The Metaphysics of Value: On Second-Order Objectivity

John Rosenthal
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John Rosenthal: Colorado College

Chapter 16 in The Myth of Dialectics, 1998, pp 189-195 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract As in Hegel’s exposition of ‘the concept’, so too in Marx’s analysis of the value-form, it is ‘the universal’ which is substantial and ‘particulars’ which are its accidents. It should, however, be abundantly clear from the foregoing that this formulation loses all its idealist force with the restriction of its scope to just ‘particulars’ (in the sense specified above) placed within the value-relation. We have seen that for any given specimens of some sort of product their universal value-character remains latent and indeed indefinite - so to say, ‘imputed’ - until such time as those specimens are sold: at which point, this latent universality of commodities is ‘realized’. Note that this implies that particular products only definitively exist as values, hence as commodities, precisely in the moment of their ceasing-to-exist as values - which by no means, however, entails their ceasing to exist altogether.

Keywords: Social Product; Commodity Product; Physical Thing; Revise 1873; Linguistic Sign (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1998
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-37184-2_16

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DOI: 10.1057/9780230371842_16

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