Real Abstraction, Materialist Social Synthesis, and the Transcendental Regime in the Capitalist Mode of Production

Abstract

The article addresses how Immanuel Kant, Theodor Adorno, and Alain Badiou can come surprisingly close, provided we invoke Marx's value form at the centre of commodity exchange. We will argue for a complementary elaboration to the ‘capitalist schematisation' (Christian Lotz via Alfred Sohn-Rethel), while at the same time probing into the material basis of Badiou's transcendental organization—investigating whether the transcendental regime of appearing is always already a product of a determinate mode of production. We will be guided by two premises: (1) The pure conceptual unfolding understood as an inner-logical consequently produces the non-conceptual, an external result, immanent to such unfolding, hence real abstraction, which retroactively imposes itself on understanding as a conceptual abstraction. (2) The inversion of objective/subjective into objective-subjective synthesis, which is both real and social. Overall, the article seeks to scrutinize an alternative social synthesis through a Badiou-inspired reconstruction of Marx’s value form and posed as a potential category of social synthesis that entails the real abstraction, namely money with commodities, alongside the object labour in a single, unified structure.