To be sure, Marx coquettes with Hegel in his analysis of the value form as a unity of opposities, but Marx explains himself well enough that further study of Hegel's logic would shed no light at all on what he is saying. Just read Marx. Carefully. For example:
http://tiny.cc/GsfFk Commodities are a unity of use value and exchange value. A commodity as a value unites the two as the exchange value for the owner and use value for the purchaser (David Harvey puts it well), but the value form externalizes the contradiction immanent in every commodity--it is both a use value and exchange value, but it can't be both at the same time--by making commodities use values alone and reserving for money a monopoly on exchange value or exchangeability (other commodities are no longer immediately exchangeable against the array of other commodities as in the expanded value form). Marx is not playing dialectical games here. He is trying to understand precisely the position of money in the circulation of commodities (and he loosely borrows the Hegelian idea of a unity of opposites in his analysis of the value form). Upon inspection, money turns out not simply to be a device to overcome the double coincidence of wants. In virtue of the role it acquires by its position as the equivalent, it may make sense to hoard it, that is to sell without any immediate intention to buy. Money after all is alone the materialization of the social abstract labor time of which all commodities exchange as expressions. The payoff here is the critique of Say's Law and Marx beats Keynes and economics to the punch by more than 70 years. Marx did not feel at home in the positivist world of Comte and the atomistic world of JS Mill. So yes he was drawn to Hegel, and he announces that, I think, so his audience will not be surprised by his speaking of unities of opposities, real contradictions, the creativity of negative forces, dialectical inversions, quantitative to qualitative changes and of epochal historical differences. But one only read Marx to understand what he means by these ideas and concepts. Marx cleans them of Hegelian baggage. Marx stands on his own. Look forward to disagreement. Rakesh ________________________________________________ YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
