From General Economy to the Concept of Value: Toward an Aneconomic Marxism

Abstract

Economy has become a preferred figure for material and conceptual totalities in contemporary theoretical discourse. This usage of economy can be traced less to classical or Marxian political economy than to developments in twentieth-century French social theory, including Marcel Mauss's anthropology of the gift and Georges Bataille's theory of general economy. Jacques Derrida, for one, draws on Mauss, Bataille, and others to deploy economy as a textual figure closely articulated with his deconstruction of the modern philosophical concept. In this essay, I argue that Derrida's usage of economy manifests a kind of Kantian philosophical formalism, and I contrast Derrida's theoretical strategy on this count with Marx's approach to theory by way of concepts. Marx's concept of value, I argue, manifests a very different relationship to totality and philosophical formalism than is presupposed by the Derridean critique of conceptuality.