The Critique of Political Economy as Critical Social Theory

Chapter 5 places the question of labour as not-capital within the context of a relatively new current of thought that seeks to develop Marx’s critique of political economy as a critical social theory. This combines a critique of labour; the open Marxist conception of capital as class struggle; and a monetary theory of value that draws on the Neue Marx-Lektüre. It argues that placed within the context of an original accumulation that—reproduced within the capital relation—leaves workers dispossessed, Marx’s notion of ‘labour as not-capital’ is nothing positive. Labour is not-capital only when and where labour power is readily available as a commodity. It rests therefore on the violence of separation and use. As such, Labour provides no standpoint to critically affirm against the negative totality of which it is the fundamental, constitutive part.