The Dismeasure of Value // Die Maß-losigkeit des Werts
Talk in the series “Philosophische Gespräche” at Helle Panke e.V. with Luiz Repa, moderation: Falko Schmieder
The lecture will be in English, but a German translation of the lecture will be distributed.
The presentation examines the theoretical-political interpretation offered by of the Brazilian philosopher José Arthur Giannotti of Marx’ Grundrisse, particularly the section on the development of productive forces in the “Chapter on Capital.” In this section, Marx suggests that the process of capitalist development renders obsolete the thesis that socially necessary labour time is the objective measure of the value of labour products—a thesis that contradicts the position later adopted in Capital itself. According to Giannotti, the Grundrisse anticipates contemporary capitalism insofar as it reveals how the process of value creation asserts itself by appealing to the logic of measuring living labour by dead labour, with no possibility of restoring, at the end, what was presupposed at the outset. In this way, capital reproduction comes to depend on power relations, the need to establish monopolies over scientific invention, and the occupation of key positions in the flow of financial capital. The “fibrillation” of the value theory also implies a crisis in the identity of the subject capable of revolutionising the productive process as a whole, since the social measure that defines workers as a social class is lost. Unlike Habermas—who draws on the same Grundrisse to consider real possibilities for the democratisation of society and crises of legitimacy in capitalism—Giannotti conceives of democracy as the political terrain on which barriers might be erected against the barbarism of unregulated, measureless capitalism, devoid of intrinsic measures.
Admission: 2 Euro
Luiz Repa teaches at the Universidade de São Paulo, Department of Philosophy, Languages and Literature, and Human Sciences.
Falko Schmieder is a cultural theorist and research team leader of the project The 20th Century in Basic Concepts. A Dictionary of Historical Semantics in Germany.