Étienne Balibar
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780823273607
- eISBN:
- 9780823273652
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823273607.003.0012
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
This chapter unfolds the moments of a Marxist critical construction of the universal. From the first, Marx's theory of commodity and money fetishism formed one of the most admired and contested ...
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This chapter unfolds the moments of a Marxist critical construction of the universal. From the first, Marx's theory of commodity and money fetishism formed one of the most admired and contested aspects of his “critique” of political economy. In an astonishing fashion, it restores the correlation of sovereignty and subjection to the heart of the modern “social relation” that appears to herald the triumph of free individuality. To this end, it was necessary conceptually to reinscribe the classical schema of the “contract” into the representative and practical space of commodity exchange, whose immediacy he explodes by showing its latent metaphysics, which is also an anthropology and a politics.Less
This chapter unfolds the moments of a Marxist critical construction of the universal. From the first, Marx's theory of commodity and money fetishism formed one of the most admired and contested aspects of his “critique” of political economy. In an astonishing fashion, it restores the correlation of sovereignty and subjection to the heart of the modern “social relation” that appears to herald the triumph of free individuality. To this end, it was necessary conceptually to reinscribe the classical schema of the “contract” into the representative and practical space of commodity exchange, whose immediacy he explodes by showing its latent metaphysics, which is also an anthropology and a politics.
