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proletariat, which the theory none the less continues to designate as the objective agent of the future transformation of society.[. . .] Horkheimer maintains that the Marxian critical theory of society has continued to be a philosophical discipline even when it engages in the critique of the economy; he names the three aspects which constitute the 'philosophical moment' of the critique of political economy. First, the critique of political economy shows the 'transformation of the concepts which dominate the economy into their opposites'. 11 Second, critique is not identical with its object. The critique of political economy does not reify the economy. It defends 'the materialist concept of the free, self-determining society, while retaining from idealism the conviction that men have other possibilities than to lose themselves to the status quo or to accumulate power and profit'. 12 Third, the critique of political economy regards the tendencies of society as a whole and portrays 'the historical movement of the period which is approaching its end'. 13 Horkheimer names these the 'philosophical moments' in the critique of political economy, for each conceptual procedure aims at more than the empirical comprehension of the given laws and structures of society, and judges and analyses what is in the light of a normative standard, namely, the 'realization of the free development of individuals' through the rational constitution of society. For Horkheimer, it is the critique of the given in the name of a Utopian-normative standard that constitutes the legacy of philosophy.[. . .]
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1. With the claim that the critique of political economy shows the 'transformation of the concepts which dominate the economy into their opposites', Horkheimer draws attention to the following aspect of Marx's procedure: beginning with the accepted definitions of the categories used by political economy, Marx shows how these turn into their opposites. Marx does not juxtapose his own standards to those used by political economy, but through an internal exposition and deepening of the available results of political economy, he shows that these concepts are self-contradictory. This means that when their logical implications are thought through to their end, these concepts fail to explain the capitalist mode of production. The categories of political economy are measured against their own content, that is, against the phenomenon which they intend to explain, and are shown to be inadequate in this regard. This aspect of Marx's procedure may be named immanent 'categorial critique'. |
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2. The purpose of defetishizing critique is to show that the social reality of capitalism necessarily presents itself to individuals in a mystified form. Spontaneous, everyday consciousness, no less than the discourse |
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