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O Dinheiro Do Espírito E O Deus Das Mercadorias – a Abstracção Real Segundo Sohn-Rethel (The Money of the Mind and the God of Commodities – The Real Abstraction According to Sohn-Rethel)

2013; RELX Group (Netherlands); Linguagem: Inglês

1556-5068

Nuno Miguel Cardoso Machado,

Economic Theory and Policy

The English version of this article can be found at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2307204A tese fundamental de Sohn-Rethel e que existe uma “identidade secreta” entre a forma mercadoria e a forma do pensamento. A troca de mercadorias e uma abstraccao real – corporizada no dinheiro – e constitui um a priori social que se reflecte na abstraccao conceptual, i.e., no pensamento abstracto caracteristico das sociedades mercantis: a filosofia (na Grecia antiga) e a ciencia moderna (no capitalismo). Todavia, a teoria Sohn-Retheliana apresenta uma limitacao fundamental: a sua identificacao exclusiva da abstraccao real com a esfera da circulacao resulta numa ontologizacao do trabalho que, pelo contrario, constitui uma especificidade capitalista e a fonte original da abstraccao nesta sociedade.According to Sohn-Rethel there is a “secret identity” between commodity form and thought form. Commodity exchange is a real abstraction – embodied in money – and constitutes a social a priori which reflects itself in the conceptual abstraction, i.e., in the abstract thought typical of commodity-producing societies: philosophy (in ancient Greece) and modern science (in capitalism). However, the theory of Sohn-Rethel has a fundamental flaw: its exclusive identification of the real abstraction with the sphere of circulation results in the ontologization of labor which, on the contrary, is a capitalist specificity and the original source of the abstraction in this society.