Published in Capital & Class (42) 2:

Reviewed by Daniel Hinze,
Independent Scholar
The Substance of Capital is part of The Life and Death of Capitalism series by Chronos Publications. The content of the book was originally published in 2004 and 2005 as articles in the first two issues of the journal Exit!. Robert Kurz, who died in 2012, was the editor of the journal and the central founding member of the Exit! group which dedicates itself to the critique of commodity society through value (dissociation) critique. The Substance of Capital critiques different conceptualisations of labour and breakdown in Marxist discourse from this perspective. Kurz first of all sets out a detailed critique of the concept ‘labour’ – the substance of value. In Part II, he then moves on to debate different theories of crisis and the breakdown of capitalism. Through these discussions, the author sets out the key themes of the Exit!-specific critique of capitalism and its critique of other critical (Marxist) approaches.
In his 2012 book, Geld ohne Wert (Money without Value – Outline of a Transformation of the Critique of Political Economy), Kurz refers to the articles that constitute this volume
as a preliminary ‘attempt at a polemic’ – in particular against the ‘circulation ideological
and exchange idealising’ views of Michael Heinrich.
Kurz directs his critique at ‘traditional’, ‘labour-movement’ Marxist, on the one hand, and at ‘postmodern’ neo-Marxists on the other. According to the author, neither perceives the substance of value and capital accurately, each essentially remaining stuck in a system-immanent critique, unable to step outside its blinkered boundaries and therefore failing to perceive the capitalist trajectory as a whole. While traditional Marxism clings to an ‘ontology’ of labour, which makes labour a transhistorical category, constitutive of the metabolism between man and nature in any society, postmodern Marxism goes in the opposite direction, desubstantialising value by perceiving it to be generated in the circulation sphere rather than acknowledging the objective basis of value in labour, expended in production.
These different misconceptions of labour, proposes Kurz, then translate into an inability to apprehend the trajectory of capitalist breakdown. Traditional Marxism is too wedded to the centrality of labour and the worker to admit the possibility of breakdown due to the de-substantialisation of value – that is, the removal of labour and the revolutionary subject from the production process. Postmodern analysis – by permitting subjective  value determination in market exchange – has shed any pretence of value determination in production and is therefore unable to even explore crisis and breakdown as consequence of the absolute limits to valorisation.
Kurz derives these stark criticisms from his own analytical platform of value dissociation critique. He does not admit labour as a transhistorical human condition but views it as a specifically capitalist mode of the social and natural metabolism. Concrete labour is a real abstraction in capitalism which dissociates value-generating activities from all other human, social reproduction. These other, ‘lesser’ activities are gendered as female, while the capitalist actor is necessarily the (white) male. Conjoined with this conceptualisation of labour – which objectively creates value in production through the expenditure of human effort – is the view that scientific progress in microelectronics leads to the obsolescence of labour in the third industrial revolution. The ‘substance’ of capital is removed from capitalism, leading to its demise.
Kurz is apodictic about the ‘de-substantialisation’ of capital. If we approach the problem less dogmatically than Kurz would wish us to, the approach gives us a more complete
understanding of crisis. Using it, we can devise a simple threefold classification of crisis
and breakdown theories. The first position is that there is per se no logical ground to
anticipate the relative or absolute reduction of surplus value over the course of capitalist
development and accumulation. From the second perspective, there is a reduction in surplus value relative to the value of capital which leads to a fall in the rate of profit, and, as a third position, there is an absolute reduction and even the disappearance of surplus through the ‘de-substantialisation’ of, that is, removal of labour from, production
through automation. Kurz propounds the third view while Heinrich falls into the first
camp.
Despite its outward appearance, the text is not a fair-minded, philosophical appraisal
of different Marxist lines of thought. Rather, it is polemical in both intent and character.
Michael Heinrich in particular, as a contemporary and supposed representative of postmodern neo-Marxism, is in the crosshairs of this polemic. It is quite unclear how Kurz manages to misconstrue Heinrich’s views on the generation of value and surplus value so badly and to characterise them as circulation and exchange-based, but in essence, Kurz proposes that value is generated absolutely in production while Heinrich, quite rightly, insists with Marx that this value needs to be realised in circulation. Circulation, by mediating competition, determines ‘socially necessary’ labour times and ‘average’ production conditions for all commodities without which value determination in production would be impossible.
Nonetheless, there are generally interesting points in the polemic. In the critique of the categories of labour, Kurz speaks of Marx’s aporia with respect to concrete labour – which cannot, at the same time, be both concrete and an abstract category (‘labour’ as such). Kurz wants us to understand concrete labour to be a real abstraction in capitalism
which has been split off/dissociated from all other necessary reproductive social activities. ‘Labour’ as an abstract, separate category is a social a priori for capitalism. To a considerable extent, this is pre-figured by Marx in the differentiation between labour in general and wage labour in capitalism.
Problematically, Kurz insists that the dissociation of roles is gendered in capitalism by necessity rather than being a result of historical continuity. While sexism and racism have a useful function in capitalism by lowering income, job and career expectations and supporting social acceptability of the lower status of the non-white/non-male worker it is difficult to see why this would be a necessary condition of capitalism. Indeed, as women are integrated into the labour force, previously dissociated, caring ‘female’ activities are in turn being integrated into the capitalist market – not, of course, without being made ‘productive’ and emptied of their caring character where profitable.

In conclusion, this book is probably most useful for scholars steeped in value critique who can use it to develop an understanding of the evolution of Kurz’s thought and the dogmatic differentiation between the Krisis and Exit! groups – Kurz was a member of Krisis until he split from it and founded Exit!. For an overview of different contributions of value critique, I would recommend instead Marxism and the Critique of Value edited by Larsen et al. (MCM’ Publishing, 2014). Separately, it is definitely worthwhile looking
at Michael Heinrich’s profound and sober analysis.
Author biography
Daniel Hinze earned a PhD in economics from Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. He has worked at the World Bank, the Deutsche Bundesbank and is now a civil servant in the United Kingdom.