“Paradoxes of Exchange Society,” inquires into the social contract that is both presupposed and reproduced in all human exchange. As the title of Kluge’s film indicates, the exposition of Nachrichten aus der ideologischen Antike (News from Ideological Antiquity) seeks to constitute an antiquity appropriate to today’s challenges.
“Commodified things are not thingly, they are crystallized human characteristics, metamorphosed human beings.” —Alexander Kluge
Marx’s maxim that class struggle is the “motor force” of history is to be taken literally and not viewed as simply some literary metaphor. But what does this mean in the real world? How does this work? And, how should we read Capital politically?
Correcting a longstanding misinterpretation, Moseley argues that there is no ‘transformation problem’ in Marx’s economic theory.