Excerpt from Chapter One of Frank Engster’s Book: Das Geld als Maß, Mittel und Methode Das Rechnen mit der Identität der Zeit (Berlin: Neofelis Verlag UG, 2014)

Abstract

The question of the book is how a radical critique of capitalism is possible when critique in the tradition of Kant and Hegel means that the criticized subject itself has to “give” the measure of its critique. The thesis is that, while in Kant this reflexivity is achieved by transcendental subjectivity and reason and in Hegel by self-consciousness, self-relation of the concept and the absolute reason of spirit, in Marx we find a materialist turn.

The turn shows that capitalist society became reflexive by a kind of self-measurement, done by the functions of money, on the one hand, and the valorization of labour power and capital, on the other. Money, by its function as the measure of value and the means of its realization and mediation, measures in the commodities the productive relations of their production, thus determining from the past valorization of labour and capital the magnitudes necessary for their further productive valorization — and hence for a productive use of money itself. That is how, in money’s capital form, the measured magnitudes become reflexive, while money itself becomes in its capitalist self-relation the form to measure the same valorization process which by this form becomes possible in the first place. The aim of the book is to translate this process into an economy of time, showing that money’s quantification of social relations is nothing else than this translation itself.

Author(s): Frank Engster

Translator: Isidora Hennig

Title (English): Excerpt from Chapter One of Frank Engster’s Book: Das Geld als Maß, Mittel und Methode Das Rechnen mit der Identität der Zeit (Berlin: Neofelis Verlag UG, 2014)

Journal Reference: Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture, Vol. 18, No. 1-2 (2021).

Publisher: Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities - Skopje

Page Range: 42-52

Page Count: 11

Citation (English):  Frank Engster, “Excerpt from Chapter One of Frank Engster’s Book: Das Geld als Maß, Mittel und Methode Das Rechnen mit der Identität der Zeit (Berlin: Neofelis Verlag UG, 2014),” trans. Isidora Hennig, Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture, Vol. 18, No. 1-2 (2021): 42-52.

Author Biography

Frank Engster, Independent researcher

Frank Engster wrote his PhD thesis on the subject of time, money and measure. He is interested in the different — (post-)operaist, (post-)structuralist, form-analytic, (queer-)feminist etc. — readings of Marx’s critique, especially in money as a technique and its connection with measurement, quantification, time and (natural) science. Some publications are available on academia.edu