Money, measurement and quantification

Frank Engster

Chapter 6 in Marx: Key Concepts, 2024, pp 108-127 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: I want to show that money in capitalism is radically different from all its previous forms because money becomes a measure that quantifies “pure social relations” (Marx). The measure is essential to constitute the same social objectivity and totality that it mediates and for which it, by this mediation, determines in the magnitudes of the commodities the productive power of the valorization of labor-power and capital. In short, money is a proper technique of measurement. Decisive to show this technique will be to develop the different functions of money to its capital-form. The entry will be Marx’s value-form analysis, which shows in a logical way how a measure is given. It is given by the exclusion of one arbitrary commodity which by its exclusion fixes an ideal value-unit, while all other commodities in turn are set in a quantitative relation as pure values. All commodities share an ideal value unit as their common measure, but furthermore is to be shown that this sharing falls into the practical realization of their relation in the exchange process. Hence, what seems to be an exchange of commodities and money, is the realization of the “results capital” (Marx), and what seems to be exchange-values, are the magnitudes determined by the productive power of the valorization of labor-power and capital. And finally, in these elements of valorization, money itself has been converted (and will convert back after the realization). In short, money in its capitalist form measures a valorization process in which money itself constantly enters. It is as if this form of self-measurement functions for the capitalist society as the practical self-reflection of an “automatic subject” (Marx).

Keywords: Economics and Finance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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