Dissolving Human’s Self-estrangement In The Unholy Forms

The famous British poet Shelley wrote in his Queen Mab:“Commerce has setthe mark of selfishness, the signet of its all-enslaving power, upon a shining ore, andcalled it gold.”In our time,“The money and credit woven into the world, like the worldof God and faith, is completely false, but at the same time it is a powerful force toravage us.”In Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, Marx points out: our time hasmade a mistake that it separates the essence of the object as some merely external,material things from human, it does not consider the content of human being to be thetrue reality. As a theoretical form of human self-consciousness, philosophy is the eliteof times spirits and the live soul of civilization. It is not only a theoreticalself-consciousness of time issues but also a critical reflection of civilization deposition.Marx’s critique of money is the theoretical response to the time issues. However, it isconfused that Joseph Schumpeter pointed out in his Capitalism, Socialism andDemocracy:“Marx’s distinctly weak performance in the field of money, in which hedid not succeed in coming up to the Ricardian standard.” On the contrary, AntonioNegri wrote in Marx beyond Marx: Lessons on Grundrisse:“Centralizing the analysisof money permits Marx therefore to radically innovate with respect to the theory ofvalue of the classics, in a double dimension: to reduce the theory of value to the figuresof the averaging of social labor, and therefore to define it as oscillation, asconflictuality, as potentiality of antagonism.”The two opposite attitudes prompt us toquestion: what is the true implication of Marx’s critique of money?Marx’s critique of money is not a kind of political economics, on the contrary, it isa Critique of Political Economy. Marx doesn’t use the economic category ofcommodities, money and capital in the context of political economics to understandthe concept of money. Instead, he gives them philosophical meanings, by doing that he made these economic categories rise to the ontological levels and thus achieved aterminology revolution of money concept. But, academic circle’s understanding of themoney issue didn’t come to this way. They either studied money issue only from thepolitical economics perspective, or paid too much attention on the economicsphilosophical relationship between money and man. These two ways concealed Marx’strue understanding of money. Marx’s understanding of money comes from neitherpolitical economics perspectives nor economics philosophical way, he studies it fromphilosophy itself to uncover the revolutionary transformation of human’s way ofexistence in modern society induced by money. To this extent, Marx’s questioning ofthe essence of money is to unmask human’s self-estrangement in the unholy formsunder the political economics context.“The task of history, therefore, once the worldbeyond the truth has disappeared, is to establish the truth of this world. The immediatetask of philosophy, which is at the service of history, once the holy form of humanself-estrangement has been unmasked, is to unmask self-estrangement in its unholyforms.” The “unmasking” we talk about here is not an end but a means. The realpurpose is to change the present alienated world and dissolve human’sself-estrangement. If the task of traditional philosophy is to unmask human’sself-estrangement in the holy form, then the historical task of modern philosophy is tounmask human’s self-estrangement in the unholy forms. Modern society is based onthe dependence of objects. Money is the bond of all human activities. As all human areequal in front of God, there are no undemisable rights or holy things in front of money.Money dissolves them. Therefore, unmasking human’s self-estrangement in the unholyforms is to unmask human’s self-estrangement in the money in modern society. In thissense, Marx’s criticism of heaven turns into the criticism of the earthly money.In Marx’s point of view, the way of human’s existence depends on theirproduction mode.“How a person produce is how person himself would be”. Thepurpose of this kind of production is to gain more money, which we call capitalism.“As long as man didn’t recognize himself as the human, he didn’t use the human wayto organize the world, the connection of human society would turn to its alienation forms.” Thus, Marx’s critique of money is not only the criticism of human’sself-estrangement in the unholy forms in modern society, but also the criticism of theorigin of it—capitalism’s production forms. Its ultimate goal is to dissolve human’sself-estrangement in the unholy forms, thus we could get back man’s independence andpersonality which were lost due to self-estrangement caused by capitalism. Marx’scritique of money is the critique of human’s way of existence. In this sense, it is notonly a key to dissolving human’s self-estrangement in the unholy forms, but also a keyto understand Marx’s philosophy. Without critique of money, our understanding of thetask of Marx’s philosophy—dissolving human’s self-estrangement in the unholy formsis abstract, misguided and superficial, while without knowing this task, ourunderstanding of Marx’s critique of money is fragmentary and rootless. Therefore, wecould only understand Marx’s dissolving human’s self-estrangement in the unholyforms through his critique of money. On the other hand, we could only understand thereal meaning of critique of money in Marx’s philosophy through the task of dissolvinghuman’s self-estrangement in the unholy forms.Marx’s critique of money is not studies on political economics which ignored‘human beings’, rather it is the critique of the historical premise of political economicsand the absence of human. Because of this, it is the critical consideration of the way ofhuman’s existence in capitalism. Because of the absence of objects in financial capital,the relationship between objects is reflected by the relationship between human. Itseems that the alien power of the objects is abolished. But this is a severe distortion tohuman themselves. What we see is only a ‘counterfeit’, the rather that this is a moredespicable and extreme self-estrangement and dehumanization, since ‘the content ofcredit’ is not commodity, metal and paper money but social and moral existence andour own inner vitality. More terribly, under the guise of ‘trust’, it’s ‘distrust’ and totalalienation. In financial capital, money isn’t cancelled by human, man himself is thecapital and interest, which is profanity of human. Therefore, Marx’s critique of moneyis more important in this global capitalism era featured by financial capital. Under thenew historical conditions, human’s self-estrangement in the unholy forms will be more covert and severe. Correspondingly, the historical task of dissolving human’sself-estrangement in the unholy forms is more difficult.