A dialética do capital fetiche em Karl Marx

Abstract

The present thesis has its turning point in the appropriation of dialectics as fundamental heuristic key for the elucidation of the peculiarity of the economic categories contained in Capital, that is, how Marx manages to transfer the dialectical method from the philosophical sphere to the economic sphere and operate a forceful critique of political economy. The dialectical appropriation of the metamorphoses that constitute capital has, in the abstract form of the commodity, its essential mediation for the apprehension of the concreteness of the capital system. Commodity fetishism unfolds in multiple forms to obliterate the surplus labor time as the foundation of value that appreciates itself. The elucidation of the capital fetish, which manifests as a sort of "automaton subject," has its turning point in investigating the commodity as an abstract form of manifestation of wealth in the capitalist mode of production. The analysis of specific moments from Capital's first and third books allows us to capture the peculiarity of the antediluvian forms of capital and the capillarity of capital metamorphoses (usurious, commercial, and industrial). The ontological analysis of the vicissitudes of the commodity, money, and industrial capital finds its crowning in interest-bearing capital as the perfect manifestation of the capital fetish. The dialectical investigation of the metamorphosis of the capital fetish primarily aims to reveal the limits of the system, which repeatedly requires the obliteration of its foundations and needs to incessantly recycle the mechanisms for suppressing its relationship with living labor through the encrustation of new theological tricks and old metaphysical subtleties. Interest-bearing Capital represents the apex of the completeness of the fetish expressed in productive capital, shaping itself as a form devoid of concept, with a unique ability to invert the actual movement of things and transform Capital into a kind of cause of itself. It solidifies the understanding that the interests emanate from the very property of the capital and not from the sharing of the surplus value resulting from production. The development of interest-bearing capital serves as essential mediation for the exponential growth of fictitious capital. One will observe how the relationship of fictitious capital with productive capital tends to fray due to the dynamic of expansion and incessant accumulation of the capital system. The surplus value emanating from production cannot return to production and needs to go to the illusory, speculative, and parasitic forms expressed in the futures market, commodities market, stock market, and public debt. In an attempt to carry out the immanent reading of Capital, the thesis author resorted to valuable loans from thinkers such as István Mészáros (2006), G. Lukács (2012), Herbert Marcuse (1978), Rosdolsky (2001), Carlos Prado Eleutério (2011), Jesus Ranieri (2000), Jadir Antunes (2018; 2006), Jorge Grespan (2019), Marcelo Carcanholo (2011), José Chasin (1988), Marilda Iamamoto (2008), Luiz Gonzaga Belluzzo (2013), Maria de Lourdes Rollemberg Mollo (2011), Hector Benoit (2008), M. Sabatini (2023), Boccega (2007; 2020), Reinaldo Carcanholo (2003; 2013), Enrique Dussel (2012), Marxhausen (1988), Freire (2021), Monfardini (2011) etc.