Geld, Maß und Zeit in Marx’ Kapital. Die Technik der Messung und die Produktivkraft der Verwertung

Abstract

A theory of capitalist money causes almost unsolvable difficulties as it requires the systematic development of its individual functions – and this requires nothing less than the development of the capitalist mode of production. Moreover, with this entanglement of money’s functions on the one hand, and the mode of production on the other, the “money riddle” must be solved, the riddle of its universal and yet finite quantitative validity as it is in this validity that seems to lie the mysterious force that is essential for the capitalist mode of production. The solution of this money riddle is to reveal the entanglement between the capitalist mode of production and the functions of money by measure and measurement: capitalism that is a valorization process which is measured and increased by money. What by money in the last instance is measured is the productive force of this valorization, and this productive force is a temporal relation. Money, by quantifying social relations with its functions, becomes the technique at once for both empowering and resolving an “economy of time” (Marx). The enigmatic nature of money hence lies in this solution: to quantify the productive force of the valorization process in an economy of time.