[FRA:] Adorno & Horkheimer: towards a new Manifesto?

[Christopher Cutrone]

No, this is a non-dialectical exposition of use-value and exchange-value in Marx. The other side of it would be: 

Exchange-value *appears* as a mere social convention but is actually objective, in the sense that we actually live in a society driven by the utilitarian ethos of "the greatest good for the greatest number," in which productive efficiency in *time* is the measure. Time appears objective, and capitalist exchange seems the "best of all possible [social] worlds" in which the exigencies of time can be met. 

Use-value *appears* objective, in the sense of being about concrete utility, but is actually social in origin, because human needs have been changed and indeed created by society. 

SO, it is not the case that human needs are objective, and social relations are convened around meeting those needs, in an ever more progressive manner, until arriving at the rational productivity of capitalism, which is what bourgeois society imagines about itself. 

The "fetish" is that human labor is the source of value (real utility), but it is not a fetish in the sense of a deception, but is the real source of value in this (historically specific) society. The commodity form of the value of human labor (as a function of time) is our effective (social) reality, indeed, as Marx put it, the actual "cosmos" we inhabit. 

But, after the Industrial Revolution, labor-time becomes not only inadequate, but also self-contradictory and self-undermining as a source of (social, including individual use-) value. Yet we still try to mediate our social relations through exchanging our labor as a commodity. 

Getting beyond capital, according to Marx, would mean getting beyond the social relations of the exchange of labor (as a social principle, i.e., being a "productive member of society"). It would mean transforming the "mode of production," in which the "relations" (of the exchange of labor) have been outstripped by the "forces," thus the "bourgeois" or "capitalist" mode of production has become self-contradictory and in need of overcoming. 

Just how this is going to happen is what Adorno was focusing on. For it is not the case than another, different social principle can be opposed to the present "fetishism" of the commodity form of labor. We live in bourgeois time and space, and value our activity within it accordingly. Not only that, but this capitalist cosmology projects itself back across human history as its incipient, emergent principle, only freed to "come into its own" in modernity -- hence, bourgeois, capitalist society appears "progressive." 

But the Marxian point that Adorno is contemplating is that, since capitalism/bourgeois society, i.e., social relations and hence individual subjectivity mediated by the commodity form, has become self-destructive, without being overcome, it would only be the case that the "emancipation of (human) labor" in bourgeois society was progressive if it is successfully overcome. 

This is why Adorno cites favorably Kant's "Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View," in which Kant says that achieving a cosmopolitan civil society (of bourgeois social relations) would be merely a "mid-way point" in humanity's achieving freedom. Otherwise, Kant wrote, Rousseau's verdict on civilization -- as the "glittering misery" of humanity's degradation -- would be proven correct. 

Marx (after Hegel) followed Kant on this point, but sought to understand why proletarian socialism, i.e., overcoming the bourgeois relations of the exchange of labor as the principle of society, from *within* ("immanently"), would be necessary to achieve Kant's "mid-way" point, or the beginning of human freedom that bourgeois society announced itself to be. 

After the "fetishism" of the value of human labor took the nasty turns of the 20th century ("work will make you free"), the Marxian prognosis came to be in doubt, to say the least. Yet, according to Adorno, the Marxian problematic remained in force: the realization of the "bourgeois" interests of the workers (i.e., as the commodity owners of their own labor-power) as the only means by which bourgeois social relations could be realized/negated/transcended/overcome (the notorious "Aufhebung"). 

-- Chris 

--- On Sun, 12/26/10, Lev Lafayette <lev.lafayette at isocracy.org> wrote:

> From: Lev Lafayette <lev.lafayette at isocracy.org>
> Subject: Re: [FRA:] Adorno & Horkheimer: towards a new Manifesto?
> To: "Discussion of Frankfurt School Critical Theory" <theory-frankfurt-school at srcf.ucam.org>
> Date: Sunday, December 26, 2010, 8:55 PM
> On Sun, 2010-12-26 at 21:25 -0500,
> Ralph Dumain wrote:
> 
> > Adorno makes an interesting comment I don't
> understand:
> > 
> >     *Adorno:* But our task is to
> explain this by speculating on labour's
> >     ultimate origins, to infer it
> from the principle of society, so that
> >     it goes beyond Marx. Because
> exchange value seems to be absolute,
> >     the labour that has created it
> seems to be absolute too, and not the
> >     thing for whose sake it
> basically exists. In actuality the
> >     subjective aspect of use value
> conceals the objective utopia, while
> >     the objectivity of exchange
> value conceals subjectivism.
> 
> Exchange value appears to have an objective value, insofar
> it it
> evaluated in dollars and cents (or whatever). However that
> value is
> fraught with all sorts of subjective, and systematically
> induced,
> distortions of value as Marx described in commodity
> fetishism (gold is
> the classic example). 
> 
> In contrast use value is perceived to be subjective because
> it is
> individually variable. However, because use value is the
> utility gained
> to satisfy real needs it has an objective and factual
> status.
> 
> Ideally, exchange values reflect use values. A product is
> bought and
> sold in accordance to its ability to satisfy individual
> wants and needs
> and the available supply. In reality individual wants and
> needs become
> system-orientated, thus suppressing real wants and needs in
> the quest
> for future (and especially monopoly) profit. Economic
> disaster looms
> when exchange values become highly variant to use values.
> 
> Hope this helps,
> 
> 
> 
> Lev
> 
> 
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