Zhao qingqiu's philosophy in the capital sphere is based on the zhao qingqiu learning times on october 28, 2015 at 00:00
There is a tendency towards a simplistic, one-sided understanding of capital awareness and evaluation, and we should grasp the essence of capital from its unity of form and content, process and entity, moving beyond simplistic and one-sided perceptions of the scope of capital。
It's full of contradictory capital
Capital becomes a complex of contradictions at the moment it is generated. The contradictory capital always sets up itself against what it has created, “like a magician, it can no longer control the demons it calls by magic”。
Marxist classic writers had predicted the loss of capital, but it had not come quickly. In the new era of globalization, capital still has greater scope for development. At the same time, the negative consequences of capital increasingly affect people's lives and interactions and pose even serious challenges to the future and survival of humanity。
Capital always displays its own contradictions, and it is not easy to accurately map the scope of capital from this robust picture. But regardless of how capital evolves and develops, the perception of capital ultimately goes back to marx's capital critical theory。
Capital as a unified form and content, process and entity
Max's analysis of the scope of capital was completed in the economics manuscript 1857-1858. In this study note for capitalism, marx elaborates on capital as a category. In general, marx believes that the scope of capital is the unity of form and content, process and entity。
Marx's examination of the scope of capital begins with a critical examination of classical political economics, which looks at capital primarily at the content and entity levels. In their view, money was the ultimate form of capital, which was the wealth accumulated from past production in exchange for value and input into new production as a factor. In this way, capital becomes a pure entity with only material attributes, accumulated labour, a factor of production and value creation. The main drawback of this perception is that capital is “understanded as something, not as a relationship”. After removing the forms and processes of capital, “capital becomes something that exists in all forms of society and becomes something completely unhistoric”, and capital itself logically becomes a universal prerequisite for all human production practices。
Unlike classical political economists, marx thought that the scope of capital should be understood from the “exchange value of movement in circulation”. In other words, money is not the form of capital completion, but the initial expression of capital. Money, as exchange value, is the measure of value and the means of exchange if it leaves circulation, and, on the contrary, it is the currency in circulation that is the exchange value and thus the initial form of capital. Mobility is therefore a prerequisite for capital. Capital can only be kept in circulation, where it loses neither the physical (commodity) nor the form (exchange value). It is through this process that capital becomes a commodity and currency in circulation, so that it acquires the regularity of the entity without losing the requirement of its value as an exchange. Thus, capital, premised on and confirmed in circulation, is the norm of both goods and currencies, and the sum of goods and currencies in circulation. The flow itself encompasses two elements: the production process, the process of value enhancement, and the process of value realization. As a result, marx's examination of capital rose from the most basic units of capitalist production methods, namely commodities and currencies, to the productive relationship dimension of capitalism as a whole. It is also in this sense that the productive relationship between capital and capitalism has equal meaning。
It is not difficult to see from the above analysis that marx grasps the scope of capital from the unity of form and content, process and entity. It is also on the basis of this understanding that the secrets of capital and capitalist production relationships can be truly revealed。
Beyond recognition and evaluation
Currently, there is a tendency for our knowledge and evaluation of capital to be simplistic and one-sided and therefore need to be surpassed. In terms of recognition, when it comes to capital, it comes to the realization that it can bring added value. This perception seems to be justified by both the logic of capital expansion for its own purposes and its core element of “capital possession residual value”. But, in terms of content, it makes clear that capital is the value of producing more value and that it generates profits with capital. This basic understanding of classical political economics is no different and logically makes capital a precondition for the interpretation of capital and falls into a “circle of interpretation”. This dilemma stems from the fact that it captures the scope of capital from a purely physical perspective, without seeing capital as a process and a reflection of specific social relationships. Contrary to this perception, another one-sided perception is the absolute and unconditional equivalence of capital and capitalist production relations, which are considered to be productive. Indeed, in the capitalist doctrine and its manuscript, marx expressed the idea that commodities, money and capital, as the most basic elements of capitalist production relations, reflect the very prescriptive nature of such production relations. Capital reflects the production relationship, but it is not equal to the production relationship. If capital is simply equated with the productive relationship of capitalism, then we will face a huge problem of interpretation. Capital is playing an enormous role in the modern process of modernization in china. If capital and capitalist production relations are synonymous, how will socialist production relations be allowed to flourish? In addition, the unconditional and absolute equivalence of capital with productive relationships has weakened the physical identity of capital itself, thus moving to another segment, making it difficult to understand and grasp its existence. In short, we should seize capital from the unity of form and content, process and entity, going beyond these two simplistic, one-sided tendencies to recognize the scope of capital。
From the point of view of evaluation, our assessment of capital remains in the dilemma of both positive and negative. On the one hand, the modernization process in china is dependent on the role of capital; on the other hand, the inherent contradictions in capital inevitably create problems in terms of economic development, income distribution, the resource environment, values, social justice, and hence the need to limit capital. While this assessment objectively reflects the reality of capital, it is of little interest in defusing the current capital-induced problems. For, whether they are positive or negative, they are common to capital itself. Therefore, limiting or overcoming capital can, i am afraid, be achieved only through the abandonment of capital, which is not achieved by subjective will alone. In fact, overcoming the many problems posed by capital should begin with going beyond the “yes and no” evaluation model. This needs to be understood in the historical direction of capital. The generation, development and extinction of capital is a natural historical process. Its very existence is determined by realistic historical conditions, and its very existence implies its usefulness. It is in this sense that marx himself is positive about capital. The affirmation of capital from its historical point of view is not intended to prove its immutability, because everything that exists is meant to die, nor is it the historical legitimacy of capital to avoid its injustice, but rather to demonstrate that overcoming it is a process of self-denial of capital. In this way, the restriction of capital is achieved not by removing its “bad side” while retaining the “good side”, but by the development of the capital itself。
28 october 2015 10:49
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