historical materialism

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Historical Materialism 2j.i (2013) 2ij-2ig

BRILL

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Historical-Critical Dictionary of Marxism

Exteriority
A: hrigiya. - F: extriorit. - G: Exterioritt
R: vnesnee. - S: exterioridad. C: - waizaixing

For Lukcs, Bloch and Kosik, totality is both

the founding category of Marxist thought as
well as its horizon, understood in terms ofthe
horizon of Being that grounds the meaning
of beings in tbeir environment. 'Tbus capital
becomes a very mysterious being' {MECW 34,
460). As 'self-valorising value' {MECW 20, 292;
translation modified) the being of capital
ontologically grounds money, commodities
etc. Totality is the category par excellence for
every ontology, world-model or system. And
yet totality presupposes another, preceding
category without which there can be no totality: exteriority [Exterioritt], or externality
[uerlichkeit]. This is the unspoken presupposirion 'from where' totality can be thought.
A critique of totality always already presupposes a position outside of it. Exteriority is, in
a practical sense, the location ofthe 'Other' of
capital; the locarion ofthe living, ofthe workers not yet subsumed by capital (ante festum),
or the 'place' where they cease to work (post
festum) after they have been expelled by capital (througb unemployment). Exteriority is tbe
'most important category ofthe philosophy of
liberation' (cf Dussel 2003).
1. Exteriority in Marx's early writings. Although it would have been possible to
include earlier, indirect quotarions, here
only the most important texts will be noted.
Towards the end of 1843 or perhaps early in
1844, but certainly in Paris and in a turbulent
period of his intellectual development, Marx
writes: 'Where, then, lies the positive possi& Kiininklijkc Brill NV, Lcidun, -

bility of a German emancipation? Answer: In

the formation [Bildung] of a class with radical chains, a class of civil society which is not
a class of civil society, an estate which is the
dissolution of all estates, a sphere which has
a universal character by its universal suffering and claims, no particular right because
no particular wrong, but wrong generally, is
perpetrated against it' {MECW 3, 187). The
question of exteriority already presents itself
in this text. 'By proclaiming the dissolution of
the hitherto existing world order the proletariat
merely states the secret ofits own existence, for
it is in fact the dissolution of the world order'
(188). Here the proletariat appears as absolutely dominated, but at the same time as that
which is absolutely opposed to the totality (of
the capitalist order), i'his is a contradiction
of a positivity beyond the horizon of the ruling order, from where the present condition
{'the artificially produced povert/) is negated
as a principle 'in regard to the world which is
coming into being' (188). This principle is not
founded in the totality, the ruling order: it is
external to it.
2: Beyond Being as Nothingness. - Also in 1844,
and certainly following the article on economic questions that Engels sent to him from
England, Marx commences his philosophical
engagement with economics. In the second
notebook of the 1844 Manuscripts he writes:
'Political economy, therefore, does not recognise the unemployed worker, the workingman, insofar as he happens to be outside this
labour relationship. The rascal, swindler, beggar, the unemployed, the starving, wretched
and criminal workingman - these are figures
who do not existybr political economy but only
for other eyes, those of the doctor, the judge,
the grave-digger, and bum-bailiff, etc.; such

2l8

. Dussel / Historical Materialism 21.1 (2013)217-219

figures are spectres outside its domain [Reich]

'Before' or 'outside' of capital, living labour
{MECW 3, 285). These spectres reside in the
is already operative and, without being capital
exteriority of the totality. Somewhat later he in the exteriority of capital, it nonetheless is
adds: 'the abstract existence of man as a mere
the source of value. (Source [Quelle], not founworkman who may therefore daily fall from
dation [Grund], since the foundation of capital
his filled void into the absolute void - into his
is 'the valorisation of value'.) From the exterisocial, and therefore actual, non-existence'
ority of capital, living labour is potentially a
(286). For Marx, the non-waged dependent
creator of value (creator of the foundation):
human being (before or after she is subsumed
the positive source of future value. Within
by capital) is a 'spectre' that does not exist for
exteriority, living labour is determined negacapital. It is simply nothingness [Nichts]. It is
tively, as poverty; positively, as a value-creatthe trans-ontological, that which is beyond
ing source. Living labour is true reality, person
Being, the outside, 'realised nothingness [das
and embodiment [Leiblichkeit]. Beyond that,
erfuUte Nichts]', the being of exteriority that exteriority, living labour, is the viewpoint from
transforms itself into 'absolute nothingness'
which the critique of the totality, of capital,
once it is subsumed by capital, because it will
can be undertaken.
then have ceased to be an autonomous subject
(in the exteriority of capital, without capac- 4. Exteriority of living labour as creative source:
ity for living), only to transform itself into a
the 'pauper'. - In August 1861 Marx engages
(alienated, totalised) determination of capithe subject again in more depth in the 1861-3
tal. And yet it would be impossible to distinEconomic Manuscripts: 'The sole antithesis
guish someone from capital before he or she
to objectified labour is non-objectified, living
has been subsumed by it if there were not a
labour. The one is present in space, the other
domain in which non-capital is operative. This
in time, the one is in the past the other in the
domain, this 'place', is exteriority.
present the one is already embodied in a use
value, the other, as human activity-in-process,
3. Non-capital as negative and positive exterior- is currently engaged in the process of selfobjectificadon, the one is value, the other is
ity. - Thirteen years later (London 1857), Marx
writes in the third notebook of the Grundrisse: value-creating' {MECW 30, 36). Capital is the
given, past totality: accumulated labour. Liv'Labour as non-capital, posited as such, is (1)
ing labour is the actuaUty ofcapital that creates
Not-objectified labour, negativefy conceived
[...] non-raw material, non-instrument of from nothing {ex nihito), which is situated in
exteriority as that which precedes capital and
labour, non-raw product [...]. Living labour
existing as abstraction from these moments which stands as a negation in relation to itself.
of its actual reality (likeviise, non-value); this 'Labour capacity appears on the one hand as
absolute poverty' (40); and the labourer 'as
complete denudation, the purely subjective
such, conceptually speaking, [...] is a pauper;
existence of labour lacking all objectivity
[Objektivitt]. Labour as absolute poverty [...]. he is the personification and repository of this
capacity which exists for itself, in isolation
(2) Not-objectified labour, non-value, positively conceived [...]. Labour [...] as the Uv- from its objectivity. On the other hand [...]
ing source of value' {MECW 28, 223). When it labour capacity is, just as much, the general
possibility of material wealth and the sole
is not 'subsumed', totalised, labour still exists
source of wealth' (41). The worker is the 'source'
within the exteriority of capital and hence is
that creates capital. Considering Schelling's
its precondition. 'It is presupposed by capital
address concerning the 'Lord of Being' {SWX,
as its opposite, as the antithetical existence of
260 et sqq.) and the 'source of creation' (185),
capital, and as it on the other hand, in its tum,
it becomes clear that Marx applies this dispresupposes capital' (223). From the space of
tinction to the question of surplus-value: selfexteriority, living labour is subsumed through
valorising value is the foundation or the being
the labour contract to the real process of the
nf capital (tntality); living labour is beyond this
production of siirpluS'Vali.ie

E. Dussel/Historical MateriaUsm 21.1 (2013)217-219

'foundation' and is the 'creative source' of it.
And yet the necessity remains for it to situate
itself in the exteriority of this foundation,
5. When embodiment endures a tanning. - The
theme is found again in Capital, Volume I
(1867) in the systematically analogous location of a critique of capital, 'In the market", still
outside and before - that is, in the exteriority of capital - the capitalist, Marx ironically
remarks, is so lucky as to find 'a commodity,
whose use value possesses the peculiar property of being a source of value, whose actual
consumption, therefore, is itself an embodiment of labour, and, consequently, a creation
of value' (AffiCVf 35, 178). Here again Marx is
concerned with the moment at which the
worker is subsumed into the totality out of
exteriority. In doing so, the worker retains, at
all times, his ability to be, from the nothingness of capital, within his embodiment and
'vital character', a 'creative source of value'
(ibid,). Once the capitalist succeeds in contracting the worker, the result is a kind of triumphant march which leads, like in Dante's
Inferno, from the 'outside' of the exteriority
of capital, into the 'inside' of the factory: 'He,
who before was the money owner, now strides
in front as capitalist; the possessor of labour
power follows as his labourer' {MECW35,187),
He who 'before was the money owner" and he
who was the 'possessor of labour power' were
situated in the exteriority of capital. Now they
stride - one upfront, the other trailing behind
him like a dog would behind his master - upon
a new horizon: the totality, Marx depicts this
'exodus' from exteriority and 'entry" into the
totality as a play with two actors: 'The one
with an air of importance, smirking, intent on
business; the other, timid and holding back,
like one who is bringing his own hide to market and has nothing to expect but - a tanning'
(ibid,; translation modified).
All of this finds expression in the definitive concept of 'subsumption'. But this concept would be incomprehensible vrithout an
'outside' and 'below', from where the move-

219

ment 'inside-above' of the sublation [Aufhebung] emanates. The process of 'enclosure',

of inclusion-into-totality [EintotaUsieren], of
which alienation consists as a transition from
'fulfilled nothingness' (exteriority) to 'absolute
nothingness' (totality), can be understood
from the point of exteriority of living, not-yetsubsumed labour.
If one has only the category of totality, the
oppressed would be, in their oppression (wage
labour), nothing more than an exploited class.
Yet, departing from the category of exteriority,
he or she who, in thefuture, in a temporal before
[zeitUchen vorher] and a categoriat outside, will
be exploited, can be conceived of as a vital
embodiment, a character with ownership over
his or her labour-power, with an autonomous
dignity. Seen negatively, they are poor; understood positively, they are the 'creative source
of value'; they are the living labour which is
'presupposed by capital' as exteriority, but,
'on the other hand, it, in its tum, presupposes
capital' {MECW 28,223), because the pauper is
in need of wages and is thus necessarily subsumed by the totality.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: E, DUSSEL 2003, Philosophy of
Liberation, Eugene, OR,; K, MARX & F. ENGELS

1975-2005, Marx Engels Collected Works

{MECW), London; F,W.J, SCHELLING 1856-61,
Smmtliche Werke {SW), Stuttgart.

Enrique Dussel
Translated by Andreas Bolz
Above/below, body, capital, critique, dignity,
exclusion, existence, expropriation, liberation,
ontology, sublation, formal/real subsumption,
wage labour, totality, valorisation process.
Aufhebung, Befreiung, Exappropriation, Existenz, Exklusion, formelle/reelle Subsumtion,
Kapital, Kritik, Leib/Krper, Lohnarbeit, oben/
unten. Ontologie, Totalitt, Verwertungsprozess. Wrde,

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