I. A typology of contradictions in Marx

Perhaps the central difference between analytical and Hegelian readings of Marx is concerned with the concept of dialectical contradiction. The analytical readings either deny that there is such a concept as dialectical contradiction in Marx, or hold that, even if there is such a concept, it is a remnant of Hegel's confused and obscurantist heritage and thus must be discarded.Footnote ¹ By contrast, the Hegelians believe that at foundational level what is distinctive about Marx's way of thought is dialectics, that dialectical contradiction constitutes the kernel of Marx's dialectics, and, finally, that Marx's conception of dialectical contradiction is heavily influenced by Hegel.

The concept of contradiction in Marx is polysemic, and the first step towards understanding the nature of dialectical contradiction is to distinguish it from two other types of contradiction that can be found in his work, what I call ‘theoretical’ and ‘practical’ contradiction.Footnote ² By the former, I mean inconsistency in a theory. Most often, the inconsistency at issue is not explicit; it rather obtains between unstated presuppositions of the theory and its explicit claims. Because Marx is occasionally presented as an irrational thinker, I need to emphasize the obvious point that Marx is fully committed to theoretical consistency. Indeed, one of the major methods that Marx uses to criticize other political economists is to show how their theories suffer from contradiction. To illustrate, in the first volume of Capital, Marx criticizes John Stuart Mill for presupposing Ricardo's theory of profit, according to which the source of profit is exclusively labour. And yet, Mill claims that profit partly originates from the abstinence of the capitalist in spending his capital. Therefore, according to Marx, Mill commits a theoretical contradiction in that he, Mill, at the same time accepts and rejects Ricardo's theory of profit. Interestingly in this case, Marx emphatically distinguishes Hegel's (and his own) dialectical contradiction from the contradiction that amounts to sheer incoherence in Mill, and writes that Mill ‘is as much at home with absurd and flat contradictions as he is at sea with the Hegelian contradiction, which is the source of all dialectics’ [So fremd ihm der Hegelsche Widerspruch, die Springquelle aller Dialektik, so heimisch ist er in platten Widersprüchen] (C: 744/K: 623).Footnote ³

While the first type of contradiction occurs in theories and makes them inconsistent, the second, practical type is the attribute of counterproductive actions or dysfunctional systems. More specifically, practical contradiction obtains when there is a tension or an antagonism between the goal of an action or a system, and the very means which are used to achieve such a goal. According to Marx, capitalism is burdened with practical contradictions, to the extent that it is constantly prone to crises that would undermine its viability as a whole. To illustrate Marx's conception of practical contradiction, let us consider the following passage from the second volume of Capital:

According to Marx, capitalist production tends to reduce the wage of workers to a minimum, and yet at the same time requires workers’ purchasing power to realize the value of commodities produced. Here there is a practical contradiction in capitalism: the accumulation of capital necessarily requires minimization of the wage of workers, which leads to the reduction of the effective demand, and that in turn halts the process of accumulation of capital. In other words, the very means (the reduction of wages) that capital necessarily deploys to achieve its goal (the attainment of surplus-value) undermines that goal.

While it is easier to at least initially grasp what theoretical and practical contradictions are, in the case of dialectical contradiction, we are immediately faced with difficulties. Hegel is particularly clear that the dialectical contradiction is ontological and obtains in reality. In the Science of Logic, he famously writes, ‘everything is inherently contradictory’ [Alle Dinge sind an sich selbst widersprechend.] (SL: 439/WL II: 74). But what could it possibly mean that ‘things’—rather than theories or actions—are contradictory? Faced with this question, the analytical readings of Marx throw the baby out with the bathwater and maintain that the dialectical contradiction is ‘nonsense’ and that theoretical and practical contradictionFootnote ⁴ exhaust Marx's legitimate usage of the concept of contradiction.Footnote ⁵ Resisting the analytical readings, my aim in this paper is to give support to the camp of Hegelians. Namely, I will show that there is a distinct type of contradiction in Marx that cannot be reduced to the other two, and that Marx's conception of dialectical contradiction is legitimate and rational.Footnote ⁶

Although Marx promised in his letters to Engels to write a general treatise on dialectics, he never actually found time to do so.Footnote ⁷ This leaves interpreters the difficult task of reconstructing the general theory of dialectical contradiction in Marx. This is not, however, the task I pursue in this paper. My aim is more modest. Namely, I solely focus on Marx's analysis of commodity-form in the first chapter of Capital and carve out the structure of dialectical contradiction in commodity. Such a focus is justified on the ground that the analysis of commodity-form is the only place in Marx's entire oeuvre where he systematically deploys and develops the concept of dialectical contradiction. It is noteworthy that Marx in the first edition of Capital concludes his analysis of commodity-form with an explicit reference to the notion of dialectical contradiction:

Although Marx omits this statement in later editions of Capital, the statement, I believe, remains central to his analysis even in the later editions.Footnote ⁸ In order to make sense of this statement, I begin with Hegel's Logic. Like my limited focus on Marx, I eschew delving into Hegel's (much-discussed, yet still not well-understood) general theory of dialectical contradiction.Footnote ⁹ Rather, I focus on the contradiction of the ‘thing’ [Das Ding] in Hegel's Logic, and show how grasping the contradiction of the ‘thing’ for Hegel clarifies the contradiction of the commodity for Marx. As we will learn, Hegel conceives of the thing as the contradictory unity of form and matter. Likewise, commodity in Marx can be understood as the contradictory unity of form and matter, while the form of commodity for Marx can be taken as exchange-value and its matter as use-value. Tracking this route will show us how for Marx commodity is the contradictory unity of exchange-value and use-value, rendering the above mentioned programmatic statement of Marx intelligible.

II. The dialectical contradiction of the ‘thing’ in Hegel

In one place in the Science of Logic, Hegel describes his project in the ‘objective logic’ to be concerned with ‘investigating the nature of ens in general’ (SL: 63/WL I: 61). Accordingly, in this section, I reconstruct the objective logic on the basis of Hegel's conception of ens or object. Corresponding to the two parts of the objective logic, Hegel conceives of object in two different ways: one, according to the ‘logic of being’ and with the category of ‘something’ [Etwas]; two, according to the ‘logic of essence’ and with the category of ‘thing’ [Das Ding].Footnote ¹⁰

We can take Hegel in the logic of being to be explaining and criticizing traditional ontology which is at the same time the ontology that underpins our everyday common-sense experience of the world. Traditional ontology is characterized by atomism, in this context namely the view that objects are ultimately subsistent on their own, and exist, and can be conceived, independently of other objects. This is not to deny that objects, according to traditional ontology, have some sort of relation with each other, but it is to say that the relation remains ‘external’ to what makes the objects what they are. That is, according to traditional ontology, the relation of an object with other objects is not constitutive of the object.

In traditional ontology, originating in Aristotle's Categories, such an atomist conception of objects is captured through the notion of substance conceived as ‘substratum’. The object in traditional ontology has certain qualities and quantities, but what gives the object a unity and makes it identifiable and distinguishable from other objects is a substratum that underlies those qualities and quantities. Since the substratum itself, as distinct from the qualities and quantities that are superimposed on it, does not have any determination, it remains a contentless, ‘bare substratum’.

In the logic of being, Hegel uses the category of ‘something’ to capture the conception of the object according to traditional ontology. At the same time, he stresses the affinity of ‘something’ with our common-sense ontology. He thus writes, ‘In our ordinary way of thinking, something rightly carries the connotation of reality’, and immediately continues, ‘however, something is still a very superficial determination’ (SL: 115/WL I: 123). Something is a very superficial determination for Hegel, because it remains a bare substratum that cannot be further determined.Footnote ¹¹ To be more precise, the conceptual structure of something, for Hegel, consists of two moments that are externally added to each other: the moment of ‘being-in-itself’ that is the substratum devoid of any determination, and the moment of ‘being-for-another’, namely, the qualities and quantities that something harbours. The qualities and quantities can be called the being-for-another of something, since they are determinate in virtue of their relation with the qualities and quantities that other somethings have (SL: 119/WL I: 128).

We can further elucidate the conceptual structure of something by looking at the operator of ‘negation’ in the logic of being through which something is generated. Hegel conceives of qualities and quantities generically as ‘determinacies’ [Bestimmtheiten], and, following Spinoza maintains that ‘determinacy is negation’ (SL: 536/WL II: 195). The concept of negation for Hegel is tied up with the concept of contrastive exclusion. To say that something is brown is to say that its determinacy (brownness) excludes other relevant determinacies (redness, whiteness, blackness, etc.). According to Hegel, although such a conception of negation as exclusion of the other specifies the determinacies of something (in so far as it shows that the brown object is not red, or white, or black), it nonetheless falls short of the determination of something itself, since it leaves something as a positively given, as a bare substratum that does not have any determination. Thus, although Hegel praises Spinoza for the discovery of the principle ‘determinacy is negation’, he criticizes Spinoza for his failure to grasp the full implications of the principle that ‘all determinations are negation’, including the determination of substance itself (SL: 113/WL I: 121, my emphasis). Hegel writes:

Here Hegel distinguishes two types of negation: one, negation (or exclusion) of the other; two, self-negation (or self-exclusion).Footnote ¹² Spinoza, operating solely with the first type of negation, falls short of the determination of substance, and conceives of substance as a positive given that underlies determinacies but does not itself have any determination. Hegel, by contrast, maintains that negation can also be applied to itself, engendering ‘self-negating negation’. In contrast to the negation of the other, which is characteristic of the logic of being, self-negation is characteristic of the logic of essence, and it is the operator through which Hegel manages to overturn the traditional ontology of bare substratum.

We can now come to realize that in so far as the logic of being is concerned there is no contradiction in something. Something excludes other somethings, and, as it were, remains a harmonious ensemble of qualities and quantities. (That a brown person excludes a white person does not make the brown person contradictory.) The contradiction obtains when we go one level deeper, to the essence of objects, and realize that the object essentially not only excludes other objects but also excludes its very own self. Hegel uses a host of expressions to express the contradictory structure of the object in the logic of essence. The object, for Hegel, is essentially ‘self-repellent’ [sich abstoßend], ‘opposite of itself’ [Gegenteil seiner selbst], ‘the other of its own self’ [das Andere seiner selbst] and is characterized by ‘incompatibility with itself’ [Unverträglichkeit mit sich].Footnote ¹³

To elucidate in what sense the object is contradictory, we need first to become familiar with Hegel's general strategy in the logic of essence. Indeed, the transition from the logic of being to the logic of essence must be captured in terms of a total paradigm shift. It must be captured as a transition from an atomistic ontology that Hegel rejects to a relational ontology that Hegel endorses. To put the issue differently, it is a transition from the logic of externality of relation (where the relation of an object to another object is not constitutive of it) to the logic of internality of relations (where the relation of an object to another object is constitutive of it.) In order to develop his relational ontology, Hegel first introduces the notion of ‘determinations of reflection’ [Reflexionsbestimmungen], and he discusses contradiction within this context.

Reflection, to which the term ‘determinations of reflection’ refers, is not for Hegel a subjective activity of thinking that reflects upon an externally given object; it is rather the objective relation that constitutes the very relata of the relation.Footnote ¹⁴ Correspondingly, the determinations of reflection are dyadic relational determinations that are constituted in and through their interrelation. Throughout the logic of essence, Hegel describes the various determinations of reflection that make the inner constitution of things. Such categories include, among others: cause and effect, essence and appearance, ground and grounded, force and expression, and (relevant to my discussion here) form and matter. The difference of these categories of essence from ‘something’ and ‘other’ something in the logic of being is obvious. Whereas ‘something’ and ‘other’ something stand on their own independently from each other, form and matter are what they are solely through their relation.

Hegel argues that once we conceive of the determinations of reflection as being internally related to each other—rather than being merely externally compared or related—we realize that the coupled determinations of reflection in fact contradict each other. The argument is that, according to Hegel, each of the determinations of reflection is a self-subsistent unity that obtains its self-subsistence through inclusion of its other (in so far as it is what it is only through relation to its other), and yet is self-subsistent through excluding its other (in so far as it is a distinct unity from its other). Hegel calls this structure of simultaneous inclusion and exclusion of its own other ‘contradiction’:

Here Hegel states that each of the pair of the determinations of reflection excludes from itself what gives unity to it. That is to say, the determination of reflection negates what makes its own selfhood and is thus constituted by a ‘self-negating negation’. The cause (say) is internally related to the effect, and thus the effect is constitutive of the cause. And yet, the cause is a distinct entity from the effect, and obtains its distinctness from the effect through excluding the effect. Therefore, the cause becomes what it is through negating or excluding the effect, which is at the same time included in the definition of the cause.Footnote ¹⁵

It is by defining the structure of the object solely through determinations of reflection that Hegel aims to overturn traditional ontology. According to Hegel, the object is not a ‘positive unity’, that is to say, it is not a bare substratum upon which qualities and quantities are externally added. Rather, the object, according to its essential constitution, is a ‘negative unity’ of form and matter, namely, a contradictory totality that solely obtains through the interrelation of form and matter:

In describing the structure of the thing as consisting of the relation of form and matter, Hegel adopts Aristotle's doctrine of hylomorphism, namely, the view that, ontologically speaking, form does not exist independently of matter but is realized in matter. Although I cannot defend this thesis here, I have to mention that Hegel believes that a consistent and thorough development of Aristotle's doctrine of hylomorphism proves that the structure of the thing is contradictory.Footnote ¹⁷ In the above passage, Hegel, while maintaining that it is the totality of the thing that is contradictory, simultaneously explains this contradiction in terms of the contradiction of matter. According to Hegel, within the totality of the thing, matter is ‘both self-subsistent and negated at the same time’. Matter is to be conceived as independent of form, since form consists of matter, and yet at the same time, matter is to be determined as a ‘property’ of form, and thus as dependent on form.

The contradiction of matter can be further specified in the following way. According to Hegel, form is a relational category; the form of a human being obtains solely through its relation with other human beings. As form is a relational category that is equally shared by all the things which have the same form, it cannot individuate the thing. The individuation of the thing obtains through its matter, which isolates the thing from other things. As matter grasps the thing in isolation from other things, it is unrelational. And yet, this is only one side of the story. Matter at the same time is relational, since form for Hegel is not a pre-made, neo-Platonic, category that exists independently of matter. Rather, form obtains only through the interrelation of matters, and in this sense matter is relational. Therefore, in the structure of the thing, the relatedness and unrelatedness of matter completely interpenetrate, and such interpenetration makes the structure of the thing contradictory.Footnote ¹⁸ In Hegel's own words, ‘the object is the absolute contradiction of the complete independence of the manifold [i.e. of unrelatedness of matters] and of their equally complete dependency [i.e. of their relatedness]’ (Enz: §194, original emphasis).Footnote ¹⁹

III. The dialectical contradiction of commodity in Marx

In his Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, Friedrich Engels distinguishes dialectics from what he calls ‘the so-called metaphysical mode of reasoning’. While for the metaphysical mode of reasoning, ‘things … are isolated, are to be considered one after the other and apart from each other’, dialectical thought ‘comprehends things … in their essential connection’ (MECW 24: 298–301/MEW 19: 202–5). It is evident now that the former corresponds to the atomistic, traditional ontology Hegel criticizes in the logic of being, and the latter to the relational ontology Hegel affirms in the logic of essence. We have learned that, for Hegel, when objects are conceived atomistically, i.e., as substrata bearing qualities and quantities, there is no contradiction in the object. The object becomes contradictory when we conceive of it relationally, namely, as a negative unity of form and matter. In this section, my aim is to use this Hegelian framework to clarify Marx's conception of commodity as the contradictory unity of use-value and exchange-value.

The first step is to explain what Marx means by use-value and exchange-value. The use-value of a commodity is its capacity to satisfy certain human needs or desires. Marx maintains that such capacity is directly tied up with the physicality and corporeality of the commodity, that is to say, with its ‘matter’. Thus, the use-value of wheat is the capacity of wheat to satisfy hunger, and that capacity is tied up with the natural characteristic of wheat, with what makes wheat the natural thing that it is. Exchange-value, by contrast, is the capacity of the commodity to be exchanged with other commodities.Footnote ²⁰ In contrast to use-value, exchange-value is a social status that is attached to the physicality of the wheat and makes it the commodity wheat. The exchange-value thus is the ‘form’ which natural products of labour take on within a social system of commodity production.Footnote ²¹

The Hegelian framework discussed so far can help us to reconstruct what Marx is doing in the first chapter of Capital. Thus, in the first section of the chapter, entitled ‘The two factors of commodity: use-value and value’, we can take Marx to be analysing commodity as a substratum bearing two properties of use-value and exchange-value that are externally added to each other. By contrast, in the third section, entitled ‘the form of value [Wertform] or exchange-value’ we can take Marx to be conceiving of exchange-value and use-value as form and matter of commodity.Footnote ²² Such a conception indicates that exchange-value and use-value are internally interrelated, and thus, as we will see, constitute a contradictory unity.Footnote ²³ In another work, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Marx himself states such a shift of analysis:

According to Marx, so far as we conceive commodity atomistically, namely, as a substratum bearing two properties of use-value and exchange-value, the two properties ‘fall apart from each other’ (MEGA II/5: 31). It is only through the relation of commodity with other commodities that the inward unity of commodity obtains. But when we conceive of commodity in relation to other commodities, we are in effect analysing the commodity from the point of view of its form, and this analysis is exactly what Marx undertakes in the third section of the first chapter of Capital.

Marx's analysis of the form of value is replete with subtleties, and I will only give a simplified account.Footnote ²⁴ As discussed, Marx maintains that the ‘form of value only exists in relation of commodity to commodity’ (MEGA II/5: 31). And he explicates that ‘the actual relation that exists between commodities is their exchange process’ (MECW 29: 282/MEW 13: 28). Thus, he begins his analysis by focusing on the very basic relation of exchange that exists between two commodities, what he calls ‘the simple form of value’: ‘x Commodity A = y Commodity B; or: x commodity A is worth y commodity B’ (C: 139/K: 63).

As Marx's concern at this point is to analyse the form of value, he disregards the quantitative relation that exists between the two commodities (between x and y). Obviously, when the owner of commodity A exchanges it with commodity B, she is interested in the use-value of B. Thus, Marx maintains, the use-value or the matter of commodity B functions as the ‘sensuous form of appearance’ [sinnliche Erscheinungsform], as the ‘body of value’ [Wertkörper], as the ‘material shape’ [dingliche Gestalt] of exchange-value of A. (I have some linen, but I am hungry, and need some bread. Thus, I exchange linen with bread, and therefore, the exchange-value of linen is expressed in the use-value or the body of bread).

Through the simple form of value, commodity A is not yet inwardly constituted as a commodity, since the exchange value of commodity A is not expressed in its own use-value, but in the use-value of commodity B. Marx's desideratum is to show how it is the case that commodity A is constituted as one thing in which its own use-value and exchange-value cohere with each other. In order to do so, Marx maintains that the simple form of value is subject to a dialectical development. In the first step, Marx argues that if the exchange-value of A can be expressed in use-value or physicality of B, it can be expressed in the use-value or physicality of any other commodity (such as commodity C, D, E, etc.). But with such an expansion of the form of value to an endless number of commodities, the value of commodity A gets dispersed in a ‘motley mosaic of disparate and unconnected’ commodities, and thus no ‘unified form of appearance’ or expression of value for it obtains (C: 157/K: 79). The solution to such deficiency in expression of value is eventually the exclusion of one single commodity, the commodity of money, which functions as the universal equivalent, in which all commodities express their value in it. With the formation of money as the universal equivalent, the commodity A does not need to express its value in the physicality of other commodities, but already as an instance of such universality, it can express its value in its own use-value, i.e., in its own physicality. In a quite helpful analogy, Marx writes:

In this passage, Marx explains that there is no pre-made universal or form of human being of which the particular individuals are instantiations. Rather, a particular human being becomes a human being through a process of interrelation with other individuals, and such interrelations generate the universal or the form of human being. Thus a human being becomes a human being not immediately through their own body, but in their relating to other human beings, through which their own body ‘retroactively’ [rückbezüglich] becomes the instantiation of the species human being. In the case of commodity, Marx writes:

This passage is particularly noteworthy, since it clearly states the order of Marx's derivation of the inward constitution of commodity. First, the value of commodity is expressed in the use-value of another commodity, not in itself. Second, through the dialectic of value and the formation of money, the value of commodity is expressed in the use-value of itself. This means, third, that eventually commodity becomes a totality that has both and at the same time use-value and value.

I have argued that the totality or the inward constitution of commodity obtains through its relation with other commodities. But why is such inward constitution contradictory? In order to explain this, let us focus, one more time, on the simple form of value, namely, the relation between two commodities.Footnote ²⁶ Recall that when commodity A is exchanged with commodity B, the exchange-value of A is expressed in the use-value or the body of B. In order to explain the relation between the exchange-value of A and the use-value of B, Marx explicitly uses Hegel's terminology. The two, Marx writes, constitute a pair of ‘determinations of reflection’ (C: 149/K: 72).Footnote ²⁷ And then, similar to Hegel's conception of determinations of reflection, Marx holds that the use-value of A and the exchange-value of B ‘are two inseparable moments, which belong to and mutually condition each other; but at the same time, they are mutually exclusive or opposed extremes’ [zu einander gehörige, sich wechselseitig bedingende, unzertrennliche Momente, aber zugleich einander ausschließende oder entgegengesetzte Extreme] (C: 139–40/K: 63).Footnote ²⁸ As this formulation clearly indicates, the simple form of value, for Marx, is constituted by a contradiction; since, first, the exchange-value of A is contained in the use-value of B, and yet, since the two commodities are necessarily two distinct things, the exchange-value of A is excluded by the use-value of B. The relation is contradictory, since it is composed of two moments that contain, and yet exclude, each other. To further explicate, Marx considers the relation between the exchange-value of A and the use-value of B to be an ‘external opposition’. With the dialectic of value and the formation of the universality of money, the external opposition between exchange-value A and use-value B transforms into an ‘internal opposition’ within commodity A, between its exchange-value and its own use-value (MEGA II/5: 639). It is exactly the internalization of the relation with other commodities that makes commodity A the inwardly contradictory thing that it is.

Alternatively, we may describe the contradiction of commodity by referring to Marx's conception of money. We can understand Marx's conception of money better if we contrast it with the conception of money according to Enlightenment thinkers. For the latter, Marx reports, money is a ‘mere symbol’ that is ‘invented by the universal consent of mankind’ in order to facilitate the circulation of commodities. That is to say, for Enlightenment thinkers, money is the ‘arbitrary product of human reflection’, and thus bears no constitutive relation to commodities. By contrast, for Marx money inherently obtains through ‘the relation between all commodities’ (C: 184–86/K: 105–6) and retroactively makes commodities what they are. The formation of money is contradictory as money is the result of the interrelation or exchange of commodities. And yet money exists from the beginning in commodities, making the commodities exchangeable with each other in the first place.

In the previous section, I reconstructed the internal contradiction of the thing in Hegel by focusing on the contradiction of matter. I argued that matter is both unrelational and relational. Matter is unrelational, in so far it isolates the thing from other things that share the same form. And yet matter is relational, since it is the very interrelation of matters that first constitute the form. Here we can observe the same Hegelian structure in commodity. The commodity is initially a natural or physical thing, which is unrelated to other commodities. And yet the same commodity is exchanged with other commodities. In this latter sense, the commodity embodies money, and therefore is related to other commodities. The commodity is contradictory, since it is both related and unrelated to other commodities. That is to say, the commodity is composed of two mutually incompatible moments, which are nonetheless internally related: the moment of being physical and thus ‘sensuous’; and the moment of being social or relational, and thus ‘oversensuous’. And Marx in fact does not hesitate to use the two adjectives in one single phrase to further emphasize the internal contradiction of commodity: He characterizes commodities as ‘sensuously oversensuous … things’ [sinnlich übersinnliche … Dinge].Footnote ²⁹

In conclusion of this section, I would like to underscore the difference between Marx and Hegel on the issue of the relation of form and matter. I have explained that, for both, form is not a premade neo-Platonic category which exists beyond matter. Rather, for both, form obtains through the interrelation of matters. The difference between the two thinkers consists in the following point. In Marx, the form of the commodities, i.e., their exchange-value, though resulting from the interrelation of commodities, is ultimately reified in a separate commodity from all other commodities: namely, money. Marx writes:

Arguably, it is such reification of the universal or the form in Marx—a reification that does not have any counterpart in Hegel—that gives Marx's analysis an essentially critical bent. I cannot pursue the implications of this point in any detail here, but I would like to briefly indicate that, from an ontological point of view, the reification of the form of products of labour in money underpins Marx's famous discussion of the fetishism of commodities, a critical doctrine which is meant to express the systematic suppression of use-value to exchange-value in capitalism. For our present concern, it is worth noting that the reification of form in a separate commodity makes the contradiction of the commodity more explicit than the contradiction of the thing in Hegel since, for Marx, money is a recognizably separate commodity which inheres in all other commodities, and thus all other commodities include the very form which they actively exclude.

And more generally, the difference between Marx and Hegel on the issue of the contradiction of the thing consists in the fact that while for Hegel ‘everything’, including natural things, ‘is inherently contradictory’; for Marx the contradiction of commodity is a specifically social phenomenon that obtains in capitalism. For Marx, it is not the case that any product of labour in any conceivable mode of production is contradictory, rather the product of labour becomes contradictory only within a system of generalized commodity production, where all products of labour are produced for the sake of getting exchanged with, and are thereby related to, other products of labour. It is exactly such an irreducibly relational character of commodity in capitalism that makes it contradictory, a feature that the products of labour in pre-capitalist modes of production do not have.Footnote ³⁰