Abstract
This chapter presents an inquiry into Friedrich Engels’ contribution to the political economy in the twentieth century, having an eye at the same time on Sohn-Rethel’s contribution to Real abstractions. For the author, Engels’ historical method is problematic, given that he confuses the genetic procedure in the process of commodity in Marx with a specific historical time, before Capitalism’s appearance. In this, Sohn-Rethel follows Engels, when he focuses not on this system where trade of labor commands, but on the simple exchange of currencies that took place in classical Greece. As for the theory of value, the author proposes arguments to suggest that Engels’ employment of the ‘simple mercantile production’ is not related to his understanding of dialectics, but rather to a misunderstanding of his own theory of value.
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Blackledge, P. (2020). Method and Value: Engels Through Sohn-Rethel. In: Oliva, A., Oliva, Á., Novara, I. (eds) Marx and Contemporary Critical Theory. Marx, Engels, and Marxisms. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39954-2_6
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