This article explores Adorno’s negative dialectics as a critical social theory of economic objectivity. It rejects the conventional view that Adorno does not offer a critique of the economic forms of capitalist society. The article holds that negative dialectics is a dialectics of the social world in the form of the economic object, one that is governed by the movement of economic quantities, that is, real economic abstractions. Negative dialectics refuses to accept the constituted economic categories as categories of economic (...) nature. Instead, the article argues, it amounts to a conceptualized social praxis [ begriffene Praxis] of the capitalistically constituted social relations, which manifest themselves in the form of seemingly independent economic categories. Economic nature is a socially constituted nature, which entails the class antagonism in its concept. The article concludes that for negative dialectics the explanation of real economic abstractions lies in the understanding of the class-divided nature of human practice. (shrink)

Against the background of the contemporary debate about financialisation, the paper conceptualises the capitalist labour economy as fundamentally a monetary system. It argues that money is not a capitalist means of organising its labour economy but that it is rather a capitalist end. The argument examines and finds wanting conceptions of money in political economy, including Keynesianism and neoliberalism, and argues that the debate about financialisation is fundamentally based on the propositions of political economy. It holds that Marx’s critique of (...) political economy conceives of money as the form of value and expounds money-making as the purpose of the capital labour economy. Thus, the labour theory of value is fundamentally a monetary theory of value, labour is the means of valorisation, and that is, of money in process, and as such capital. Making money out of money is capital as its most rational. In the form of credit, money posits wealth as a claim on future surplus value. (shrink)

At the time of writing, history appears to be accelerating. The socalled Asian crisis, the disaster in Russia, and the Brazilian downturn show with brutal force that the long drawn-out crisis of capitalist accumulation has reached another impasse. Where might it all end?

The article expounds the ordo-liberal tradition that emerged as a distinct neo-liberal conceptualization of free economy as a political practice. According to this tradition there are things more important than GDP in as much as free economy depends on the formation of the moral and the social preconditions of market freedom. The social facilitation and moral embedding of free economy are fundamental to the ordo-liberal conception of a human economy, which entails a social policy of Vitalpolitik – a politics of (...) life. Particularly at a time of manifest economic crisis and austerity, the social and moral veracity of economic liberty depends thus on the exercise of strong state authority. (shrink)

While Adorno has tended to be read as a critic of the administered world and the consumer industry rather than a Marxist, Adorno and Marx establishes Adorno's negative dialectics as fundamental for understanding Marx's critique of political economy. This conception of the critique of political economy as a critical theory marks both a radical departure from traditional Marxist scholarship and from traditional readings of Adorno's work and warns against identifying Adorno with Marx or Marx with Adorno. Rather, it highlights the (...) intersection between Adorno's critical theory and Marx's critique of political economy that produces a critical theory of economic objectivity that moves beyond Marxian economics and Adornonian social theory. Adorno and Marx offers an ingenious account of critical social theory. Its subversion of the economic categories of political economy contributes to the cutting-edge of contemporary social theory and its critique of social practice. (shrink)

Estamos en medio de una onda enorme de protestas, rechazos masivos y multitudinarios de las condiciones contemporáneas. El trabajo se pregunta qué significa decir NO en una sociedad que requiere de los pobres y miserables que subsidien el sistema financiero para mantener la ilusión de una riqueza abstracta. Este subsidio es necesario en la sociedad existente, para asegurar su riqueza y prevenir su implosión. La sociedad capitalista no puede combatirse de una formadirecta e inmediata - ¿qué significa realmente luchar contra (...) el dinero, resistir el movimiento de monedas, combatir el movimiento de tipos de interés, luchar contra los movimientos de precios, y resistir a la pobreza en un modo de reproducción social que conlleva la pobreza en su concepto de riqueza? El rechazo a aceptar las cosas tal y como son es enteramente negativo con respecto a las condiciones existentes de reproducción social. Demanda que su progreso continuo se ponga en suspenso. (shrink)

Karl Marx's Capital is critique of the capitalistically organised social relations of reproduction. It recognises economic categories as perverted social categories and asks about the manner in which human social practice manifests itself in the form of independent economic categories and laws that unfold as if governed by invisible principles. He says, the capitalist relations are beyond human control and he argues that the indi-viduals act under economic compulsion and are controlled by the products of their own labour. His critique (...) says, in the capitalist social relations the individuals act as personification of economic categories. The immense wealth of capitalist society is abstract, it appears in the form of money as more money. In these wealth-relations, time is money, the satisfaction of human needs a mere sideshow. Yet, the economic categories are purely social forms. Critique of political economy is social critique of economic inversion, it is about the sheer unrest of live as the hidden misery of economic things. (shrink)

The ‘politics of novelty’ seems a somewhat strange if not straightforwardly bizarre topic. What is meant by ‘novelty’ and under what sort of conditions would one be able to think of ‘novelty’ in terms of a politics? What does politics have to do with ‘novelty’, and conversely, ‘novelty’ with ‘polities’?