The Commodity as ‘Characteristic Form’

Martha Campbell

Chapter 10 in Economics as Worldly Philosophy, 1993, pp 269-302 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract In his ‘Notes on Wagner’ Marx describes the commodity as the ‘characteristic form’ of the product in contemporary society. This description of the commodity, taken together with Marx’s claim that ‘the determinate character of social man must be the starting point’ (Marx, 1975, p. 189), suggests that Capital begins with reference to capitalism (with the determinate character of capitalist social man) by beginning with the analysis of the commodity. This interpretation of the beginning of Capital, even though suggested by Marx himself, seems, on the face of it, untenable. Because the commodity form is not unique to capitalism, it does not seem possible that an analysis of this form could disclose the determinate character of capitalism.

Keywords: Capitalist Form; Exchange Relation; Capitalist Production; Wage Labour; Capitalist System (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1993
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-349-22572-9_10

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9781349225729

DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-22572-9_10

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Palgrave Macmillan Books from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().