which
have been already elaborated on in the method of enquiry. A paper comment-
ing on the relationship between the Grundrisse and Capital has the title ‘The
Four Levels of Abstraction of Marx’s Concept of “Capital”: Or, Can We Consider
the Grundrisse the Most Advanced Version of Marx’s Theory of Capital?’96 The
reading proposed here has both a positive and a negative response to this ques-
tion: As the method of enquiry yes, but not as the method of exposition.

91 See Ilyenkov 1982, p. 142.

92 See Bellofiore 2016, p. 56: ‘Darstellung again, is at the same time a “revelation”’. Cf. Hegel
1969b, pp. 65–6, where Hegel draws an analogy between revelation (Offenbarung) and a
pistol shot.
93 Marx 1962a, p. 791: ‘Die Expropriateurs werden expropriiert’.
94 The Idee des Guten comes in the last moments of die Idee des Erkennens, and the whole
Science of Logic is the presupposition of the Philosophy of Right. See Hegel 1989, p. 32.
95 Marx 1980, p. 90: ‘[D]ie dialektische Form der Darstellung nur richtig ist, wenn sie Ihre
Grenzen kennt’.
96 Fineschi 2013. According to the reading presented here one has to talk about ‘moments’
not ‘levels’.
the relationship between the grundrisse and capital 165

The thesis proposed by some commentators,97 that the Grundrisse offers

neue Darstellung, needs further reconsideration. According to the reading pre-
sented here, the Grundrisse does give us the method of enquiry, and Capital,
notwithstanding all its shortcomings and points needing development, gives
the method of exposition. Given that just the first volume of Capital was pub-
lished by Marx himself and several books were left unwritten even in the forms
of notes,98 it is undoubtedly true that we have no more than the partial real-
isation of Marx’s project. Nonetheless, the partial realisation of the method
of exposition in the three volumes of Capital does not mean that the totality
presented in them is the realisation of a closed totality and a closed realisation
of the method of exposition; it is just to affirm that they are the partial real-
isation of the plan proposed in the Grundrisse99 as the work where method of
enquiry is elaborated on (and again, that this is only to the extent expected from
notebooks not intended for publication). The richness of these notebooks then
is not fully realised in the works where Marx develops his method of exposition.
Many books have been written since Marx, on the crises, the changes in the
characteristics of the world labour market, etc., and many more are needed.100
As to the discussion of Marxian totality, the absence of his book on the money
market is particularly to be regretted, since according to him it is in the money
market that capital posits itself as totality.101
The adoption of the approach suggested here leads to a coherent reading
of the Grundrisse and Capital and shows the inner coherence between the
method of enquiry and that of exposition, but also raises many questions for
further discussion.102
The neue Darstellung is the Herculean task then left for us.

97 Negri 1991, pp. 12–13, 31, and 51.

98 More than that: it is thought that Marx published only about 1/72 of his project! See Dussell
2001, p. 211.
99 Marx 1973, 275.
100 For an elaboration of the paths of further development of Marx’s project (Capital, critique,
and his historical project beyond political economy), see Foster 2018.
101 Marx 1973, p. 275.
102 Callinicos 2018, p. 144: ‘The critique of political economy stands before us, massive and
unfinished but magnificent, like Michelangelo’s slaves in the Accademia in Florence’.
Epilogue

At this stage of the discussion, enough argument has been advanced, I hope,
to establish an unambiguous reading of Marx’s works regarding the concep-
tion of totality and its role in methodological elucidation. It has been estab-
lished that it is defensible to assert an evolutionary coherence to the Marxian
totality. The role of this conception in Marxian methodology and its relation-
ship with the method of inquiry and method of exposition have also been
elaborated upon. As we saw in the last chapter, the power of abstraction is
realised in two moments: the method of enquiry and the method of exposi-
tion.
The conception of dually intertwined totality as a transcategorial meta-
category presented here is more promising than the structuralist1 and post-
structuralist accounts in denying the ontological primacy of contingency.2
Totality is not a category but a metacategory because it is not limited to any
specific category. It is transcategorial because its nature is revealed in trans-
ition from one category to the other. This conception is also more promising
than the competing accounts among Marxist thinkers. It also encompasses
the Marxist theory which stresses internal relations.3 Internal relations are
primarily internal relations among the members of wholes. These members are
relational entities not in the sense that the characteristics of each one stems
from the relationships of that thing with other things, but in the sense that
they find their activation through those relations.4 Taken as an ensemble of
relations, each of them is such that it cannot exist without the existence of a
totality. The full conception of such a totality is unimaginable without those
relations.
This conception of totality is also more promising than the proposed exteri-
ority as an alternative or complementary constituent to totality. In Towards an
Unknown Marx, Enrique Dussell writes: ‘According to Lukács, Kosík or Bloch
[totality] is “fundamental” because it is understood as the realm of being which
founds entities within its realm’.5 He forgets to add that totality is also foun-
ded by its entities. Once this version of totality is adopted, it may be asked

1 See Godelier 1967.

2 Postone 2015.
3 For a developed account of the internal relations, see Ollman 2003.
4 Marx 1976, p. 149; discussed above.
5 Dussel 2001, p. 240.

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epilogue 167

if the introduction of exteriority would be necessary and even helpful. The

reason is that the Marxian totality as presented here is, unlike a Hegelian total-
ity, open.6
Such openness puts limits on this conception of totality. For instance, it can-
not cover those situations where this alien-fetishistic mode of social life does
not prevail or is not central – for instance, the situation in Occupied Palestine.
It cannot, to give another example, explain the difference between the treat-
ment of Ukrainian and Syrian refugees. But the proposed conception is helpful
where this totality is to be grasped as well as those external cases. It is also more
promising than the conception which proposes negativity as an alternative to
totality.7 In the conception of totality presented here, negativity is already an
inherent characteristic of totality.
That said, there are limits to my argument. Regarding the primary literat-
ure, I have limited myself, in principle, to what is found in mew. To get a
broader picture, a further project may reconstruct these discussions with a
consideration of all the nuances found in mega2, including the French edi-
tion of Capital Volume i supervised by Marx.8 I say all, because the reader has
witnessed some modest attempts made to integrate the mega2 version of the
much-debated Volume iii of Capital. Although I do not expect further integ-
ration of the nuances in the mega2 text to invalidate what I believe to be an
unambiguous reading of the Marxian Totality presented here, the present work
is ultimately to be evaluated in light of that eventual elucidation.
Another problem is the evaluation of the possibility of further integration
of the moment of consumption in this social alien-fetishistic contradictory
totality, as the moment of singularity, where the human praxis is essentially
individual. This entails a challenge for an account of the social totality presen-
ted here.
Apart from that, except for a couple of examples,9 the discussion of totality
presented here does not tackle the question of totality in artworks.10 Although

6 Cf. Rockwell 2018, p. 165: ‘While Hegel’s dialectic was the “totality of reason, a closed onto-
logical system, finally identical with the rational system of history” (Marcuse, 1941/1999,
314), Marx’s totality is “the totality of class society, and the negativity that underlies its
contradictions and shapes its every content is the negativity of class relations” (Marcuse,
1941/1999, p. 314)’. For a critical review of Rockwell’s book, see Boveiri 2021.
7 See Dunayevskaya 2002.
8 See the Appendix i for just one example where I have given different versions of such a
passage along with my own translation of that French edition.
9 Chapters 3 and 4.
10 In a commentary on one of Paul Cézanne’s still life paintings, for instance, we read: ‘Each
seemingly insignificant element is vital to the overall design’. Murphy 1968, p. 137.
168 epilogue

I follow the research on this topic as an amateur,11 I am not qualified to pass

judgement on the meaning of totality with regard to works of art.12 Nonethe-
less, I hope that this book will be helpful to a researcher working in that field.

11 In Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep, the detective Philip Marlowe says: ‘I seem to talk
in circles, it just seems that way. It all ties together – everything’ (Chandler 1992, p. 223).
Another related example may be interesting. During the production of the movie adapt-
ation of Chandler’s book, the director Howard Hawks could not figure out whether one
character, Owen Taylor, was murdered or committed suicide. They consulted the author,
who wrote in a letter: ‘They sent me a wire … asking me, and dammit I didn’t know either’
(Hiney and MacShane 2000, p. 103). On this, see Jameson 2016. Another work left uncon-
sulted is Lukács’s The Specificity of Aesthetics; see Lukács 1978a, p. 50.
12 See Best 2020, p. 4 for a promising path in this respect. She demonstrates the pertinence
of the conception of totality in the contemporary world notwithstanding the changes that
have occurred between Marx’s time and the present.
 appendix 1

Rereading of a Passage from the French Edition of

First Volume of Capital Edited by Marx

After the following passage from the Afterword to the second edition of Capital
Vol. i, which is common in two different French versions:

Of course, the method of presentation [Darstellung] must differ in form

[ formell] from that of inquiry [Forschung]. The latter has to appropriate
the material in detail, to analyze its different forms of development and
to track down their inner connection.1

We read:

Erst nachdem diese Arbeit vollbracht, kann die wirkliche Bewegung ents-
prechend dargestellt werden. Gelingt dies und spiegelt sich nun das Le-
ben des Stoffs ideell wider, so mag es aussehn, als habe man es mit einer
Konstruktion a priori zu tun.2

Only after this work has been done can the real movement be appropri-
ately presented [exposed]. If this is done successfully, if the life of the
subject-matter is now reflected back in the ideas, then it may appear as if
we have before us an a priori construction.3

C’est seulement lorsque cette tâche est accomplie que le mouvement

réel peut être exposé en conséquence. Si l’on y réussit et que la vie de la
matière traitée se réfléchit alors idéellement, il peut sembler que l’on ait
affaire à une construction a priori.4

1 Karl Marx 1976, Capital i, translated by Ben Fowkes, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, p. 103:
‘Allerdings muß sich die Darstellungsweise formell von der Forschungsweise unterscheiden.
Die Forschung hat den Stoff sich im Detail anzueignen, seine verschiednen Entwicklungs-
formen zu analysieren und deren innres Band aufzuspüren’. Karl Marx 1962, Das Kapital i, in
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels 1962, Werke 23, Berlin: Dietz Verlag, p. 27.
2 Karl Marx 1962, Das Kapital i, in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels 1962, Werke 23, Berlin: Dietz
Verlag, p. 27.
3 Karl Marx 1976, Capital i, translated by Ben Fowkes, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, p. 103.
4 Karl Marx 1993, Le Capital – Livre Premier, edited by Jean-Pierre Lefebvre, Paris: Presses Uni-
versitaires de France, p. 17.

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170 appendix 1

I have checked with the staff active at the mega2 project, who have access to
Marx’s manuscripts. They confirm that the same passage in the version edited
and modified by Marx is as follows:

Une fois cette tâche accomplie, mais seulement alors, le mouvement réel
peut être exposé dans son ensemble. Si l’on y réussit, de sorte que la vie
de la matière se réfléchisse dans sa reproduction idéale, ce mirage peut
faire croire à une construction a priori.5

My translation for this latter text is as follows:

When this task is accomplished, and just then, the real movement can be
expounded in its integrity. If one succeeds at this, in a way that the life
of the matter reflects itself in the ideal reproduction, this mirage can pre-
tend to be an a priori construction.

5 Karl Marx 1982, Le Capital – Livre premier, translated by M. Joseph Roy, Moscow: Éditions du
Progrès, p. 21.
 appendix 2

Some Passages of Capital iii, in Original for Further

Verification

[Note to the reader. The following passages from different versions of what is
known as the third volume of Capital are not intended to be exhaustive. They
are simply presented here to the reader as further verification of the arguments
developed in this manuscript.]

∵
Wir haben gesehn, daß der Productionsprozeß im Ganzen betrachtet Einheit
von Productions- und Circulationsprozeß ist. Bei der Betrachtung des Circu-
lationsprozesses als Reproductionsprozeß (ch. iv Buch ii) wurde dieß näher
erörtert. Worum es sich in diesem Buch handelt, kann nicht sein allgemeine
Reflexionen über diese ‘Einheit’ anzustellen. Es gilt vielmehr die konkreten
Formen aufzufinden und darzustellen, welche aus dem Proceß des Capitals
– als Ganzes betrachtet – hervorwachsen. (In der wirklichen Bewegung der
Capitalien treten sie sich in solchen konkreten Formen gegenüber, für die die
Gestalt des Capitals im unmittelbaren Productionsprozeß, wie seine Gestalt im
Circulationsprozeß nur als besondre Momente erscheinen. Die Gestaltungen
des Capitals, wie wir sie in diesem Buch entwickeln, nähern sich also schritt-
weis der Form, worin sie auf der Oberfläche der Gesellschaft, im gewöhnlichen
Bewußtsein der Productionsagenten selbst, und endlich in der Action der ver-
schiednen Capitalien auf einan der, der Concurrenz auftreten.) (Marx 1992b,
p. 7)

Im ersten Buch wurden die Erscheinungen untersucht, die der kapitalistische

Produktionsprozeß, für sich genommen, darbietet, als unmittelbarer Produk-
tionsprozeß, bei dem noch von allen sekundären Einwirkungen ihm frem-
der Umstände abgesehn wurde. Aber dieser unmittelbare Produktionsprozeß
erschöpft nicht den Lebenslauf des Kapitals. Er wird in der wirklichen Welt
ergänzt durch den Zirkulationsprozeß, und dieser bildete den Gegenstand der
Untersuchungen des zweiten Buchs. Hier zeigte sich, namentlich im dritten
Abschnitt, bei Betrachtung des Zirkulationsprozesses als der Vermittlung des
gesellschaftlichen Reproduktionsprozesses, daß der kapitalistische Produk-
tionsprozeß, im ganzen betrachtet, Einheit von Produktions- und Zirkulation-

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172 appendix 2

sprozeß ist. Worum es sich in diesem dritten Buch handelt, kann nicht sein,
allgemeine Reflexionen über diese Einheit anzustellen. Es gilt vielmehr, die
konkreten Formen aufzufinden und darzustellen, welche aus dem Bewegungs-
prozeß des Kapitals, als Ganzes betrachtet, hervorwachsen. In ihrer wirklichen
Bewegung treten sich die Kapitale in solchen konkreten Formen gegenüber, für
die die Gestalt des Kapitals im unmittelbaren Produktionsprozeß, wie seine
Gestalt im Zirkulationsprozeß, nur als besondere Momente erscheinen. Die
Gestaltungen des Kapitals, wie wir sie in diesem Buch entwickeln, nähern
sich also schrittweis der Form, worin sie auf der Oberfläche der Gesellschaft,
in der Aktion der verschiedenen Kapitale aufeinander, der Konkurrenz, und
im gewöhnlichen Bewußtsein der Produktionsagenten selbst auftreten. (Marx
1964, p. 33)

∵
[I]st in der Gesellschaft selbst – die Totalität der gesellschaftlichen Produc-
tionszweige betrachtet – die Summe der Productionspreisse der producirten
Waaren gleich der Summe ihrer Werthe. (Marx 1992b, p. 236)

[I]st in der Gesellschaft selbst – die Totalität aller Produktionszweige betrach-

tet – die Summe der Produktionspreise der produzierten Waren gleich der
Summe ihrer Werte. (Marx 1964, p. 169)

∵
Wenn die Concurrenz das Gesellschaftscapital nämlich so vertheilt zwischen
die verschiednen Productionssphären, daß die Productionspreisse (abstrahirt
von der größren oder geringren Portion, worin der Dechet fur fixes Capital in
dieselben eingeht) in einer Sphäre = den in diesen Sphären der mittleren Com-
position, d. h. = K + p, wenn K. der Kostenpreiß, aber variable Grösse und p
constante Grösse ist, nämlich = der Grösse des Profits p. 100 in jener Sphäre
(in jener Sphäre der mittlern Composition Profit zusammenfallend mit dem
Mehrwerth) – oder was dasselbe, daß die Profitrate dieselbe in allen Produc-
tionssphären (by being equalied to that in those branches of production where
the average composition of capital prevails), dann wäre die Summe der Profite
in den verschiednen Productionssphären = Summe des Mehrwerths und die
Summe der Productionspreisse des gesellschaftlichen Gesammtproducts =
Summe seiner Werthe. Es ist aber klar daß die Ausgleischung zwischen den Pro-
ductionssphären von verschiedner Zusammensetzung (ob diese Verschieden-
heit blos auf verschiednem Verhältniß von constantem und variablem Capital,
some passages of capital iii 173

oder auch auf Verschiedenheit der Circulationszeiten beruhe) immer dahin

streben muß sie zu equalisiren mit den Sphären von mittlerer Zusammenset-
zung, sei es nun daß diese exakt der gesellschaftlichen Durchschnittscomposi-
tion entsprechen, sei es, daß sie sich derselben annähern. Zwischen den mehr
oder minder Annähernden findet selbst wieder Tendenz nach Ausgleichung
statt, die der vielleicht idealen, d. h. in der Wirklichkeit nicht vorhandnen Mit-
telcomposition zustrebt, die Tendenz hat sich um sie herum zu normiren. In
dieser Weise herrscht also nothwendig die Tendenz die Productionspreisse zu
bloß verwandelten Formen des Werths zu machen oder die Profite in blosse
Theile des Mehrwerths zu verwandeln, die aber vertheilt sind, nicht im Ver-
hältniß zum Mehrwerth, der in jeder besondren Productionssphäre erzeugt ist,
sondern im Verhältniß zur Masse des in jeder Productionssphäre angewandten
Capitals, so daß auf gleich grosse Capitalmassen, wie immer zusammengesetzt,
gleich grosse Antheile (aliquote Theile) der Totalität vom gesellschaftlichen
Gesammtcapital erzeugten Mehrwerths fallen. (Marx 1992b, p. 248–49)

Die Konkurrenz verteilt das Gesellschaftskapital so zwischen die verschiednen

Produktionssphären, daß die Produktionspreise in einer jeden Sphäre gebil-
det werden nach dem Muster der Produktionspreise in diesen Sphären der
mittleren Komposition, d.h. = k + kp' (Kostpreis plus dem Produkt der Durch-
schnittsprofitrate in den Kostpreis). Diese Durchschnittsprofitrate ist aber
nichts andres als der prozentig berechnete Profit in jener Sphäre der mit-
tlem Komposition, wo also der Profit zusammenfällt mit dem Mehrwert. Die
Profitrate ist also in allen Produktionssphären dieselbe, nämlich ausgeglichen
auf diejenige dieser mittleren Produktionssphären, wo die Durchschnittszu-
sammensetzung des Kapitals herrscht. Hiernach muß die Summe der Profite
aller verschiednen Produktionssphären gleich sein der Summe der Mehrwerte,
und die Summe der Produktionspreise des gesellschaftlichen Gesamtprodukts
gleich der Summe seiner Werte. Es ist aber klar, daß die Ausgleichung zwis-
chen den Produktionssphären von verschiedner Zusammensetzung immer
dahin streben muß, sie zu egalisieren mit den Sphären von mittlerer Zusam-
mensetzung, sei es nun, daß diese exakt, sei es, daß sie nur annähernd dem
gesellschaftlichen Durchschnitt entsprechen. Zwischen den mehr oder minder
Annähernden findet selbst wieder Tendenz nach Ausgleichung statt, die der
idealen, d.h. in der Wirklichkeit nicht vorhandnen Mittelposition zu strebt, d.h.
die Tendenz hat, sich um sie herum zu normieren. In dieser Weise herrscht also
notwendig die Tendenz, die Produktionspreise zu bloß verwandelten Formen
des Werts zu machen, oder die Profite in bloße Teile des Mehrwerts zu verwan-
deln, die aber verteilt sind, nicht im Verhältnis zum Mehrwert, der in jeder
besondren Produktionssphäre erzeugt ist, sondern im Verhältnis zur Masse
174 appendix 2

des in jeder Produktionssphäre angewandten Kapitals, so daß auf gleich große

Kapitalmassen, wie immer zusammengesetzt, gleich große Anteile (aliquote
Teile) der Totalität des vom gesellschaftlichen Gesamtkapital erzeugten Mehr-
werts fallen. (Marx 1964, pp. 182–83)

∵
Alle diese Phänomene α), β), γ) scheinen ebenso sehr dem durch die Arbeitszeit
bestimmten Werthverhältniß, als der aus blos unbezahlter oder Surplusarbeit
bestehenden Natur des Mehrwerths zu widersprechen. Es erscheint also alles
verkehrt in der Concurrenz. Die fertige Gestalt der ökonomischen Verhältnisse,
wie sie sich auf der Oberfläche zeigt, in ihrer realen Existenz, und daher auch in
den Vorstellungen, und denen der Träger und Agenten dieser Verhältnisse über
dieselben, sind sehr verschieden und in der That verkehrt, gegensätzlich zu der
innern wesentlichen, aber verhüllten Gestalt, ihrer unsichtbaren Kerngestalt,
und dem ihr entsprechenden Begriff. (Marx 1992b, p. 279)

Alle diese Erscheinungen scheinen ebensosehr der Bestimmung des Werts

durch die Arbeitszeit, wie der aus unbezahlter Mehrarbeit bestehenden Natur
des Mehrwerts zu widersprechen. Es erscheint also in der Konkurrenz alles
verkehrt. Die fertige Gestalt der ökonomischen Verhältnisse, wie sie sich auf
der Oberfläche zeigt, in ihrer realen Existenz, und daher auch in den Vorstel-
lungen, worin die Träger und Agenten dieser Verhältnisse sich über diesel-
ben klarzuwerden suchen, sind sehr verschieden von, und in der Tat verkehrt,
gegensätzlich zu ihrer innern, wesentlichen, aber verhüllten Kerngestalt und
dem ihr entsprechenden Begriff. (Marx 1964, p. 219)

∵
Die wahre Schranke der capitalistischen Production ist das Capital selbst, daß
das Capital und seine Selbstverwerthung als Ausgangspunkt und Endpunkt, als
Zweck der Production erscheint; daß die Production Production für das Capital
und nicht umgekehrt die Productionsmittel blosse Mittel für die Erweiterung
und Gestaltung des Lebensprozesses für die Gesellschaft sind, welche die Pro-
ducenten bilden. Die Schranken, in denen sich die Erhaltung und Verwerthung
der Capitalwerthe, die auf der Basis der Verarmung und Expropriation der
grossen Masse der Producenten beruht, bewegen kann, treten daher beständig
in Widerspruch mit den Productionsmethoden, die das Capital zu seinem
Zweck anwenden muß, und die auf unbeschränkte Vermehrung der Production,
auf die Production als Selbstzweck, auf unbedingte Entwicklung der gesell-
some passages of capital iii 175

schaftlichen Productivkräfte der Arbeit lossteuern. Das Mittel, unbedingte

Entwicklung der Productivkräfte der gesellschaftlichen Arbeit geräth in fort-
währenden Conflict mit dem beschränkten Zweck, der Verwerthung des vor-
handnen Capitals. Wenn die capitalistische Productionsweise daher ein his-
torisches Mittel ist, um die materielle Productivkraft zu entwickeln und den
ihr entsprechenden Weltmarkt zu schaffen, ist sie zugleich der beständige
Widerspruch zwischen dieser ihrer historischen Aufgabe und den ihr ents-
prechenden gesellschaftlichen Productionsverhältnissen. (Marx 1992b, p. 324).

Die wahre Schranke der kapitalistischen Produktion ist das Kapital selbst, ist
dies: daß das Kapital und seine Selbstverwertung als Ausgangspunkt und End-
punkt, als Motiv und Zweck der Produktion erscheint; daß die Produktion
nur Produktion für das Kapital ist und nicht umgekehrt die Produktionsmit-
tel bloße Mittel für eine stets sich erweiternde Gestaltung des Lebensprozesses
für die Gesellschaft der Produzenten sind. Die Schranken, in denen sich die
Erhaltung und Verwertung des Kapitalwerts, die auf der Enteignung und Ver-
armung der großen Masse der Produzenten beruht, allein bewegen kann, diese
Schranken treten daher beständig in Widerspruch mit den Produktionsmeth-
oden, die das Kapital zu seinem Zweck anwenden muß, und die auf unbes-
chränkte Vermehrung der Produktion, auf die Produktion als Selbstzweck,
auf unbedingte Entwicklung der gesellschaftlichen Produktivkräfte der Arbeit
lossteuern. Das Mittel – unbedingte Entwicklung der gesellschaftlichen Pro-
duktivkräfte – gerät in fortwährenden Konflikt mit dem beschränkten Zweck,
der Verwertung des vorhandnen Kapitals. Wenn daher die kapitalistische Pro-
duktionsweise ein historisches Mittel ist, um die materielle Produktivkraft zu
entwickeln und den ihr entsprechenden Weltmarkt zu schaffen, ist sie zugleich
der beständige Widerspruch zwischen dieser ihrer historischen Aufgabe und
den ihr entsprechenden gesellschaftlichen Produktionsverhältnissen. (Marx
1964, p. 260)

∵
Es folgt dieß keineswegs nothwendig und ist nur behauptet worden, weil der
Unterschied zwischen dem Werth und dem Productionspreiß der Waaren bisher
nicht begriffen war.
Wir haben gesehn, daß der Productionspreiß einer Waare keineswegs mit
ihrem Werthe identisch ist, obgleich die Productionspreisse der Waaren in ihrer
Totalität betrachtet, nur durch ihren Gesammtwerth regulirt sind und obgleich
die Bewegung in den Productionspreissen der verschiednen Waarenarten, all
other circumstances remaining the same, ausschließlich durch die Bewegung
176 appendix 2

ihrer Werthe bestimmt ist. Es ist gezeigt worden, daß der Productionspreiß
einer Waare über oder unter ihrem Werthe stehn kann und nur ausnahmsweise
mit ihrem Werthe zusammenfällt. (Marx 1992b, 700)

Es folgt dies keineswegs notwendig und ist nur behauptet worden, weil der
Unterschied zwischen dem Wert der Waren und ihrem Produktionspreis bisher
nicht begriffen war. Wir haben gesehn, daß der Produktionspreis einer Ware
keineswegs mit ihrem Wert identisch ist, obgleich die Produktionspreise der
Waren, in ihrer Totalität betrachtet, nur durch ihren Gesamtwert reguliert
sind, und obgleich die Bewegung der Produktionspreise der verschiednen War-
ensorten, alle andren Umstände gleichbleibend gesetzt, ausschließlich durch
die Bewegung ihrer Werte bestimmt ist. Es ist gezeigt worden, daß der Produk-
tionspreis einer Ware über oder unter ihrem Wert stehn kann, und nur aus-
nahmsweis mit ihrem Wert zusammenfällt. (Marx 1964, p. 766)
 appendix 3

Note on Translation

Aufhebung is one of the most important and the most complex terms in dia-
lectical studies.1 The term sursumer and its derivative sursomption were intro-
duced as French equivalents of aufheben and Aufhebung by Yvon Gauthier.
They are also adopted by Gwendoline Jarczyk and Pierre-Jean Labarrière in
their French translations of The Phenomenology of Spirit and The Science of
Logic. In this book, I introduce these terms into English as ‘to sursume’ and ‘sur-
sumption’. ‘Sublation’ and ‘sanction’ have been in use as English renderings of
Hegel’s Aufhebung. But neither can express the polysemy of the German word,
which means retaining, raising, and negating all at the same time.2 While ‘sur-
sumption’ may not be an ideal equivalent either, it has the merit that it can be
taken as an opposition to subsumption, which Hegelian and Marxian dialectics
refute. Moreover, and more related to the discussion of the book, it provides us
with the possibility of introducing other derivations used in German and in
need of discussion here. Hence, the terms aufhebbar and Aufhebbarkeit have
been translated as ‘sursumable’ and ‘sursumability’.

1 Cobben 2006, pp. 110–13.

2 Inwood 1992, p. 283

© Kaveh Boveiri, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004703971_012

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Index
Abstract xi, 23, 35, 41, 57, 67, 68, 75, 91, Bourdieu, Pierre 95n, 159n
93, 94, 99, 100, 105, 106, 107, 108, Burbidge, John William 57n
109, 110, 118, 118n, 121, 126, 128, 128n,
128n222, 137, 138, 146, 148, 149, 150, Callinicos, Alex 3n, 25n, 25n67, 25n68,
158 117n, 122n, 136n, 137n, 144n, 149, 149n,
Abstract principle, the method of 42 149n25, 150, 150n, 150n28, 150n30, 151,
Abstraction 7, 42, 48, 59, 71, 74, 74n, 85, 86, 155n, 156, 156n, 165n
89, 90, 92, 95, 99, 104, 106, 107, 108, 112, Camus, Albert 74n, 160n
118, 127, 154, 166 Capital viii, ix, 1, 2, 3, 32, 45, 45n, 61, 76, 77,
Aristotelian 89 78, 79, 80, 80n, 80n9, 81, 88, 89, 96, 98,
empty 102 99, 101, 101n, 101n108, 102, 107, 107n, 110,
erroneous 99 119n, 120, 121, 122, 122n, 123, 123n, 124,
false 126 126, 127, 128, 128n, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134,
Hegel’s (Hegelian) 89, 91, 92 136, 136n, 136n267, 136n268, 137, 137n,
Inference of the 92 140n, 140n288, 140n289, 141, 142, 143,
Lockean empiricist 89 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 148n, 149, 149n,
Marxian 71, 92, 99, 100, 101, 118 150, 150n, 151, 153, 153n, 154, 155, 156,
Power of 71, 86, 89, 130, 166 157, 158, 158n, 158n64, 158n66, 159, 160,
Real 59, 74, 75 160n, 162, 163, 164, 165, 165n, 167, 169,
reductive 128n 169n, 169n3, 169n4, 170, 171
Afary, Frida 80n Category 5, 18n, 26, 27, 27n, 29, 30, 32, 33,
Althusser, Louis 30n, 76, 102n, 103n, 123n, 34, 35, 37, 37n, 38, 39, 44n, 59, 85, 101,
144, 150, 150n 101n, 107, 111, 112, 116, 117n, 122, 123, 124,
Arendt, Hannah 60n 127, 131, 133, 153, 154, 155, 156, 158, 166
Aristotle 22, 22n, 107n, 158, 158n Categorial development 158
Arndt, Andreas 87n, 92n, 99n, 99n102, 100n, Categorial movement viii, 3, 18, 37, 38,
142n, 157n, 160n 39, 77, 85, 107n, 120, 122, 122n, 123, 128,
Arthur, Chris 62n, 108n 132, 136, 141–42, 150, 153, 155, 156
Asay, Jamin 48n Metacategory 26, 27, 39, 120, 123, 161n,
Aufhebbar 177, see sursumption 162, 166
Aufhebbarkeit 177, see sursumption Cerutti, Furio 3n, 41n
Aufheben 177, see sursumption Chandler, Raymond 168n
Aufhebende 94, see sursuming Concrete vii, 22, 25, 26, 33, 35, 41, 42, 43, 44,
Aufhebung 18n, 31, 134, 164, 177, see sur- 45, 46, 47, 55, 57, 58, 63, 68, 78, 92, 93,
sumption 99, 100, 101, 104, 105, 109, 121, 128, 137,
138, 140, 146, 148, 149, 150, 156, 171
Backhaus, Hans-Georg 154n Concreteness 64
Bellofiore, Riccardo 79n, 80n, 106n, 116n, Dialectic of the Concrete 1, 2, 11, 41n, 51n, 160
119n, 164n Pseudo-concrete vii, 42, 45, 46, 52n, 62, 63n,
Best, Beverley 168n 64, 74, 99, 101
Bidet, Jacques 3, 3n, 144, 144n, 148, 148n, Concretisation 41, 42, 58, 67, 92, 99, 120, 121,
149, 149n 122, 123
Big Sleep 168n
Bloch, Ernst 38, 64n, 68, 166 Dardot, Pierre 65n, 87n, 91n, 139n, 160n
Blunden, Andy 49 Deleuze, Gilles 8n, 104n, 162n
Boudin, Raymond 44n Descartes, René 4, 161, 161n, 162n
202 index

Di Giovanni, George 19n, 21n, 27n, 161n 85, 85n, 86, 88, 89, 89n, 91, 98, 99, 100,
Dunayeskaya, Raya 117n 102, 104, 105, 105n, 105n128, 112, 113n,
Durkheim, Emile 14 114, 114n, 115, 115n, 116, 116n, 119, 120,
Dussel, Enrique 126n, 166n 120n, 123n, 128n, 129n, 130n, 131n, 142n,
144, 144n, 146, 146n, 148, 148n, 149, 150,
Elias, Norbert 10, 10n 150n, 151, 153n, 154, 155, 155n, 157, 158,
Engels, Friedrich 158n, 161, 161n, 162, 162n, 162n89, 163,
164, 164n, 164n95, 167, 167n, 177
Feuerbach, Ludwig Andreas viii, 2, 46, 49, Owl of Minerva 83, 105
52, 56, 57, 61, 62, 64, 75, 83, 91, 95, 96, Phenomenology of Spirit 13, 22n, 26, 63n,
130, 132, 133, 141, 162n 83, 89, 155
Fichte 81, 81n, 82, 161n Philosophy of Right 27, 83, 105, 162n,
Finelli, Roberto 79n, 116n, 118n, 118n185, 119n 164n
Fineschi, Roberto 79n, 153n, 154, 154n, Science of Logic (Wissenschaft der Logik)
154n48, 154n49, 164n 2, 17, 18n, 21, 21n, 25, 26, 27, 32, 85, 89,
Foster, John Bellamy 165n 93, 120n, 146, 155, 161, 164, 164n, 177
Freeman, Alan 70n Heidegger, Martin 58n
Heinrich, Michael 78n, 80n, 136n, 136n266,
Gadamer, Hans-Georg 54n 151n
Gauthier, Yvon 22n, 47n, 89n, 112n, 115n, 177 Houlgate, Stephen 19n, 25n, 27n
Guattari, Félix 8n, 104n, 162n Hume, David 91n
Goldmann, Lucien 96, 96n, 97
Goldstick, Dan 6n, 48n Ilyenkov, Evald Vassilievich 101n, 101n109,
Gramsci, Antonio 32n, 152n 104n, 105, 105n, 116n, 141n, 151, 151n,
Grumley, John Edward 29n, 31n, 33n, 38n, 151n33, 156, 156n, 164n
87n, 92, 156 Inwood, Michael 37n, 56n, 177n

Halbwachs, Maurice 88n Jacoby, Russell 47n, 56n

Hall, Stuart 98n, 98n95, 103n, 103n119, 140n, Jameson, Fredric 1n, 44n, 46n, 47n, 49n,
142n, 158n, 158n65 57n, 104, 168n
Harvey, David 97n, 129n, 139n, 161n Jay, Marti 3, 29n
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich iii, vii, ix,
x, 2, 4, 8, 12n, 13, 13n, 16, 17, 17n, 18, 18n, Kant, Immanuel x, 8, 17, 17n, 27, 39, 41n, 50,
18n7, 18n8, 18n9, 18n10, 18n11, 18n12, 81, 81n, 82n, 85
18n13, 18n14, 18n15, 18n16, 18n17, 19, 19n , Kaplan, Abraham 159n
19n19, 19n20, 19n21, 19n22, 19n23, 19n24, Kosík, Karel vii, x, 1, 3, 4, 4n, 5, 6, 8, 9, 9n, 10,
20n, 20n25, 20n26, 20n27, 20n28, 11, 11n, 12n, 13, 14, 16, 17, 17n, 21n, 28, 33n,
20n29, 20n30, 20n31, 21, 21n, 21n33, 35n, 36, 37, 37n, 38, 40, 41, 41n, 41n3,
21n34, 21n35, 21n36, 22, 22n, 22n39, 41n4, 42, 42n, 42n6, 42n7, 42n8, 42n9,
22n40, 22n41, 22n42, 22n43, 22n44, 42n10, 42n11, 43, 43n, 43n13, 43n14,
23, 23n47, 23n48, 23n49, 23n50, 23n51, 43n16, 44, 45, 45n, 46n, 47, 47n, 48,
23n52, 23n53, 23n54, 24, 24n, 24n56, 50, 51, 51n, 52, 52n, 53, 53n, 55, 55n,
24n57, 24n58, 24n59, 24n60, 25, 25n, 55n52, 55n53, 56, 57, 57n, 58, 58n,
25n62, 25n63, 25n64, 25n65, 25n66, 58n65, 58n66, 58n67, 59, 59n, 59n69,
25n67, 26, 26n71, 26n72, 26n74, 27, 27n, 59n70, 59n71, 60, 60n, 60n73, 60n74,
27n76, 27n79, 27n80, 28, 29, 30, 30n, 32, 60n75, 61, 61n, 61n77, 62, 62n80, 62n81,
34n, 36, 38, 38n, 39, 41, 44, 44n, 45n, 46, 62n82, 63, 64, 65, 65n, 65n92, 65n93,
47, 48, 51, 54, 56, 56n, 57n, 63n, 64, 67, 65n94, 66, 66n, 66n96, 66n98, 66n99,
72, 76, 76n, 81, 81n, 82, 83, 83n, 84, 84n, 67, 67n, 68, 68n, 68n102, 69, 69n,
index 203

Kosík, Karel (cont.) 69n105, 69n106, 69n109, Method of enquiry viii, 3, 77, 78, 78n, 144,
70, 70n, 71, 71n, 71n117, 71n118, 72, 145, 145n, 150, 151, 152, 153, 153n, 154,
73n, 74n, 74n127, 75, 75n, 76, 76n, 156, 157, 158, 159, 161, 161n, 162, 163, 164,
76n132, 77, 77n, 77n135, 78n, 81, 165, 166
90, 105, 113n, 120n, 126n, 142, 142n, Method of investigation 3, 70, 151, 153, 157,
152, 152n, 160, 160n, 160n77, 163n, 162
166 Methodology vii, ix, x, xi, 3, 29, 65, 82, 83,
Kroeger, Adolph Ernst 26n 84, 89, 141n, 145, 151, 157, 161, 162, 166
Milton, John 84n
Labriola, Antonio 69, 69n, 69n108 Molière 57n
Laval, Christian 65n, 87n, 91n, 139n, 160n Moment 2, 3, 3n, 6, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 23n,
Leibniz, Wilhelm Gottfried 4n, 87 24, 25, 26, 31, 32, 33, 35, 43, 57n, 59, 60,
Monad 87 63, 67, 71, 72, 74, 77, 87, 89, 89n, 100, 101,
Lemieux, Cyril 152n 102, 103, 103n, 105, 106, 108, 109, 110, 111,
Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich 24, 29, 30, 32n, 47n, 112, 113, 114, 117, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124,
54n 125, 127, 128, 132, 135, 136, 138, 139, 141,
Lobkowicz, Nicholas 101n 150, 152, 152n, 153, 155, 157, 158, 159, 160,
Locke, John 89 161, 164n, 164n97, 166, 167, 171
Lukács, Georg 2, 3n, 27, 28, 28n, 29, 29n, submoment 153
29n4, 29n5, 30, 30n, 30n7, 30n9, das and der 89, 101, 157, 157n, 162
30n10, 30n11, 30n12, 31, 31n, 32, 32n, Momentum, 89, 130
32n21, 32n22, 32n23, 32n24, 33, 33n, Moseley, Fred 3, 106, 106n, 106n134, 106n135,
33n26, 33n27, 33n28, 33n30, 33n31, 110n, 136, 136n, 158
33n32, 34, 34n, 34n34, 34n36, 35, 35n, Murphy, Richard W. 167n
35n41, 35n42, 35n43, 36, 36n, 37, 37n,
37n52, 37n53, 38, 38n, 38n55, 38n56, Negri, Antonio 153n, 160n, 165n
38n57, 38n58, 39, 39n, 39n61, 39n62,
39n63, 41, 43n, 54n, 58, 58n, 58n67, Object 50, 52, 53, 55, 56, 58, 59, 62, 102, 125,
61, 62, 64, 65n, 75, 84, 84n, 100, 166, 158
168 Objective 22, 28, 42, 43, 43n, 46n, 50, 51, 52,
Luxemburg, Rosa 32n, 100, 138 53, 55, 56, 57, 59, 60, 60n, 62, 113, 114,
129n, 130, 141, 158n
Macherey, Pierre 97, 97n Objectively 33, 35, 47, 49, 55, 141
MacKinnon, Catharine 55n Objectivity vii, 23, 24, 25, 30, 43, 47, 48n, 49,
Mandel, Ernst 150, 150n, 150n31 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 56n, 57, 57n, 72,
Marcuse, Herbert 55, 55n, 167n 116, 129
McLellan, David 80n, 82n, 82n16, 83n, 84, Objectivise 55
84n, 84n27, 84n28, 85, 85n33, 86n, Objectivation 50, 55, 56, 59
86n38, 88 Object* [Gegenstand] 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56,
McTaggart, Ellis 18n 76n, 87, 89, 95, 102, 103, 122, 125, 132,
Meta-methodology 84 133, 146, 160
Method x, 5, 18, 26, 30, 30n, 32, 33, 33n, 34, Objective* [Gegenständlich] 51, 53, 56, 57,
35, 37, 42, 64, 79, 82, 99, 121, 128, 130, 62n, 63, 65, 66, 67, 69, 71, 81, 87, 91, 106,
142, 144, 145, 145n, 146, 147, 149, 153n, 117, 119, 128, 129, 163
154, 156, 158, 161, 162 Objectively* 119, 129, 130
Method of exposition viii, 3, 3n, 77, 78, 78n, Objectivity* [Gegenständlichkeit] 51, 56,
142, 144, 145, 145n, 150, 151, 154, 155, 156, 63, 65, 72, 129, 129n, 130, 131
157, 158, 159, 161n, 162, 163, 164, 165, Objectification 51, 52, 55, 56, 59, 60, 74n, 114
166 Objectual 50, 52, 58, 59, 62, 73
204 index

Objectuality 50 Sursume 20, 21, 24, 31, 45, 46, 62, 63, 64, 67,
Ollman, Bertell 26n, 30n, 34n, 83n, 166n 74, 89, 94, 163, 177
Sursumer 177
Paolucci, Paul 14, 14n, 70n, 161n Sursumption 18, 31, 97, 134, 164, 177, 212
Pareto, Vilfredo 34n Sullivan, Peter M. 10n
Parmenides 26, 44, 158, 158n
Pascal, Blaise 71, 71n, 72 Taylor, Charles 17n
Patterson, Thomas C. 87n Thatcher, Margaret 14, 14n, 129n
Plato 26 The 1844 Economic and Philosophical
Plekhanov, Georgiĭ Valentinovich 69, 69n Manuscripts viii, 2, 76, 78, 86, 118, 118n,
Polanyi, Karl 15, 15n 131
Postone, Moishe 103n, 112n, 130n, 138n, 161n, The Holy Family 92
166n The German Ideology viii, 2, 46, 46n, 64,
Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph 90, 90n, 136 65n, 84, 91, 93, 96, 98, 100, 152
Psychopedis, Kosmas 162n The Grundrisse viii, ix, 1, 2, 3, 35, 36, 37n,
55, 76, 76n, 77, 78, 80, 89n, 98, 99, 106,
Reichelt, Helmut 85n, 120n, 121n, 154n, 106n, 107, 107n, 110, 116n, 117n, 118, 118n,
154n46, 158 119, 120, 120n, 121, 122, 122n, 123, 125,
Ricardo, David 100, 103 126, 127, 129n, 134, 137, 143, 144, 145, 147,
Rockwell, Russell 167 148, 148n, 149, 149n, 150, 152, 152n, 152–
Rosdolsky, Roman 110n, 116, 117, 119, 144, 53n38, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 160,
144n, 147, 148, 148n, 149n, 157 160n, 160n79, 163, 163n, 164, 165
Russell, Bertrand 5, 9, 9n, 31n ‘Theses on Feuerbach’ viii, 2, 49, 50n, 52, 56,
57, 61, 62, 75, 83, 91, 96, 97, 132, 133, 141
Sartre, Jean-Paul 60n, 75n Theunissen, Michael 27n, 81n
Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph 1, Tilly, Charles 27n
4, 11, 11n, 12, 12n, 12n29, 12n30, 12n31, Totality
12n32, 13, 13n, 13n37, 12n38, 12n39, 15, abstract 43
47 bad 43, 99
Schmidt, Alfred 76n, 120n Empty 42, 43, 68, 99
Sciabarra, Chris Mathew 72n False 43, 99
Sève, Lucien 34, 34n, 35, 35n as totalisation 6, 8, 26, 30, 42, 60, 62, 64,
Sextus Empiricus 48, 48n 65, 103, 110, 114, 120, 121, 122, 123, 132, 141,
Smith, Adam 109, 125 162
Smith, Tony 123, 128n, 129n, 148, 148n, 153n as detotalisation 110
Spann, Othmar 1, 4, 11, 13, 13n, 15, 15n moments of 91, 100, 103
Spannian 14 Tran, Duc Thao 53n
Spinoza, Baruch 13, 83, 83n, 90 Tudor, Lucien 15n
Stahl, Titus 38n
Starosta, Guido 106n, 126n, 132n, 145n Vygotsky, Lev Semyonovich 155n
Strunk, William Jr. 159n
Sursumable 177 Weston, Thomas 119n
Sursumable, Unsursumable 87 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 1, 4, 5, 5n, 6, 6n, 7, 7n,
Sursuming 46, 94 8, 8n, 9, 9n, 10, 10n, 47
self- 18 Wolf, Dieter 152n
Sursumability 177 Wolf, Frieder Otto xi, 162