| Moishe Postone holds the view that Marx established the concept of capitalism on the basis of capital category and takes the historical development as a process under special objective law.Thus,Moishe Postone analyzes the basic concepts of Marx’s critique theory from special historical perspective,criticizes the trans-historical "labor" standpoint of "traditional Marxism" and takes the fundamental feature of capitalism as the social mediation form of capitalist labor.Moishe Postone holds the view that commodity,capital and the dialectical relation between abstract time and concrete time are the elements building capitalism’s domination historically.And they also build the internal contradictions and dynamic of the capitalist totality.This paper will inspect Moishe Postone’s Critique of Capital from three perspectives:labor,time and capital.From labor perspective,this paper begins with Moishe Postone’s analysis of the duality of commodity as the foundation of the basic contradictions of capitalism,which is based on special historical methodology,revealing the limitations of"traditional Marxism" which is based on fetish.Subsequently,this paper discusses the historical specificity of the capitalist labor to further criticize the trans-historical labor position of "traditional Marxism".Moishe Postone emphasizes the historical particularity of capitalist labor and points out that capitalist labor itself is a social mediation,by concentrating on Marx’s definition of the concept of abstract labor in capitalism.This paper discusses Moishe Postone’s analysis of capitalist domination in the labor perspective on the basis of the duality of labor.From time perspective,this paper is based on Moishe Postone’s emphasis of the temporal dimension of value,which is created by abstract labor,to begin with discussing the formation of abstract time.It indicates that the domination of abstract time comes true only with the generalization of the commodity form and the full development of capitalism.The performance of the domination is the stipulation of value by social necessary labor time.Based on the temporal dimension of value,this paper further describes the value transformation and reconstruction dialectic between value and use value,which is called "treadmill effect".In the process of this dialectic development,both social labor hour,which is the measure of social necessary labor time,and the productivity,are constantly moving forward in time.This movement of time can be measured by historical time.Postone defines abstract time and historical time as two sorts of times in capitalism,which construct the domination of capitalism together.From capital perspective,this paper clarifies Moishe Postone’s analysis of value from the perspective of capitalist relations of production.By making the distinction between material wealth and value,Postone emphasizes the historical particularity of value.He views value as the core of capital,and then analyzes the duality of capital.With the dialectic of value and use value,the concrete dimension of capital is to be incorporated in its abstract dimension.The interaction of the duality of capital leads to the internal contradiction of forces and relations of production.Postone believes that capitalist contradiction is the internal contradictions of capital,which is the internal tension between the productive potential brought about by the development of productivity and the reality that the relations of production requires the existence of value.But this is not the contradiction of the capitalism that Marx revealed.Postone does not really understand Marx’s methodology of rising from the abstract to the concrete,so it is inevitable of his misunderstanding of the track of capitalism and the way to get over it. |
