Marx’s Theory of the Genesis of Money: How, Why, and Through What Is a Commodity Money?

Historical Materialism #154

by Samezo Kuruma

In this volume, Marx's Theory of the Genesis of Money. How, Why, and Through What is a Commodity Money? , the first of the author's works to be translated into English, Samezō Kuruma examines the different angles from which Marx analyses the commodity and money in the first two chapters of Capital , Volume I. Kuruma carefully explains each of the theoretical questions raised by Marx, particularly the theory of the value-form, which unravels the mystery surrounding money. The theoretical knowledge Marx gains from his analysis of the commodity is the linchpin of Capital , but he recognises that this presents the reader with the 'greatest difficulty' - just as 'beginnings are always difficult in all sciences'. Kuruma helps to ease this difficulty by making the reader clearly aware of how and why Marx poses his theoretical questions.

This work includes an English translation of the full text of Kuruma's book, Kachikeitai-ron to kōkankate-ron (Theory of the Value Form and Theory of the Exchange Process) (Iwanami Shoten, 1957) and a slightly abridged version of Part I of Kahei-ron (Theory of Money) (Otsuki Shoten, 1979). It is a substantially revised edition of the English translation under the same title, Marx's Theory of the Genesis of Money , that was self-published by the translator (Outskirts Press, 2008).

Genres: Economics, Theory, Nonfiction

204 pages, Hardcover

First published September 11, 2008

Reviews

[Blandinus]

Pretty rigorous look at the beginning chapters of Capital vol 1. Kuruma sets out to elucidate the value form and explain how, why, and through what commodity money comes into place, while addressing the particular issues that one may have about the theoretical abstraction of the value form and its expression between the commodities. I would very much recommend this for those who are familiar with their Marx or for those who have a hard time grappling with the critical project that Marx sets out to do. The beginnings of sciences are hard but Kuruma guides the reader through a pretty clear description of the contradiction that commodities have being a use value, while at the same time trying expressing their equality and value in terms of abstract human labor with other commodities, and how a society under commodity production maintains the social relations that allow that value form and expression to continue.

[Max LoMonaco]

Essential reading for those who believe that money, for Marx, emerged out of barter. Kuruma is precise, methodical, and refreshingly comprehensible in his treatment of the opening 3 chapters of Capital Vol. 1. Among other things, he demonstrates that the desire of the commodity owner is entirely abstracted from in the determinations of the value-form, securing the immanent movement of the commodity as opposed to an external positing. This does not mean, however, that Kuruma believes that the value-form has a developmental "motive force" that necessarily "sends" the simple value-form to the general. Instead, he reproduces Marx's logical presentation of the forms of value in such a way that, though the simple value-form constitutes the atom of the latter determinations, it contains no Hegelian sort of destiny.