User:SLohn/sandbox

Value criticism or critique of value (from german Wertkritik) is the name of a certain interpretation of Karl Marx works to criticize a capitalistic society and belongs to the branch of postmarxism. Robert Kurz was one of the main figures in establishing his interpretation as an independent branch of postmarxism by publishing in German, Spanish and Portuguese since the '80th. Although Moishe Postone does not count explicitly as a representative for value criticism, his work, "Time, Labor and Social Domination" shows important similarities and is often cited within the community.

Commodity and value
Value criticism takes most aspects of Marx critical theory like commodity fetishism and the double character of commodity, namely the use-value and the exchange-value, which transforms Labour into another form of commodity so that labour subjects are subsumed under the categories of value. This makes abstract value according to value criticism the decisive impersonal category in social domination.

Labour and value
Labour in a capitalistic society is for value criticism not understood as transhistoric, like for traditional Marxists, but as a historic specific entity used as social intermediation and is just as to be criticized as capital. This is because both rely on the same system of value realization (from German 'Wertverwertung'), what leads to a process where value has to be used to produce more abstract value and is hence fetishistic objectified, something that Marx called the autonomous subject. This way humans are serving only self-created inherent necessities as objects and material within the capitalistic realization process, which consists of commodity, value and (abstract) labour.

Capitalism and indirect social domination
Capitalism is criticized not because of the exploitation of the worker class, but because of the indirect (impersonal) domination of abstract conditions, while all humans are required to reproduce these conditions. Another growing branch within value criticism is developed by Roswitha Scholz's value dissociation theory (from German Wert-Abspaltungs Theorie). Value dissociation explains why the commodity producing subject was from it's beginning masculine assigned and hence, properties like rationality, typically with a positive connotation, count nowadays as masculine, while irrationality, typically with a negative connotation, counts as feminine. The imposed rationality required from a participant of a society using abstract labour as only valid intermediation leads necessarily to the dissociation of the irrational needs of a commodity producing subject and is solved by delegating irrational interpersonal needs into the responsibility of women. Thus women are subordinated to men, while men are subsumed to the instrumental rationality of a civil capitalistic society.

Enlightenment and civil society
The enlightenment period and the citoyen as a capitalistic subject are often criticized with adopted approaches of the critical theory according Adorno und Horkheimer as well as by using aspects of Freud's Psychoanalysis.

Value criticism and traditional Marxism
Some important aspects of traditional Marxism are rejected by value criticism. According to their specific interpretation of Marx critical theory, aspects like the traditional view of class struggle and historical materialism can not be maintained under the assumption that Labour, understood as abstract Labour, is a historic specific aspect of capitalism. Thus the worker class is within this standpoint itself part of the capitalistic society and thus not able to be the revolutionary subject. Consequently, traditional Marxism can only lead to state capitalism.

Antisemitism, racism and sexism
Value criticism claims to have an immanent explanation of antisemitism, racism and sexism. The latter is explicitly worked out by the value dissociation theory of Roswitha Scholz, while racism is explained as immanent to a modern (capitalistic) nation and its incapability to solve problems of the current society on a national basis. Antisemitism in widely taken over from Moishe Postone's analysis of anti-semitism.

Publishers
Known publishers are the Krisis group and EXIT! in Germany and in Austria SINet.

Literatur

 * Robert Kurz: Der Kollaps der Modernisierung, Reclam, Leipzig 1994, ISBN 3-379-01503-2
 * Ernst Lohoff: Der Dritte Weg in den Bürgerkrieg: Jugoslawien und das Ende der nachholenden Modernisierung. Horlemann-Verlag, 1996, ISBN 3-89502-055-9
 * Gruppe Krisis: Manifest gegen die Arbeit, Selbstverlag,, 1999
 * Robert Kurz: Schwarzbuch Kapitalismus. Ein Abgesang auf die Marktwirtschaft, Ullstein, 1999, ISBN 3-548-36308-3
 * Roswitha Scholz: Das Geschlecht des Kapitalismus. Feministische Theorien und die postmoderne Metamorphose des Patriarchats. Horlemann-Verlag, 2000, ISBN 3-89502-100-8
 * Moishe Postone: Zeit, Arbeit und gesellschaftliche Herrschaft, Ca Ira, Freiburg i.Br. 2003, ISBN 3-924627-58-4

Weblinks

 * Krisis - Value critical platform and newspaper.
 * Exit - Value critical platform and newspaper.