Requirements of a categorial reinterpretation

The exposition thus far has laid the groundwork for a reconstruction of Marx's critical theory. As we have seen, the passages of the Grundrisse presented in Chapter One suggest a critique of capitalism whose assumptions are very different from those of the traditional critique. These passages do not represent utopian visions that later were excluded from Marx's more “sober” analysis in Capital but are a key to understanding that analysis; they provide the point of departure for a reinterpretation of the basic categories of Marx's mature critique that can overcome the limits of the traditional Marxist paradigm. My examination of the presuppositions of this paradigm has highlighted certain requirements such a reinterpretation must meet.

I have examined approaches that, proceeding from a transhistorical notion of “labor” as the standpoint of the critique, conceptualize the social relations characterizing capitalism in terms of the mode of distribution alone, and locate the system's fundamental contradiction between the modes of distribution and production. Central to this examination was the argument that the Marxian category of value should not be understood merely as expressing the market-mediated form of the distribution of wealth. A categorial reinterpretation, therefore, must focus on Marx's distinction between value and material wealth; it must show that value is not essentially a market category in his analysis, and that the “law of value” is not simply one of general economic equilibrium.