Badiou, Marx, and an Analysis of the Value-Form

Abstract

This article is an attempt to bring together Marx and Badiou, precisely there where the connection between their problematics seems to be minimal, almost null, i.e. in the realm of Marx’s critique of political economy. This attempt at linking Marx and Badiou takes as its guiding thread the hypothesis that there is a homology between Badiou’s onto-logic in his Logics of Worlds and the analysis of the value-form in Marx’s Capital 1. A crucial step in this homology consists in the conceptual operation of a transition from the reality of the Two to the Three, conceived as an internal exception of the Two. The article thus aims at showing that on the basis of this transition it is possible to solve the problem of the materiality of money-commodity in Marx.