Wolfgang Fritz Haug: Towards a Critique of the >Monetarist< Reading of Marx' Capital

Part I, in: Das Argument 257, vol. 46, 2004, no. 5, 701-709

Part II, in: Das Argument 258, vol. 46, 2004, no. 6, 865-876

After a first critique of the >monetary value theory< as opposed to Marx' value theory of money in Argument 251/2003 the author examines Michael Heinrich's Critique of Political Economy. An Introduction (2004). He particularly analyses the covert clash between Heinrich's monetarist approach and the Marxian theory. He confronts Heinrich's ^logicist^^ reading with marx' analysis and genetic reconstruction of the value form. He analyses a number of eliminations in Heinrich's version of Marx' theory: the rejection of >money commodity< (cf. Capital, I, Fowkes, p. 163), the elimination of the natural substratum in Heinrich's constructivist version of Marx' concept of abstract labour, the negation of Marx' concept >organic composition of capital< (ibid., p. 762). He defends against Heinrich the ^praxeological^^ approach to reconstruct the ^objectivity^^ of the relations of production and their institutional settings. Finally he criticizes Heinrich's anti-historical and ^post-marxist^^ rejection and silencing of all >traditional Marxism<.