Value Form and Marx’s Critique of Capital

Advancing the interpretation of the logic of Marx’s *Capital* from the perspective of value form is a typical manifestation of the theoretical effort in foreign academic circles to develop historical materialism from the angle of historical specificity. These scholars identify concepts such as commodity, money, and capital in *Capital* as basic categories belonging exclusively to the capitalist formation, and on this basis they interpret the logic of *Capital* as the logic of the self-movement of these concepts. This interpretive path, which sets aside the thread of historical philosophy and focuses instead on the dimension of Hegelian logic, although it displays a relatively good fit in interpreting phenomena such as what Marx calls the self-valorization of capital, in its essence always finds it difficult to accurately grasp the rich connotations that Marx, from the perspective of historical materialism, assigns to concepts such as commodity and money. A factual analysis, seeking truth from facts, of the academic efforts of this “new dialectics movement” is very important for deepening our understanding of Marxist philosophy, especially historical materialism, from a concretizing perspective. The British scholar Christopher John Arthur (C. J. Arthur), as a representative figure of the “new dialectics movement,” is committed to advancing a contemporary interpretation of the logic of the critique of capital contained in Marx’s *Capital*. From the perspective of a system-dialectics opposed to historical dialectics, he has carried out a new analysis of Marx’s ideas on abstract labor, exploitation of surplus value, value determinism, and other aspects, displaying to a certain extent the theoretical achievements of contemporary foreign academic circles in interpreting *Capital* from the angle of value form. This has a certain enlightening effect for us in deepening our understanding of the abstractness of capital. At the same time, however, Arthur relies too heavily on understanding value form from the dimension of exchange value, overemphasizes value form in the dimension of the self-deduction of concepts, and neglects the objective content of value and the socio-historical foundation of value relations. Consequently, his interpretation of Marx’s historical materialist theory has many limitations.

从价值形式的角度推进对马克思《资本论》阐释逻辑的解读，是国外学界从历史特殊性的视角来发展唯物史观之理论努力的一种典型表现。这些学者把《资本论》中的商品、货币、资本等概念认定为只隶属于资本主义形态的基础性范畴，并以此为基础而把《资本论》的逻辑解读为上述概念的自我运动逻辑。这种撇开历史哲学脉络而专注于黑格尔逻辑学维度的阐释路径，尽管在对马克思所说的资本自我增殖等现象的解读上显示出了较好的契合度，但就其本质而言，始终难于准确地抓住马克思从唯物史观的角度赋予商品、货币等概念的丰富内涵。对这种“新辩证法运动”的学术努力进行实事求是的剖析，对于我们从具体化视角来深化对马克思主义哲学尤其是唯物史观的发展来说是十分重要的。英国学者克里斯多夫·约翰·阿瑟（C.J.Arthur）作为“新辩证法运动”的代表人物，致力于推进对马克思《资本论》中所蕴含的资本批判逻辑的当代解读。他从与历史辩证法相对立的体系辩证法的角度，对马克思在抽象劳动、剩余价值剥削、价值决定论等方面的思想进行了新的剖析，在一定程度上展现了当代国外学界从价值形式的角度来解读《资本论》所取得的理论成就，这对于我们深化对资本抽象性的理解有一定的启发作用。但同时，阿瑟过于倚重从交换价值的维度来理解价值形式，过于强调概念自我演绎维度上的价值形式，而对价值的客观内容以及价值关系的社会历史基础不予重视，因而在对马克思历史唯物主义理论的解读上有不少局限性。

I. The Ahistoricity of System-Dialectics and Its Limitations

一、体系辩证法的非历史性及其局限

Arthur’s new dialectics is system-dialectics, a very distinctive concept whose intellectual source is related to Hegel’s *Science of Logic*. Arthur insists that what Hegel displays in the *Science of Logic* is a system-dialectics opposed to the historical dialectics displayed in his philosophy of history. “There are two different dialectical theories in Hegel. The first is a historical dialectic. Hegel thinks there is a developmental logic underlying world history. But in works such as the *Science of Logic* and the *Philosophy of Right* there is a second dialectical theory, which can be called a systematic dialectic. It is concerned with the problem of the presentation of the categories used to conceptualize a given concrete whole. The order of presentation of these categories does not necessarily coincide with the order of their historical emergence.” [1]1 Marx, *Theories of Surplus Value*, Part 1, Chapter IV, Section 3 (paraphrased/compiled from Marx’s critique of the classical economists). Clearly, this new dialectics is not an objective dialectics reflecting the developmental process of objective things, but rather a conceptual dialectics reflecting the movement of concepts within a system of presentation. In terms of textual basis, it is evidently related to what Marx said in the “Introduction” to the *Grundrisse*: “It would be inexpedient and wrong to arrange the economic categories in the order in which they were the determining factors in the course of history. Their order of succession is determined rather by their mutual relation in modern bourgeois society, and this is exactly the reverse of what seems to be their natural order or the order of their historical development.” [2]2 Marx, *Theories of Surplus Value*, Part 3, Chapter XIX, Section 9 (paraphrased). Arthur aims to prove that the dialectics Marx employs in *Capital* is not the historical dialectics we usually speak of, but rather the system-dialectics he emphasizes here.

阿瑟的新辩证法就是体系辩证法，这是个很独特的概念，它在思想来源上与黑格尔的《逻辑学》有关。阿瑟坚持认为黑格尔在《逻辑学》中展现出来的，是与其在历史哲学中展现的历史辩证法相对立的体系辩证法，“在黑格尔那里存在两种不同的辩证理论。第一种是历史的辩证法，黑格尔认为存在一种作为世界历史之基础的发展逻辑。但是，在诸如《逻辑学》和《法哲学原理》等著作中还有第二种辩证理论，它可以被称作体系辩证法，其所关注的是被用来概念化既存具体整体的诸范畴的表述问题。这些范畴的叙述顺序并不必然与它们在历史上出现的顺序相一致”。显然，这种新辩证法并非反映客观事物发展过程的客体辩证法，而是反映阐述体系中的概念运动的概念辩证法。就文本依据来看，它显然跟马克思在《〈政治经济学批判〉导言》所说的“把经济范畴按它们在历史上起决定作用的先后次序来排列是不行的，错误的。它们的次序倒是由它们在现代资产阶级社会中的相互关系决定的，这种关系同表现出来的它们的自然次序或者符合历史发展的次序恰好相反”有关。阿瑟是想证明马克思在《资本论》中所运用的辩证法不是我们通常所说的历史辩证法，而是他在这里所强调的体系辩证法。

Arthur’s approach of opposing history and system in his interpretation of Marx’s dialectics inevitably comes at a great cost. For although Marx’s historical dialectics takes as its object of study the historical process in the historiographical sense, the horizon within which this dialectics unfolds is not history in the historiographical sense, but rather the history of the movement of internal contradictions on the philosophical dimension. That is to say, Marx’s materialist dialectics unfolds along the dimension of the movement of the internal contradiction between productive forces and relations of production, not along the empirical thread of factual history. Arthur first carries out a simplistic misreading of Marx’s historical dialectics from the historiographical dimension, then emphasizes that this historical dialectics is inconsistent with the textual structure of *Capital*, and consequently proposes that the methodology in *Capital* must be interpreted from the perspective of system-dialectics. However, the system of conceptual movement in Marx’s *Capital* is not a reflection of the self-movement of these concepts themselves; rather, it uses the order of development of concepts to reflect the historical specificity of the capitalist mode of production, on the premise of placing this mode of production within the historical developmental process of the private ownership mode of production. The reason he uses the methodology of rising from the abstract to the concrete to expound the logical relations among these categories is precisely this. Therefore, when Arthur discusses system-dialectics on the premise of severing the connection between system and history, his so-called system can only be an abstract conceptual system devoid of historical process background. In essence, this approach damages both historical dialectics and genuine system-dialectics.

阿瑟在对马克思辩证法的解读上把历史与体系对立起来的做法，必然会付出很大的代价，因为马克思的历史辩证法尽管在研究对象上是针对历史学意义上的历史过程的，但这种辩证法的展开视域却不在于历史学意义上的历史，而在于哲学维度上的内在矛盾运动的历史。也就是说，马克思的唯物辩证法是沿着生产力与生产关系的内在矛盾运动的维度而展开的，而不是沿着事实史的实证线索来展开的。阿瑟首先站在历史学的维度上对马克思的历史辩证法进行了简单化的误读，然后再强调这种历史辩证法与《资本论》的文本结构不相一致，并进而提出必须从体系辩证法的角度来解读《资本论》中的方法论。可是，马克思《资本论》中的概念运动体系并非这些概念本身的自我运动过程的反映，而是在把资本主义生产方式放在私有制生产方式的历史发展过程中来考虑的前提下，用概念的发展次序来反映资本主义生产方式的历史特殊性的。他之所以要用从抽象上升到具体的方法论来阐述这些范畴之间的逻辑关系，其原因正在于此。因此，当阿瑟在切断体系与历史之间联系的前提下来谈论体系辩证法时，他所谓的体系只能是无历史过程背景的抽象的概念体系。从本质上看，这种做法既损害了历史辩证法，也损害了真正的体系辩证法。

The “new” in the new dialectics Arthur advocates is actually a shift from Hegel’s dialectics of the negation of the negation in history to a formal dialectics of concepts represented by Hegel’s *Science of Logic*. He dislikes the historical-genetic line of thought brought by Hegel’s philosophy of history, and therefore turns to a formal-dialectical study of *Capital*. Arthur’s approach actually represents a trend in contemporary Western academia: seizing upon the issue of value form and making a big fuss over it. Behind value form lies the abstractness of exchange value, a so-called philosophical interpretation of the logic of capital. The theoretical background of this interpretation is the excessive disciplinary specialization in contemporary Western academia. In the interpretation of the logic of capital, economics is defined as only studying the trend of capital’s valorization, while philosophy is defined as not needing to study the development of capital itself, but only needing to study the cultural effects brought about by the expansion of the logic of capital. These cultural effects, at the concrete level, manifest as ideological enslavement and the abstraction of social relations. Consequently, many scholars believe that for philosophers to intervene in the critique of the logic of capital, they should seemingly focus exclusively on interpreting the abstraction of social relations.

阿瑟提倡的这种新辩证法，所谓的“新”实际上就是从黑格尔的否定之否定的历史辩证法，转变到了以黑格尔《逻辑学》为代表的概念本身的形式辩证法上来。他不喜欢黑格尔的历史哲学所带来的历史发生学思路，因而转向了对《资本论》的形式辩证法式的研究。阿瑟的这种做法其实代表了当今西方学术界的一股潮流，即逮住价值形式问题猛做文章。价值形式的背后就是交换价值的抽象性，是对资本逻辑的所谓哲学解读。这种解读的理论背景是当代西方学界的学科分工太细了，在对资本逻辑的解读上，经济学被界定为只研究资本增殖的趋势图，哲学被界定为不需要研究资本的发展本身，而只需要研究资本逻辑的拓展所带来的文化效应，这种文化效应落脚到具体的层面就是意识形态的奴役和社会关系的抽象化。因而，不少学者认为哲学家介入对资本逻辑的批判似乎就应该专注于对社会关系抽象化的解读。

In reality, in interpreting Marx’s critique of capital, if the logic of economics is separated from the logic of philosophy, it is impossible, no matter how one goes about it, to understand Marx’s historical materialist methodology. The price paid for this separation is that the understanding of the thread of productive forces forever remains at the economic dimension, and the understanding of relations of production forever remains at the level of an empirical social structure. This kind of social relation is not the social relation that truly exists in real life, because the social relation that truly exists coexists with the development of productive forces within the economic formation. Therefore, if Arthur’s interpretive thread continues to be pushed forward, it will face a major problem: what is the driving force for the development of this thread? Although on the surface Marx also speaks of the method of presentation in *Capital*, especially when discussing the concrete totality, where he says this refers to the concrete in thought, grasping the concrete in thought. However, this concrete cannot be said to be constructed by thought; it is the reflection in thought of the complex content already possessed by the objective world. Marx’s presentation does not deduce the logic of development among concepts from his own mind; if it did, that would be Hegelianism, severing the connection between conceptual deduction and the development of real life. *Capital* summarizes the content of the total process of capitalist production in real capitalist society; it is not content deduced from Marx’s mind.

实际上，在对马克思资本批判理论的解读上，如果把经济学的逻辑跟哲学的逻辑割裂开来，那么，无论怎样都不可能理解马克思的历史唯物主义方法论。割裂开来所付出的代价是，对生产力线索的理解永远停留在经济学的维度上，对生产关系的理解永远停留在一种经验性的社会结构的层面上。这种社会关系不是真实存在于现实生活中的那种社会关系，因为真实存在的社会关系是与生产力的发展共存于经济形态中的。所以，阿瑟的解读线索如果继续推进下去就会面临很大的问题：这条线索的发展动力何在？尽管表面上看起来马克思在《资本论》中也讲叙述方法，特别是在讲具体总体的时候，马克思也说这是指思维中的具体，在思维中把握具体。但是，他的这个具体不能说是由思维建构出来的，而是客观世界已经具有的复杂内容在思维上的反映。马克思的叙述不是从自己的头脑中去演绎出概念之间的发展逻辑，如果是这样的话，那就是黑格尔主义了，就是切断了概念演绎与现实生活发展之间的关联性。《资本论》概括的是现实资本主义社会中的资本主义生产总过程的内容，不是马克思头脑中演绎出来的内容。

Arthur sees Hegel’s methodological influence on Marx, as well as the difference between Marx’s understanding of concepts such as capital and that of the bourgeois classical economist David Ricardo. This is correct. But he interprets Marx’s surpassing of Ricardo as a complete break with Ricardian economics, thereby aligning Marx’s dialectics entirely with Hegelian logic. This approach is incorrect. As an economist, Ricardo focused on the analysis of the magnitude of value, so his labor theory of value is positivist. Marx’s surpassing of Ricardo consists in adding the analysis of the value form on the basis of the analysis of the magnitude of value, thereby truly achieving the unity of content and form on the question of value, rather than abandoning the analysis of the magnitude of value and concerning himself only with the analysis of the value form. Arthur forcibly severs Marx’s dialectical thinking on the question of value, interpreting Marx’s *Capital* from the perspective of a single value form. This is the most important reason for the problems in his interpretation of this issue.

阿瑟看到了黑格尔对马克思在方法论上的影响，以及马克思在资本等概念的理解上与资产阶级古典经济学家大卫·李嘉图的不同，这是正确的。但他把马克思对李嘉图的超越理解成了与李嘉图经济学的彻底切割，从而把马克思的辩证法完全向黑格尔逻辑学的方向靠拢，这种做法是不正确的。作为经济学家，李嘉图专注于价值量的分析，因而他的劳动价值论是实证主义的。马克思对李嘉图的超越是在价值量分析的基础上再加上了价值形式的分析，在价值问题上真正作到了内容与形式的统一，而不是在放弃价值量分析的前提下只关心价值形式的分析。阿瑟硬生生地割裂了马克思在价值问题上的辩证法思想，从单一的价值形式的角度来解读马克思的《资本论》，这是他在这一问题的解读上出现问题的最重要原因。

Therefore, when Arthur says, “Personally, I think that the capitalist system does to some extent contain logical relations. This is because I particularly emphasize the mode of exchange — which abstracts from the heterogeneity of commodities — and treat commodities as instances of universality, i.e., value. This mode of exchange operates in the same way as the abstractive power of thought, producing structures identical to logical forms, namely the value form,” I am not at all surprised, because he in fact treats the use-value of commodities as subordinate to the value form. Yet we know that neither the *Grundrisse* (the *Economic Manuscripts of 1857–1858*) nor Volume I of *Capital* can provide textual support for this view. Regarding the former, although many scholars in foreign academic circles who approach from the perspective of the value form cite the relevant discussion of exchange value in the “Chapter on Money” that appears at the beginning of this manuscript — namely, “The universal exchange of activities and products, which has become a condition of existence for each individual, this universal exchange, their mutual connection, appears to them as something alien, independent, as a thing. In exchange value, the social relation of persons is transformed into a social relation of things; personal capacity is transformed into things’ capacity.” [1]1 Marx, *Theories of Surplus Value*, Part 1, Chapter IV, Section 3 (paraphrased/compiled from Marx’s critique of the classical economists). Moreover, in this “Chapter on Money,” Marx repeatedly states that there should be a preceding “Chapter on Exchange Value,” saying, “The circumstances that cause the exchange value of commodities, and hence their price, to rise or fall above or below the average value of commodities should be expounded in a section on exchange value; these circumstances exist even before the price is actually realized as money, and are therefore initially entirely unrelated to this process.” [2]2 Marx, *Theories of Surplus Value*, Part 3, Chapter XIX, Section 9 (paraphrased). But we must see that in the final chapter Marx added to this manuscript, he did not use the title “Exchange Value” but instead used the title “Value.” Moreover, at the very beginning of this chapter, Marx clearly states: “The first category in which bourgeois wealth presents itself is the category of the commodity. The commodity itself appears as the unity of two determinations. … Once use-value undergoes a change of form due to modern relations of production, or itself influences modern relations of production and causes them to undergo a change of form, it falls within the scope of political economy.” [3]3 “Valorization” (Verwertung) refers to the process by which capital increases its value, i.e., the production of surplus value. I believe this is not pure chance but a theoretical necessity in the development of his thought.

因此，当阿瑟说“我个人认为，资本主义体系在某种程度上的确包含逻辑诸关系。这是因为我特别强调交换——从商品异质性中抽象——的方式，并将商品看作普遍性即价值的实例。这种交换方式与思想抽象力运作的方式是相同的，它产生了与逻辑诸形式相同的结构，即价值形式”时，我一点也不觉得奇怪，因为他事实上就是把商品的使用价值认定为屈从于价值形式的。可我们知道，不管是《1857—1858年经济学手稿》还是《资本论》第一卷，都不可能为这种观点提供文本上的支持。就前者而言，尽管国外学界很多从价值形式角度切入的学者都引用此手稿一开始出现的第二章“货币章”中关于交换价值的相关论述，即“活动和产品的普遍交换已成为每一单个人的生存条件，这种普遍交换，他们的相互联系，表现为对他们本身来说是异己的、独立的东西，表现为一种物。在交换价值上，人的社会关系转化为物的社会关系；人的能力转化为物的能力”。并且，马克思在这个“货币章”中多次讲到在这一章之前应该还要有一个“交换价值章”，“使商品的交换价值，从而使商品的价格高于或低于商品的平均价值而上涨或下跌的情况，应在论交换价值的一篇中阐述，这些情况在价格实际地实现为货币的过程之前就已经存在，因而一开始就和这个过程完全无关”。但我们必须看到的是，马克思在此手稿最后补充进去的一章中却没有用“交换价值”的标题，而是用了“价值”的标题，而且在此章的一开始，马克思就明确地说：“表现资产阶级财富的第一个范畴是商品的范畴。商品本身表现为两种规定的统一。……使用价值一旦由于现代生产关系而发生形态变化，或者它本身影响现代生产关系并使之发生形态变化，它就属于政治经济学的范围了。”我认为，这不是纯粹的偶然，而是一种理论发展上的必然。

Although Marx focused on the interpretation of exchange value or money relations in the opening part of this manuscript, as his research deepened, especially when he entered the “Chapter on Capital,” he soon discovered that only in the simple determination of exchange value or money is there pure abstraction, whereas the value relation in real life is mediated by the most profound oppositions. “[The] entire cleverness [of bourgeois apologists] consists in remaining at the simplest economic relations, which, taken in isolation, are pure abstractions, but in reality are mediated by the most profound oppositions, and reflect only the one side of these oppositions where their manifestation disappears.” [4]4 Christopher J. Arthur, *The New Dialectic and Marx’s Capital*, Chapter 6 (paraphrased). Marx even explicitly states that when studying the question of value, use-value must be taken into account: “Should value be understood as the unity of use-value and exchange value? … In any case, this must be studied in detail when investigating value; it cannot simply be abstracted from, as Ricardo does, nor can it be merely taken as a premise with the word ‘usefulness,’ as the vulgar economist Say does. In the exposition of the various chapters, it will first and foremost be shown to what extent use-value lies outside economics and the economic form-determination as a material precondition, and to what extent it enters into economics.” [5]5 Arthur, *The New Dialectic and Marx’s Capital*, Chapter 6 (paraphrased). Therefore, when Marx, in the final supplementary chapter — the “Chapter on Value” — emphasizes the dual attributes of the commodity rather than merely its exchange-value dimension, this embodies the result of his serious reflection and reflects the continuous deepening of his theoretical research. In the later Volume I of *Capital*, Marx also adopts this approach of beginning theoretical exposition from the dual attributes of the commodity, precisely for this reason. That Arthur and other contemporary foreign leftist scholars have failed to see this is, it must be said, a great pity.

马克思虽然在此手稿的开始部分专注于交换价值或货币关系的解读，但随着研究的深入，尤其是当他进入“资本章”时，他很快就发现，只是在交换价值或货币的简单规定性中才只有纯粹的抽象性，而现实生活中的价值关系则是以最深刻的对立为中介的。“[资产阶级辩护论者的]这全部聪明才智不过是要停留在最简单的经济关系上，这些经济关系单独来看，是纯粹的抽象，但在现实中却是以各种最深刻的对立为中介的，并且只反映上述对立表现消失不见的那一个方面。”马克思甚至明确地提出在研究价值问题时必须把使用价值考虑在内，“是否应把价值理解为使用价值和交换价值的统一？……无论如何，在研究价值时必须对这一点加以详细的研究，不能像李嘉图那样索性把它抽掉，也不能像庸俗的萨伊那样，只是把‘有用性’一词郑重其事地当作前提。在阐述各篇章时，首先并且必定会表明，使用价值在怎样的范围内作为物质前提处在经济学和经济的形式规定之外，又在怎样的范围内进入经济学”。因此，当马克思在补充进去的最后一章即“价值章”中强调商品的二重属性而不只是强调其交换价值维度时，所体现的是他认真思考的结果，反映的是其理论研究的不断深入。在后来的《资本论》第一卷中马克思也运用了这种从商品的二重属性来开始理论阐述的思路，其原因也正在于此。阿瑟等当代国外学界的左派学者没能看到这一点，不能不说是一种很大的遗憾。

Regarding the latter text, Volume I of *Capital*, it also does not support the above interpretative approach that only values exchange value. We know that Chapter 1 of Volume I of *Capital* has four sections. The first two sections discuss the content of value, i.e., use-value and value, and the corresponding dual character of labor. The third section discusses the value form, and the fourth section discusses the fetishism of commodities and its secret. When Arthur and other foreign leftist scholars interpret this passage of text, they focus only on the third section, on the value form, while ignoring the existence of the first two sections. This clearly attempts to sever the two parts of Marx’s theory of value — content and form. In the first German edition of Volume I of *Capital*, the content of the aforementioned third section was placed as an appendix at the very end of the book under the title “The Value Form.” It was only in the second German edition that it was adjusted into the main text of Chapter 1. In traditional interpretations of *Capital*, this part was not given much importance, whether in the field of political economy or Marxist philosophy. In a sense, the importance of this part has been constructed by scholars in the so-called “New Dialectic” movement in foreign academic circles. On the basis of severing the dialectical relationship between the content and form of Marx’s concept of value, they have also deliberately downplayed the fetishistic character of commodities discussed in the aforementioned fourth section, equating it with the abstractness of the value form they emphasize. In reality, Marx’s critique of commodity fetishism both reveals the abstractness of exchange value and highlights the external manifestations of this abstractness at the level of concrete phenomena. Therefore, severing the content of the third section from that of the fourth section undoubtedly seriously damages the completeness and scientificity of Marx’s theory of value.

就后者即《资本论》第一卷的文本来说，也不支持上述只看重交换价值的阐释思路。我们知道，《资本论》第一卷第一章有四小节的内容，前两节讲的是价值的内容即使用价值和价值，以及相对应的劳动的二重性，第三节才是讲价值形式的，而第四节讲的是商品的拜物教性质及其秘密。阿瑟等国外左派学者在解读这一段文本时，只关注第三节即价值形式的内容，而无视前两节的存在，这分明是想把马克思价值论中的内容与形式这两个部分割裂开来。在《资本论》第一卷德文第一版中，上述第三节的内容以“价值形式”的标题作为附录放在全书的最后，在德文第二版中才调整到了第一章的正文中。在传统的《资本论》解读中，这一部分的内容并没有赋予太多的重要性，不管是在政治经济学界，还是在马克思主义哲学界，情况均是如此。在某种意义上说，这一部分的重要性是被国外学界所谓“新辩证法运动”中的学者建构起来的。他们在割裂马克思价值概念的内容与形式之辩证关系的基础上，又对上述第四节中讲的商品的拜物教特性进行了刻意的淡化处理，使之与他们所强调的价值形式的抽象性等同起来。而实际上，马克思对商品拜物教的批判是既揭示交换价值的抽象性，又凸显这种抽象性在具体现象层面的外在表现形式的。因此，把第三节与第四节的内容切割开来，无疑会严重损害马克思价值理论的完整性与科学性。

II. The Self-Deduction of Concepts and Its Idealist Character

二、概念的自我演绎及其唯心主义特性

Arthur’s emphasis on systematic dialectics inevitably leads him to face major problems in understanding the conceptual deduction within systematic dialectics. For Marx, the scientific methodology of rising from the abstract to the concrete employed in *Capital* is not a simple copy of Hegel’s idealist conceptual dialectics. Rather, it is a process that, on the premise of understanding the capitalist mode of production at the level of the developmental process of the private ownership mode of production, starts from the most basic commodity relations in private ownership society and gradually rises to an in-depth study of the specific object of capitalist commodity relations. Therefore, the opening concept of Marx’s *Capital* must be the commodity, and cannot be any other element of the capital system, because none of these other elements can, like the commodity concept, possess both the characteristics suitable for all private ownership societies and the function of embodying the uniqueness of capitalist commodity relations. The developmental process Marx analyzes in *Capital*—from commodity, money, capital to surplus value, the rising organic composition of capital, the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, capitalist crisis, etc.—is in fact a process that, starting from the perspective of the entire developmental process of private ownership, increasingly penetrates to the essential level of capital relations, and then, proceeding from this scientific essence, explains the various forms of expression of capital at the level of empirical phenomena.

阿瑟对体系辩证法的强调，势必使他在理解体系辩证法中的概念演绎上面临很大的问题。因为对于马克思来说，他在《资本论》中所运用的从抽象上升到具体的科学方法论，其实并不是对黑格尔唯心主义概念辩证法的简单照抄，而是在把资本主义生产方式放在私有制生产方式发展过程的层面上来加以理解的前提下，从作为私有制社会中最基础的商品关系入手来逐渐上升到对资本主义商品关系这一具体对象进行深入研究的过程。因此，马克思《资本论》的开端概念一定是商品，而不可能是资本体系中的其他要素，因为这些要素中的任何一个都不可能像商品概念那样既具有适合于所有私有制社会的特性，又具有体现资本主义商品关系之独特性的功能。马克思在《资本论》中分析从商品、货币、资本到剩余价值、资本有机构成不断提高、一般利润率的下降规律、资本主义危机等的发展过程，其实是从整个私有制发展过程的角度入手，越来越深入到资本关系的本质层面，并进而从这种科学的本质出发来解释资本在经验现象层面上的各种表现形式的过程。

Arthur cannot understand this, so he believes that Marx’s choice of the commodity as the opening concept in *Capital* is merely a reluctant choice. In his view, all elements, including the commodity, are linked to the totality of capital relations and cannot be used in isolation. However, the expository system of *Capital* must take some element as its starting point; this is why Marx designated the commodity as the initial concept. “If the meaning of each element is determined by its position in the totality, and the exposition of the totality must nevertheless begin from some isolated (and therefore to a certain extent falsified) relation, then this original element can only be described in a provisional and indeterminate manner; as the narrative of the system advances to more complex and concrete relations, the original definition of the concept is correspondingly and normatively transformed into a higher determination.” [1]1 Marx, *Theories of Surplus Value*, Part 1, Chapter IV, Section 3 (paraphrased/compiled from Marx’s critique of the classical economists). Arthur’s understanding of the commodity as the starting point of *Capital* as merely a falsified, provisional, and indeterminate mode of exposition shows that he is completely unaware of the true meaning of Marx’s methodology of rising from the abstract to the concrete in interpreting capital. He understands the “abstract” in Marx’s methodology as something that empirically extracts an element from a structural totality. For example, he understands the commodity, which Marx takes as the starting point of *Capital*, as an empirical element extracted from the overall relations of capital. For Arthur, Marx chose the commodity rather than the concepts of capital and money simply because the latter two are not simple enough. “Let us now reconstruct Marx’s sequence of thought. He is confronted with capital, but he cannot begin with capital, because even if the concept of capital is stripped to its pure essence, it still possesses the complexity of self-valorization, its immediate manifestation being the increment in the reflux of money. So, he abstracts from this complex relation to money. But what is money? Clearly, money is in essence an incomplete idea; it has no meaning apart from its various relations with commodities (e.g., as the medium of commodity circulation). It is not an appropriate simple starting point.” [2]2 Marx, *Theories of Surplus Value*, Part 3, Chapter XIX, Section 9 (paraphrased). Following this line of thought further, Arthur even believes that the commodity concept is also unsuitable as a starting point, because the commodity in its general sense is merely a vague concept that cannot reflect the historical specificity of the capitalist commodity, namely, exchange-value. Therefore, in his view, the most appropriate starting concept should be the concept of exchange-value.

阿瑟无法理解这一点，所以他认为马克思《资本论》把商品作为开端概念只是一种无奈的选择，因为在他看来，包括商品在内的所有要素都是跟资本关系的整体连在一起的，都是不能单独拿出来使用的。但《资本论》的阐述体系又不得不把某种要素作为起点概念，这才是马克思把商品定为起始概念的原因。“如果每一个要素的意义由它在总体中所处的位置决定而对总体的阐述又不得不从某种孤立的（从而在一定程度上是伪造的）关系中开始的话，那么，这种原初要素只能以临时未定的方式得到描述；当体系的叙述前进到更复杂、更具体的关系时，概念的原初定义也就相应地和合乎规范地转化为更高的规定性。”阿瑟把《资本论》的商品起点理解为只是一种伪造的、临时未定的阐述方式，这说明他根本不了解马克思在资本解读上所运用的从抽象上升到具体的方法论的真实含义。他把马克思方法论中的“抽象”理解成了在经验层面上把某种要素从结构性的整体关系抽离出来的东西，譬如，他把马克思作为《资本论》起点的商品理解成了从资本整体关系中抽离出来的某种经验性要素了。对阿瑟来说，马克思之所以选择商品，而不选择资本和货币概念，只是因为这两个概念都不够简单，“让我们现在重建马克思的思想序列。他面对的是资本，但他不能从资本开始，因为即使资本概念被剥离到纯粹本质的层面，它仍然拥有自我增殖的复杂性，它的直接表现是货币回流中的增量。所以，他从这种复杂关系中抽象出货币。那什么是货币呢？显然，货币在本质上是一个未完成的理念，它在与商品的各种关系中（如作为商品流通的中介）之外没有任何意义。它并不是一个恰当的简单起点”。沿着这种思路继续推进，阿瑟甚至认为商品概念也不适合作为起点概念了，因为一般意义的商品只是一个模糊概念，它不能反映资本主义商品的历史规定性，即交换价值性。因此，在他看来，最合适的起点概念应该是交换价值概念。

Arthur is completely unaware that when, on the dimension of simplicity, he identifies the concept of exchange-value as the starting concept of Marx’s *Capital*, this exchange-value is in fact merely an element at the empirical level. Starting from such an element, it is very difficult to logically deduce an analysis of capital as a complex element, unless some mystical mode of inference is adopted. In fact, Arthur does use a mystical logic to explain the process of conceptual deduction in Marx’s *Capital*. For him, the “contradiction” in Marx’s expository context is not a reflection of objective real contradictions at the theoretical level, but rather a manifestation of the imperfection of the concepts themselves. For example, value should exist within the commodity, but it must also be expressed in money, the medium of commodity exchange; the essence of money should be embodied in money itself, but self-valorizing money can only be embodied in capital. This non-correspondence presented in concepts such as commodity and money is interpreted by Arthur as a contradiction in Marx’s conceptual system. “The method of movement in systematic dialectics should be based on the following foundation: noting whether the provisionally identified characteristic (here, value as the universality of the commodity) can be objectively established at the developmental stage under consideration (here, exchange). It is well proven to be the case that the (value) determination of these relations generates a contradiction. This in turn leads to the inner necessity of transcending the contradiction and thereby generating a more complex set of relations—into which the fuller realization of value can be subsumed.” [3]3 “Valorization” (Verwertung) refers to the process by which capital increases its value, i.e., the production of surplus value. For Arthur, Marx merely pushes the expository logic forward to the next element by questioning the theoretical status of the previous element. “Insofar as this abstract element has no meaning outside the structure to which it belongs, the narrative can rigorously proceed by questioning the status of this element. The same dialectic applies to the intermediate stages of the derivative parts. The day the reconstruction of the totality is completed is precisely the moment when the truth of the totality is revealed.” [4]4 Christopher J. Arthur, *The New Dialectic and Marx’s Capital*, Chapter 6 (paraphrased). In this way, the conceptual deduction in Marx’s *Capital* truly becomes a Hegelian conceptual dialectics.

阿瑟一点也没意识到，当他在简单性维度上把交换价值概念认定为马克思《资本论》的起点概念的时候，这种交换价值其实只是经验性层面上的一种要素。从这种要素出发是很难在逻辑上推演出对作为复杂性要素的资本的分析的，除非采用某种神秘性的推论方式。事实上，阿瑟就是用神秘性的逻辑来解释马克思《资本论》中的概念演绎过程的。在他那里，马克思阐释语境中的“矛盾”，不是客观现实中的矛盾在理论层面上的反映，而是概念本身的不完善性的某种表现。譬如，价值应该存在于商品之中，但它又必须体现于作为商品交换中介的货币之中；货币的本质应该体现在货币本身之中，但自我增殖的货币却又只能体现在资本之中。商品、货币等概念中所呈现出来的这种不完全对应性被阿瑟解释成了马克思概念体系中的矛盾。“体系辩证法中运动方法应建立在如下基础上，即注意到临时确认的特征（在这里是作为商品普遍性的价值）能否在有待考察的（这里是交换）发展阶段上客观地建立起来。它被很好地证明是如下情况：这些关系的（价值）规定性产生了一个矛盾。这反过来导致了超越矛盾并因而产生更复杂的关系集合——价值更充分的现实化可被归入这些关系集合——的内在必然性。”对阿瑟来说，马克思只是通过质疑前一个要素的理论地位而就把阐释逻辑推进到了下一个要素上面，“就这个抽象要素在它所从属的结构之外没有任何意义而言，叙述可以通过质疑这个要素的地位而严格继续下去。同样的辩证法适用于派生部分的中间阶段。重构总体的终结之日，恰恰是总体的真理显现之时”。这样一来，马克思在《资本论》中的概念演绎就真的成了黑格尔式的概念辩证法了。

Hegel could deduce his conceptual system by relying on the self-developing logic of his absolute spirit without being questioned about its rationality, because his philosophy is fundamentally idealist philosophy. But if Marx did this, would he not be questioned about the rationality of such a theoretical system? Specifically, the following questions would certainly arise: On what basis does Marx question the theoretical status of concepts such as commodity and money? That is, on what basis does Marx suspect that these concepts are insufficiently determined? Why must these concepts necessarily develop into the concept of capital? If such interrogation continues, the result obtained is terrible: Marx could only have deliberately designed the conceptual development process from commodity and money to capital in order to prove the self-valorization of capital. In this way, would this not once again fall into the “trap” that foreign theorists have designed for Marx’s philosophy? Because they always say that Marx’s philosophical methodology is a mystical teleological method. Consequently, Marx’s theory of historical materialism is interpreted as merely an ideological doctrine based on Marx’s subjective judgment, and no longer possesses scientificity. Furthermore, because Arthur’s interpretation does not involve real contradictions at all, he is unable to explain Marx’s analysis of the contradictions of capital relations. The only conclusion he can draw from this conceptual dialectics is that the self-valorization logic of capital is an objective existence, rather than a crisis-ridden existence based on the movement of internal contradictions.

黑格尔可以凭借他的绝对精神的自我发展逻辑来演绎其概念体系而不被人质疑其合理性，因为他的哲学压根儿就是唯心主义哲学。可马克思这样做的话，难道不会被人质问此种理论体系的合理性吗？具体来说，如下的质问一定会出现：马克思是凭什么来质疑商品、货币等概念的理论地位的？也就是说，马克思凭什么怀疑这些概念是未被充分规定的？这些概念为什么必然发展到资本概念？这样的拷问如果延续下去，得出的结果是很可怕的：马克思只可能是为了证明资本的自我增殖性而故意设计了从商品、货币到资本的概念发展过程。这样一来，岂不是又中了国外理论家给马克思哲学所设计的“圈套”？因为他们总是说马克思的哲学方法论是一种神秘的目的论方法。由此，马克思的唯物史观理论就被解释成了只是一种基于马克思主观判断的意识形态学说，而不再具有科学性。再者，阿瑟的这种解释因为根本就没涉及现实矛盾，因而他是无法解释马克思对资本关系的矛盾分析的。他从这种概念辩证法中所得出的结论只能是资本的自我增殖逻辑是一种客观的存在，而不是一种基于内在矛盾运动的危机式存在。

III. Another Concept of Abstract Labor

三、另一种抽象劳动概念

For Arthur, who approaches Marx’s critique of capital from the perspective of “systematic dialectics,” it is clearly insufficient to remain only at the level of commodity exchange relations, because the title of Volume 1 of Marx’s *Capital* is “The Production Process of Capital,” not “The Exchange Process of Commodities or Capital.” Therefore, within his explanatory framework, he must, on the basis of the abstractness of commodity exchange relations, advance further to the level of the capital production process in order to explore the theoretical fulcrum of critique. In Arthur’s case, this is first manifested in his definition of two types of abstract labor. His first type of abstract labor refers to abstract labor as the value-substance of commodity relations. This understanding, derived from the labor theory of value of classical political economy, contains little that is new, except that he applies this concept to the interpretation of the formal determinations of social relations. When Smith and Ricardo used this concept from the perspective of the magnitude of value to construct the essential commensurability between different commodities, what Arthur highlights through this concept is that the specific determinations of various different commodities are leveled by abstract labor. For Arthur, who takes exchange-value as the core of his interpretation, this dimension of abstract labor is not difficult to understand. In fact, what he wants to emphasize is the second concept of abstract labor, namely, the formal determination of wage-labor situated within the production relations of capital. The textual support he finds is the content in the section “Exchange of Capital and Labor” in the “Chapter on Capital” of Marx’s *Grundrisse* (1857–1858). In this section, Marx indeed discusses the abstractness of wage-labor: “One last point to be noted with regard to labor as it confronts capital: labor, as the use-value which confronts money posited as capital, is not this or another labor, but labor pure and simple, abstract labor; absolutely indifferent to its particular specificity, but capable of any specificity. Of course, for the particular substance which constitutes a specific capital, there must be a particular labor which corresponds to it as a specific labor; but since capital as such is indifferent to every particularity of its substance, and exists both as the totality of all such particularities and as the abstraction from all of them, the labor which confronts it likewise possesses in itself, subjectively, the same totality and abstraction.” Arthur uses this passage to prove that the abstract labor Marx had in mind is manifested not only in commodity exchange relations but also in the interpretation of the characteristics of wage-labor within the capital relation. For him, labor in the capitalist production process increasingly loses its distinctive artistry and increasingly becomes undifferentiated, purely abstract activity. This, he argues, not only shows that Marx has extended the tentacles of his critique of abstractness into the domain of the capital production process, but also marks that Marx has found a more fundamental theoretical terrain for his critique of capital, because “in any case, the abstraction of labor in the capital relation is more fundamental than the abstraction of labor in exchange.”

对于从“体系辩证法”入手来谈论马克思资本批判理论的阿瑟来说，仅停留在商品交换关系的层面上显然是不够的，因为马克思《资本论》第一卷的标题是“资本的生产过程”，而不是“商品或资本的交换过程“。因此，他在解释框架中一定会在商品交换关系的抽象性之基础上，再推进到资本生产过程的层面来探讨批判的理论支点。在阿瑟那里，这首先体现在了他对两种抽象劳动的界定上。他的第一种抽象劳动是指作为商品关系之价值实体的抽象劳动，这种源自于古典经济学劳动价值论的理解并没有太多新意，只不过他把这一概念运用到了对社会关系之形式规定性的解读上。当斯密和李嘉图从价值量的角度运用这一概念建构了不同商品之间的本质通约性时，阿瑟通过这一概念所凸显的是各种不同商品的特殊规定性被抽象劳动抹平了。对于以交换价值为解读核心的阿瑟来说，这一维度上的抽象劳动是不难理解的。其实，他要强调的是第二种抽象劳动概念，即处于资本生产关系中的雇佣劳动的形式规定性。他找到的文本支撑是马克思在《1857—1858年经济学手稿》“资本章”中“资本和劳动的交换”一节中的内容。马克思在这一节中的确讲到了雇佣劳动的抽象性问题，“在同资本相对立的劳动方面，还应该注意的最后一点是：劳动作为同表现为资本的货币相对立的使用价值，不是这种或那种劳动，而是劳动本身，抽象劳动；同自己的特殊规定性决不相干，但是可以有任何一种规定性。当然，对于构成一定资本的特殊实体来说，必须有作为特殊劳动的劳动与之相适应；但是，因为资本本身同自己实体的任何一种特殊性都毫不相干，并且它既是所有这些特殊性的总体，又是所有这些特殊性的抽象，所以，同资本相对立的劳动在主体上也自在地包含有同样的总体和抽象”。阿瑟是用这段话来证明马克思眼中的抽象劳动除了体现在商品交换关系中之外，还体现在对资本关系中的雇佣劳动之特性的解读上。对他来说，资本主义生产过程中的劳动越来越失去独特的技艺性，越来越变成无差别的、纯粹抽象的活动，这一点不仅体现了马克思已经把抽象性批判的触角深入到了资本生产过程的领域，而且还标志着马克思在资本批判方面已经找到了更为基础性的理论场地，因为“无论如何，劳动在资本关系中的抽象比劳动在交换中的抽象更为基础”。

Arthur’s problem lies in his simplistic reading of Marx’s text, and consequently in his overly one-dimensional grasp of Marx’s thought on the capital-labor relation. The passage he cites above is in fact only the content of the first of two dimensions of Marx’s analysis of the capital-labor exchange relation. At the very beginning of the section “Exchange of Capital and Labor,” Marx clearly points out that the exchange relation between capital and labor contains not only the content of a general commodity exchange mediated by money, but also the connotation of the special process in which capital appropriates labor. The content of this second dimension is explicitly contained within the capital-labor relation, but it cannot be defined by the general exchange relation: “In the exchange between capital and labor, the first act is an exchange, which falls entirely within the sphere of ordinary circulation; the second act is a process qualitatively different from exchange, and it is only by an abuse of language that it can be called any kind of exchange at all. It is directly opposed to exchange; essentially a different category.” The passage Arthur cites above discusses the first aspect of the capital-labor exchange, i.e., the capital-labor exchange as an ordinary exchange relation. And immediately following this passage, Marx clearly states: “Now we come to the second aspect of the process. If we consider the exchange process in general, the exchange between capital or the capitalist and the worker is now completed. What now follows is the relation of capital to labor as the use-value of capital. Labor is not only the use-value which confronts capital, but it is the use-value of capital itself.” At this level, what Marx sees is clearly not the abstractness of the worker’s labor, but rather its specific use-value character. In fact, with the advance of the capitalist industrial process, the worker’s labor does indeed increasingly lose its specific artistry (such as the craft specialization in feudal guilds) and is replaced by standardized modes of labor. But calling it abstract labor does not mean that it is empirically really just an abstract, purely formal labor; rather, it is because, if one views this capital-labor relation from the perspective of the general exchange relation, then labor at this point will appear to capital only in its abstract labor character as embodied in exchange-value. But once one enters the second dimension of the capital-labor relation, i.e., the dimension of capital’s appropriation of the specific use-value of labor, then the worker’s labor not only lacks abstractness, but even at the level of concreteness it is a specific kind of concreteness, namely, a specific use-value character capable of creating surplus value. Therefore, Arthur’s inference from the above-cited passage that Marx also saw the importance of abstract labor at the level of the capitalist labor process is inaccurate. What he actually sees is still labor and capital at the level of general commodity exchange relations, not the wage-labor within the real capitalist labor process.

阿瑟的问题在于对马克思的文本作了简单化的理解，进而对马克思的劳资关系思想也作了过于单一化的把握。他引用的上述这段文字其实只是马克思关于劳资交换关系的两个维度中的第一个维度的内容。马克思在“资本和劳动的交换”一节的一开始就明确地指出，劳资之间的交换关系除了具有以货币为中介的一般商品交换关系的内容外，还具有资本占有劳动的特殊过程的内涵。这第二种维度上的内容是明确地包含在劳资关系之中的，但它不能用一般的交换关系来加以界定，“在资本和劳动的交换中第一个行为是交换，它完全属于普通的流通范畴；第二个行为是在质上与交换不同的过程，只是由于滥用字眼，它才会被称为某种交换。这个过程是直接同交换对立的；它本质上是另一种范畴”。阿瑟引用的上述那段文字是在讲劳资交换的第一个方面，即作为普通交换关系的劳资交换。而就在这段文字的后面，马克思明确地指出，“现在我们来看看过程的第二方面。如果是一般说的交换过程，那么资本或资本家同工人之间的交换现在是完成了。现在接着发生的是资本同作为资本的使用价值的劳动的关系。劳动不仅是同资本相对立的使用价值，而且是资本本身的使用价值”。在这一层面上，马克思看到的显然不是工人劳动的抽象性，而是它的特殊的使用价值性。事实上，随着资本主义工业进程的推进，工人的劳动的确会越来越丧失其特殊技巧性（如封建行会中的那种技艺专长）而被标准化的劳动模式所取代。但它被称为抽象劳动，并不意味着它在经验层面上真的只是一种抽象的、单纯形式的劳动，而是因为如果从一般交换关系的层面上来看待这种劳资关系，那么，此时的劳动在资本眼里便只会呈现出由交换价值所体现了的抽象劳动性。但一旦进入到劳资关系的第二个维度，即资本占有劳动的特殊使用价值的维度，那么，工人劳动不但不具有抽象性，而且即使在具体性层面上也是一种特殊的具体性，即能够创造剩余价值的具体的使用价值性。所以，阿瑟从上述引文中推论出马克思在资本主义劳动过程层面上也看到了抽象劳动的重要性，这是不准确的。他所看到的实际上仍然是一般商品交换关系层面上的劳动和资本，而不是真正的资本主义劳动过程中的雇佣劳动。

To conflate the two dimensions of the labor-capital relationship—that is, to confuse the general exchange relationship between labor and capital with capital’s appropriation and exploitation of living labor in the production process—is not a problem unique to Arthur alone, nor is it a problem unique to the contemporary Euro-American “New Dialectics” movement as a single academic school; rather, it is a major problem widespread in Western academia. In fact, even Marx himself, in his own time, criticized the errors committed by bourgeois classical economists on this issue. When discussing the shortcomings of classical economics, Marx clearly pointed out: “They directly confuse the exchange of a certain quantity of objectified labor for labor capacity in the circulation process with the absorption of living labor by objectified labor existing in the form of means of production that occurs in the production process. They confuse the exchange process between variable capital and labor capacity with the process of absorbing living labor by constant capital. This shortcoming also arises from their ‘capitalist’ limitations, because for the capitalist himself, who pays for labor only after it has been performed, the exchange of a smaller quantity of objectified labor for a larger quantity of living labor appears as the sole unmediated process.” [1]1 Marx, *Theories of Surplus Value*, Part 1, Chapter IV, Section 3 (paraphrased/compiled from Marx’s critique of the classical economists). Scholars like Arthur have not actually surpassed classical economics in terms of economic cognition. They first take over the methods and viewpoints of classical economics, and then, through the mediation of a critique of the abstractness of social relations, construct their so-called critique of capital. If the capitalist production process is not understood at the level of a social-historical perspective, and if it is interpreted only from an economic angle, then its theoretical importance will be greatly diminished, because within such an interpretive horizon, the production process is merely a technological process, not a social-historical one. Even if one approaches it from a perspective with social-relational dimensions, such as the division of labor, one can at most understand the division of labor as the social division of labor between a shoemaker who makes boots and a baker who makes bread, but one can never see that the essence of the capitalist division of labor is the division between capitalists who own the means of production and wage laborers who possess only the commodity of labor power—and this is precisely determined by capitalist relations of production. “This is a viewpoint fundamentally different from that of bourgeois economists who are themselves bound by capitalist conceptions. Although bourgeois economists see how production proceeds within the capital relation, they do not see how this relation itself is produced, nor do they see how, within this relation, the material conditions for the dissolution of this relation are simultaneously produced, and thus they do not see how the historical basis for this relation as a necessary form of economic development and social wealth production is eliminated.” [2]2 Marx, *Theories of Surplus Value*, Part 3, Chapter XIX, Section 9 (paraphrased). The problem with Arthur and others lies precisely here. Fundamentally, because their interpretation of the capital-labor process lacks the theoretical horizon of historical materialism, they, like the bourgeois classical economists, weaken the study of the production process itself and instead focus only on the level of the labor-capital relationship as a general commodity exchange relationship.

把劳资关系中的两个维度混淆起来，即把劳资之间的一般交换关系混同于资本在生产过程中对活劳动的占有和剥削关系，这不是阿瑟一个人的问题，也不是当代欧美“新辩证法运动”这一个学术流派的问题，而是普遍存在于西方学界的一个大问题。其实，即使是马克思当年，他也批判过资产阶级古典经济学家在这一问题上犯下的错误。在谈到古典经济学的缺点时，马克思明确地指出：“他们把流通过程中一定量对象化劳动同劳动能力的交换直接混同于生产过程中发生的、以生产资料形态存在的对象化劳动对活劳动的吸收。他们把可变资本和劳动能力之间的交换过程与不变资本对活劳动的吸收过程混同起来。这个缺点也是由于他们的‘资本主义’局限性而产生的，因为对于在劳动实现以后才对劳动进行支付的资本家本人来说，较少量的对象化劳动同较多量的活劳动的交换表现为唯一的没有中介的过程。”阿瑟等西方学者其实在经济学认知上并没有超越古典经济学，他们首先是接过了古典经济学的方法与观点，然后再通过社会关系抽象性批判的中介来建构起了所谓的资本批判理论。如果不把资本主义生产过程放在社会历史观的层面上来加以理解，如果只是从经济学的角度来解读这种生产过程，那么，它的理论重要性就会大打折扣，因为在这种解读视域中，生产过程只是一种工艺学过程，而不是社会历史过程。即使从像分工这样的具有社会关系性的视角来切入，那也至多只能把分工理解为制作靴子的鞋匠与制作面包的面包匠之间的社会分工，而永远看不到资本主义分工的本质是拥有生产资料的资本家与只剩下劳动力商品的雇佣劳动者之间的分工，而这恰恰是由资本主义生产关系所决定的。“这是与那些被资本主义观念本身所束缚的资产阶级经济学家的观点根本不同的一种观点，资产阶级经济学家虽然看到了生产在资本关系中是怎样进行的，但是他们看不到这种关系本身是怎样被生产出来的，同时看不到在这种关系中怎样同时生产出使这种关系解体的物质条件，从而看不到这种关系作为经济发展的、社会财富生产的必要形式的历史根据是怎样消除的。”阿瑟等人的问题就出在这里，从根本上说是由于他们在对资本劳动过程的解读上缺乏唯物史观的理论视域，这才使他们像资产阶级古典经济学家那样，弱化对生产过程本身的研究，而只是把重点放在作为一般商品交换关系的劳资关系的层面上。

Arthur’s simplistic interpretation of Marx’s concept of abstract labor will inevitably affect his understanding of Marx’s following viewpoint: that the production process of capital is both a general labor process and a process of capital’s valorization. [3]3 “Valorization” (Verwertung) refers to the process by which capital increases its value, i.e., the production of surplus value. This academic viewpoint, rich in dialectical depth, can only be understood from the perspective of materialist historical dialectics, and for Arthur, who focuses on systematic dialectics, it is indeed too difficult. Arthur first raises it as a genuine problem: “Here a real difficulty arises: whose productive forces are these? Are not the productive forces attributed to labor and those attributed to capital the same productive forces? Indeed they are! But this cannot be attributed to the theorist’s ambiguity; this situation arises from the contradictory interpenetration of the poles of the capital relation, in which ‘labor is productive only when it produces its own opposite.’” [4]4 Christopher J. Arthur, *The New Dialectic and Marx’s Capital*, Chapter 6 (paraphrased). Secondly, he defines these two understandings of productive forces as essentially both correct, because in Marx’s interpretation there are originally two different interpretive frameworks, and capitalism itself is inherently contradictory. “In short, the second viewpoint is an inversion of the first. In fact, both viewpoints are correct, although they contradict each other. This actually means that capitalism is inherently contradictory. There is no formal logical contradiction here, because the concept of ‘inversion’ is carefully positioned so that the validity of each ‘essence’—whether in independence or in interaction—can be separately confirmed.” [5]5 Arthur, *The New Dialectic and Marx’s Capital*, Chapter 6 (paraphrased). Arthur’s questioning of the concept of exploitation within the Marxist tradition also stems from this. Because, in his view, if the subject of production is no longer labor but has transformed into capital, then the traditional concept of exploitation based on the dimension of surplus value loses its rational basis and should therefore be replaced by the concept of inversion. This is what he calls a new interpretation of the concept of exploitation.

阿瑟对马克思抽象劳动概念的简单化解读势必会影响到他对马克思如下观点的理解，即资本的生产过程既是一般劳动过程又是资本的价值增殖过程。这种具有深厚辩证法底蕴的学术观点只有从唯物主义历史辩证法的角度才能加以理解，而对于专注于体系辩证法的阿瑟来说，的确也是太困难的。阿瑟首先把它当作一个难题提了出来，“在此出现了一个真正的难题：这到底是谁的生产力呢？归因于劳动的和归因于资本的生产力难道不是相同的生产力吗？确实如此！但这不能归因于理论家的模棱两可，这种情况源于资本关系各极的矛盾贯通性，在这种情况中，‘劳动只有在它生产了它自己的对立面时才是生产劳动’。”其次，他又把对生产力的这两种理解界定为本质上都是正确的观点，因为在马克思的解读中本来就有两种不同的解读框架，而资本主义也是本来就具有矛盾性的。“总而言之，第二种观点是对第一种观点的颠倒。事实上这两种观点都是正确的，尽管它们相互矛盾。这其实意味着资本主义在本质上就是矛盾的。这里面并不包含形式上的逻辑矛盾，因为‘颠倒’概念被仔细地定位以便可以分别确认每一‘本质’——无论是在独立时还是在相互作用时——的有效性。”阿瑟对马克思主义传统中的剥削概念的质疑也是由此而来的，因为在他看来，如果生产的主体不再是劳动而是转变成了资本，那么，传统的基于剩余价值维度的剥削概念就失去了存在的合理性，因而应该由颠倒概念来取代。这就是他所谓的对剥削概念的新解读。

Arthur’s above-mentioned viewpoint on the relationship between the general labor process and the valorization process appears, on the surface, to be quite dialectical, but in reality it is merely a dualistic interpretive approach and thus contains significant problems. For Marx, the labor process under capitalist conditions “appears as” the valorization process or the self-movement process of capital, not, as Arthur claims, that it is in essence both the worker’s labor process and capital’s self-valorization process. Marx points out that this labor process appears as the valorization process; this is precisely the result and product of the capitalist production process, not some ahistorical empirical reality. Although this labor process appears as capital’s valorization process, this does not thereby change its own general characteristics. That is to say, it does not thereby make the capitalist labor process truly become a process in which capital can mysteriously accomplish self-valorization. “If we examine the production process from two different viewpoints—(1) the labor process, (2) the valorization process—then this means that the production process is only a single, indivisible labor process. Labor is not performed twice: once to create a purposeful product, to create a use value, to transform the means of production into a product; and another time to create value and surplus value, to valorize value. … The labor process appears as the valorization process because: the concrete labor added in the labor process is a socially necessary quantity of labor (according to its intensity), which equals a certain quantity of social average labor; and because: this quantity of labor, in addition to the quantity of labor contained in wages, also represents an additional quantity of labor.” [6]6 Marx, *Results of the Direct Production Process* (a draft of what was to become Volume I of *Capital*), Section on “The Production of Relative Surplus Value” (paraphrased/compiled). Marx clearly saw that the valorization process is merely the form of appearance of the labor process under the conditions of capitalist relations of production, not some given, empirical objective process. Capital, relying solely on its material attributes, cannot valorize itself; it only exhibits the characteristic of self-valorization under the combined effect of its material attributes and its social-relational attributes. But even so, the actual labor remains the labor of the wage worker, remains the expenditure of the worker’s vital forces and the realization of their productive capacity. This means that within this labor process, or the valorization process as its form of appearance, there always exists the opposition and contradiction between capital, as the objective condition of labor, and the worker, as the subjective condition of labor. And this contradiction does not fall from the sky; it is determined by capitalist relations of production, and it is caused by the capitalist production process itself.

阿瑟在一般劳动过程和价值增殖过程之关系问题上的上述观点，从表面上看似乎很具有辩证法色彩，但实则只是一种二元论的解读思路，因而存在着很大的问题。对马克思来说，资本主义条件下的劳动过程是“表现为”价值增殖过程或者说资本的自我运动过程，而不是像阿瑟所说的那样，在本质上既是工人的劳动过程，又是资本的自我增殖过程。马克思指出，这种劳动过程表现为价值增殖过程，这恰恰是资本主义生产过程的结果和产物，而不是某种非历史性的经验现实。这种劳动过程虽然表现为资本的价值增殖过程，但这并不因此而改变其自身的一般特性。也就是说，并不因此而使资本主义的劳动过程真的成了一种资本能够神秘地完成自我增殖的过程。“如果我们从两种不同的观点——（1）劳动过程，（2）价值增殖过程——来考察生产过程，那么这就意味着，生产过程只是单一的、不可分的劳动过程。劳动并没有进行二次：一次是为了创造合乎目的的产品，创造一种使用价值，把生产资料转化为产品；另一次是为了创造价值和剩余价值，为了增殖价值。……劳动过程所以表现为价值增殖过程，是由于：在劳动过程中所追加的具体劳动是社会必要劳动量（按其强度），它等于一定的社会平均劳动量；并且由于：这个劳动量除了工资所包含的劳动量以外还代表一个追加的劳动量。”马克思明确地看到了价值增殖过程其实只是劳动过程在资本主义生产关系条件下的表现形式，而不是某种既定的、经验的客观过程。资本单凭其物的属性是不可能自行增殖的，它只是在物的属性和社会关系属性的共同作用下，才会表现出自我增殖的特性。但即便如此，实际的劳动依然是雇佣工人的劳动，依然是工人生命力的支出及其生产能力的实现。这就使这种劳动过程或作为其表现形式的价值增殖过程中始终存在着作为劳动的客观条件的资本与作为劳动的主观条件的工人之间的对立与矛盾。而这种矛盾不是从天而降的，而是由资本主义生产关系决定的，是由资本主义生产过程所导致的。

In Marx’s view, understanding the valorization process based on capital’s appropriation of the labor process as another labor process identical to the general labor process is in fact a manifestation of the capitalist fetishistic conception, and at the same time an illusion generated from the capitalist production process itself. “The economists’ illusion — which confuses capital’s appropriation of the labor process with the labor process itself, and thereby transforms the mere material elements of the labor process into capital, because capital is also transformed into material elements of the labor process in this process — arises from the very nature of the capitalist production process; … this illusion is a very convenient method for proving the eternity of the capitalist mode of production or for proving that capital is the immortal natural element of human production itself.” In this sense, Arthur is also trapped in the fetishistic conception and unable to extricate himself. Although he emphasizes that he discusses the autonomous movement of capital from the perspective of social validity, because he truly believes that the value-form possesses autonomy, rather than understanding this valorization process as the manifestation of the wage-laborer’s labor process under capitalist conditions, he is not only unable to correctly comprehend the essential connotation of capital’s self-valorization process, but also inevitably unable, as Marx did, to seek the theoretical basis for workers’ revolutionary resistance movements from the perspective of the internal contradictions of the capitalist production process.

在马克思看来，把以资本对劳动过程的占有为基础的价值增殖过程，理解为与一般劳动过程一样的另一种劳动过程，这实际上是资本主义拜物教观念的一种表现，同时也是从资本主义生产过程中产生出来的一种幻想。“经济学家的这种幻想——把资本对劳动过程的占有这件事同劳动过程本身混淆起来，从而把单纯劳动过程的物的要素转化为资本，因为资本在其中也转化为劳动过程的物的要素——，是从资本主义生产过程的性质本身中产生出来的；……这种幻想是证明资本主义生产方式的永恒性或证明资本是人类生产本身不朽的自然要素的非常方便的方法。”在这一意义上，阿瑟也是陷于拜物教观念中而不能自拔。尽管他强调是从社会有效性的角度来谈论资本的自主运动的，但由于他真的认为价值形式是具有自主性的，而不是把这种价值的增殖过程理解为雇佣工人的劳动过程在资本主义条件下的表现形式，因此，他不仅无法正确理解资本的自我增殖过程的本质内涵，而且还必然无法像马克思那样，从资本主义生产过程的内部矛盾性的角度来寻找工人的革命反抗运动的理论依据。

In Arthur’s view, workers’ resistance to the logic of capital originates from the dualistic opposition or contradictory relationship between the labor process and the valorization process. He points out that no matter how powerful capital’s self-valorization process is, it cannot completely suppress the subjectivity workers possess in the labor process. “The former subjects of production become manipulable objects, but this is a matter of manipulating their activity, not of depriving them of all subjectivity. They labor for capital, indeed they labor as capital, but in a certain sense they still act. … Therefore, even if Marx’s view that the productive power of labor is actually absorbed into capital is correct, we still need to believe that capital remains dependent on labor. Moreover, the suppressed subjectivity of workers still poses a threat to capital’s purposes.” Arthur thus also proposes a new theory of value determination. He believes that the reason capital can create value or valorize lies not in capital’s exploitation of workers, but in the victory of capitalists in the class struggle with workers. And wage labor, for workers, is less a productive labor than a counter-productive labor, because its main mission is to reject capital’s attempt to force them to labor.

在阿瑟看来，工人对资本逻辑的反抗就是来源于劳动过程与价值增殖过程的二元对立或矛盾关系中。他指出，资本的自我增殖过程再强大，也不可能完全压制住工人在劳动过程中具有的主体性。“之前的生产主体成为可操控的客体，但这是操控他们活动的问题，而不是剥夺他们全部主体性的问题。他们为资本而劳作，确切地说他们作为资本而劳作，但在某种意义上他们仍然行动着。……因此，即使马克思关于劳动的生产力实际上是被吸纳进资本中的观点是正确的，我们仍然有必要相信，资本依然依赖于劳动。而且，工人被压制的主体性对资本的目的来说依然是一种威胁。”阿瑟由此还提出了一种新的价值决定论。他认为资本之所以能创造价值或者说使价值增殖，其原因不在于资本对工人的剥削，而在于资本家在与工人的阶级斗争中取得了胜利。而工人的雇佣劳动与其说是一种生产性劳动，还不如说是一种反生产性的劳动，因为它的主要使命是拒斥资本迫使他们劳动的企图。

Arthur does not answer where this worker subjectivity he speaks of comes from, nor does he answer whether the counter-productive labor of workers based on this subjectivity corresponds to the deep connotation of Marx’s scientific socialism. In fact, he merely uses a theory of class struggle from the political dimension, whose historical necessity is not elucidated, to interpret the militancy of workers in Marx’s theory. Although this seems on the surface to echo the surface characteristics of left-wing political movements that have become increasingly popular in Europe and America since the 1990s — that is, emphasizing contemporary political nature rather than historical necessity — it is clear that this view is not only incomparable in theoretical depth to the theory of class struggle within the perspective of Marx’s historical materialism, but also has not achieved the degree of impact on the Western capitalist system in terms of actual effect. Arthur and others aim to confront the new abstract mode of domination that has emerged under the conditions of the financial crisis in contemporary capitalism, and try to find a path of resistance to break through this abstract domination. However, their problem lies in abandoning the socio-historical interpretive approach in the Marxist academic tradition and abandoning the methodological perspective of historical materialism, leading them to only directly pounce on the abstractness manifested by exchange value on the surface of capital relations, and to launch an external critique of it based on abstract human nature theory. They do not answer what causes this abstractness of exchange value, and thus naturally cannot answer whether it is possible to explore a realistic path of capitalist critique from the perspective of the contradictions in real relations of production. In this sense, I believe that the “new dialectics movement” of Arthur and others is essentially nothing more than the application of a humanist critical approach to the interpretation of Marx’s economic categories and to the interpretation of capitalist economic relations. They have not touched upon the issue of applying the scientific methodology in Marx’s critique of political economy to the interpretation of the latest contemporary forms of capital. (Notes omitted)

阿瑟没有回答他讲的这种工人主体性是从何而来的，也没有回答基于这种主体性的工人的反生产性劳动是否与马克思科学社会主义的深层内涵相呼应。实际上，他只是用未阐明其历史必然性的、政治学维度上的阶级斗争理论，来阐释马克思学说中的工人斗争性的。这虽然从表面上看似乎在呼应从20世纪90年代以来在欧美世界越来越流行的左翼政治运动的表面特征，即强调的当下政治性而非历史必然性的特征，但显然，这种观点不仅是理论深度上无法与马克思唯物史观视域中的阶级斗争理论相提并论，而且在实际效果上也没达到对西方资本主义制度构成冲击的程度。阿瑟等人是想面对当代资本主义在金融危机条件下新出现的抽象统治模式，并试图找出冲破这种抽象性统治的反抗路径，但他们的问题在于放弃了马克思学术传统中的社会历史性解读思路，放弃了唯物史观的方法论视角，从而导致他们只能直接扑向呈现在资本关系表面的、由交换价值所体现出来的抽象性上，并对它展开一种基于抽象人性论的外在批判。他们没有回答这种交换价值的抽象性是由什么导致的，因而当然也无法回答能否从现实生产关系矛盾性的角度来探寻资本主义批判的现实路径。在这一意义上，我认为，阿瑟等人的“新辩证法运动”在本质上无非是把人本主义批判思路运用到了对马克思经济学范畴的解读之中，运用到了对资本主义经济关系的解读之中。他们没有触及把马克思政治经济学批判中的科学方法论运用到对当代最新资本形态的解读中去的问题。（注释略）

Online Editor: Zhang Jian

网络编辑：张剑