The “Value-Critique Group” in the Context of Contemporary German Research on *Capital*

In the history of research on *Capital*, the “Value-Critique Group” or Crisis Group (Krisis-Gruppe) appears far less prominent than the New Marx Reading School, which has attracted considerable attention in the German-speaking world. The reasons for this can be roughly attributed to three basic factors: (1) The difficulty of classifying it. For instance, Jappe holds that the “Value-Critique Group” cannot be “classified” under any of the usual forms of critical thought, because “it is neither Marxist, nor anarchist, nor parliamentarist, nor situationist, nor ecological, nor radical democratic, nor Frankfurt School.” [1]1 Anselm Jappe, *The Adventures of the Commodity: For a Critique of Value* (London: Verso, 2005), p. x. However, the influence of these critical currents is indeed embedded in the theoretical elaborations of many scholars within this school, albeit in a “mixed” sense. (2) Among the core members of the “Value-Critique Group,” figures such as Robert Kurz, Ernst Lohoff, Roswitha Scholz, and Norbert Trenkle are non-academic. For example, Kurz, born in 1942 into a German worker’s family, made a living by delivering goods. This has meant that they have exerted more social influence than academic influence. (3) The limitation of language itself. The literature of the “Value-Critique Group” is written in German and, for a long time, lacked English translations. Under the circumstances where English functions as the “unified currency” of the global academic market, it is only natural that the theoretical contributions of this group have been overlooked. However, as soon as the English translation of *The Substance of Capital* [2]2 Robert Kurz, *The Substance of Capital*, trans. Robin Halpin (London: Chronos Publications, 2016). appeared, it generated great interest in the study of *Capital* in the English-speaking world. Correspondingly, for Chinese academia, it appears even more “unfamiliar.” Whether the origin of the “Value-Critique Group” can be definitively fixed in West Germany in the 1970s and 1980s remains a matter of debate, but 1986 is indeed a landmark year, because in that year the journal *Krisis: Critique of Commodity Society* was founded in Nuremberg as their main platform. In 2004, following a split, the journal *Exit* emerged, along with *Streifzüge*, first published in Vienna in the spring of 1996. Of course, today the “Value-Critique Group” has expanded beyond the “classic group of authors” of the 1986 period, bringing together dozens of scholars, including, for example, the open Marxist John Holloway. If we trace the theoretical sources, the main influences come from Lukács’s *History and Class Consciousness* and from the Frankfurt School thinkers Adorno and Sohn-Rethel, particularly their concepts of real abstraction and the social synthesis function of value. If we look at the crisis theory of the “Value-Critique Group,” it was further developed under the influence of Rosa Luxemburg, Henryk Grossman, and Paul Mattick. Of course, after the 1970s, any Western scholar seriously discussing value had to pay close attention to Isaak Rubin’s *Essays on Marx’s Theory of Value*, and the “Value-Critique Group” was no exception. “Generally speaking, value-critique is not about discussing other people’s theories, but about analyzing the past and present of capitalism.” [3]3 This is a paraphrase of a common self-description by members of the group. However, here we will primarily analyze the group of authors associated with the journals *Krisis* and *Exit*, focusing on some well-known works such as *The Black Book of Capitalism* [4]4 Robert Kurz, *Schwarzbuch Kapitalismus: Ein Abgesang auf die Marktwirtschaft* (Frankfurt am Main: Eichborn, 1999). The English translation is *The Black Book of Capitalism: A Farewell to the Market Economy*. to discuss their core concept of value-critique (*Wertkritik*). To this end, we will attempt to answer: what is the central theme of the “Value-Critique Group”? And what are the main principles of their discussion?

在《资本论》的研究史上，“价值批判小组”或危机小组（Krisis-Gruppe）较之于德语世界备受关注的新马克思阅读学派来说，则显得冷清的多。究其原因，大概存在三个基本理由：（1）难以归类其存在的困难。譬如雅普（Jappe）认为，“价值批判小组”不能被“归类”到通常的批判思想形式之中，因为，“它既不是马克思主义的，也不是无政府主义的、议会主义者、情境主义者，更不是生态学家、激进的民主主义者，也不是法兰克福学派”。但是，这些批判思想在这一学派的诸多学者思想阐发中的影响倒是扎根其中的，只不过有一种“混杂”的意味。（2）在“价值批判小组”的核心成员中，罗伯特·库尔茨（Robert Kurz），恩斯特·洛霍夫（Ernst Lohoff）、罗斯维塔·肖尔茨(Roswitha Scholz)、罗伯特·特伦克勒（Norbert Trenkle）等人都是非学院派人物，譬如，1942年出生于德国工人家庭的库尔茨就是一个靠给人运送货物的谋生者，这也使得他们更多地产生社会影响而非学术影响。（3）语言本身的限制。“价值批判小组”的文献以德文写作，在之前一直缺乏英文译本，使得这一小组的理论贡献，在英语犹如世界学术市场的“统一货币”的情势下，被忽视也实属正常。不过，《资本的实体》英文译本甫一问世，便产生英语世界《资本论》研究的极大兴致。相应地，对于中国学术界来说，它更显得“陌生”了。“价值批判小组”的起源是否定格在20世纪70年代和80年代的西德这一说法还存在争议，但1986年确实是一个标志性的年份，因为，这一年在纽伦堡创办的《危机：商品社会批判》（Krisis）杂志为他们的主要阵地，2004年，随着分裂又出现了“出路”（Exit）杂志、还有于1996年春天在维也纳第一次出版的漫谈（Streifzüge）杂志。当然，在今天，“价值批判小组”已经溢出了1986年时期那个“经典作者群”，汇聚了数十位学者加盟其中，譬如开放马克思主义者约翰·霍洛威等人也参与其中。如果从理论源头来看，主要的影响来自于卢卡奇的《历史与阶级意识》和法兰克福学派的阿多诺、索恩·雷特尔等人的现实抽象与价值的社会综合能力；如果从“价值批判小组”的危机理论来看，又是在罗莎·卢森堡和亨利克·格罗斯曼、马蒂克（Paul Matick）的影响下继续推进的，当然，在20世纪70年代之后，任何严肃讨论价值的西方学者都要注重分析伊萨克·鲁宾（Isaak Rubin）的《马克思价值论论文集》，“价值批判小组”当然也不例外。“一般说来，价值批判并不是要讨论别人的理论，而是要分析资本主义的过去和现在”，不过，在这里主要是围绕“Krisis”与“Exit”这两本杂志下的作者群展开分析，并集中于一些著名的作品如《资本主义黑皮书》等讨论他们的核心概念价值批判（Wertkritik），为此，我们将试图回答“价值批判小组”的中心议题是什么？其主要讨论的中心原则又是如何的？

I. The Traditional Conception of Collapse and the “Immanence of Value”: A Double Critique

一 传统崩溃观念与“价值内在论”：双重批判

The “Value-Critique Group” is, more precisely, a critique of the immanence of value (*value-immanent*). It seeks to dismantle the notion of value as an unchanging, eternal law, and therefore it is necessary to re-establish “the element of logical-historical self-destruction contained in the value relation in Marx’s work.” [5]5 This is a paraphrase of a central tenet of the group’s critique. Why is it necessary to establish this principle? This must be understood by starting from the traditional theory of breakdown. In 1913, Luxemburg published *The Accumulation of Capital*. Particularly in its second part, discussing the “three rounds of debate,” she argued that capitalism essentially comprises two aspects of production: on the one hand, material production, and on the other hand, production at the level of surplus value. The latter itself includes two aspects: a. the production of surplus value; b. the realization of surplus value. For Luxemburg, the realization of surplus value determines capital accumulation, and therefore the dimension of “realization” that determines capital accumulation also necessarily determines the fate of capitalism. Thus, she criticized the existing understanding of crisis theory, stating that “it excludes the profound and fundamental conflict between the productive capacity and the consuming capacity of capitalist society. This conflict is precisely generated by capital accumulation and erupts in periodic crises.” [6]6 Rosa Luxemburg, *The Accumulation of Capital*, trans. Agnes Schwarzschild (London: Routledge, 2003), p. 347. Of course, this is an inversion of the views of bourgeois economists, who tend to emphasize that crises determine accumulation. So, how is this problem of capital accumulation to be resolved? In Luxemburg’s view, “surplus value must be stripped of its form as surplus product before it can reassume the form intended for accumulation; by one method or another, it must pass through the monetary phase.” [7]7 Ibid., p. 115. Consequently, the problem of capitalist crisis is ultimately framed as “the problem of realizing surplus value for the purpose of capitalization,” but unfortunately, “it is pushed into the background, and is rarely touched upon by Marx until the very end.” [8]8 Ibid., p. 351. In response, Kurz argues that Luxemburg’s crisis theory suffers from two explanatory defects: I. It remains confined to the pure sphere of circulation, abstracting from the moment of surplus value production. “This is also the origin of the fantasy of politically intervening in the capitalist reproduction process (strengthening mass purchasing power) today,” [9]9 Robert Kurz, *The Substance of Capital*, p. 234. as advocated by some “neo-harmonicists,” such as Hilferding and Tugan-Baranovsky. [10]10 Rudolf Hilferding (1877–1941) was an Austrian Marxist economist and politician, known for his theory of finance capital. Mikhail Tugan-Baranovsky (1865–1919) was a Ukrainian-Russian economist who developed a theory of capitalist crises based on disproportionality between departments of production. II. Its perspective remains based on the simple reproduction of total capital, failing to incorporate the expansion of capital into the relations of production as a historical dimension. In other words, the former is merely an “appearance” or a “result,” which is “the basic tendency of value to be stalled in direct production.” [11]11 Kurz, *The Substance of Capital*, p. 235. Although Luxemburg perceived the limits of capitalist development, her view, confined to the insufficiency of circulation, naturally led her to miss a fundamental problem: the realization of surplus value still requires a large amount of living labor to be absorbed into the production of surplus value. Undoubtedly, it is wrong to one-sidedly emphasize the sphere of circulation, based on the belief that the realization of surplus value still depends on consumption as a supplement. This is similar to the approach of many contemporary left-wing scholars who promote this compensatory mechanism in the realm of consumption or spectacle.

“价值批判小组”其实更准确地说是对价值内在论（value-immanent）的批判，它要破除的是将价值作为不变的永恒法则，所以，必须要重新确立起“马克思作品中包含的价值关系在逻辑-历史意义上自我毁灭的要素”。为什么要确立这一原则呢？这得从以往的崩溃理论（Theory of Breakdown）看法谈起。1913年，卢森堡发表了《资本积累论》一书，特别是在其第二篇中针对“三回论战”的讨论，进而讨论了资本主义实质上包含两个方面的生产：一方面是物质性的生产，另一方面是剩余价值层次的生产，后者又包含了a.剩余价值生产;b.剩余价值实现两个方面。对于卢森堡来说，剩余价值实现决定了资本的积累，因而，决定资本的积累的“实现”维度也必然决定资本主义的命运。所以她对以往危机理论理解的看法给予了批评，“它排除了资本主义社会的生产能力与消费能力之间的深刻而根本的冲突。而这个冲突正是由资本积累而生，它爆发为周期性危机”。当然，这是对资产阶级经济学家们的看法进行倒置处理的，因为后者更加强调危机会决定积累。那么，要如何解决这个资本的积累问题？在卢森堡看来，“剩余价值必须脱去作为剩余生产物的形态，然后才能重新采取以积累为目的的形态；通过这种或那种方法，它必须经历货币阶段”。所以，资本主义危机问题最后被强调为是“以资本化为目的的剩余价值实现问题”，只是可惜的是，“被推入幕后，直至结束时，很少为马克思所论及了”。对此，库尔茨认为，卢森堡式的危机理论存在着两个方面的解释缺陷：I.停留于纯粹的流通领域，抽掉了剩余价值生产环节。“这也在今天政治干预资本主义再生产过程（加强群众购买力）的幻想的始作俑者”，譬如一些““新和谐主义者”，如希法亭、杜冈-巴拉诺夫斯基”那里得到推崇；II.视角停留在将总资本的简单再生产作为基础，没有将资本的扩展纳入到作为历史性维度的生产关系之中加以认识。也就是说，前者其实只是一种“表象”或者是“结果”，正是“在直接生产中被停滞的价值的基本趋势”。卢森堡虽然看到了资本主义发展的极限，但是局限于流通不足这一看法的她自然也就错失了一个根本的问题，那就是剩余价值的实现依然需要大量活劳动被吸纳到属于剩余价值生产之中，无疑，由于认为剩余价值实现依然需要依靠消费补充，从而片面强调流通领域是错误的，正如今天诸多左翼学者在消费或景观上推进这一补偿机制的看法一样。

However, for Bernstein and Kautsky, their direct conclusion no longer sought the logic of capitalism’s inevitable collapse from objective conditions themselves, but instead relied on the revolutionary action of the proletariat. Thus, under the historical circumstances of an increasingly upgraded structure of capital domination, this had a somewhat subjective flavor. Nonetheless, this is not a theoretical conception that no one has continued to pursue. For example, in the political reading of *Capital* or in certain left-wing discourses advocating subjective resistance, their views are still constantly filled in with new names. On this point, one need only open contemporary Western radical left-wing works to see it without further elaboration. Of course, Lenin also did not provide a complete understanding of crisis, nor was it likely that he could develop a fully adequate theory of crisis. Because, during this period, people’s view of the demise of capitalism was no longer rooted in economic crisis, but in political conflict—in the sense of the power of capital. Thus, in Lenin’s focus, “there is absolutely no encounter with absolute material limits, and this dimension is taken as the objective basis. It is not the collapse of historical accumulation, but the political conflict of imperialist capitals of various countries, and the potential conscious political action of the working class arising from this, which will be able to halt the process of capitalist development worldwide.” Starting from non-economic factors inevitably leads to an unsatisfactory explanation of the problem of capital overaccumulation. Politics and economics ultimately became two different directions unfolding gradually along with capitalist crisis. Unfortunately, in the face of the economic crisis of the late 1920s, Henryk Grossman, in his 1929 work *The Law of Accumulation and Collapse of the Capitalist System*, explicitly stated: “Luxemburg completely misunderstood the importance of Marx’s methodological procedure. Who can ensure proportional accumulation in the two departments? Under capitalism, no such regulator exists.” Consequently, he retreated to the sphere of surplus-value production, reorienting Marx’s theory of crisis as capital overaccumulation: “Although Marx did not give a concise description of the law of collapse, he did specify all the elements required for such a description. On the basis of the law of value, the law of collapse can be developed as the natural result of the capitalist accumulation process.” Like Luxemburg, he elaborated on Marx’s duality of the capitalist production process in *Capital*, namely the unity of the production of use-values and the valorization process of surplus-value or profit. The valorization of value is the fundamental driving force of capitalist production. For example, for the entrepreneur, the production of use-values is merely a means to an end, a necessary evil. Therefore, the income from expanded production or accumulation is merely a function of the magnitude of profit valorization. If profit expands, output will expand; if valorization fails, output will decrease. However, a contradiction arises here: “From a purely technical perspective, as a labor process producing use-values, nothing hinders the development of productive forces. This development encounters obstacles in the valorization process, i.e., the elements of production must function as capital to be valorized. If profit disappears, the production process is interrupted. Maximum possible valorization forms the specific goal of the capitalist production process.” In more colloquial terms, a paradox emerges here: the increase in productive forces naturally leads to an increase in the output of use-values, which correspondingly inevitably causes the valorization of value to be severely affected. Looking further, with the development of technology, the organic composition of capital will rise, which means a reduction in variable capital. Given a certain level of production technology in the total capital, the rate of profit also declines accordingly. “From the perspective of use-value, productive forces develop without absolute limits. This accumulation of use-values (simultaneously the accumulation of value) leads to a falling rate of profit, which in turn means that the valorization of advanced capital is no longer possible at the given rate, implying crisis and the devaluation of existing capital.” Therefore, the theory of collapse and crisis should be determined based on the tendency of the rate of profit to fall in the process of capital accumulation. However, crisis often helps restore the purpose of capital valorization. Of course, the ultimate tendency towards collapse is inevitable and irreversible. Hence, he pointed out: “Bauer’s harmonious conclusion about the possibility of infinite development represents a mediocre delusion.” The root of this error lies in the need to view the collapse problem over a longer period, but Bauer did not do so. “He limited his calculation to four production cycles.” That is, “if Bauer had completed the development of his system over a sufficiently long period, he would soon have discovered that this system must inevitably collapse.” Because, “with the absolute growth of capital accumulation, the valorization of this expanding capital becomes increasingly difficult. Once these ‘countertendencies’ are eliminated or simply cease to operate, the tendency towards collapse prevails as the absolute form of the final crisis.” Subsequently, Paul Mattick reinforced the failure of these “countertendencies,” leading capitalism ultimately to its “death crisis.”

但是，对于伯恩斯坦与考茨基来说，他们直接的结论便不再从什么客观的条件本身寻求资本主义无法延续的崩溃的逻辑，而是借助于无产阶级的革命行动，所以，这在资本支配结构日益升级的历史情势下，则多少有些主观的味道。不过，这也不是一条没有人继续推进的理论构想。譬如在对于政治地阅读《资本论》或者一些主张主体性抵抗的左翼话语中，他们的看法依旧不断地被填充为新的名字，这一方面只要打开当代西方激进型的左翼著作便无需赘言了。当然，列宁也没有为危机提供一个完整的理解，也不太可能发展出充分的危机理论。因为，在这一段时期，人们对资本主义消亡的看法不再植根于经济的危机，而是关于政治冲突——在资本力量的意义上。因而，在列宁的关注点中，“绝没有遇到绝对的物质限制，并将这一层面作为客观基础，不是历史性积累的崩溃，而是各国帝国主义资本的政治冲突，以及由此产生的工人阶级潜在的有意识的政治行动，这种政治行动在世界各地将能够使资本主义发展的过程停滞下来。”从非经济因素出发，必然在资本过度积累问题上存在着不够理想的阐释。政治与经济最后成为随资本主义危机渐次展开的两个不同方向。可惜的是，在面对1920年代末的经济危机时，亨利克-格罗斯曼（Henryk Grossman）于1929年发表《资本主义体系的积累与崩溃规律》明确指认，“卢森堡完全误解了马克思方法论程序的重要性。谁能确保在两个部门中按比例进行积累？在资本主义下不存在这样的调节器”。因而，他退回到剩余价值的生产领域，重新将马克思的危机理论定位为资本的过度积累，“虽然马克思没有给予崩溃法则一个简明的描述，但他确实指定了此类描述所需的所有元素。在价值法则的基础上，可以将崩溃法则发展为资本主义积累过程的自然结果。”与卢森堡一样，他发挥了马克思在《资本论》中关于资本主义生产过程的二重性，即使用价值的生产和剩余价值或利润的增值过程的统一。价值的增殖才是资本主义生产的基本驱动力。譬如，对企业家来说，使用价值的生产只是一种结束的手段，一种必要的邪恶。所以，扩大生产或积累的收入只是利润大小的增值的函数。如果利润扩大，产量将扩大，如果增殖失败，产量将减少。但是，这里又存在一个矛盾，“从纯粹的技术方面来看，作为生产使用价值的劳动过程，没有任何东西可以阻碍生产力的发展。这种发展在增殖过程中遇到障碍，即生产要素作为必须增殖的资本。如果利润消失，生产过程就会中断。最大可能的增殖形成了资本主义生产过程的具体目标”。 换句通俗点的说法，这里出现了一个悖论：生产力提升当然导致使用价值产量提高，相应必然使得价值的增殖受到严重影响，进一步地看，伴随技术的发展，资本有机构成会提高，这也就意味着可变资本的降低，在资本总量在一定生产技术水平情况下，利润率也随之降低。“从使用价值方面来看，生产力绝对限制地发展。这种使用价值的积累（同时是价值的积累）导致利润率下降，这反过来意味着高级资本的增殖不再可能以给定的速度，这意味着危机，现有资本的贬值”。所以，崩溃与危机理论应该是根据资本积累过程中的利润率下降的趋势给予确定，只不过，危机往往可以帮助恢复资本的价值增殖的目的，当然，最终的崩溃趋势是必然的、不可逆转的，所以，他才指出，“鲍威尔关于无限发展可能性的和谐结论代表了一种平庸的妄想”，这一错误的根源在于必须从更长的时间看待崩溃问题，但是鲍威尔没有这样做。他将计算限制在四个生产周期”，也就是说，“如果鲍威尔在足够长的时间内完成了他的体系的发展，他很快就会发现，这一体系必然会崩溃”。因为，“随着资本积累的绝对增长，这种扩张资本的增殖变得越来越困难。一旦这些“反趋势”（countertendencies）被消除或干脆停止运作，崩溃趋势就会作为最终危机的绝对形式占了上风。”随后，马蒂克（Paul Mattick）强化了这种“反趋势”的失效，资本主义最终走向其“死亡危机”。

Grossmann’s emphasis on the falling rate of profit as an inevitable tendency of the capitalist production process sought, at a certain level, to restore the dimension of critique of political economy, and can be regarded as the conception of crisis in *Capital* closest to that era. However, Kurz’s assessment of him, like his treatment of Luxemburg, holds that their theories are both built on the basis of value immanentism, “failing to return to the contradiction between the development of productive forces and the value objectivity of production,” and thus “unable to identify the contradiction within the concept of productive labor itself. Therefore, Grossmann’s theory of collapse relies excessively on a highly dubious mathematical example, which ontologizes value. It (like the earlier crisis debates) does not take the concept of value and productive labor as its starting point of reasoning, but rather the ‘reproduction schema’ from Volume 2 of *Capital*, and thus from the outset remains stuck in a superficial understanding of market mediation.” This critique is not without reason. For Grossmann, the collapse theory indeed has a “mathematical basis.” Hence, whether the capitalist crisis is understood as underconsumption or as a calculation of the falling rate of profit, for Kurz, “it is understood only within the scope of quantitative value relations and their analysis; disproportionality is understood only within the quantitative logic of value, not as a qualitative disproportionality in the relation between matter and value. In other words, what becomes obsolete in the crisis is not the value relation itself, but the blind regulatory mechanism of the market; what collapses is not the value relation, but the relative equilibrium of exchange value.” The reason for this is that the collapse of the value relation is far from having been reached; that era was destined only to discuss crisis within the value relation, because value had already been immanently embedded in the premises of capitalist analysis. Precisely because of this, the theory of capitalist collapse subsequently became, in the eyes of those scholars who understand capitalism empirically, a “chicken rib” [12]12 “Chicken rib” (鸡肋) is a Chinese idiom from the *Records of the Three Kingdoms*, referring to something of little value but reluctantly kept because it is hard to discard. — the immanentism of value had firmly gripped the minds of modern people. For Marx, this is precisely the reason why people have lost any imagination of a de-valorized society. Consequently, value, as a “second nature” of “abstract domination” that people create themselves yet which dominates them, is instead wielded with ease in research, and some even discuss new future forms of civilization within the dimension of the value relation. The reason for this is that the “Value Critique Group” not only targets previous theories of collapse and crisis; they also, on a practical level, warn people. Faced with the arguments of some scholars in the capitalist situation regarding the various twists and turns encountered in socialist development, Kurz claims, “The decline of the Eastern European countries is far from a signal of the final victory of Western capitalism; it is a phase in the gradual collapse of the world economy based on commodities, value, abstract labor, and money.” When, then, can one stand at the point of the collapse of the value relation and think? That must be the advent of a new kind of socializing technologies, in which applied natural science and labor science are fused. Therefore, “Today, capitalism can be historically interpreted as identical to the rough, clumsy, immature, and in every way dirty precursor form of a true, direct social industry — that is, it is only today that it grows out of the spore of capitalism, and thus irreversibly explodes.”

格罗斯曼对利润率下降这一资本主义生产进程的必然趋势的强调，在一定层面想恢复政治经济学批判的维度，可以认为是在那一时代最切近《资本论》的危机观念。但是，库尔茨对他的评价与对待卢森堡一样，认为他们的理论都建立在价值内在论的基础之上的，“没有回到生产力的发展和生产的价值对象性之间的矛盾”，从而，“无法识别生产劳动概念本身的矛盾，因此，格罗斯曼所持有的崩溃理论过分依赖于一个高度可疑的数学例子，它使得价值本体论化，它（像早期的危机辩论一样）不是以价值的概念和生产劳动为推理出发点，而是《资本论》第二卷中的 “再生产模式”，因此从一开始就停留在对市场的表面中介的理解上”。这一批判不是没有道理的，对于格罗斯曼来说，崩溃理论的确存在一个“数学基础”，因而，资本主义危机无论是消费不足还是利润率下降的计算，对于库尔茨来说，“都只是在定量的价值关系及其分析的范围内被理解的；不相称性只是在价值的定量逻辑中被理解，而非作为物质与价值关系中的定性不相称性被考察。换句话说，在危机中变得过时的并非是价值关系自身，而是市场盲目的调节机制；崩溃的并非是价值关系，而是交换价值的相对平衡。”之所以如此，是因为价值关系崩溃远未达到，那个时代注定只能在价值关系之内谈论危机，价值已经内在地嵌入在资本主义分析的前提之中。正是因为如此，资本主义崩溃理论在随后的发展中，显然是基于经验性地理解资本主义的那些学者眼中的“鸡肋”，价值的内在论死死地咬住了现代人们的头脑。对于马克思而言，这正是人们对于一个去价值化的社会为何失去了任何的想象的理由。因而，价值作为人们自己创造却支配人自身的“抽象的统治”的“第二自然”的思考方式，在研究上反倒是被运用自如，甚至会在价值这一关系维度内讨论新的未来的文明存在样态。之所以如此是因为，“价值批判小组”不仅针对以往的崩溃与危机的理论，他们也是在现实的层面去告诫人们，面对资本主义处境中的一些学者对社会主义发展中遭遇的种种曲折的论调，库尔茨声称，“东欧国家的衰落远不是西方资本主义最终胜利的信号，而是建立在商品、价值、抽象劳动和货币基础上的世界经济逐渐崩溃的一个阶段。”那么，什么时候才能够站到价值关系崩溃点上思考呢，那必然是一种新的社会化的技术（socializing technologies）的来临，在其中，应用自然科学和劳动科学融合起来，因此，“在今天，资本主义可以被历史性地解读为与真正的、直接的社会工业的粗糙、笨拙、不成熟和各方面都很肮脏的前身形式相同，即只有今天是从资本主义的孢子中生长出来的，它因此不可逆转地爆炸了”。

II. Leveraging Capitalism with the Ontology of Labor: A Perspective

二 以劳动本体论撬动资本主义：一个视角

The next question, naturally, is: how does the “Value Critique Group” itself implement the critique of value immanentism? It can be summarized as a logical progression: “critique of labor” → “critique of fetishism” → “critique of capitalism.” Specifically, the work of the “Value Critique Group” is to radicalize crisis theory, because not only capitalist elites but also Western leftist scholars are rife with the cliché that capitalism can eternally renew itself. However, the “Value Critique Group” is very clear that modernization is merely a form of the implementation and further development of this capitalist system; whether it is a mechanism of private capitalism or state capitalism is unimportant. For as long as the fetishism of “value immanentism” persists, the critique of capitalism will fail to grasp the substance. In commodity-producing society, its basic categories — labor, value, commodity, money — have always been fetishized as “natural” facts of life and “objective” necessities. For example, “labor”: some people transpose the anthropological conception of labor from the early Marx into the reading of *Capital*, and use this labor, which can be found in all epochs of society, as the basis of critique: “Labor, as a creator of use-values, as useful labor, is a condition of human existence independent of all social forms; it is an eternal natural necessity for the material exchange between man and nature, for the realization of human life.” [13]13 This is a direct quotation from Marx’s *Capital*, Volume 1, Chapter 5, “The Labor Process and the Valorization Process.” But according to Trenkle’s view, this approach — which often uses labor at the anthropological level to critique the alienated conception of labor — is difficult to sustain. Because, on the one hand, textually, Marx, in his early critique of List, already spoke of the abolition of labor as a precondition for liberation; on the other hand, one must consider an important question: “Is labor an anthropological constant?” Here, Trenkle’s attempt to move beyond the anthropological mode of thinking about labor has a certain profundity, but whether his thinking can reach Marx’s later analysis of labor in *Capital* and its manuscripts is a matter requiring caution. Of course, the claim of the “Value Critique Group” is precisely to negate the basic judgment that “labor is an anthropological constant.” Because, in their view, if a socialist revolutionary movement cannot deeply question commodity value as the governing principle of production and social life, and still remains within a social life dominated by capitalist value, then it still follows the operational logic of the world market. That is to say, value critique is more importantly a focus on the historical specificity of value production, which exists only in capitalist commodity society. The labor to which value production points actually has no distinction between anthropological labor and abstract labor; the operational principle of value production can only be grounded in abstract labor. Here, labor is an oppressive activity under the domination of value, labor subject to the rule of ownership; its abolition is the fundamental condition for abolishing the domination of value. Or, this is what constitutes the true entry point for value critique. Clearly, they go further, directing critique toward the abolition of labor itself, rather than merely critiquing abstract labor as scholars of the “value form” or abstract domination do. For instance, Heinrich, when discussing communist society, explicitly states that it should be a liberation from a social relation that confronts individuals as an anonymous compulsion. Of course, why does the “Value Critique Group” completely shift from a critique of abstract labor to a critique of labor itself? At first glance, this indeed somewhat violates certain habits we have long held in reading *Capital*.

那么，接下来的问题自然是，“价值批判小组”自己是如何实施价值内在论批判的？可以概括为“劳动批判”→“拜物教批判”→“资本主义批判”这样一种逻辑进路。具体言之，“价值批判小组”所做的工作是将危机理论激进化，因为，不仅是资本主义精英，就连在西方左派学者当中，资本主义能够永恒地自我更新的的陈词滥调也一样非常流行。不过，“价值批判小组”非常明确地认为，现代化只是这一资本主义体系的实施和进一步发展的形式，至于是私人资本主义的机制，还是国家资本主义的机制并不重要。因为，只要“价值内在论”这一拜物教始终存在，那么，对资本主义的批判则难以抓到实质。对于商品生产社会来说，其基本范畴：劳动、价值、商品、货币，一直作为生活的“自然”事实和“客观”需要而被拜物教化。譬如"劳动"，一些人会将早期马克思人类学特质的劳动观念平移至《资本论》的看法中，并以此种可以在一切世代的社会中找到的劳动作为批判的基础，“劳动作为使用价值的创造者，作为有用劳动，是不以一切社会形式为转移的人类生存条件，是人和自然之间的物质变换即人类生活得以实现的永恒的自然必然性。” 但依照特伦克勒的看法，这一常常被人们用来以人类学层面上的劳动去批判异化层面的劳动观念所构成的进路是很难成立。因为，一方面从文本上看，马克思在早期批判李斯特的著作中便谈到废除劳动作为解放的先决条件；另一方面，必须要考虑一个重要的问题：“劳动是一个人类学的常量吗？”这里特伦克勒试图走出人类学的劳动的思考方式是有其深刻性的一面，而他的这一思考是否能够达到马克思后来的在《资本论》及其手稿中对劳动的分析，则是要小心的问题。当然，“价值批判小组”的主张正是要否定“劳动是一个人类学的常量”这个基本的判断，因为，在他们看来，如果一种社会主义的革命运动不能够深入质疑作为生产和社会生活的支配原则的商品价值，依然还处于资本主义价值主导的社会生活之中，那便依然遵循世界市场的运行逻辑。也就是说，价值批判更重要的是对价值生产这一仅仅在资本主义商品社会中的历史性特质的关注。价值生产所指向的劳动，其实并没有所谓的人类学劳动与抽象劳动的区分，价值生产的运行原则只能奠基在抽象劳动之上，这里的劳动便是价值支配之下的压迫性活动，受着所有权统治下的劳动，它的废除才是废除价值统治的根本条件。或者说，这才是构成价值批判的真正入口。显然，他们更是将批判指向取消劳动本身，而不是像“价值形式”或者抽象统治的学者那样仅仅批判抽象劳动，譬如，海因里希在谈到共产主义社会就明确指出，这应该是从一种匿名的强制而与个人相对立的社会关系中解放出来。当然，为什么“价值批判小组”要彻底从抽象劳动批判转向劳动本身的批判呢？乍一看，这着实有点违背我们一直以来对《资本论》解读的某些习惯。

Among Western leftist scholars and general Marxist interpreters, it is common to use non-alienated labor versus alienated labor as a critical construct. For Marx, he indeed believed that labor can be distinguished into abstract labor and concrete labor, and the secret of why value can dominate and become the governing principle of modern society lies in the process by which this concrete labor is abstracted. This abstraction is different from ordinary conceptual abstractions, such as flowers or fruit; rather, it is “a historically established, actually existing social power that places people under its thumb—a violent abstraction.” [14]14 The phrase “暴力抽象” (violent abstraction) is a term used by the German Marxist scholar Robert Kurz and the “Value Critique” group to describe the coercive nature of value abstraction under capitalism. Analyzing labor by no means implies conducting research on an anthropological sense of labor; the important thing is to focus on labor under a specific social form. In Trenkler’s view, “because all non-labor moments are excluded from the sphere of labor, the historical establishment of labor is accompanied by the formation of further independent spheres of society, into which all those irrelevant moments are banished; these spheres themselves are exclusive: leisure, privacy, culture, politics, religion, etc.” [15]15 “特伦克勒” (Trenkler) refers to a contemporary German Marxist theorist associated with the “Value Critique” group, whose work focuses on the critique of labor and value. Thus we can also see that leisure, love, and the pursuit of self can only exist outside labor; within labor, it is destined to be merely an “independent” sphere, withdrawn from the rest of social life. This labor, under the capitalist social form, has no purpose other than valorization. It must be emphasized here: this is a critique of labor itself. Consequently, humans enter this independent, separated sphere of labor because, in the course of social history, they have been cut off from the most basic means of production and subsistence, and now can only survive by temporarily selling themselves. Therefore, “for them, labor primarily means the basic extraction of vital force, and in this respect it is an extremely real, actually existing abstraction.” [16]16 The “Value Critique” group (Wertkritik) is a German Marxist school that emerged in the 1980s, centered on the journal *Krisis*, which argues that Marx’s critique of political economy must be radicalized to target the category of labor itself. Hence, if the labor that creates the premise of value is not abolished, it is naturally impossible to abolish abstract labor, and thereby abolish value.

在西方左翼学者和一般的马克思主义理解者那里，常常喜欢用一种非异化的劳动与异化的劳动来作为批判的构式。对于马克思来讲，他也的确认为劳动可以区分为抽象劳动和具体劳动，而价值之所以能够主导并成为现代社会的支配原则的秘密，就发生在这个具体劳动被抽象的过程之中，这一抽象不同于一般的概念式的抽象，如花、水果，而是“一种历史地建立的、实际存在的社会权力，将人名置于其拇指之下的暴力抽象”。分析劳动绝不是意味着要对一种人类学意义的劳动展开研究，重要的是聚焦于一种特定的社会形式之下的劳动。在特伦克勒看来，“由于将所有非劳动环节排除在劳动领域之外，劳动的历史性确立伴随着社会的进一步独立领域的形成，所有那些不相干的环节都被放逐到这些领域，这些领域本身具有排他性：休闲、隐私、文化、政治、宗教等等”。所以我们也就可以看到，闲暇、爱、追逐自我都只能在劳动之外，劳动之内其实注定只能是“独立”的领域，是从社会生活的其余部分中撤出来的，这一在资本主义社会形式中的劳动除了价值化之外没有其他目的。这里要强调一下：这是对劳动本身的批判。因而，人类进入到劳动这一独立的、分离的领域是因为他们在社会历史进程中脱离了最基本的生产和生存手段，现在只能通过暂时出卖自己来生存。因此，“对他们来说，劳动主要意味着对生命力的基本提取，因此在这方面是一个极其真实的、实际存在的抽象概念。”所以，如果不废除创造价值前提劳动的话，自然不可能废除抽象的劳动，进而废除价值。

Generally speaking, labor has become a matter of course, and people even believe that labor liberates humanity from nature. Gallo Bergmann has conducted an etymological investigation of the word “labor” (arbeiten). In ancient Greek, *ponein* comes from *ponos* (toil, burden); the French and Spanish words for labor, *travail*/*trabajo*, come from the vulgar Latin *tripalare*, meaning nothing other than “torture”; in Russian, it is *rabota*, which comes from *rab*, meaning “slave”; and the Germanic *arba* merely means “servant.” [17]17 Gallo Bergmann is a scholar who has conducted etymological research on the concept of labor. Thus, that labor is today considered ideal is by no means a fact. However, those within the horizon of the “value immanentism” of labor cannot see the history of violence behind the idea that “labor creates freedom.” Trenkler believes that people have not yet reached the level of dismantling or questioning the fetishism of labor; otherwise, why would German trade unions still regard Engels’s “The Part Played by Labor in the Transition from Ape to Man” as one of the few pamphlets still worth using in their member training courses? [18]18 Engels’s “The Part Played by Labor in the Transition from Ape to Man” (1876) is a classic Marxist text arguing that labor was the decisive factor in human evolution; it is often used in trade union education. Of course, his point here is not to deny any means of creating subsistence; the question is only: why, in bourgeois society, are all these different activities subsumed under a single abstract concept, namely labor? Of course, abstraction here can only be understood as a social environment; “the sole decisive factor is whether an activity is realized within the abstract social environment of commodity production and whether it provides some wages for it. This is why a particular activity depends on the environment, sometimes considered labor, sometimes not.” [19]19 The distinction between Tätigkeit (activity) and Arbeit (labor) is a key theme in the “Value Critique” tradition, where labor is seen as a historically specific form of activity under capitalism. In the sense of “marketability,” meaningful activity (Tätigkeit) becomes labor (Arbeit). In this social environment, workers and capitalists alike are indifferent to the content of their own labor; labor is labor, and both workers and capitalists are puppets wearing the mask of value—what kind it is does not matter. Thus, the rhetoric of freedom of choice in labor is merely “a discourse of incentives” within the boundaries of the capital-labor relationship, or within the boundaries of “value immanentism.” [20]20 “价值内在论” (value immanentism) refers to the ideological assumption that value is an inherent property of labor, rather than a historically specific social form. Consequently, people have little awareness of this; as a real abstraction, it has been internalized, and it is difficult for people to imagine other forms of wealth creation. In other words, all activities of life have already been laborized, even activities such as our academic exchanges and emotional dialogues. Real abstraction, as Lukács said, is embedded in our consciousness as truly as the crushing of a wheel. [21]21 György Lukács (1885–1971) was a Hungarian Marxist philosopher; his concept of “reification” (Verdinglichung) in *History and Class Consciousness* (1923) describes how capitalist social relations appear as natural, objective things. It is precisely based on this judgment that Trenkler believes the real obstacle to breaking this real abstraction comes from us as ordinary individuals under the capitalist form. As long as two issues are clearly seen: the destination of the surplus of production and where time goes. “Under the trinity of commodity production, abstract/alienated labor, and capital accumulation as an end in itself, the currently achieved level of productive forces will inevitably lead to more people being excluded from the production process, thereby cutting off basic means of subsistence.” [22]22 The “trinity” of commodity production, abstract/alienated labor, and capital accumulation is a formulation used by the “Value Critique” group to describe the self-reinforcing structure of capitalism. Within such a framework, how can “justice” become justice, and how can the distribution of surplus be redirected toward human needs? These are all destined to be impossible. Today, labor is even more intensified; under biopolitics, various new forms of social reproduction have reshaped the “prison problem.” That is, similar to the earlier “problem of the prison, its function, its possible disappearance, can only be raised from an economic and political perspective, from the perspective of the political economy of illegalist practices.” [23]23 The reference to “prison problem” and “illegalist practices” alludes to Michel Foucault’s *Discipline and Punish* (1975), which analyzes the prison as a model of modern disciplinary power. But the common phenomenon is that resistance to the maintenance of this system ultimately becomes people standing up for labor, rather than against labor itself. For this reason, “if we cannot manage to destroy this fatal fixation, and make humanity realize that the potential for creating wealth achieved in the past must be liberated from the fetishistic forms of capital and labor, the crisis of the labor society will ultimately destroy the social and natural foundations of human existence.” [24]24 The “crisis of the labor society” is a concept from the “Value Critique” group, arguing that capitalism’s drive to eliminate living labor through automation leads to a systemic crisis. This is what we see among Western leftist scholars: some always understand real abstraction as the process of abstraction in the circulation of commodities on the market, which means that the critique of the system of commodity production is excluded—for example, Sohn-Rethel, who understands real abstraction as exchange abstraction. [25]25 Alfred Sohn-Rethel (1899–1990) was a German Marxist philosopher who argued in *Intellectual and Manual Labour* (1970) that the abstraction of exchange is the real basis of conceptual thought, a position criticized by the “Value Critique” group for neglecting production. Thus, the negativity of capitalism is completely compressed into the sphere of circulation and related spheres such as distribution; this can only understand the “real abstraction” of capitalism from this superficial angle, whereas starting from productive labor has the effect of cutting the ground from under their feet.

一般来说，劳动已经成为了不言而喻的事情，并且人们还会认为劳动将人类从自然中解放出来。加洛·贝尔格曼就做过一个关于劳动（arbeiten）的词源学的考证，古希腊语中ponein来自ponos（劳作，负担），法语和西班牙语的劳动一词travail /trabajo来自粗俗的拉丁语tripalare，其意思无非是 "折磨"；在俄语中，则为rabota，它来自rab，意思是"奴隶"，而日耳曼语的arba只是意味着 "仆人"。所以，像今天这样，劳动被认为是理想的，这根本不是事实。但是，身处劳动的“价值内在论”视野之内的人是看不到“劳动创造自由”这一理念背后的暴力史，特伦克勒就认为，人们还进入不到瓦解或质疑劳动拜物教的层面，不然为什么德国工会始终会认为恩格斯的《劳动在从猿到人的转变中的作用》是为数不多仍值得在其成员培训课程中使用的小册子之一。当然，他这里的意思并非是要否定任何为了创造生存的手段，问题仅在于：为什么在资产阶级社会中，所有这些不同的活动都被归入一个唯一的抽象概念，即劳动？当然，这里抽象只能够被理解为是一种社会的环境，“唯一的决定性因素是，一项活动是否在商品生产的抽象社会环境得以实现，以及是否为其提供了一些工资。这就是为什么一项特定的活动取决于环境，有时被认为是劳动，有时不是。”在“可市场化”的意义上，有意义的活动（Tätigkeit）变成了劳动（Arbeit）。在这一社会环境中劳动者与资本家一样，对自身劳动内容毫不关心，劳动就是劳动，无论是工人还是资产者都是带着价值面具的木偶人，哪一种类都不重要，所以渲染劳动选择的自由其实只是在资本与劳动的关系界限内，或者说在“价值内在论”的界限内“一种激励的话语”。所以，人们对此也没有什么意识，作为现实抽象已经内化于心，人们很难想象还有其他形式的财富的创造形式，或者说，生命的一切的活动都已经劳动化了，甚至我们学术的交流、情感的对话这样的活动也如此。现实抽象正如卢卡奇所说的那样，犹如车轮碾压一样真实地嵌入到我们的意识之中了，正是基于这一判断，特伦克勒认为打破这种现实抽象的真正障碍来自于资本主义形式下的作为普通个体的我们。只要看清两个问题：生产的剩余物的走向与时间去哪儿了。“在商品生产、抽象/异化劳动、作为目的的资本积累这三位一体的暴政下，目前达到的生产力水平将不可避免地导致更多的人被排除在生产过程之外，从而切断了基本的生存手段。”在这样一种框架之内，“正义”如何能够成为正义、分配剩余物如何能够转向人类自身的需要，这些注定都是不可能的事情。在今天，劳动更是被强化了，在生命政治之下，新的社会再生产的种种形式重塑了“监狱问题”，也就是说，类似于原先的“监狱的问题，它的作用，它可能的消失，只能从经济和政治角度被提出，从非法主义行为的政治经济学角度被提出”。但普遍出现的状况是，抵抗这种制度的维持，最后变成了人们是为了劳动而站起来，而不是为了反对劳动本身。为此，“如果我们不能设法摧毁这种致命的定势，让人类意识到，过去所取得的创造财富的潜力，必须从资本和劳动的拜物教形式中解放出来，劳动社会的危机将最终消灭人类生存的社会和自然基础。”这也就是我们在西方左翼学者那里所看到的，一些人始终把现实抽象理解为在市场上商品流通中的抽象化过程，这意味着对商品生产系统的批判被排除在外，譬如将现实抽象理解为交换抽象的索恩·雷特尔。于是，资本主义的消极性问题被完全压缩在流通领域和与之相关的分配等领域，这只能从这个表面的角度来理解资本主义的“现实抽象”，从生产劳动入手则具有釜底抽薪的味道。

So, how does the “Value Critique Group” see the critique of labor ontology as having the possibility of moving toward reality? From empirical reality, “we have already reached the historical painful limit of the market economy, whose economic totalitarianism is becoming unbearable,” only that with technological innovation, “this unexpected crisis looks very different from what was previously imagined, because the previous frame of reference itself has disintegrated.” [26]26 Robert Kurz, *Schwarzbuch Kapitalismus: Ein Abgesang auf die Marktwirtschaft* (Frankfurt am Main: Eichborn, 1999), p. 9. It is worth noting that Kurz’s judgment on the arrival of the crisis itself is based on a new era, namely the “Third Industrial Revolution,” which differs from the first and second industrial revolutions because the latter two still sought capital’s self-valorization within the expansive logic of modernity, while the third revolution unfolds the process of modernity’s disintegration as a “vision of automation” (Visionen der Automatisierung). When Henry Ford caused a sensation in the second industrial revolution, one thing was self-evident: despite the rationalization of “labor science” by the assembly line and Taylorists, it was absolutely impossible for human labor power to truly disappear on a large scale from the production process. Indeed, the mass unemployment of the Great Depression was related to new process technologies. But to regard the capitalist crisis as a fundamental “crisis of labor society,” and therefore a crisis of “abstract labor” itself, clearly exceeds the imagination of contemporaries. Then, in the “vision of automation” of the third revolution, can labor truly withdraw from the logic of valorization? We know that in modern technological production, the main way to extract relative surplus value for capitalist accumulation can only be through the “scientification” of the production process, and the production of relative surplus value is “the relationship between the capitalist’s appropriation of new value and the reproduction cost of each worker’s labor power, but not the absolute number of employed workers, and therefore not the absolute amount of surplus value. As the absolute amount of value creation decreases, surplus value itself must also decrease.” [27]27 Robert Kurz, *Der Kollaps der Modernisierung: Vom Zusammenbruch des Kasernensozialismus zur Krise der Weltökonomie* (Leipzig: Reclam, 1991), p. 178. The relative rate of surplus value continuously rises, but surplus value decreases, so expanded capitalist reproduction must be further pursued. This, in turn, requires productive living labor as a condition. When the labor absorbed and the labor cast off (unemployment) are unbalanced, capitalist production inevitably tends toward stagnation: “With the development of productive forces, capital increases the degree of exploitation, but in doing so, it destroys the basis and object of exploitation, namely value production itself. Because the production of relative surplus value is inseparable from the gradual integration of modern science and the material production process, it includes the tendency to eliminate living, direct, productive labor, which is the sole source of all social value.” [28]28 Robert Kurz, *Weltordnungskrieg: Das Ende der Souveränität und die Wandlungen des Imperialismus im Zeitalter der Globalisierung* (Bad Honnef: Horlemann, 2003), p. 67. For example, in today’s intelligent society, on the surface, living labor in factories is gradually eliminated. As productive forces develop rapidly with the aid of technology, the view that the absolute number of workers is decreasing is naturally reasonable. However, “capitalist production is by no means the absolute form for developing productive forces and producing wealth,” and thus, “the limit of capitalist production is the workers’ surplus time. The absolute surplus time won by society has nothing to do with capitalist production. The development of productive forces is important for capitalist production only when it increases the surplus labor time of the working class, rather than reducing the general labor time of material production; therefore, capitalist production moves in contradictions.” [29]29 Karl Marx, *Capital*, Vol. 3, in *Marx-Engels Collected Works*, Vol. 25 (Beijing: People’s Publishing House, 1974), p. 292.

那么，“价值批判小组”是如何看到劳动本体论的批判具有走向现实的可能性呢？从现实经验来看，“我们已经达到了市场经济的历史痛苦极限，其经济极权主义开始变得难以忍受”,只不过随着技术革新，“这场意想不到的危机看起来与以前想象的大不相同，这是由于以前的参照系本身解体了。”值得注意的是，库尔茨对危机本身的来临的判断建立在一个新的时代的基础之上的，即“第三次工业革命”，这与第一、第二次工业革命不同，因为后两者依然是在现代性的扩展性逻辑中寻求资本的自我增殖，第三次革命则是作为“自动化的愿景”（Visionen der Automatisierung）展开了现代性的解体过程。当亨利·福特在第二次工业革命中引起轰动时，有一件事是不言而喻的，那就是，尽管装配线和泰勒主义者对“劳动科学”进行了合理化，但人类的劳动力绝对不可能真正大规模地从生产过程中消失。的确，大萧条时期的大规模失业与新的工艺技术有关。但是，认为资本主义危机是一种根本的“劳动社会危机”，因而也是“抽象劳动”本身的危机，显然超出了当代人的想象。那么，在第三次革命的“自动化的愿景”中，劳动是否真正能够退出价值增殖的逻辑？我们知道，在现代技术生产中，榨取相对剩余价值进行资本主义积累的主要方式只能够通过生产过程的“科学化”，而相对剩余价值的生产是“资本家在新价值中的占有与每个劳动者的劳动力再生产成本之间的关系，但不是指雇佣的劳动者的绝对数量，因此也不是指剩余价值的绝对量，随着价值创造的绝对减少，剩余价值本身也必然减少。”相对剩余价值率不断提高，但是，剩余价值却减少了，所以必须进一步扩大资本再生产，那么，这又得以生产性的活劳动为条件，当吸入的劳动与甩出去的劳动（失业）两者之间不均衡时，必然使资本主义生产趋于停滞，“随着生产力的发展，资本增加了剥削的程度，但在这样做的时候，它破坏了剥削的基础和对象，即价值的生产本身。因为相对剩余价值的生产是与现代科学和物质生产过程的逐步融合分不开的，它包括消除活的、直接的、生产性劳动的趋势，而这种劳动是全部社会价值的唯一来源。”比如，今天在智能化社会中，从表面上看，工厂的活劳动逐渐被消除了，随着生产力在技术的辅助下得到快速发展，工人的绝对人数在减少看法自然是有道理的，但是，“资本主义生产决不是发展生产力和生产财富的绝对形式”，由此，“资本主义生产的限制，是工人的剩余时间。社会所赢得的绝对的剩余时间，与资本主义生产无关。生产力的发展，只是在它增加工人阶级的剩余劳动时间，而不是减少物质生产的一般劳动时间的时候，对资本主义生产才是重要的；因此，资本主义生产是在对立中运动的”。

III. Classless Struggle and the Idea of Liberation in the Era of Fictitious Capital

三 无阶级的斗争与虚拟资本时代的解放理念

So, today, according to the Value Critique School’s view of technology driving the collapse of labor ontology, how is struggle understood? Or, is class struggle still necessary? Trenkle believes that “the category of class opposition cannot provide a basis for any concept of the extreme growth of social inequality, nor can it simply repeat the opposition and conflict between social interest groups caused by this inequality.” [30]30 Norbert Trenkle, “Die große Entwertung: Zur Krise der kapitalistischen Wertform,” *Krisis* 23 (1999), p. 45. The reason to oppose this form of class opposition struggle is that this struggle’s thinking is based on the conflict between labor (the proletariat) and capital (the bourgeoisie). That is, “the opposition between the representatives of capital, who command and organize the production process with the aim of stabilizing the price of capital, and the wage workers, who ‘create’ the surplus value necessary for this process through labor.” [31]31 Norbert Trenkle, “Die große Entwertung,” p. 47. The traditional Marxist narrative precisely shapes the mode of class struggle around this contradiction. As we have already clarified in the critique of “value immanentism” above, the Value Critique School insists that the contradiction between labor and capital is merely an internal conflict under the mask of value. Both are like being inside a besieged city premised on modern commodity production, struggling over a series of issues concerning how to produce, how to distribute, how to exchange, and how to consume. The key issue is that we must think outside the besieged city, to examine the possibility of a non-value life for people after removing the mask of value. Therefore, neither Trenkle nor other members of the Value Critique School group are much like those scholars of German value-form analysis, because for the latter, “value” is the “entry point” for gazing at the external world. On the contrary, the Value Critique School believes that as long as one does not jump out of the immanentist perspective of value, social conflict is doomed to be eternal. Today, among some Western leftist scholars, isn’t the discourse that tries to indefinitely defer revolution precisely an effort to add bricks and mortar to this eternal picture? Because capitalism does not care about revolution itself; it only cares about whether it can always maintain the goal of valorization. Or, if revolution can bring about valorization, it will be even more proactive than the proletarian revolution.

那么，到了今天，按照价值批判学派对技术推动劳动本体论崩溃的看法，如何理解斗争？或者说，还有阶级斗争的必要吗？特伦克勒认为，“阶级对立的范畴并不能为任何关于社会不平等极端增长的概念提供基础，也不能简单地重复这种不平等所导致的社会利益集团之间的对立和冲突”。要反对这种阶级对立的斗争形式的原因在于，这一斗争的思考是建立在劳动（无产者）与资本（资产者）之间的冲突基础上的。也就是，“以资本的价格稳定为目的指挥和组织生产过程的资本代表和以劳动“创造”这个过程所必需的剩余价值的雇佣工人之间的对立。”传统马克思主义的叙事正是围绕这一矛盾去塑造阶级斗争方式。正如我们前面在“价值内在论”批判中所已经阐明的，价值批判学派坚持认为，劳动与资本的矛盾都是在价值面具之下的内在冲突而已，两者犹如在一座现代商品生产为前提的围城之内，围绕着怎么生产、怎么分配、如何交换、如何消费的系列问题进行斗争，而关键的问题在于，我们要在围城之外去思考，在价值面具拿掉之后去审视人的非价值生活的可能。故而，无论特伦克勒、还是其他的价值批判学派小组成员并不太像德国价值形式分析的那些学者，因为对于后者来讲，那个“价值”才是凝视外部世界的“入口”。相反，价值批判学派认为，只要不跳出价值的内在论视角，社会冲突注定会永恒下去。当今，在一些西方左翼学者那里，试图将革命无限延宕下去的话语不正是努力要在这种永恒的画面上添砖加瓦？因为，资产主义不在乎革命本身，它只关注能否一直维持这价值增值这一目的，或者说，如果革命能够换来价值增殖，它便会比无产者革命更加主动。

In Trenkle’s view, because both labor and capital are constrained by value, they often, in the production of value’s valorization and preservation, “no longer presuppose the irreconcilability of the interests of the seller of labor power and the seller of capital. Quite the contrary: the emphasis is always on their compatibility, whether in the name of productivity, local competitiveness, or the purchasing power of domestic demand.” [32]32 Norbert Trenkle, “Die große Entwertung,” p. 52. That is, in this sense, people do not say that capital is bad, but only speak of “evil” in the sense of capital “excessively pursuing high profits.” The essential “evil” of capital is often obscured, so the entire society still mentally reserves enough space for the existence of capital. People also generally believe that “profit must be created, capital valorized, productivity increased, and growth ensured at all costs; this is natural and self-evident.” [33]33 Norbert Trenkle, “Die große Entwertung,” p. 53. Because all of this is precisely the source of our happy life. Thus, people simply do not recognize that productive forces only manifest as capital’s promotion of productive forces under the capitalist mode of production, and that the mode of promoting productive forces is not limited to the form of capital. In this way, “the struggle between labor and capital develops increasingly into an effective identity at the subjective level, which can be attributed to the systematic establishment of a fully generalized commodity society, one that successfully imposes the functional logic of capitalism onto society and makes society regard this logic as an irreversible natural law.” [34]34 Norbert Trenkle, “Die große Entwertung,” p. 55. After the third industrial revolution, the development of capital gradually reaches a stage where it takes itself as the frame of reference. For example, although the capitalization and future expectation of accumulated capital value are inherent in the logic and form of commodity production, they are realized through the sale of a commodity, namely, property ownership that certifies a claim to a specific sum of money and its increase. The sellers of these property ownership titles are not workers promising to provide labor in ten or twenty years, but the operators of capital themselves (mainly banks and other financial institutions), who sell these certified future value claims to each other, thereby generating and accumulating fictitious capital. Fictitious capital has become the actual driving force of capital accumulation. It is precisely for this reason that the form of capitalist crisis has correspondingly changed.

在特伦克勒看来，劳动与资本因为都受到价值的制约，使得他们往往又在价值的增殖与保存价值的生产上，“不再以劳动力卖方和资本卖方的利益不可调和为前提。恰恰相反：重点总是放在它们的兼容性上，无论是以生产率、地方竞争力的名义，还是以国内需求的购买力的名义。” 也就是说，在这个意义上，人们并不是说资本不好，而仅仅是在资本“过分地追求高利润这一意义上去谈论“恶”。资本本质的“恶”往往被遮蔽掉，因而，整个社会还在思维上为资本的存在留有足够的存放空间。人们也普遍性地认为，“必须创造利润、资本增值、提高生产率和不惜一切代价确保增长，这是自然而然和不言而喻的。”因为，这一切正是我们生活幸福的来源。所以，人们根本没有认识到生产力只是在资本主义生产方式之下，才表现为资本对生产力的推动，而推动生产力的方式并非只有资本这一种形式。这样，“劳资之间的斗争发展成为越来越类似于它们在主观层面上的有效同一性，这可以归因于一个完全一般化的商品社会的系统建立，一个成功地将资本主义的功能逻辑赋予社会，并使得社会将这一逻辑看作为是不可逆转的自然法则。”在第三次工业革命之后，资本的发展逐渐到达以自我为参照系的阶段。譬如，资本化和资本积累价值的未来预期虽然是商品生产的逻辑和形式所固有的，但它是通过出售一种商品来实现的，即证明对一笔特定金额及其增加的索偿权的财产所有权，这些财产所有权的出卖人并不是出卖十年或二十年后提供劳动的许诺的工人，而是资本本身的操作者（主要是银行和其他金融机构）相互出售这些经证明的未来价值债权，从而产生和积累虚拟资本。虚拟资本已成为资本积累的实际动力。也正是因此，资本主义危机的形式也相应地发生了改变。

In the above sense, capital attempts to extract labor as a basic mode of accumulation; although commodity production through labor still exists, this is no longer the primary mode of capital accumulation. For this reason, breaking free from the exploitation of modern labor and the sellers of labor power means that class discourse becomes invalid in the era of fictitious capital. To understand Trenkler’s view, one must recognize that he consistently holds that the traditional connotation of class discourse is that capitalism is still based on the exploitation of wage labor and the appropriation of surplus value, thus necessarily giving rise to another class of proletarians. In this regard, Trenkler distinguishes between “wage workers who produce surplus value” and “workers dependent on wage labor”; the numbers of people these two categories refer to are inconsistent. However, now the two types of workers have become blurred after the boundaries between production and daily life have been breached. Correspondingly, the concept of class has also shifted from its originally specific referent of a force to a broad group that has lost its specific connotation. Regarding the concept of “workers dependent on wage labor,” it merely reflects the existence and mode of life of capitalist society, a society regulated solely through labor and commodity production. “For the vast majority of people, commodity production appears as the compulsion to sell labor power in order to survive. Although this universal compulsion is a basic feature of capitalist society, it is by no means suitable for the definition of the working class, because all people, regardless of their social status and position in the social hierarchy, are in principle subject to this compulsion.” Why emphasize the compulsion of labor, or labor as the comprehensive principle of bourgeois society? Because, in the view of the “Value Critique School,” this is precisely what the original class discourse cannot understand or analyze. Class discourse is too narrow, or rather, it has become somewhat distant from life, confined only to the production of a minority, whereas labor compulsion permeates every corner of life. “Traditional Marxism has always regarded the regulation of society through labor as a transhistorical constant of all societies, failing to recognize that this is the historically specific essential characteristic of capitalist formation.” That is to say, the reason class discourse is unacceptable in the view of the “Value Critique School” is that the increasingly numerous phenomena of alienation in daily life have already surpassed class rule; it can only be discussed within the meaning of labor power being employed.

在上述意义上说，资本试图抽掉劳动这一基本的积累的方式，虽然，它依然存在着以劳动的方式进行的商品生产，但这已经不再是资本积累的主要方式。为此，摆脱对现代劳动和劳动力出卖者的剥削也就意味着阶级话语在虚拟资本时代失效。要理解特伦克勒这一看法，就在于他始终认为传统的阶级话语内涵是，资本主义仍然建立在剥削雇佣劳动、以及剩余价值占有的基础上的，所以，必然产生另外一个无产者的阶级。对此，特伦克勒区分了“产生剩余价值的有薪工人”与“依赖雇佣劳动的工人”，两者指向群体的数量是不一致的，但是，现在两类工人已经完全在生产与生活界限突破之后变得并不清晰了，相应地，阶级概念也同时从原先的特有指代的力量变为一个宽泛的、失去了特定内涵的群体。就“依赖雇佣劳动的工人”这个概念来说，它只是反映了资本主义社会的存在和生活方式，这种社会仅仅通过劳动和商品生产加以调节，“对绝大多数人来说，商品生产表现为为了生存而出卖劳动力的强迫。虽然这种普遍的强制性是资本主义社会的一个基本特征，但它绝不适合于工人阶级的规定，因为所有的人，无论他们社会身份和生活状况在社会等级中的地位如何，原则上都要服从这种强制性。”为什么要强调劳动的强制性，或者说作为资产阶级社会的综合原则的劳动，因为在“价值批判学派”看来，这一点正是原先阶级话语无法理解和分析的，因为阶级话语概念太窄，或者说，它变得离生活有点远，而仅仅被限定在少数人的生产之内，而劳动强制则弥散在生活的各个角落里，“传统马克思主义始终通过劳动对社会的调节是所有社会的跨历史的常量，没有认识到这是资本主义形成的历史特定的本质特征”。也就是说，阶级话语之所以在“价值批判学派”看来不能够被接受，原因在于日常生活中越来越多的异化现象已经超越了阶级统治，它只能在劳动力被雇佣这个意义上来谈论。

Since valorization under fictitious capital accumulation differs from valorization of capital achieved through the use of labor power in commodity production, labor in commodity production is no longer a constant; valorization driven by fictitious capital is the fundamental dynamic. So, where does our way out lie? The answer of the “Value Critique School” is: oppose labor. Because the pure “expenditure of labor power” as human activity itself has been elevated to an abstract principle capable of dominating all social relations, demanding unconditional submission to this principle. Time is no longer the time of life; one could say that life no longer exists in the real world. At this level, the “Value Critique School” completely negates the following left-wing critical approach: using labor as an anthropological concept to conceive principles opposing capital. Because its implicit premise still discusses the conflict and opposition between capital and labor within capitalism. Labor itself is actually fetishistic. As they state in the *Manifest gegen die Arbeit* (Manifesto Against Labor), after centuries of domestication, modern people cannot even imagine a life without labor. Labor not only dominates the economic sphere in a narrow sense but also, as a whole, permeates the entire social existence, infiltrates daily life, and penetrates beneath everyone’s skin. Of course, for the “Value Critique School,” the perspective is more from a “negative” standpoint, discussing the establishment of a new society completely detached from labor, and arguing that the only prospect for social emancipation is the abolition of this form of mediation. The first step toward achieving this goal can and must be taken today. Faced with crisis management and the rampant frenzy of capital, the established achievements of society must be protected, but the production of material wealth must be freed from dependence on capital accumulation. The goal must be to establish a broad new sector of social self-organization, utilizing all available potential productive forces (i.e., technology) to build decentralized global network structures. But most importantly, new forms of social mediation must be developed, allowing freely associated individuals to consciously decide their own affairs. Hence, the end of labor is the end of politics.

既然，虚拟资本积累之下的价值化与通过在商品生产中使用劳动力而实现的资本价值化是不同的，那么，商品生产中的劳动则不再是一个常量，虚拟资本推动的价值化才是最基本的动力。那么，我们的出路在哪里？“价值批判学派”的回答是，反对劳动。因为，作为人类活动本身的纯粹的“劳动力支出”，已经被提高到一个能够支配整个社会关系的抽象原则，它要求人们无条件地臣服于这一原则。时间不再是生命的时间，可以说，生活不再存在于现实的世界。在这个层面上，“价值批判学派”便彻底否定了这样一种左翼批判思路：以作为人类学意义上的劳动，去构想反对资本的原则。因为，其隐含的前提仍然还是在资本主义内部去讨论资本与劳动的冲突与对立。劳动其实本身就是拜物教的，正如他们在《反对劳动宣言》（Manifest gegen die Arbeit）中所说的，经过几个世纪的驯化，现代人甚至无法想象没有劳动的生活。劳动不仅在狭义上主宰着经济领域，而且作为一个整体渗透到整个社会存在中，渗透到日常生活中，深入到每个人的皮肤之下。当然，对于“价值批判学派”来说，更多的还是从“否定”的视角出发，讨论要建立起一个新的完全脱离劳动的社会，并认为社会解放的唯一前景是废除这种形式的中介，实现这一目标的第一步可以而且必须在今天迈出。面对危机管理和资本的疯狂肆虐，社会既定的成就必须得到保护，但物质财富的生产必须摆脱对资本积累的依赖。目标必须是建立一个广泛的新的社会自组织部门，利用所有可用的潜在生产力（即技术）来建立去中心化的全球网络结构。但最重要的是，必须发展新形式的社会中介，让自由联合的个人有意识地决定他们自己的事务。故而，劳动的结束就是政治的结束。

IV. Conclusion

四 结 语

As a critical theory of contemporary capitalism, the “Value Critique School” has identified the defects of the empiricist perspective of understanding contemporary capitalism through value, and repeatedly reminds people that when confronting capitalism, theoretical thinking must break free from “value immanentism.” This has its rationality. We know that Marx’s intention in criticizing fetishism in *Capital* is precisely to warn people that value is a historical phenomenon; once it is treated as a natural phenomenon, one inevitably falls into the ideology of political economy. Viewed this way, the “Value Critique School’s” assertion that value, labor, etc., in capitalist society are by no means constant constants can be seen as an approach to the historical materialist methodology of grasping and determining their qualitative nature by returning to historical specificity. But unfortunately, the “Value Critique School” did not push forward further, that is, it did not continue to deeply analyze the fundamental reason why value, as a relation detached from people, in turn dominates society. Or, why must labor manifest as value? Consequently, they fail to see that “value immanentism” is merely the result in consciousness of the internal contradictions of capitalist relations of production based on the division of labor and private property. Thus, when the “Value Critique School” criticizes “labor ontology” and “class discourse” on the basis of its critique of “value immanentism,” it precisely discards the link of the inherent contradiction between labor and capital caused by capitalist relations of production. Although they recognize that value originates from labor and capital is the congealed form of dead labor, this is insufficient. Generally speaking, the problem of the domination of labor comes from two different levels: on the one hand, labor is embedded in capitalist relations of production based on private property; on the other hand, labor is embedded in value relations. The “Value Critique School” only sees the latter aspect and does not touch upon the former aspect of the mode of production. Because, regarding the former, one must not only see the empirical fact of the “labor ontology” of labor being valorized but also analyze the social causes and historical roots of why it manifests as such a fact. To answer these questions, one must, like Marx, push forward to the dual character of labor, then analyze the social form that causes the abstraction of labor, and starting from the internal self-contradictions of this specific social form, advance and reshape labor, thereby opening up the possibility of new historical development. But unfortunately, the “Value Critique School’s” demand to abolish labor in order to dissolve existing political forms is merely an aesthetic illusion. Although they see the labor root behind value, which is superior to other left-wing critical theories that only see the dominant role of value, they share the same mistake as these Western leftists: they can only seek the opposition between capital and labor from the surface of the specific social form of capitalism. In the view of historical materialism, this opposition can only be understood and resolved when placed within the process of social-historical movement. (Notes omitted)

作为对当代资本主义的批判理论，“价值批判学派”看到了从价值理解当代资本主义这一经验主义视角的缺陷，并一再提醒人们注意面对资本主义时，理论思考要摆脱“价值内在论”，这是有其合理性的。我们知道，马克思在《资本论》中对拜物教的批判意图正在于告诫人们，价值是一种历史的现象，一旦将其作为自然的现象必然会掉入到政治经济学的意识形态之中。这样看，“价值批判学派”主张资本主义社会中的价值、劳动等绝对不是一个恒定的常数，可以看作是对回到历史的特殊性上把握和确定它们的质性这一历史唯物主义方法论的接近。但可惜的是，“价值批判学派”并没有再向前推进，也就是没有再继续深入分析价值作为一种脱离了人的关系，又反过来统治社会的根本原因是什么？或者说劳动为什么要表现为价值？由此，他们并没有看到，“价值内在论”只是以分工和私有制为基础的资本主义生产关系的内在矛盾在意识上的结果，所以，“价值批判学派”在“价值内在论”批判的基础上，批判“劳动本体论”、“阶级话语”，恰恰丢弃了资本主义生产关系所造成的劳动与资本之间的内在矛盾性这一环节。虽然，他们认识到价值来源于劳动、资本是死劳动的凝结，但这是不够的。一般来说，劳动的统治问题来自不同的两个层面：一方面，劳动被镶嵌在一个私有制为基础的资本主义生产关系之中；另一方面，劳动被镶嵌在价值关系之中。“价值批判学派”只是看到了后一个方面，而没有触及到生产方式的前一个方面。因为，就前者来说，不仅要看到劳动被价值化这一“劳动本体论”的经验事实，还要分析为什么会表现为这种事实的社会原因以及历史根源，要回答这些问题就必须像马克思那样，再推进到劳动的二重性，进而分析造成劳动的抽象化的社会形式，并从这一特定的社会形式的内在自我矛盾入手，推进和重塑劳动，从而打开新的历史展开的可能性。但可惜的是，“价值批判学派”要求取消劳动以消解现有的政治方式只是美学的幻像，虽然，他们看到了价值背后的劳动根源，这是比其他一些左派批判理论仅仅看到价值的主导作用要高明的地方，但是，与这些西方左派一样失误的地方就在于，只能从资本主义这一定社会形式的表面寻找资本与劳动的对立，而在历史唯物主义看来，这一对立始终是置于社会历史的运动过程中才能得到理解并加以解决的。（注释略）

(The author is a professor and doctoral supervisor in the Department of Philosophy and the Research Center for Marxist Philosophy and Contemporary Civilization at East China Normal University.)

（作者系华东师范大学哲学系暨马克思主义哲学与当代文明研究中心教授、博士生导师）

Online editor: Zhang Jian

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