A Sociological Theory of Value: Georg Simmel's Sociological Relationism [1. Aufl.] 9783839403730

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A Sociological Theory of Value

Per la mare, Núria Milà Vicents, i en la memòria de l’àvia, Maria Vicents Salvador

Natàlia Cantó Milà, Ph. D., teaches sociology and social policy at the University of Leipzig. Her main research areas are sociological theory, history of sociology, social policy, and development studies.

Natàlia Cantó Milà

A Sociological Theory of Value Georg Simmel’s Sociological Relationism

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Bibliothek Die Deutsche Bibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.ddb.de © 2005 transcript Verlag, Bielefeld All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, inlcuding photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Layout by: Kordula Röckenhaus, Bielefeld Typeset by: Natàlia Cantó Milà, Leipzig; Alexander Masch, Bielefeld Printed by: DIP, Witten ISBN 3-89942-373-9

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Table of Contents

Foreword by Otthein Rammstedt

9

Introductory Remarks

13

PART I: GEORG SIMMEL AS A SOCIAL SCIENTIST Introduction to Part I: Georg Simmel as a Social Scientist

21 23

1. Georg Simmel: His Life and Work Introduction. A Biographical Sketch Georg Simmel and the Social Sciences The Object of Sociology The Concept of Sociation Wechselwirkung. A Sketch for a Relational Sociology The Concept of the ‘Forms of Sociation’ The Concept of Form in Simmel’s Philosophy of Life The Problem Areas of Sociology You and Me A Look Back, a Look Ahead

27 27 28 37 39 40 44 50 51 52 53

2. The Making of Georg Simmel as a Social Scientist Introduction On the Influences of Völkerpsychologie On the Influences of Gustav Schmoller and the Younger Historical School of National Economy On the Influences of Herbert Spencer, Charles Darwin and Social-Darwinism On the Influences of Kant and the Dialogue with Neo-Kantianism On the Influences of Karl Marx and Marxism On the Philosophy of Life and the Influences of Henri Bergson A Look Back, a Look Ahead

55 55 56 59 66 69 79 89 91

5

3. The Philosophy of Money: History, Intentions, Perspective, Methodology Introduction From ‘On the Psychology of Money’ to The Philosophy of Money ‘On the Psychology of Money’ The Lines of Continuity and Divergence between ‘On the Psychology of Money’ and The Philosophy of Money On Simmel’s Distancing of Himself from the Influences of Herbert Spencer and Social-Darwinism between 1889 and 1900 Georg Simmel’s Dialogue with Heinrich Rickert during the Writing of The Philosophy of Money The Purpose and Methodology of The Philosophy of Money The Influence of Simmel’s Conception of Philosophy on the Structure of The Philosophy of Money Why Should We Take the Theory of Value be the Central Theme of The Philosophy of Money? A Look Back

95 95 97 100 104 109 113 116 118 120 122

Digression: Simmel on the Marxian Theory of Value Introduction The Marxian Theories of Value Georg Simmel on the Marxian Labour Theory of Value

123 123 124 131

PART II: GEORG SIMMEL’S THEORY OF VALUE Introduction to Part II: Georg Simmel’s Theory of Value

143 145

4. An Analytical Theory of Value Introduction On Being and Value The Differentiation of Subject and Object in the Processes of Valuation On the Relationality of Values On Exchange On Relativity and Absoluteness Why not a Relational Approach? Simmel’s Theory of Economic Value On Sacrifice On Equivalence Which Goods become Objects of Economic Valuation? From Usefulness to Desirability, from Scarcity to Sacrifice A Look Back, a Look Ahead

151 151 152

6

153 156 158 161 163 164 165 166 167 171

5. An Analysis of Money Introduction Money as the Reification of a Social Function The Value of Money An Ahistorical Analysis of the Emergence of Money. From Substance to Function Money Trust in Money The Characteristics of Money The Double Role of Money The Levelling Effects of Money and Their Consequences Money as a Reducer of Ambiguity Money as a Means of Exchange. Money as a Goal The Types of Personality that Derive from Considering Money as the Highest Value The Social Meaning of Money A Look Back, a Look Ahead

173 173 174 176 179 183 184 187 188 190 191 193 198 200

6. A Synthetic Theory of Value. The Modern ‘Styles of Life’ Introduction Money as an Object of Everyday Life On Having and Being On Quantification and Calculability On Means, Goals and Rationalization The Characterlessness of Money: Equality and Exclusion On Individual Freedom The Conflict of Modern Culture and Modern Lifestyles A Look Back

201 201 202 204 208 209 211 214 218 225

Epilogue: The Value of Culture

227

Bibliography

233

7

Forew ord

From a contemporary viewpoint, Georg Simmel’s The Philosophy of Money is, without a shadow of a doubt, one of the most significant scientific monographs of the 20th century, even though no scientific discipline has regarded The Philosophy of Money as one of its classic texts. Thus The Philosophy of Money has not been fully accepted by any discipline as fully belonging to its field of analysis. Indeed, academic philosophy has never accepted this monograph on money as a philosophical work while economics has never seen this “philosophical work” as a contribution to the economic discussion on money. Sociology and the arts do not view The Philosophy of Money as part of their scientific literature either, even when Simmel oriented himself towards the former in the subjects that he dealt with and the latter in his methodological approach. The unease that the reading of The Philosophy of Money provoked in the scientific community must have been intended by its author. Simmel must have known that he was offending the sensitivities of the philosophers of his time when he asserted that they were inadequately narrowing their research problems and, therefore, arriving at only meagre results. He said that he was not competent to speak to the economists by stating that not a single line of his research projects was ‘meant to be a statement about economics.’ He surely did not make any friends in the academic world of Wilhelmine Germany by taking Marx seriously, citing him with sympathy in his monograph, and asserting his intention of complementing Marxian theory with sociology. The Philosophy of Money was not conceived as a contribution to a particular discipline. From the very beginning it was meant to be an allencompassing interdisciplinary work. Simmel did not wish to philosophize in the standard way; he intended to go a different methodological 9

A SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY OF VALUE

path. There are two aspects that have often been ignored in The Philosophy of Money’s secondary literature. These aspects are Simmel’s methodology in The Philosophy of Money and the theory of value that he developed therein. With respect to methodology, Simmel asserted that his philosophy of money had been ‘an attempt for him to unfold the whole inner and outer cultural development through work on a single element of culture, taking the single line as a symbol for the whole picture.’ He also affirmed that in this work he had shown ‘that a channel resides beneath each little superficiality, through which this superficiality is connected to the last metaphysical depths’. His methodological motivation had in fact ‘grown out from his metaphysical yearning, which expressed itself simultaneously in the sought for relation between part and totality, surface and depth, reality and idea.’ The other central aspect is the question of values. Had Simmel followed a different understanding of values, he would have elaborated on his own theory of economic (and especially monetary) values. However, he dismissed an undifferentiated understanding of values and opted for a unitary concept of value. Unlike the neo-Kantian concept of value, Simmel’s concept was based on ‘reciprocal actions and effects.’ He did not thereby mean to turn all fixed points into thin air, but rather to understand them in a new and relative, way. Simmel’s theory of value is placed at the very centre of this book by Natàlia Cantó Milà. This is extremely positive. The fact that she has looked back upon the topic of values—which attained an enormous significance in the 1900s, thereby putting it into its well deserved place—is a novelty in the flood of current works on Simmel’s The Philosophy of Money. But even more significant is the fact that Canto Milà’s book does not remain fixed on the level of historical elaboration, but wonderfully connects with contemporary sociological theory. Cantó Milà shows the connections between Simmel’s sociology and contemporary sociological thinking. This is what makes up the attractiveness and significance that The Philosophy of Money still has for us today: Simmel’s unmasking of the latent structures of real social relations in a sensitive and acute analysis has often been viewed as a prediction of the domination of the monetary economy—which is something that Simmel never intended to do. For Natàlia Cantó Milà, the fact that she has emphasized the connections between Simmel’s work and contemporary sociological debates does not mean that Simmel can be integrated into our thoughts and debates. Above all, for her it means that our contemporary problems are now able to be articulated and understood with Simmel while many other sociological theories remain blind to them. 10

FOREWORD

Natàlia Cantó Milà’s complex and solid book works in a known yet unexplored field. That her thoughts will resonate among Simmel scholars is taken for granted. It would be extremely desirable for scholars in the wider field of sociological theory to pay attention to this work as well, since this book is addressing their subject, their discipline, their methodological, theoretical and practical challenges, topics which are all still waiting for a solution.

St. Cast, June 2005

Otthein Rammstedt

11

Introductory Remarks

‘But I unrolled my maps all the same, and asked him to go over the journey with me, just briefly. And in the lamplight, leaning on the veteran’s shoulder, I felt a peace unknown since my schooldays. But what a strange geography lesson I was given! Guillaumet didn’t teach me about Spain, he made Spain my friend. He didn’t talk about hidrography, or population figures, or livestock. Instead of talking about Guadix, he spoke of three orange trees at the edge of a field near Guadix: ‘Watch out for those, mark them on your map…’ And from then on the three orange trees had more significance than the Sierra Nevada. He didn’t talk about Lorca, but about an ordinary farm near Lorca. A living farm, with its farmer and its farmer’s wife. And that couple, lost in emptiness a thousand miles away from us, took on an importance beyond measure. Settled there on their mountain slope, they were ready, like lighthouse-keepers under their stars, to give help to men. From their oblivion, from their inconceivable remoteness we rescued such details, known to no geographer in the world. Only the Ebro, which waters great cities, is of interest to geographers. Not that little stream hidden in the weeds to the west of Motril, that stream that fosters thirty species of flowers. ‘Beware of that stream, it ruins the field for landing… Map that on your map too.’ Oh, I would remember that snake at Motril! It looked like nothing at all, it enchanted no more than a few frogs with its gentle murmur, but it slept with only one eye closed. In the paradise of that emergency landing-field, it lay in wait for me in the grasses, twelve hundred miles away. Given the chance, it would transform me into a sheaf of flames… And I was braced and ready to meet those thirty fighting sheep, drawn up on the hillside there and ready to charge: ‘You think the meadow is clear, and then wham!— you’ve got thirty sheep running down under your wheels…’ I could only smile in astonishment at such cunning treachery. Little by little, in the lamplight, the Spain of my map became a fairytale landscape. I marked with a cross the sanctuaries and the traps. Like beacons I charted the farmer, the thirty sheep, the stream. I pinpointed exactly that shepherdess neglected by the geographers.’1

1

Saint-Exupéry 2000:8.

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A SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY OF VALUE

The first time I heard these paragraphs from Saint-Exupery’s Terre des hommes I was participating in a seminar on sociological theory at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. It was read to us as an invitation to a journey. Yet it was a different kind of journey. It was not meant to be a journey over Spain by plane, but through the history of sociological theory. It was an invitation to stop and look at the details which escape the attention of most theoreticians, to call evidence into question, to be sensitive to ambiguities, to attend to phenomena which bind human beings together in a durable way; phenomena like friendship, thankfulness, and trust. In the years that followed I learned that sociology has also had its own Guillaumet, an author who looked at things which, at first sight, do not appear to be all that interesting from a sociological perspective: a letter, a secret, a look, a smile, an agreement or a fight. He made his own special map of human relations out of those subtle bonds that exist between two or more people and developed a sociological theory that looked beyond particular individuals and the institutions they create, to concentrate on those invisible threads that bind them together, that is, their reciprocal relations. This author was Georg Simmel (Berlin 1858Strasbourg 1918). Simmel, a contemporary of Max Weber (1864-1920) and Émile Durkheim (1858-1917), has only been rediscovered during the last decades but is now considered a classic author in the field of sociology.2 The originality and versatility of this philosopher and social and cultural scientist make him difficult to classify within the constraints of a single discipline. His writing style, closer to literature than to science, and the essayistic form of his finest analyses made him seem like a sort of brilliant dilettante beside Weber and Durkheim—and not only to his own generation but, to a certain extent to readers today. Furthermore, his lack of academic success, which meant that he was not able to supervise any doctoral theses or habilitations, hindered him from founding a “school”. As he himself noted, ‘I know that I shall die without spiritual heirs (and that is good). The estate I leave is like cash distributed among 2

14

The impressive renaissance of interest in Simmel started in the 1950s. In Germany, this was due above all to Gassen and Landmann’s attempts to sketch Simmel’s biography and initiate a dialogue about his rich oeuvre, and in the United States by Kurt Wolff, who translated chapters and essays into English and started a debate on the other side of the Atlantic. Yet the crucial impetus for the Simmel renaissance was given by Otthein Rammstedt in the 1980s in Germany, by David Frisby in the United Kingdom and by Donald Levine in the United States. Otthein Rammstedt embarked on the project of editing Simmel’s collected works, starting a huge archival research project searching for texts, documents and, above all, letters, engaging scholars from all over the world to work in Bielefeld and excavating the unexplored mines of Simmel’s theories.

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS

many heirs, each of whom puts their share to use in some trade that is compatible with their nature but which can no longer be recognized as coming from that estate.’3 All the same, and despite Simmel’s methodological and stylistic peculiarities, he was an astute theoretician who delivered highly interesting and, in their own way, systematic theories. This book will concentrate on one of these theories, namely the theory of value developed in The Philosophy of Money, and on Simmel’s approach to, and conception of, sociology, which made this theory of value possible in the first place. I have named Simmel’s approach the “relational approach” or “relational sociology”. In a way, writing about Simmel’s relational sociology is my response to and acknowledgement of the special invitation to sociology that my fellow students and I received in our first seminar on sociological theory. To Joan Estruch, the teacher that taught that course and so many others that have shaped my understanding of what it means to be a sociologist, I am deeply grateful; I am also, of course, grateful for his patient and critical reading of several versions of this work. Otthein Rammstedt, my Doktorvater, undoubtedly played the key role in the genesis of this book, since it was he who, after my initial reluctance, persuaded me with a calm “Fine… but do have another look at The Philosophy of Money,” to take a closer look at Georg Simmel and thus awoke in me a profound interest in this author. Marco Iorio, Cécile Rol and Karin Werner (my editor) have read the whole manuscript and confronted me with interesting critiques. My intellectual debt to Marco Iorio is present in almost every line of this book. Peter Boenning, María Jesús Izquierdo, Yasemin Niephaus, Christian Papilloud, Carlota Solé, Antje Vetterlein and Georg Vobruba have read chapters of this work at several stages of its development and also helped me with their comments and critiques. Pat Skorge and Paxton Helms have read it from the very first word to the final full stop, improving its English. Thomas Melde has helped bring the manuscript into its final form, and Gero Wierichs from transcript Publishers has accompanied these transformations with valuable pieces of advice. I am also indebted to Shu-er Wei and Gregor Fitzi, who accompanied my first readings of Georg Simmel, and patiently answered hundreds of questions. Justine Swierkot spent some sleepless nights listening to my new ideas, and managed to give the impression that it was all very interesting, even at four o’clock in the morning. Sandra Sequeira 3

Cited in Frisby 1990: XXV, translated from the German original ‘Anfang einer unvollendeten Selbstdarstellung’ (Simmel 1993:121).

15

A SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY OF VALUE

also supported and commented on my newest theses and ideas in long spring and summer walks through various Bielefeld parks. Their patience and kindness were a precious gift. They are wonderful friends. Antoni Estradé listened patiently and proposed hundreds of books that “I should certainly read”, and always responded to my e-mail inquiries with impressive helpfulness and knowledge. Montserrat Tresserra and Lluís Sàez encouraged me in long, pleasant conversations in this and that café during the past few Catalan summers. Vincenzo Mele, Claudia Portioli, Angela Rammstedt, and David Stockelberg were colleagues with whom I had the chance to fruitfully discuss some of my ideas. Peter Wagner oriented and encouraged me at a very early stage of this work, and gave me hints and stimuli that have accompanied me until today. The innumerable questions of my students at the University of Bielefeld forced me to think over some of the theses I wanted to develop in my work, and even forced me to rewrite the odd chapter. A big thank you goes to them, too. La Fundació La Caixa and the DAAD allowed me to visit Germany on a research scholarship for two years. Although the topic I was researching at that time had nothing to do with Simmel, this scholarship was what gave me the opportunity to make an acquaintance with his oeuvre, and made my work with Otthein Rammstedt and the Faculty of Sociology at the University of Bielefeld possible. To these institutions, and to the University of Bielefeld where I spent a total of six highly intellectually stimulating years, I am therefore in debt. Last but not least, Núria Milà has been there for me from the moment I was born. Her words of encouragement and support—and also of criticism—have always had wonderful effects on me and on the work I have done over the years. Marco Iorio has read this manuscript from the very first to the very last word, and has criticized almost every one of them. For his meticulous reading, innumerable pieces of advice, and above all for making my life wonderful I am so grateful to him. And Dàrio has greeted me with a smile every time I have raised my eyes from the computer screen, and thus made my work more difficult, for the desire to play with him has often been much stronger than the desire to do good work. I thank him for his patience and for distracting me so pleasurably. These three people have given me real-life examples of what I have been writing about: the strength and vital importance of the subtle threads that bind people together and turn them into what they are. Leipzig / Sant Martí de Centelles

16

February 2005

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS

This works seeks, on the one hand, to offer an overview of Simmel’s conception of and approach to sociology; on the other hand, it tries to systematically analyse the theory of value sketched out in The Philosophy of Money.4 These two aims have neither been chosen arbitrarily, nor can they be understood independent of each other. The relational perspective that Simmel turned into the trademark of his sociology (and social philosophy) is the epistemological foundation of his theory of value. Moreover, through the development of his theory of value (as well as of money, exchange and lifestyle) Simmel was seeking to prove the rightness of his relational approach. As I will argue later, Simmel delivered an intrinsically sociological approach to values with his theory of value precisely because he stuck to this relational paradigm in its development. In fact, he saw values as social constructions, thereby distancing himself from the theories of value which were embraced in his day. Moreover, as we will see in detail later, for Simmel values are not social constructions in the sense that they can be constructed in this way or that depending on the will of particular individuals. Values attain an objective character which imposes itself upon individuals, serving as eyeglasses through which they apprehend and evaluate their world. Glasses which Simmel doubted socialized human beings could ever completely take off. My account of Simmel’s approach to sociology and his theory of value is divided into two parts. Part I (‘Georg Simmel as a Social Scientist’) delivers a general introduction to the work and person of Georg Simmel, and then focuses on the way in which his interest in sociology was awakened, on the influences to which he was exposed and on the particular theoretical proposals that he offered for concretizing the discipline (chapters 1 and 2). It also looks at the concrete circumstances, influences, and motivations that led Simmel to write The Philosophy of Money, as well as the lines of continuity and divergence with respect to his previous works (chapter 3). Part II (‘Georg Simmel’s Theory of Value’) offers an analysis of the theory of value which Simmel laid out in The Philosophy of Money. I have organized my depiction and discussion of this theory of value by following the structure of Simmel’s monograph as much as possible. It is not always possible since, despite the fact that its first chapter is completely devoted to the theory of value, many thoughts and analyses of value appear scattered throughout the 4

Simmel developed a theory of value that aimed at being a general theory that would grasp the emergence and consolidation of all types of values, be they economic, ethical, aesthetic or of whatever other kind. These concrete types of value would then be special cases (with special features) of the one and the same general concept of value.

17

A SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY OF VALUE

other five chapters even though they are also pillars of his theory of value In my interpretation the theory of value should be understood as the central motif of The Philosophy of Money.5 A reading of this monograph through the lens of the theory of value imbues it with much more internal coherence than the focus on the issue of money. If the focus is on money alone, The Philosophy of Money appears to be a sort of melting pot of thoughts and ideas; it is only sewn together by its theme, a key in which the most varied motifs are played. Turn the focus to the theory of value, however, and it becomes a meticulously structured work.6 Hence, and in accordance with Simmel’s division of his monograph into an analytical and a synthetic part, I have distilled out an analytical theory of value and a synthetic theory of value. The first delivers a general theory of value and, based on this, a special theory of economic values (chapter 4). The second seeks to illustrate the consequences that the modern generalization of monetary economies have had on the very conception of economic values and, as an extension of the first, on values in general (chapter 6). The necessary link between these two chapters, Simmel’s analyses of money (its conditions of emergence, its function, and its social consequences), makes up chapter 5. At the end of each part I have added a digression or an epilogue. The digression at the end of part I elaborates on Simmel’s discussion of Marx’s theory of value, linking Simmel’s most relevant influences and the history of the writing of The Philosophy of Money—which was partially stimulated by the publication of the third volume of Capital in 1894—with the discussion of his theory of value. The epilogue at the end seeks to relate Simmel’s theory of culture to his theory of value, sketching hypotheses about Simmel’s theory of modernity. Although this work does offer an introduction to the sociology of Georg Simmel and, especially, to the monograph The Philosophy of Money, it can by no means substitute for a direct reading of Simmel himself. There are many reasons. First, it is obvious that one must read an author directly, and not rely exclusively on secondary interpretations to know what he or she meant; second, because a narration about what a classic author has to say can never be the wonderful reading that the 5

6

18

Despite the intense work of Simmel scholars on his theory of value, none of them has yet presented it as being the main axis of The Philosophy of Money, that is, as the central theme that actually gives it a systematic structure. See, among others, Cavalli 1993, Flotow 1995, Lichtblau 2000, Merz 1990, Rammstedt 2003. As I will illustrate in the three chapters that compose the second part of this book.

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS

classic itself is. It is also because my priority in this project has been as much to present Simmel’s sociological approach and his theory of value as to discuss them, and, on many occasions, to criticize them or to remould them. Sometimes I have sought to impose clearer analytical contours upon them—an undertaking that is certainly more modest than it might sound. Thus I have allowed myself a great deal of freedom in interpreting Simmel’s works, and as a result offer here not only an introduction to this author and to The Philosophy of Money, but also an interpretation of Simmel’s sociological approach as well as of his monograph—the latter interpretative effort emerging from a systematization of the sociologically highly interesting theory of value which resides in its pages. All the same, I have attempted to be accurate in my presentation so that the reader may easily distinguish the passages in which I have presented Simmel’s theses from those in which I have introduced my own proposals and arguments. Although this task is not always easy to accomplish without interrupting the flow of thought and breaking the rhythm of the prose, I hope that I have been able to find a balance between accuracy and a pleasant writing style.

19

Part I

Georg Simmel as a Social Scientist

Introduction to Part I: Georg Simmel as a Social Scientist

As a social scientist, Georg Simmel can best be described as the theoretician of social relations. This distinguishes him from the other two main founding fathers of the sociological discipline who also sought to define an object of study for sociology: Émile Durkheim who focused on ‘social facts’, explaining the social as stemming only from the social, and Max Weber, who focused on the social actions of individuals, developing from this standpoint an interpretative (verstehende) sociology. Simmel made the reciprocal actions and effects that emerge and develop from human relations the main object of his analysis and the lens through which he viewed social phenomena and institutions. As the next chapters will seek to illustrate in detail, precisely this focusing on the invisible threads that bind people together have made Simmel an indisputably classic author in sociology as well as a pioneering thinker of a relational paradigm in sociology. He theorized that social reciprocal relations were woven through people’s being together each day and in ways that are not directly derivable from their individual goals and intentions, and yet which result from their reciprocal actions and effects only. Simmel was seeking to distil from the innumerable dimensions and experiences of the social life of human beings that which is specifically and exclusively social to them. He argued that love, hate, avarice, jealousy, and all kinds of human motives, goals, intentions and feelings are too vague and all-encompassing to be the objects of sociological analysis. He held that these feelings, goals and intentions entail much more than exclusively “social components”, and that, therefore, concentrating on them is not the best way to grasp that which is specifically social in human relations. On the basis of an analysis of reciprocal actions and effects, Simmel proposed to analytically separate the intentions, motives, goals and historical constraints (which he termed contents) that lead an individual or a group to enter a certain relationship from the particular forms which 23

A SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY OF VALUE

such relationships assume. These concrete social forms (or forms of sociation) should constitute the object of sociology, for they are the language and the means with which the actors as such can communicate socially. Through the use and knowledge of the social forms, the participants in social relations can express the ‘contents’ (goals, intentions, motives, emotions) as well as interpret those of others. In fact, the possibility of forming and channelling individual goals, desires and motivations in this “socialized” fashion is what makes social communication possible, and, therefore, is a necessary condition for the establishment of social relationships. Simmel argued the forms of sociation cannot be reduced to, or deduced from, the motives and intentions of the concrete individuals and/or the concrete institutions that partake in concrete interrelations of whatever kind. These goals, motives and intentions actually constitute, in one way or another, the object of analysis of all the social sciences but sociology. Thus, seeking to distinguish the emerging discipline of sociology from all other social sciences, he proposed the interindividual (supra-individual) forms that social relations adopt as the best object of analysis to which sociology could devote itself. Furthermore, he argued that this forming of motives and intentions is precisely that which is exclusively social to social relations as well as that which makes social relations possible. This relational paradigm delivers a substantial contribution to the overcoming of the individualism-holism debate in sociology. Simmel’s point is that neither an individualist nor a holistic perspective can actually grasp that which is intrinsically social to social relations and social phenomena. Instead of arguing that, by concentrating on the whole (i.e., on “society”) or on particular individuals, the relational aspect will also enter into the picture somehow, Simmel made it the focal point of his sociology, thereby bringing the relational mode to the very top of the sociological agenda. However, this does not mean that Simmel considered these relations a different entity from the individuals who enter into them. Instead, I understand Simmel’s proposal to mean that the right perspective for sociology implies abstracting from the individuals who partake in these relations and focusing on the relations themselves and on the forms they adopt. All the same, these relations are not to be understood as that which physically and spatially lies between those who relate to each other, but rather as a state and as a change of state of these individuals. Simmel illustrated his point with the example of a kiss. A kiss is understood as a relation and cannot be considered ontologically different from the lips that kiss; it should be considered as their state. Nonetheless, Simmel suggested that, from a sociological viewpoint, these states and their changes rather than the individuals themselves are 24

INTRODUCTION: GEORG SIMMEL AS A SOCIAL SCIENTIST

the relevant objects of analysis.1 It is from this standpoint that I argue that Simmel proposed a paradigm shift that overcomes the individualism-holism debate, but without suggesting that relations are something different from those who realize them. Even so, they take forms and have consequences that have not been thought of, and planned by, those who realize them, and on their own develop a dynamic that is of great interest for the social sciences and especially for sociology. Furthermore, Simmel differentiated between social forms and institutions (literally constructions, Gebilde) such as the state or the church, arguing that sociology should concentrate on the former rather than on the latter.2 In focusing on the minute relations that bind human beings together, Simmel was convinced that he had found the right perspective to capture basic forms of sociation, and thereby identified an object of study that makes it possible to distil that which is intrinsically social in human relations. At first sight, he argued, these minute human relations do not bear any comparison to institutions such as the state or the church, or with phenomena like the monetarization of the economy or, to use a more recent example, globalization. A handshake, a friendly look, or a kiss between two people seems to lose all importance when compared to them. Yet, such institutions and phenomena are actually only possible if people keep on shaking hands, looking at each other, and establishing durable relations with each other that eventually become institutionalized and/or lead to phenomena which escape their knowledge and control. The apparently irrelevant relations between human beings weave the social net every day, they actually are society. Viewed through a relational lens, society stops being a vague and static entity. It becomes instead the sum of processes that crystallize in forms of sociation that are continuously woven anew in the flux of ongoing reciprocal actions and effects. This is the way in which, in my view, Simmel’s relational perspective helps unravel the opposition between the macro and micro approaches, concealing them through the focus on relations. *** 1 2

GSG6 1989: 61-62. However, an analysis of his Sociology, for instance, soon proves that he did not stick to this differentiation and concentrated on both with the same intensity. It would be highly interesting to concentrate on the differentiation between social constructions (Gebilde) and forms of sociation. We will not be able to deal with this in detail here, but suffice it to say that this differentiation is not very clear. There are certainly ways of arguing that institutions are not too different from objectified forms of sociation in which case a clear line between structures and forms would be difficult to trace.

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A SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY OF VALUE

The chapters of the first part of this study deliver an overview of Simmel’s main contributions to sociology. This will be achieved through a depiction of Simmel’s general approach to sociology, paying special attention to his relativism (which I will term “relationism”) and to his analysis of the forms of sociation: the two main pillars of his sociology. A brief presentation of the key influences on the development of Simmel’s sociological theory will follow, in the hope that it will simultaneously portray Simmel’s originality and his debt to his sources. Finally, in this first part, The Philosophy of Money (the book that actually contains Simmel’s theory of value and constitutes a brilliant realization of his relationism, thus capturing the focal questions I will be addressing extremely well) will be introduced and its lines of difference and continuity with Simmel’s previous works and, especially, with the 1889 text ‘On the Psychology of Money’ will be traced. Hence, the book upon which we will concentrate our attention almost exclusively in the second part of this work will already be familiar to us. It will be introduced from the general context of Simmel’s social theory and within the more general considerations of the evolution that his works underwent from his first explicit engagement with the issue of money and economic values to the publication of his monograph on them in 1900. Chapter one delivers a brief biography of Georg Simmel as well as a presentation and discussion of his concept of and approach to sociology. As mentioned above, his relationism and formal sociology will be the centre of our attention. Chapter two focuses on those authors and currents of thought that had a special impact on the development of Simmel’s sociological works and perspective. Chapter three concentrates on the way in which the theses that Simmel developed in The Philosophy of Money slowly took shape over the course of the years that separate one of the primary influences of this monograph (i.e., the brief text ‘On the Psychology of Money’), and The Philosophy of Money itself. At the end of this first part, a digression will concentrate on Simmel’s discussion of the Marxian theory of labour value and thus prepare the ground for the second part in which Simmel’s theory of value will occupy all of our attention.

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1. Georg Simmel: His Life and Work

Introduction. A Biographical Sketch Georg Simmel was born in the heart of Berlin on March 1, 1858. He was the youngest son of Flora and Eduard Simmel, who were of Jewish origin but who had converted to Christianity during their youth. Following the early death of Eduard Simmel in 1874 the family suffered serious financial difficulties. Where the young Georg was concerned, they were overcome thanks to Julius Friedländer, a friend of the family and cofounder of the music publishing company ‘Peters’. Friedländer, a welloff man who had no children, felt a strong sympathy for the youngest Simmel, and took him under his wing as his protégé. Thus, thanks to Friedländer’s support, Georg Simmel was able to attend high school and then university in Berlin. There he studied philosophy, history, history of art, and an early form of social psychology (Völkerpsychologie).1 He attended the seminars of Johann Gustav Droysen, Theodor Mommsen, Moritz Lazarus, Hermann Grimm, Adolf Bastian, and Eduard Zeller, among others.2 In 1881 Simmel received his degree as a Doctor of Philosophy; but the road to it had not been an easy one. In his first attempt at a doctoral thesis, he delivered a work strongly influenced by Völkerpsychologie with the title Psychological and Ethnological Studies on Music. However, it was rejected by the philosophy faculty to prevent the young philosopher’s being encouraged to pursue this “wrong” direction.3 He had to submit a text on Kant instead which he had written for a competition and with which he had earned an imperial prize in 1880. Its title was The

1 2 3

See Frisby 1992:22 for more details on Völkerpsychologie as a “pre-form” of social psychology. Köhnke 1996:35. ‘Psychologische und ethnologische Studien über Musik’. GSG1 1999:4589.

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Nature of Matter according to Kant’s Physical Monadology.4 The Habilitation—which also encountered some controversy—followed in 1885.5 Simmel had to go through the examination procedure twice, possibly due to a somewhat impolite response to one of the examiners during the oral examination.6 After the Habilitation, he continued his academic career as a Privatdozent.7 An associate professorship without salary followed in 1901. It was not until 1914 that he was offered a regular professorship. This was, much to his later displeasure, not in Berlin, but at the University of Strasbourg, where he remained until his death on 26th September 1918, shortly before the end of the First World War. During his lifetime, Simmel was a well-known figure in Berlin’s cultural scene. He did not restrict himself to scientific or academic matters, but showed great interest in the social problems of his time as well as the arts. He sought contact with the intellectuals and artists of his day. He married the portrait painter Gertrud Kinel in 1890 (with whom he had a son, Hans, who later became an associate professor of medicine in Jena), and was acquainted with well-known artists and writers of his day such as Rainer Maria Rilke, Stefan George, and Auguste Rodin, among others. He organized private meetings and seminars at his home in Berlin, choosing the participants with great care: among the selected were Ernst Bloch, Bernhard Groethuysen, György Lukacs, Margarete Susman, and Gertrud Kantorowicz.8

Georg Simmel and the Social Sciences Simmel’s interest in the social sciences can be traced back to the very beginning of his academic career when he, as a young student, attended Moritz Lazarus and Heymann Steinthal’s seminars at the University of Berlin. There he became acquainted with Völkerpsychologie, a discipline these two brothers-in-law had founded and which can be thought of as an older form of social psychology. Simmel’s contact with the social sciences during his student years was deeply influenced by this now ex4 5 6 7 8

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Das Wesen der Materie nach Kant’s Physischer Monadologie (GSG1 1999:9-42,43-87). See Köhnke 1996:42-51. Habilitation: postdoctoral qualification to lecture. Köhnke 1996:107. I.e. as an external lecturer. Gertrud Kantorowicz was not only Simmel’s friend and student, but, for a while, also his lover. Not much is known about this affair, only that as a result of it a girl, Angela, was born. Georg Simmel neither acknowledged his paternity nor contributed in any way to the care and upbringing of this child. See Angela Rammstedt 1996 for more on this issue.

GEORG SIMMEL: HIS LIFE AND W ORK

tinct discipline, especially by the works and words of Moritz Lazarus. Other influences on the very young Simmel that might have led him down the path of the social sciences came from positivism, which was very influential at that time, and from Spencer’s evolutionary theories. In fact, Simmel’s close connections to Völkerpsychologie can be seen in the fact that his first attempt at a doctoral thesis—the text on music which was refused by the philosophy faculty—was strongly inspired by the theses of Völkerpsychologie.9 Furthermore, his first texts in the field of social science were published in the journal Lazarus and Steinthal edited together: Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft.10 Following this early link with Moritz Lazarus and (to a lesser extent) Heymann Steinthal, Simmel (now a junior colleague at the philosophy faculty in Berlin) became acquainted with Gustav Schmoller and, consequently, with the Jüngere Historische Schule der Nationalökonomie (‘Younger Historical School of National Economy’). There he was introduced to the newest debates concerning economics in general and political economy in particular, and presented a paper ‘On the Psychology of Money’ in Schmoller’s discussion circle: this paper later became one of the primary influences of The Philosophy of Money.11 The acquaintance with Schmoller and the contact with the Younger Historical School of National Economy further stimulated Simmel’s interest in the social sciences in the direction initiated by Völkerpsychologie. On the one hand, he profited from Schmoller’s personal engagement and theoretical interest in ‘the social question’.12 On the other he was deeply influenced by Lazarus’ emphasis on a supra-individual level of analysis, as well as by the relativizing worldview of Völkerpsychologie, its conception of ethical principles as bound to a group (Volk) and not universally valid, and by Lazarus’ theorizing about the relationship of the individual to the group and to the culture of this group. He also read 9

Herbert Spencer had also written a text on the origins of music which Simmel might have known. See Spencer(1891)1966. 10 See: ‘Psychological and Ethnological Studies on Music’ (‘Psychologische und ethnologische Studien über Musik’, Simmel 1882:261-305), ‘Dante’s Psychology’ (‘Dantes Psychologie’, Simmel 1884:18-69, 239-276) and ‘On the Psychology of Women’ (‘Zur Psychologie der Frauen’, Simmel 1890:6-46). 11 ‘Zur Psychologie des Geldes’. GSG2 1989:49-65. It was published as an article in a journal Schmoller edited: ‘Jahrbuch für Gesetzgebung, Verwaltung und Volkswirtschaft im Deutschen Reich’ (Yearbook of Legislation, Administration and Economy in the German Empire). We will focus upon this text with some detail in chapter 3. 12 Die soziale Frage.

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with great interest the works of Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer and incorporated elements of their theories into his thought. All these sources helped Simmel shape the contours of his sociological approach. Moreover, his knowledge of Kant (indispensable in those times for any student—and scholar—of philosophy) slowly gained an increasing importance for his approach to the social sciences as well. It penetrated deeply into Simmel’s sociological work and perspective, especially after his interest in social-Darwinism decreased as the 1890s went by.13 Simmel’s re-orientation towards Kant and Kantianism formed the background for a dialogue with the members of the southern-German neoKantian school, especially with Heinrich Rickert, but also with the sociologist who was the closest to their ideas, Max Weber. This contact with neo-Kantianism as well as an intense reading of Kant influenced Simmel’s approach to the social sciences at the end of the 19th century and during the first years of the 1900s. These are precisely the years in which The Philosophy of Money was written. As we know from the diverse accounts of those who knew Simmel personally, he was one of the best known lecturers at the University of Berlin.14 Furthermore, his seminars were attended by a great number of students and his books were widely read and reviewed. His sociological theory was even well-received on the other side of the Atlantic in the late 1880s and 1890s. Some of his sociological essays were translated into English, some of them were published in English first, and others were only published in English. The essays were published in wellknown American sociological journals, such as The American Journal of Sociology and Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.15 Given his publishing success, it is not immediately understandable why Simmel’s academic career was not more successful. From his correspondence, and from Gassen and Landmann’s attempts to reconstruct Simmel’s life and oeuvre, it is known that Simmel had several friends and colleagues who sought to help him obtain a professorship on several occasions in his life.16 For instance Georg Jellinek and Max Weber (unsuccessfully) supported Simmel’s aspirations to a full professorship at the University of Heidelberg in 1908. The fact that 13 Rammstedt has pointed out that the young Simmel actually intended to bring Kantianism and a Darwinist materialism together in his social science, as his contributions to the journals ‘Vorwärts!’ and ‘Die neue Zeit’ show. Yet, he had already given this idea up by the late 1890s (Rammstedt 1993:27). 14 See Gassen & Landmann 1993 for some of these narrations. 15 See them collected in GSG18, forthcoming. 16 See Gassen & Landmann 1993 .

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he was of Jewish descent, despite having been baptized a Protestant as a child, surely played a significant role in the lack of recognition that he received from the academic system. Yet other motives also played an important role in this story. Simmel’s peculiar and original writing style was certainly at odds with the established scientific canons of the time; and, his works were not easy to classify as belonging to one discipline or another. In fact, Simmel’s writings seem on some occasions to be closer to literature than to a scientific discipline. His preference for writing essays should be added to this list, as well as his custom of never—or only equivocally—citing his sources. All these facts led to Simmel’s being taken less seriously than he should have been and contributed to his exclusion from the established German scientific community of that time. Nonetheless, the fact that his family was of Jewish extraction was possibly a key factor in why he had to wait until his fifty-sixth birthday before he became a full professor—at least this is the impression that one is left with in light of the way that Simmel was reproached for his relativistic (“typically Jewish”) mode of thinking. Indeed, the conservative bureaucracy of the Grand Dukedom of Baden blocked any attempts to gain a professorship for Simmel. The evaluation letter from the historian Dietrich Schäfer (also from Berlin), commenting on Simmel as a possible candidate for a professorship in Heidelberg in 1908, mentioned his ‘Jewishness’ as an argument against his making a good professor. According to Schäfer, this ‘Jewishness’ tinged Simmel’s intellectual production with a strong relativism and negativity—characteristics that were not good for any student.17 Throughout his life, Simmel had to fight against many similar accusations. This might have led him to put particular emphasis on his endeavour to develop a ‘positive relativism’, a relativism which had to be understood as a social relativity. In my view, this could better be translated as a social relationism. He stressed on many occasions that he was not attempting to destroy anything.18 What he was doing, rather, was wondering about the ways in which values, truths, or aesthetic canons (among other things) had emerged, and why they had become stable. He argued that their appearance of “absoluteness” is a product of reciprocal human actions and effects, and, therefore, nothing is fundamentally absolute, but always embedded within a social context.

17 Gassen & Landmann 1993, Köhnke 1996. 18 See Simmel’s letters on that matter, especially to Jellinek and Rickert, the Georg Simmel Archive, University of Bielefeld. All letters cited in these study can be found in the Georg Simmel Archive, University of Bielefeld, see them collected in GSG22 and GSG23, forthcoming.

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In fact, seeking to escape being reproached for writing from a negative relativistic perspective, Simmel even radically rejected the works of his youth, especially Introduction to the Moral Sciences, which had awakened the controversy about his relativism.19 He had announced his intention to rewrite it on several occasions but had never managed to do so. A good decade after its publication (1892/1893), he affirmed that he no longer accepted most of the ideas that he had developed in it.20 All the same, and despite the varying approaches to philosophy and the social sciences that Simmel developed throughout his career, his interest in sociology remained constant through his entire life. Proof of this can be found not only in the papers that he published, but also in his correspondence. For instance, when Simmel wrote, in a letter to Célestin Bouglé on March 2, 1908, that he was occupied with his Sociology, which was finally coming to its end, he also mentioned that the work on it had dragged on for fifteen years;21 this indicates that sociology had been a long-term commitment for him. If we take this assertion literally and consider that Sociology was first published in 1908, his work on it must have begun around 1893. Consequently, its first seed should be sought in the article ‘The Problem of Sociology’—which was originally published in 1894.22 Indeed, Simmel must certainly have considered this article a significant contribution to sociology from the very beginning. He endeavoured to spread its ideas, even abroad, as much as possible. Its translation into French appeared at the same time as the original German version, in September 1894. The English translation appeared a year later and, by the end of the century, the Italian and Russian translations were also in print. The English translation, which was published in the ‘Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science’, is of particular significance. In a supplementary note, Simmel highlighted that sociology involves empirical research and asserted that its aim is to solve social problems instead of remaining on the level of endless discussions about definitions. This supplementary note makes it clear that Simmel did not

19 Einleitung in die Moralwissenschaften. GSG3 1989 & GSG4 1991. 20 GSG4 1991:408 (editorial report). A reprint of the original of 1892 reached the German market in 1904. Another reprint came in 1911. 21 Soziologie. Eine Studie der Formen der Vergesellschaftung, GSG11 1992. All references to Simmel’s unpublished letters in any volumes of GSG stem also from the Georg Simmel Archive at the University of Bielefeld. As has been mentioned above, in the near future they will be published as the volumes 22 and 23 of Simmel’s collected works, i.e. GSG22 and GSG23 respectively. 22 ‘Das Problem der Sociologie’. GSG5 1992:52-61.

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consider this new discipline to be an offshoot of philosophy but a science that was concerned with the social problems of his time.23 If we have a closer look at Simmel’s correspondence with Célestin Bouglé in those years (i.e., between 1894 and 1908), we find that in a letter of February 15, 1894, Simmel had already emphasized his interest in this new discipline of sociology. Furthermore, he affirmed that he did not foresee a shift away to any other fields of inquiry in the immediate future. Thus he certainly closed a circle when, in 1908, he asserted that he was concluding a work that he had begun a long time ago. Indeed, during the years that separate ‘The Problem of Sociology’ and Sociology Simmel focused on many special sociologies, seeking to describe the social problems of the day within a sociological framework. He devoted his attention to the workers’ and women’s movements, to religion, to the family, to prostitution, and to ethics, among many others.24 He seemed to be deeply interested in putting his new theoretical proposals for the constitution of sociology into practice, thus proving their heuristic validity. Simmel was also well aware that the institutionalization of sociology would be reinforced by the establishment of scientific journals and official institutions. Hence he participated in the ‘Institut International de Sociologie’, of which he became the vice-president, published regularly at the American Journal of Sociology, and—although only briefly due to differences with Emile Durkheim—collaborated with l’Année sociologique. He even toyed with the idea of founding his own sociological journal but never realized this project.25 He was also well aware that another effective means of consolidating the role of sociology within the scientific sphere was through its presence in the university. Thus he offered sociological seminars without interruption from 1893 until his departure for Strasbourg in 1914.

23 Thus, he asserted that ‘Just what name to give this group is quite unimportant since the real question is to state problems and to solve them and not at all to discuss the names which we should give to particular groups of them.’ (Simmel 1994:32, my emphasis) This statement of problems refers to sociological and not “untranslated” social problems. The Italian translation of this text also included further modifications. This time they reflected Simmel’s theoretical dispute with Emile Durkheim. See Fitzi 1998a, for an analysis of the new and original elements of the Italian version of ‘Il problema de la sociologia’. 24 See, among others, GSG5 1992:75-90, 246-265, 266-286, GSG7 1995: 116-131, 132-183, 201-220, 221-246, GSG8 1993,131-141, 142-179, 180257, 308-316, 317-323, 324-334. 25 Rammstedt 1992:4.

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Despite his self-presentation to Bouglé in 1908, it is clear that Simmel did not ceaselessly work on Sociology for fifteen years. From 1897 to 1900 he was almost exclusively devoted to his work on The Philosophy of Money. In 1904 he published his lectures on Kant26 (1904), organized the reprint of Introduction to the Moral Sciences (1904), and substantially revisited The Problems of the Philosophy of History27 (1905)—whose first version had been published in 1892.28 The Philosophy of Fashion29 (1905) and Religion30 (1906/1912) were all written during this period too.31 In ‘The Problem of Sociology’ Simmel addressed sociology’s lack of a well-defined object of study for the first time. This lack is precisely what he considered to be ‘the problem of sociology’. In order to solve it, he developed a proposal for the young discipline which included an object of study that was not already monopolized by another social science. His intention was to endow the new-born science with legitimacy and scientific concreteness, and he assumed that this would not be possible as long as sociology did not have its own realistic object of study. At the same time, he sought to strengthen its academic position against multiple attacks from various more established lines of fire. Indeed, not many scholars at the end of the 19th century saw a point in sociology and considered it a melting pot of existing disciplines. Fearing that his message had not been understood, for his article hardly provoked any reaction, Simmel endeavoured to prove his point by undertaking a large project: the writing of Sociology. With this work he sought to illustrate and put into practice the proposal that he had delivered in 1894 for an object of sociology. On the July 15, 1898, he wrote to Georg Jellinek that he was wholly convinced that the problem that he had pointed out in his ‘The Problem of Sociology’ opened a new and important field of knowledge. He considered his proposal for an analytical distinction between the forms of sociation and their contents a sociological milestone.32 He felt obliged to prove his point and to convince the scientific community of the feasibility and fruitfulness of his idea. The best way of doing this was to make it feasible and fruitful himself.33 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

GSG9 1997:7-226. Probleme der Geschichtsphilosophie. GSG9 1997:227-419. GSG2 1989:297-423. Philosophie der Mode. GSG10 1995:7-38. Die Religion. GSG10 1995:39-118. Rammstedt 1992:5. After the presentation of Simmel’s intellectual journey is finished we will give this distinction the attention it deserves. 33 GSG11 1992:891-892 (editorial report).

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Sociology was not a completely new monograph. It combines partially rewritten articles and essays which Simmel had produced between the publication of ‘The Problem of Sociology’ (1894) and 1908. Simmel, as can be gathered from his letters, was aware of the incompleteness of this work, but defended it by saying that it was an attempt to put into practice what he had suggested almost fifteen years earlier, when it had received so little response.34 In another letter to Georg Jellinek (this time from December 23, 1907, shortly before the publication of Sociology), he reaffirmed his awareness of the patchy character of his work. He excused it by stating that it was a contribution to a brand new discipline, without any traditions and established research techniques. He affirmed that no one knew the weaknesses of his work better than he did; but, that he comforted himself with the idea that no work without predecessors could be as complete as a work which had drunk from the sources of an already existing discipline with a consolidated theoretical tradition and methodology.35 A different motive for the publication of Sociology in this somewhat incomplete state was Simmel’s eagerness to leave sociology aside and devote his attention to philosophy again. In fact, as the 1900s went by, he did not wish to be thought of mainly as a sociologist any longer. Following the publication of Sociology in 1908, Simmel did not work on any sociological papers at all for nine years and devoted his efforts to philosophy, history and aesthetics instead. This turn towards philosophy began with The Philosophy of Money. There are many reasons that might explain his distancing himself from sociology. It was not an established discipline within the academic world and, therefore, it did not allow him to obtain a professorship in that field. As the years went by, the need for academic recognition (and for a salary) grew. Furthermore, sociology offered very little recognition: he would not have been appointed to a professorship in philosophy for his sociological work either. Even if he had decided to remain a sociologist, the conservative winds of Wilhemine Germany which were bending academic policy in their direction would have denied him the academic chance to do so. Rammstedt has suggested that the repeated failures that he suffered scared him out any attempt to remain a sociolo-

34 GSG11 1992:892 (editorial report). 35 GSG11 1992:903-904 (editorial report).

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gist.36 From this point of view, Simmel’s emphasis on the philosophical character of The Philosophy of Money is easily understandable.37 Besides, the publication of the second edition of The Philosophy of Money and of Sociology mark the end of Simmel’s most clearly Kantian period. Particularly after he became acquainted with Henri Bergson and with his oeuvre, he changed his perspective and directed his interests towards the philosophy of life (Lebensphilosophie).38 As part of Simmel’s production from these years we find, among other works, Kant and Goethe39 (1906/1916), The Main Problems of Philosophy40 (1911), The Philosophical Culture41 (1911/1918), Goethe42 (1913), Rembrandt43 (1916) and Lebensanschauung (View of Life), published posthumously in 1918.44 This new turn towards the philosophy of life made the concept of life the primary focus of his theoretical work, consigning the concept of society to a secondary role. During these years Simmel occupied himself mainly with the study of brilliant artists, of their oeuvre, and of the ways in which the pulse of life crystallized in (and thus “formed”) their work. All these changes and the unfavourable circumstances for sociology surely contributed to Simmel’s losing interest in the discipline that had so fascinated him in his youth. He did not write a single line about it for years. Yet, unexpectedly, in 1917, a year before his death, Fundamental Questions of Sociology was written and published.45 The impetus for writing this book came from a publisher (G.J. Göschen) who intended to print an introductory work on sociology. Simmel was invited to write it thanks to the success which some of Simmel’s other works for the same publisher had enjoyed.46 Now, if Simmel had indeed totally lost interest 36 Rammstedt 1993:26-27. 37 All the same, he never quite abandoned sociology. In fact, in 1899 he became vice-president of the Parisian ‘Institute International de Sociologie’ and in 1909 participated in the founding of the German Sociological Society (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Soziologie), for which he served as one of the chairmen until 1913. 38 See Fitzi 1998b & 2002. 39 Kant und Goethe. GSG10 1995:119-166. 40 Hauptprobleme der Philosophie. GSG14 1996:7-158. 41 Philosophische Kultur. GSG14 1996:159-460. 42 GSG15 2003:7-270 . 43 GSG15 2003:305-515. 44 GSG16 1999:209-425. This work includes Simmel’s personal contribution to the philosophy of life and can be considered his philosophical legacy. 45 Grundfragen der Soziologie. GSG16 1999:59-150. Translated into English in Simmel 1964. 46 Mainly his The Main Problems of Philosophy. For more information on this topic see GSG14 1996:468 (editorial report).

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in sociology, it is likely that he would merely have reached for the shelf of his previous works and rewritten them in a shorter form. But he did not. Despite using older material, Simmel rewrote and redefined his perspective. In Fundamental Questions of Sociology he presented, in scarcely one hundred pages, the final stage of his sociological reflections. There it becomes clear that he had combined his proposal for a sociological discipline based on the analysis of the forms of sociation with the perspective of the philosophy of life. After this overview of Simmel’s different phases of production and interests, we will concentrate on his sociological work. In order to do so, we will begin with his proposal for an object of analysis for sociology.

The Object of Sociology At a time when sociology was still far from being an established discipline, Simmel sought to relieve it of the burden of having to be “the science of society”. According to him, this burden was an impossible one for the new-born discipline to cope with. To be the science of society meant competing with established disciplines for the legitimacy of its object of study. Law and history, psychology and ethnology, all could argue the case that society was their object of analysis, thus leaving sociology with the mere pretence of including elements from them all. Viewed from this perspective, society would be an all-encompassing object of study. Yet, at the same time, society eludes scientific investigation, for it does not offer any concrete object upon which to focus. Simmel, as Max Weber would do some time later, contributed with his approach to sociology and his illuminations on society to the demystification of this concept as a reality sui generis, impossible to reduce to a sum of its parts, as it had been depicted in the sociological literature of the 19th century, and as was still echoed in the sociologies of Emile Durkheim and Ferdinand Tönnies. Instead, this new approach conceived of society as a dynamic process, a continuous happening, and a continuous becoming. Simmel defined it as the sum of the existing forms of sociation. But let us focus a little more closely on Simmel’s approach to the concept of society, before we turn our attention to his concept of the forms of sociation. Simmel argued that if the intention is to reach an understanding of society, or of social phenomena, one cannot concentrate on single individuals in the hope that, by adopting a significant enough distance, society will enter the picture. He illustrated this point beautifully in Fundamental Questions of Sociology with the example of the Greeks and the 37

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Persians at the battle of Marathon. Even if—in seeking to understand the underlying causes of the war—it were possible to focus on the psyche and biography of each Greek and each Persian, past and present, who participated in the battle, greater comprehension would hardly be forthcoming. An understanding of society cannot be attained by adding up individuals: the focus must be set upon their interrelations.47 For only in and through these interrelations can the concrete situations that might make a war (or anything that is social48) feasibly be explained. This does not mean that, say, methodological individualism is completely false. By no means, because methodological individualism in fact tends to focus on individuals in order to seek these interrelations, thus not remaining on a psychological level. All the same, the reproach against methodological individualism could be that, for sociology, it only implies a lot of work for an unnecessary detour through concrete individuals. To put it plainly, the job is done best and most quickly when focusing directly on relations. Despite my using an example from Simmel’s last sociological work here, this is not a thesis that first emerged with Fundamental Questions of Sociology. Rather, it is a constant principle in Simmel’s sociological oeuvre, from On Social Differentiation to Fundamental Questions. Indeed, Simmel already asked himself what the actual object of sociology could be in On Social Differentiation; that is, what object of sociological analysis could justify it as an independent discipline. His resolute dismissal of society as the object of sociology can already be found therein. He argued that defining sociology as the study of society is just as inconsistent as depicting astronomy as the study of the starry sky.49 Society is not the object of sociology, for it does not offer the accessibility and exclusivity which a scientific object of study requires, according to the Simmelian argument. In short, society as such cannot be captured and investigated scientifically. According to Simmel, society is more a mystical entity than a scientifically analysable object.50 He was searching for an object which permitted a dynamic analysis and which was scientifically approachable. He found it in the forms of sociation.

47 GSG16 1999:64. 48 Implying, from this standpoint, that war is certainly a social phenomenon, in the sense that it implies reciprocal actions and effects between human beings who, furthermore, in one way or another, interact with each other. 49 GSG2 1989:126. 50 He rejected the concept of nation/(national) culture (Volk) as a valid object for the social sciences as well.

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T h e C o n c e p t o f S o c i a t i o n 51 Simmel, especially in the works of his youth, positioned himself against what he called a ‘mystical’ approach to society. According to him, the social scientists do not attempt to grasp the whole of society. Instead they have to concentrate on distilling and abstracting those forms of sociation, built in Wechselwirkung, which continuously weave together that which we call society, thus making it possible in the first place. Simmel’s answer to the question about what the object of sociology should be remained, as we know from above, constant from ‘The Problem of Sociology’ (1894) to Fundamental Questions of Sociology (1917). It argues that what takes place between individuals is what constitutes the object of sociology. As Simmel did not wish to work with a strong concept of society, he referred himself more often to sociation (Vergesellschaftung) than to society. The theoretical centrality which the concept of sociation attained in his oeuvre brings to light the desire to conceive of society as a process rather than as a static entity. Here we encounter a contradiction in Simmel’s prose. On the one hand, he tells us that defining sociology as the science of society does not make much sense, for society is a much too all-encompassing entity to become the object of one single science and, simultaneously, much too vague for this purpose. On the other hand, though, Simmel had a concrete definition of society to offer that was neither vague nor all-encompassing. Thus he could very well have argued that there was a wide and a narrow concept of society, and that sociology was only to deal with the latter. According to Simmel, society is nothing but the sum of the forms of sociation.52 These forms of sociation are what literally give form to, that is socialize (and therefore make possible), the relations between individuals. They are woven together by ongoing reciprocal actions and effects that take place between the human beings, that is, through Wechselwirkungen. Simmel approached the dichotomy between the individual and society with little other purpose than to deconstruct it by unmasking its ap51 In German, Vergesellschaftung. In the early translations of Simmel’s works into English by the American Journal of Sociology, this concept was translated as ‘socialization’ instead of ‘sociation’. I have chosen the second one because, in my view, it better captures the centrality of this ‘social’ aspect which is not exclusive to the turning of an individual into a member of the society, especially in childhood, but an ongoing process that lasts a whole life and binds people together, constituting a society wherein new members can be socialized. 52 See, for instance, GSG11 1992:23 and also GSG6 1989:210.

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parently natural character, and thus undermining it from the perspective of the theory of knowledge. After pointing out the fact that human creations like language or institutions cannot be the product of one single individual, Simmel argued that, notwithstanding, the object of sociology should neither be reduced to nor concentrate exclusively on these final products of human relations—large institutions, such as states or churches, for instance. Sociology should concentrate on the ongoing Wechselwirkungen and the forms of sociation instead. For the constantly acting and the constantly receiving, the effects of everybody else’s actions actually constitute social bonds. Concentrating on isolated individuals or an all-encompassing society is not fruitful for a sociological point of view; only what happens between the human beings is. This level of the Zwischenmenschliche, of what takes place between the human beings, is what constitutes society and nothing else but this. Simmel could not have expressed it any more clearly when he argued that he could only picture the Wechselwirkungen between two people as the starting point of any social form.53

Wechselwirkung. A Sketch for a Relational Sociology In the first chapter of Sociology Simmel emphasized that what society is, what makes society possible are different sorts of Wechselwirkungen.54 He illustrated this point by observing that a given number of people does not constitute a society because they follow these or those motives, goals, or intentions. Society emerges when these contents acquire the form of reciprocal influence, when the effect of the one on the other takes place, be it directly or indirectly. Then a society emerges beyond a mere being next to each other or an existing after each other. Therefore, if there is to be a science which focuses exclusively on society and nothing else, its object can only be these Wechselwirkungen, the types and forms of sociation’.55 In other words, that which turns an accumulation of individuals, existing simply next to and after each other, into ‘(a) so53 See GSG6 1989:208, but also GSG5 1992:54. 54 GSG11 1992:19. A re-elaboration of this chapter constituted an important part of the first chapter ‘The Field of Sociology’ (‘Das Gebiet der Soziologie’) in Fundamental Questions of Sociology. At the same time, this first chapter of Sociology was a re-elaboration of the article ‘The Problem of Sociology’, the first seeds of which were already to be found in the first chapter of On Social Differentiation. Lines of continuity in this respect are indeed well marked. 55 GSG11 1992:19.

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ciety’ is the fact that they are connected to each other, directly or indirectly, actively or passively, and that, subsequently, they share a body of forms of sociation that binds them together and allows them to communicate socially. Most of Simmel scholars have seen the central conceptual pillar of his sociological theory in the concept of Wechselwirkung (reciprocal actions and effects).56 Brigitta Nedelmann has elaborated on it and has emphasized three relevant facets included in this concept of Wechselwirkung: (1) Relationality (Relationalität), (2) immanent contradictority (immanente Widersprüchlichkeit), and (3) circularity (Zirkularität).57 These facets are not independent of each other, but condition and complement each other. According to her, they allowed Simmel to locate the dynamics of the continuous social happening (Geschehen), of the ever flowing social processes, at the heart of his analysis.58 Let us briefly consider them in more detail: • The first facet of Wechselwirkung, the relationality of objects and individuals, made Simmel’s change of perspective that focused on processes instead of on static entities possible. The example of society has already been mentioned above: for Simmel, society is the sum of the forms of sociation which result from the ever-flowing processes and relations that take place between the individuals.59 Further examples of this relational paradigm are Simmel’s conceptualization of a poor person. In the light of this perspective the poor person stops being socially categorized as poor because of the material conditions under which she lives: instead, the fact that she is viewed as poor is the result of social relationships of categorization, of exclusion and inclusion, and of distance and proximity to the socially defined ‘normality’. The same perspective can, surprisingly, be applied to the most diverse issues, for instance to jewellery (Schmuck). The value of a jewel does not stem from its intrinsic qualities, but in a sense from the social relations which are reflected in it; from its general “being recognized” as beautiful and valuable (allgemeinen Anerkanntsein).60

56 See, among others, Haesler 1983 & 2000, Nedelmann 1984, Rammstedt 1992, Papilloud 2002b & 2003. 57 Nedelmann 1983:96. 58 Nedelmann 1983:93. 59 Nedelmann 1983:94. See GSG8 1993:277 for a paradigmatic example of this dynamic perspective. 60 Haesler 1983:164.

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• The second facet of Wechselwirkung, the ‘immanent contradictority,’ is represented by the relationship and tension between life and forms. Life is a continuous flow which crystallizes in forms in order to be able to be in the first place. It remains caught within these receptacles until its own pulsing blows them up—only to create, and get caught within, new containers, that is, new forms. We will come back to this second component in the discussion of the concept of ‘forms’. • The third facet of Wechselwirkung is its ‘circularity.’61 Simmel rejected the unidirectional causal model of thinking (i.e., from causes to effects), and sought to simultaneously grasp the way in which causes produce effects and effects modify their causes.62 Hence Wechselwirkung is not quite a synonym for “interactions”, although a fair reader of Simmel must admit that he could often have used the term ‘interaction’ when he wrote Wechselwirkung. In my view, the drawing of a clear line between both concepts is feasible if we picture interactions as a chain of actions and reactions, and Wechselwirkungen as a simultaneous web. For Simmel there are no causal explanations, no unidirectional causes and effects, and no phenomena which can only be seen from one single point of view. There are always—at least—two sides to each phenomenon. And they are not always possible to overcome through a synthetic reconciliation, unlike in dialectical models of thinking. They cannot be brought together to agree.63 There is no middle term, but one extreme as well as the other (sowohl als auch).64 It is more than likely that Simmel’s concept of Wechselwirkung has its origins in Kant.65 Simmel argued that all coexistent phenomena in space and time are interconnected and stabilized by the invisible threads that 61 62 63 64

Nedelmann 1983:96. GSG6 1989:120-121. Bevers 1985:70. For instance (using an example which will become rather familiar in the course of this work), the generalization of money has liberating facets as well as constraining effects, according to Simmel’s diagnosis. On the one hand it contributes to increasing individual freedom in modern societies. On the other hand, it constrains individuals at the same time, since they become dependent on money in order to exercise the newly increased freedom. If they do not possess it in sufficient quantities, the realization of freedom is not possible. It is a conditional freedom, so to speak. 65 See Kant 1988:242 (A211/B 257). In fact, this was rather a common concept at that time which also appeared in Dilthey’s works very often (see Christian 1978:110). I owe this observation to David Stockelberg.

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connect them with each other, and make them possible as they are. In light of this perspective, nothing can be understood by itself without taking these invisible threads into account. Every element and every relation must be understood in relation to the rest: the emergence and consolidation of forms of sociation, of values, laws and rights can therefore only be understood on this relational basis, following Simmel’s perspective. On a different level of things, the concept of Wechselwirkung does not only play a central role in Simmel’s work because it holds the key to his understanding of society and of the object of sociology, but it is also the key to his philosophical position, which he termed relativism. Simmel’s concept of relativity or relativism (which he used synonymously) was often misunderstood in his time. In fact, as has already been mentioned above and will be shown again below, this relativism was the spark that ignited many of the attacks that were directed against him. And despite this rejection, in an academic self-portrait that Simmel began (and left unfinished), he described the philosophical (metaphysical) principle which he had made his own as relative.66 In fact, as Köhnke has pointed out, ‘relativism’ was the only ‘ism’ with which Simmel identified his work.67 He developed a worldview from a concept which he had originally applied to the social sciences as a methodological instrument. On this relational basis, he approached the genesis and consolidation of phenomena which intellectually occupied the minds of most philosophers of his time, such as value, truth, or beauty. It is somewhat misleading that Simmel should call his paradigm ‘relativistic’ and ‘relative’ and his philosophical position ‘relativism’. These terms, as he personally experienced in the reception of his theoretical work, have tended to be equated with scepticism and with a sort of “anything goes”. This was by no means what Simmel intended to say. His intention was not to make everything disappear into thin air or to relativize all firm-looking pillars of belief. Rather he sought to show that what keeps them in their places and what makes them stable is not “their absolute position”, but their relations to all other elements of the same system. There are only partial absolutes in Simmel’s approach, never “absolute absolutes”. Therefore, I would like to propose, from the distance of one hundred years, that we “translate” his ‘relativism/relativity’ into ‘relationism’ in order to escape the connotations of scepticism, and keep the point of Simmel’s paradigm.

66 Simmel (1958)1993:9-10. 67 Köhnke 1991:131.

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The Concept of the ‘Forms of Sociation’ Simmel argued that, although the relational paradigm (based on the analysis of Wechselwirkungen) delivers a perspective that is useful for all social and human sciences as a mode of arguing and thinking, it does not yet deliver an object that is specific enough to be the object of sociological analysis. If sociology were only defined on the basis of the analysis of social relations, it could not be more than a method. Simmel argued that a further step towards the concretization of an object of analysis is necessary in order to consolidate sociology as an academic discipline. He proposed the analytical differentiation between forms and contents as the key to the definition of this object. Sociology had to investigate the forms of sociation (die Formen der Vergesellschaftung), the other social sciences the contents. To a great extent Simmel shaped his approach to the social sciences in general and to sociology in particular polemically in relation to Dilthey’s conceptualization of the Geisteswissenschaften.68 He distanced himself from the idea of taking individuals or the human spirit as the units of investigation of the social sciences—which is precisely what Dilthey had proposed.69 In fact, this proposal was closely related to the profound critique that Dilthey made of holistic understandings of society, such as that developed by Moritz Lazarus (with whom he had been in close contact in his youth) and of Völkerpsychologie.70 According to Dilthey, considering society as a reality sui generis is misleading, since it neglects the fact that the society or the ‘Volk’ only becomes possible through the individuals.71 Curiously enough, Simmel and Dilthey actually agreed in their scepticism towards all-embracing concepts of society and holistic currents of thought. Nonetheless, either they were not aware of their points of coincidence or they were not able to bring them together to build a common front. Instead, Simmel attacked Dilthey’s proposal, for he could by no means accept that the individual soul should become the axial point of sociological analysis. Furthermore, Simmel argued that the constituent elements of the Wechselwirkungen need not be individuals (as in individual human beings) as Dilthey had claimed. They could just as well be groups, institutions, and so forth.72

68 That is, the sciences of the spirit or the human sciences. 69 Köhnke 1996:380-381. 70 Völkerpsychologie, and especially Lazarus, placed concepts like ‘organism’, ‘Volksseele’ or ‘society’ at the very centre of their analysis. 71 Köhnke 1996:383. 72 Köhnke 1996:386.

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Despite the fact that Simmel and Dilthey could actually have set up a common front against positivist and organicist approaches (Dilthey definitely more radically than the young Simmel), they confronted each other instead.73 They were, to a great extent, divided by their different positions with respect to Völkerpsychologie (and hence to Lazarus, whom they both knew well). They both rejected the somewhat holistic perspective of this discipline. Yet, while Dilthey responded to the thesis that society (or the Volk) is much more than the sum of its individual members with the premise that society is nothing but their sum, Simmel stressed how unproductive this turn was. According to him, in order to refute those who consider that society is more than the sum of its individuals, one does not need to support exactly the opposite premise. Thus he distanced himself from those who, like Dilthey, postulated that society is nothing more than this sum. In response to both arguments, Simmel proposed the analytical differentiation between forms and contents—a differentiation he still regarded with scepticism in the Introduction to the Moral Sciences74—and defined society as the sum of the forms of sociation instead of as the sum of its individual members.75 Not least because human beings are for Simmel simultaneously part of society and of its Umwelt, he did not consider it appropriate to define society as their sum. He viewed society (beyond concrete individuals and certainly beyond the ‘unity of their souls’76) either strictly as the result (in the forms of sociation) of a web of relations, or as this web of relations (of Wechselwirkungen) itself, out of which the forms of sociation emerge. The individuals who live in society are brought up with these forms of sociation, and they make use of them (without being necessarily conscious of it) in order to channel their motives, goals and intentions in order to interact with, and reach out to, other human beings.77 These forms of sociation are, notwithstanding, not directly dependent on the motives and intentions that they embody, in spite of the fact that socialized individuals do not think of them as artificial or strange since they have grown up with them. They are part of their taken-for-

73 In any case, their disagreements were as much the fruit of divergent theoretical positions as the result of misunderstandings and lack of communication—even when they both taught at the University of Berlin. For more on this topic see Köhnke 1996:380-397. 74 See Rammstedt 1993:23. 75 Thus, already in the first lines of ‘The Problem of Sociology’ (1894) he praised the overcoming of the individualist paradigm as a great advance in history and the social sciences (GSG5 1992:52). 76 ‘Die Einheitlichkeit der Seele’ in Dilthey’s terms. 77 Rammstedt 1993:23-24.

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granted world, if I may borrow Berger and Luckmann’s term here.78 In fact, in ‘The Problem of Sociology’, Simmel also called the forms of sociation ‘forms of socialization’ (Socialisierungsformen).79 Yet, before we continue down this path, we should return to the analytical differentiation between forms and contents. Concretely, what did Simmel mean with this differentiation and what does it imply for sociological analysis?80 As long as individuals live in society, they seek to realize their goals, wishes, and intentions in interrelation with each other, regardless of what these goals, wishes, and intentions might be: love, money, a job, fame, friends, sympathy, to put someone else down, or whatever else. If we observe with more care, we will realize that they do not strive for the achievement of these goals arbitrarily but that they orient themselves in relation to each other, and express their intentions, goals, motives, and wishes in such a way that their message and intentions will become understandable to the others. Furthermore, the ways of orienting oneself towards the others and of channelling one’s goals (as well as the goals themselves) vary from place to place, epoch to epoch, group to group, and culture to culture. These non-arbitrary patterns of “expression” of one’s motives and intentions, that which—as it were—“clothes” one’s aims, 81 are, according to Simmel, the forms of sociation. Thus, forms could be depicted as the “rules of the (social) game”, as the socially established patterns of interaction which mediate between individuals, social groups, or institutions, and allow them to build bridges towards each other in the (well-founded) hope that they will be understood. The forms of sociation are precisely those which are intrinsically social in the interactions between individuals; those which only make sense in society, and which make society possible in the first place. Clothed with the forms of sociation, the motives and intentions of each individual become comprehensible to all of the other individuals who are together in the same net of Wechselwirkungen, for they are expressed in a way they all know how to decode. This allows the creation of expectations in relation to social interaction since, now that they are 78 Berger & Luckmann 1991. 79 GSG5 1992:54. 80 In the following paragraphs I attempt to define and illustrate Simmel’s concept of the forms of sociation and the analytical differentiation between forms and contents using expressions and examples that Simmel never used. All the same I have not altered his arguments and definitions, but rather have sought to make them more understandable and plausible for contemporary readers. 81 Following Simmel’s own metaphor in ‘The Problem of Sociology’‚ see GSG5 1992:54.

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able to establish successful social communication bridges, the individuals also learn to expect certain reactions and not others to the actions that they undertake. In other words: the channelling of desires, goals, motives or expectations through social forms makes social communication and interaction possible.82 Contents, on the other hand, can be defined as the motivations which lead people to act, the emotions, motives, goals, and intentions of the individuals (be they human beings, groups, or institutions). Thus, while flirting might be a form of sociation, my wish to begin a relationship with somebody, or simply to prove to myself that I can drive anyone crazy, are possible motives that might be hiding behind this concrete social form. While Simmel conceived the forms of sociation (or social forms) as the object of sociological analysis, he argued that contents, on the other hand, should be left to other disciplines—such as psychology or history—to analyse. 82 I consider it necessary at this point to trace a clearer line between the concepts of Wechselwirkung and interaction. The tracing of this line cannot be found in Simmel’s works: he neither defined these concepts clearly nor explained why he was using one or the other. Therefore the following should only be taken as my own proposal and interpretation. I would like to attempt this conceptual differentiation with an example, in fact, with a short story. If suddenly an alien entity were to be standing in front of me, having just landed from a distant galaxy, I would be in Wechselwirkung with this entity merely by virtue of the fact of being with it in the same room at the same time. I would have the choice of trying to interact with it or not; yet, even if I decided not to do so, we would nevertheless be in Wechselwirkung with each other and. Even if I pretended to ignore it, I would know that it is there. More than likely, I would not behave as if I were alone in the room. I would perhaps look at it, use the forms of sociation that would appear adequate to me given the circumstances, only to realize that the alien does not have eyes I can look at. I might try to talk to it. I would try to use a friendly tone and not be at all sure whether the message is coming across … not to mention whether I am being correctly understood. Perhaps the alien would perceive me in some way too, and would try to establish bridges of communication and feel unsure about the way to do so… If after our various attempts we could finally achieve a form of communication clear to the two of us, where we could also have the feeling that the other understands and is capable of reacting, interaction would be possible, in a series of actions and reactions between the two of us. In fact, we would have created rudimentary forms of sociation between us. This difference need not be illustrated with the example of an alien. If my neighbour suddenly came into the living room and sat down in the armchair next to me and I decided to completely ignore her, I would surely be in Wechselwirkung with her and be strongly affected by her presence in the flat… I would, for instance, talk quite differently to my husband and my son as long as she sat there, even if I opted not to interact with her.

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This differentiation between forms and contents makes the sociologist aware of the fact that the association between certain forms and certain contents does not have a general or necessary character. Thus, even when a certain individual—within a certain group and with a certain cultural imagery—finds that the goal, say X, can only be coupled with the form, say Y, or at least only with the forms A, C and Y (but never with the forms G and Z), these connections are dependent on each societal and cultural horizon. We do not need to seek cultural differences to illustrate the crystallization of different forms of sociation. For instance, in the same city, at the same university, and within the same faculty, in research group F it might be considered acceptable to compete fiercely with colleagues in order to become more visible, and hence have access to a better position, while in the research group H, two floors away, this kind of behaviour with colleagues might be punished with ostracization while cooperation is rewarded. The association of certain contents with certain forms (as well as the contents and the forms themselves) is culturally and socially conditioned. Furthermore, within the same culture and group, and for the same person, there are often many possible forms in which a certain content can be channelled and expressed. And, on the flip side as it were, the same form can be used to express different contents as well. For example, let us suppose that C is fighting to get a job for which other people are fighting as well. C can choose between competing with them, ignoring them, or cooperating with them. Let us further say that C decides to compete: The form of competition actually has very clear rules,83 rules that C might have learned during her process of socialization. In fact, depending upon the way in which this process has evolved, she will be good or bad at competing, find it fair, intolerable, or whatever. In any case, competition and its rules are a form that is clear to her and that C can make use of in order to work towards a goal. She can recognize when somebody else is using that form. Yet competing is not bound to a certain motivation or goal. One can compete for the love of an interesting man or a woman, with siblings for the attention of one’s own parents, with schoolmates for the recognition of a certain teacher, or for whichever goals one wishes to attain with whichever other people happen to be pursuing the same goals. Competition is not bound to a single goal, although there might be social conceptions of when it is acceptable to compete and when it is not.

83 Perhaps, therefore, it was one of Simmel’s favourite examples. See, for instance, GSG7 1995:221-246.

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This does not mean that the creation of forms of sociation is the conscious act of a group of individuals. These forms emerge and crystallize in reciprocal actions and effects and cannot be derived from individual intentions. Yet, when specific individuals act, they can either unconsciously pick up a form with which they have been socialized, or consciously choose between the available forms of sociation that are, in their place, time and culture, suitable for channelling their concrete goal or intention. The forms of sociation are the clothing of motives and intentions. They are the successful ways of establishing bridges of communication between individuals, and thus make the wonder of being understood by, and being able to understand, other human beings and other social actors (such as institutions) possible. Forms are in a sense institutionalized patterns of action and communication. They are not created anew every day but are already part of the “social world” when particular individuals are born. In fact, they make access to social life possible in the first place. Yet, at the same time, they are only already there because they are continuously used in the mediation (formation) of human relations. And they are slowly modified by this continuous use by the people who make use of them. These changes, needless to say, are not dependent on the conscious decisions of one or more particular individuals. Rather, they slowly crystallize in Wechselwirkung as well. Over time, certain forms will lose their viability as options for channelling goals.84 Furthermore, as has been briefly mentioned above, individuals do not usually experience these forms as something imposed and external to them. Since we are socialized from the very beginning of our lives with and through them, they become to a great extent “part of us”. Thus I do not feel socially constrained when I seek to satisfy my hunger by buying a sandwich in the cafeteria, instead of biting it straight from somebody else’s hand. Hence the forms of sociation simultaneously make individuals ready for social life and necessarily constrain them, although these forms are only rarely perceived as impositions, for the reasons mentioned above. The only possible way of avoiding the constraints of the forms of sociation (i.e., social communication) is isolation, for the existence of these constraints (whatever they might be) is a crucial part of what sociation is.

84 Think, for example, of the ways today and one hundred years ago in which human beings signal and signaled to each other that they are interested in beginning a romantic relationship. This form of sociation has changed, indeed.

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The Concept of Form in Simmel’s Philosophy of Life Later in his life, after his interests had shifted towards the philosophy of life, Simmel reformulated the dichotomy of forms and contents into a dichotomy between forms and life. In this later period, he viewed forms as crystallizations of the unstoppable flow of life.85 Forms are the channels through which to express life, for life cannot express itself on its own. Simmel argued this point by asserting that life is ‘more-life’ but also ‘more-than-life’.86 The concept of ‘more-life’ merely implies that this continuous flow connects every complete moment with the next; ‘more-than-life’ implies that life is not life if it does not transcend its boundaries, and becomes crystallized and captured in a form. It belongs to the concept of life that it must be externalized and crystallized, for thus it can be expressed and fulfilled. All the same, this different use of the concept of form does not imply a radical change of paradigm in Simmel’s oeuvre. It points instead at the similar theoretical background of the different areas of research with which Simmel occupied himself. These areas of research are mainly sociology, philosophy, and cultural studies. For each of these areas, Simmel developed a major concept which plays the central role in the analysis. For sociology, the concept of society (which he dissolved into a continuous flux of sociation processes), for philosophy, the concept of life (which he defined as an ever flowing pulse that needs be captured in forms in order to be)87, for cultural studies, the concept and process of culture (which he defined in relation to human beings as being the path of the human soul back to itself). In the epilogue of this work, some attention will be given to Simmel’s concept of culture. For the time being, it is only important to bear in mind the connecting lines between this trilogy of areas and interests in Simmel’s thought. Society (sociation), life and culture are the three keys that provide access to Simmel’s oeuvre. These concepts cannot be thought of as in85 It has become a standard in the literature on Simmel to divide Simmel’s works in three phases that correspond to his early positivist phase, a Kantian period in the middle, and a period in which he worked on the philosophy of life at the end. This division of Simmel’s intellectual production into three periods was first traced by Max Frischeisen-Köhler in 1919. See Frischeisen-Köhler 1919/1920:1-51. 86 GSG16 1999:231-234. 87 At the same time, life must explode the crystallized and fixed forms in which it is contained and which make it possible, only to be captured within other forms which it will explode again, and so forth—an endless process.

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dependent of each other, but they complement each other in their theoretical construction. Instead of opening onto three different ‘Simmels’, they provide, at the same time, a means of access to Simmel’s three main areas of interest, and, through their interrelations, to that which keeps them together and forms a whole. Shu-er Wei has compared these three concepts in Simmel’s oeuvre to the elements of the scenery in Chinese theatre.88 These always remain on the stage as integral parts of the scenery. They merely move forwards and backwards, as the play evolves. Each one of them is, at a time, the leading figure, while the other two remain in the background.

T h e P r o b l e m Ar e a s o f S o c i o l o g y In the last sociological work that Simmel wrote, viz. Fundamental Questions of Sociology, he approached the discipline which had once been his main field of work in a somewhat more flexible way than he had in ‘The Problem of Sociology’ and in Sociology. He still presented formal sociology (i.e., the sociology that concentrates on the forms of sociation) as the heart of the discipline. However, he no longer restricted sociology to the study of the forms of sociation. He explicitly widened the scope of sociological work,89 and proposed three distinct problem areas of sociological analysis, namely: general sociology (allgemeine Soziologie), pure or formal sociology (reine oder formale Soziologie), and social philosophy or philosophical sociology (Sozialphilosophie).90 General sociology deals, from the perspective of a very wide understanding of society (which Simmel did not consider useful for the concretization of the object of sociology), with the relations between individuals and society. The aim of general sociology is to give an answer to the problem of the ways in which individuals and society are related to each other. Simmel mentioned the sociology of the masses as a paradigmatic example of the type of question that belongs to this problem area.91 Pure or formal sociology focuses on the investigation of the forms of sociation, as described above. Its aim is to distil these forms from the concrete motives and intentions of individuals and, in so doing, to observe the patterned ways in which individuals channel and express their emotions, impulses, and goals in a way that will be understandable to others. Simmel assumed 88 89 90 91

Wei 1999. Which he had actually always done in practice. GSG16 1999: Rammstedt & Cantó Milà 2001:14095-14096. See also GSG16 1999:88102.

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that forms of sociation crystallize in such a way that they become disassociated from the particular contents they might embody.92 So, to return to the metaphor of the rules of the game, the rules of, say, monopoly, are valid regardless of the actual players and regardless of the specific motivations that have led them to play and to play together. Finally, social philosophy is the area of sociology which deals with those questions that cannot be responded to scientifically but which one can nevertheless not stop asking.93 Simmel defined this problem area as lying on either side of scientific sociology.94 He identified the theory of knowledge with the area that precedes scientific sociology, and metaphysics with the area that lies beyond it.

You and Me In his interest in focusing on human relationships Simmel remained fixed on individuals who build bridges towards each other. If his sociology turned individuals into a secondary aspect, it was only because he adopted a perspective that led him to focus on their relations rather than on themselves. In fact, in Fundamental Problems of Sociology he emphasized that individual human beings were less an object of knowledge than an object of experience.95 Yet in his social philosophy and his cultural analyses, Simmel focused fully on these objects of experience. Indeed, in his theorization of the relationship between you and me, Simmel insisted on the fact that it is not a relation between ego and alterego, but between two different human beings who cannot completely know each other or even themselves. They perceive others and themselves only as fragments which they bring together in a stylized image of others as well as of themselves.96 And this is why the ‘you’ can only be apprehended through experience (Erleben) but not through knowledge (Erkennen). When we build a bridge towards another human being, we can never be totally certain about the way she will respond. We might guess but we cannot be completely sure. The “you” is a black box for us. This small remaining uncertainty, and the fragmentarity of our experience of the you that results in its stylization, make human relations even more central and much more complicated than they would be if they 92 93 94 95 96

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GSG16 1999:106. GSG16 1999:84-87, 122-149. GSG6 1989:84. GSG16 1999:65. This corresponds to the first apriority of social life. See GSG11 1992:4261.

GEORG SIMMEL: HIS LIFE AND W ORK

were entirely predictable. Since individuals become what they are through and within these relations, we cannot look away from them. There is no way that they could be ignored. Human relations are not predictable and they cannot become so, because the individuals who partake in them are not predictable either.97

A L o o k B a c k , a L o o k Ah e a d This chapter has offered an overview of Simmel’s life and intellectual production. Special attention has been given to his sociological approach and to the proposal he developed for a sociological object of study: the forms of sociation. This proposal, which he first formulated in the article ‘The Problem of Sociology’ of 1894, reappears in all the sociological works he wrote from then onwards. Sociology and Fundamental Questions of Sociology elaborate on this idea from the general theoretical viewpoint which Simmel had at the time they were written. Thus, Sociology (1908) contains Simmel’s elaboration on Kantian ideas as well as his attempt to reformulate and adapt them for the social sciences. Its first digression (‘How is Society Possible?) shows paradigmatically the Kantian influence on Simmel as well as Simmel’s special interpretation of the Kantian oeuvre. Moreover Sociology also demonstrates the increasing importance which the relational paradigm attained for Simmel over the years. In this work, the concept of Wechselwirkung plays a crucial part.98 Fundamental Questions of Sociology (1917) contains Simmel’s only attempt to introduce a perspective from the philosophy of life into the social sciences. This becomes especially clear if we consider the central importance which the dimension of experience (Erlebnis/Erleben) holds in this brief work. Furthermore, the dichotomy between forms and contents (which had characterized Simmel’s approach to sociology and defined its object) reappears only in a strongly modified guise so that it does not contradict the new dichotomy which Simmel had in mind by then: the dichotomy of forms and life. 97 Gregor Fitzi has characterized Simmel’s social theory as a “theory of social experience”. He has thereby emphasized the way in which Simmel systematically combined its subjective and objective elements in his approach to sociation. On the one hand, he focused on the possibility of the constitution of individualities in modernity, and on the other, on the emergence of social institutional structures (See, for instance, Fitzi 2002:75). 98 It also plays a crucial part in The Philosophy of Money (the other central work of this period), as we will elaborate on later.

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The centrality of the relational paradigm has received special emphasis in the presentation of Simmel’s sociology. Now, in the following chapter, we will deal with questions about the way in which Simmel came to develop this relational paradigm and to devote his interest to the emerging discipline of sociology. We will do so by focusing, above all, on some of the relevant influences that he received in the various phases of his intellectual production. Here, the historical moment and the general intellectual atmosphere of Simmel’s time will occupy us much less than those authors with whom Simmel was in personal contact and/or whose books he read and discussed and which exercised an important influence on him.99 Thus, similarities with and divergences from them and their works will take centre stage.

99 For an embedding of Simmel’s works in their historical and intellectual context, see Poggi 1993:1-69 (for a general depiction of the time in which The Philosophy of Money was written), and Köhnke 1996 (for a more detailed depiction of the intellectual and historical context in which the young Simmel evolved into a philosopher and social scientist).

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2. The Making of Georg Simmel as a Social Sc ientist

Introduction Those books and authors that shape the intellectual world of a generation, those teachers who taught one’s first seminars, those colleagues that believe in one’s work, and those acquaintances with whom one discusses one’s own ideas as well as theirs, together with the general intellectual atmosphere of a time, shape the contours and fields of inquiry of every scientist’s work. This chapter will concentrate on some of the seminal influences of this kind that shaped Simmel’s work and perspective. The aspiration here is, of course, not to provide an exhaustive account of all those authors and works that influenced him in one way or another. This would be an almost endless undertaking. Only a selection of those authors will be included, specifically those who had such a determinant influence on Simmel’s conception of and work in the field of the social sciences that, if he had not read them or known them, he might have developed in a considerably different direction. Furthermore, although this chapter seeks to give a general overview of the most relevant influences on Simmel as a social scientist, special attention will be paid to those influences which were relevant by the time The Philosophy of Money was written. This focus is certainly legitimized by the thematic orientation of this work. Indeed, from the next chapter on, The Philosophy of Money will be the main focus. Thus, the influences of Moritz Lazarus and Völkerpsychologie, of Gustav Schmoller and the national economy, of Herbert Spencer, Charles Darwin and Social Darwinism, of Heinrich Rickert and the neo-Kantianism, of Karl Marx and Marxism, and of Henri Bergson and the philosophy of life will be presented and briefly discussed in the following pages. 55

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On the Influences of Völkerpsychologie Moritz Lazarus and Heymann Steinthal, the founders of the now defunct Völkerpsychologie, marked out the path for Simmel’s first steps towards the social sciences.1 In fact, Hans Simmel recalled in his brief and unfinished memoirs that his father had said that they were the two teachers who had had the greatest influence on him during his student years.2 In a letter to Lazarus in 1880, Simmel told his former teacher that ‘in each turning point of his academic career he had felt the need to look back, and acknowledge with thankfulness that he (Lazarus) had showed him the way (or at least marked out the first steps)’ that he had to follow.3 In another letter to Lazarus, this time congratulating him on his seventieth birthday (and with which he included a copy of his recently published article ‘The Problem of Sociology’), Simmel emphasized that the article that he was sending ‘was the last result of the thoughts that he (Lazarus) had first awakened in him. For, never minding how independent (of them) he became later, he (Lazarus) had been the first to point out the problem of the supra-individual (das Überindividuelle) to him, (a problem) that would occupy him until the end of his life’.4 Simmel was thus grateful to Lazarus, since he had given him a direction by making him aware of theoretical problems that captured his interest for a lifetime. In any event, Völkerpsychologie played a crucial role in the intellectual shaping of the young Simmel. As a student, in the seminars offered by Lazarus and Steinthal, he became acquainted with a view of the social that postulates that there are no constant and durable characteristics of “the social.” From the viewpoint of Völkerpsychologie, the evolution and characteristics of each culture (of each Volk and of its spirit) is peculiar and specific to that culture—its social dynamics, its customs, its traditions, and so forth. The social (using Simmel’s language we could say the forms of sociation) varies from group to group and from period to 1

2 3 4

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Völkerpsychologie focused on the analysis of those psychological relations, events and creations that cannot be explained through, and reduced to, the deeds of particular human beings, but which are moulded by “the spirit of the Volk”, i.e. which are subject to certain, say, tendencies which concrete individuals display, because they are parts of a wider whole (i.e., Volk or nation—society) within which these tendencies emerge and consolidate. See Köhnke 2003:IX-XXXVII, Frisby 1992 or Cantó Milà 2002:263-280 for a more detailed discussion of the legacy of Völkerpsychologie in Simmel’s philosophical and sociological work. Simmel, Hans 1976:249. Letter of August 6, 1880, the Georg Simmel Archive, University of Bielefeld. Letter of November 5, 1894, the Georg Simmel Archive, University of Bielefeld.

THE MAKING OF GEORG SIMMEL AS A SOCIAL SCIENTIST

period. This does not mean that the particular characteristics of each group (of each Volk) are arbitrary, but simply argues that all that is social depends on the flow of the continuously evolving national spirit— which is different in and peculiar to each nation—and the relations of the particular members of the group to it.5 Despite the fact that Simmel rapidly distanced himself from the terminology of the national spirit or Volksgeist, he inherited the relativizing approach of Völkerpsychologie, and it became a primary influence of his sociology.6 Lazarus’, and to a lesser extent Steinthal’s, greatest influence on their young student was therefore to open his mind to the argument that any patterns of interaction, customs, traditions, and lifestyles vary from one culture to another, from one epoch to another, and from one group to another. However, Simmel introduced a new perspective into the relativism of Völkerpsychologie, namely a Kantian one, thereby reinforcing its relational approach. This change of perspective led Simmel to elaborate on the forms of sociation which emerge within the web of reciprocal Wechselwirkungen, and which are consolidated and maintained precisely by these invisible threads of reciprocal relations. Furthermore, he substituted the focus on the Volk and the Volkspirit with a concentration on the relations between the members of the group. Nevertheless, there are highly significant continuities between the works of Lazarus and Simmel. A central element which Simmel took from Lazarus and kept for the rest of his life concerns the relations between the individual and society and the connected relations between the objective and the subjective cultures.7 Moreover, concepts that played a central role in the theoretical baggage of Völkerpsychologie also found their way into Simmel’s prose: the concepts of crystallization, condensation, and apperception are the most prominent examples. 5 6

7

This spirit of the Volk is the essence of each group; it is much more than the sum of its individuals, but is simultaneously dependent on their contributions in order to exist and evolve further. The perspective of Völkerpsychologie (especially Lazarus’) identified society with the nation or the ‘Volk’. Simmel did not follow this pattern. The concept of the (national) culture actually never played a relevant role in his works (with the exception of the texts he wrote at the beginning of the First World War). There is neither a substantialist concept of the nation in his oeuvre nor that of a group that “belongs together”, thereby constructing a “we”. There is no national spirit, either. There is an ‘objective spirit’ however, which he certainly took from Lazarus and with which we will deal in detail in the epilogue. For the moment, it is enough to define the objective spirit as including the whole of human creation that has transcended the individual and subjective sphere, and has become independent of them, in other words, objective. See Köhnke 2003:IX-XXII and Lazarus 2003:189-213.

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The relative approach, the analysis of the ‘socially constructed’ evidences which vary from society to society, as well as the theory of the tense relations between the individual and the social level, are the main elements behind Simmel’s acknowledgement of Lazarus’ having introduced to him the analysis of the ‘supra-individual’. As has been mentioned above, he expressed his gratitude to Lazarus in a letter with which he sent the article ‘The Problem of Sociology’. This article contained Simmel’s latest reflections about the supra-individual level of analysis. He hoped that Lazarus would perhaps realize that his works and teachings had been his starting points. He was more than likely well aware of the fact that his former teacher would realize that he had, in some respects, distanced himself from his works and influence, but was hoping that Lazarus would recognize in his most recent theses the enormous influence Lazarus had had on him.8 Indeed, both Simmel and Lazarus argued that society cannot be thought of as the sum of its individual members, and they shared the conviction that, by merely adding individuals, one could never reach an understanding of the whole. Moreover they paid special attention to the relation of the individual to the whole, to the processes of objectification and condensation that take place in the cultural production of a society, and even thought of the relations between men and women and the ‘objective culture’ in a very similar light. Above all, the seeds of the very conceptualization of the objective and subjective cultures and of the tragedy of culture (which is the central focus in the epilogue of this work) directly connect Simmel with theses Lazarus had elaborated upon. All the same, Simmel was more precise than his teacher in his analysis of human relations, and managed to focus more on this relational aspect than Lazarus had done. The latter remained, in most of his works, caught up in a general (and generalizing) perspective: at the level of the nation, the Volk. Simmel did not wish to analyse ‘the society’ as a monolithic whole which is so much more than the sum of its parts, of its members, either.9 Simmel deconstructed Lazarus’ tendency to holism by developing a different kind of relativism—a relational approach that was based on the analysis of the Wech-

8

9

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Moreover, Lazarus had himself evolved further, and had changed his fields of interest, now focusing strongly on theological, ethical and philosophical analyses of Jewry, thereby distancing himself from the social sciences in general and, to a certain extent, Völkerpsychologie. See Eckart 1997:44. For Lazarus’ position on these matters see, for instance, Lazarus (1884)1917:401. The reasons why Simmel did not consider this perspective to be appropriate for sociology have been depicted in chapter 1.

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selwirkungen and the forms of sociation.10 This relationism allowed him to break the level of the collective into fluctuating relations—actions and effects that the members of a society exercise on each other. Hence, Simmel contributed to demystifying the idea of society as a reality sui generis, emphasizing that the argument that society is more than the sum of its parts (and that therefore it cannot be reduced to them) is somehow false and misleading. He argued that society is certainly something different to the sum of its members, yet it is nothing but the sum of their relations. Hence Simmel looked beyond the individual-society dualism by focusing on those Wechselwirkungen that make society possible by binding its elements with invisible threads. This relational perspective is one of his greatest contributions to sociology, and constitutes his trademark.

On the Influences of Gustav Schmoller and the Younger Historical School of National Economy Gustav Schmoller was a professor of national economy at the faculty of philosophy at the University of Berlin at the time Simmel was a Privatdozent there. In those years Schmoller was one of the most influential economists in Prussia as well as the leading figure of the Younger Historical School of National Economy (Jüngere Historische Schule der Nationalökonomie) and the chairman of the Association for Social Policy (Verein für Sozialpolitik). 11 He showed a marked interest in the younger Privatdozent Simmel, and, above all, in the discipline on which he was beginning to work. Simmel found in Schmoller a mentor who stood up for him and supported his chances of obtaining a professorship on several occasions during his career.12 Simmel’s correspondence re10 Lazarus’ holism and his tendency to generalize his observations (in contrast to Heymann Steinthal’s more systematic working style) have been commented upon by Belke 1971:LXI. 11 Schmoller’s influence on the sociologists, philosophers and historians of his time (on Max Weber and Ferdinand Tönnies among, them—as well as on Simmel) was indeed considerable (Hintze, Spiethoff & von Beckerath 1971:376). Gustav Schmoller, who for a long time did not receive much attention from the social sciences, has been the subject of growing interest in the last decade. See Backhaus 1993 for a discussion on Gustav Schmoller’s role in the development of the modern social sciences, and also the papers of the conference ‘Gustav Schmoller in seiner Zeit: die Entstehung der Sozialwissenschaften in Deutschland und Italien/ Gustav Schmoller and his time: the emergence of the social sciences in Germany and Italy’, Schiera & Tenbruck 1989. 12 Dahme 1989:11-46.

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veals how much confidence he had in Schmoller’s support.13 The relationship with his senior colleague also played a significant role in his growing interest in the social sciences since it provided positive feedback and the chance of discussion within Schmoller’s circles. We could even argue that Schmoller not only contributed to the consolidation of Simmel’s interest in sociology but also to the consolidation of sociology as an academic discipline as such. Indeed his interest in sociology actually helped legitimize it in the academic milieu of the time, for he—a professor with a good deal of prestige—made use of sociological methods and theories in his own research, and was well acquainted with the sociological literature of his time.14 Thus Schmoller’s contribution to the academic consolidation of sociology was a practical one: he took it seriously and applied some of its newest theses and perspectives to his own work. Yet what is most important for us now is that he took it seriously enough to support the work of his younger colleague Simmel, even encouraging him to work further in this field.15 Thus, Simmel’s first strictly sociological work, On Social Differentiation, was supported and published by Schmoller in a journal that he edited.16

13 See, for instance, Simmel’s letter to Georg Jellinek of May 12, 1896 in which he explicitly affirmed that he was counting on Schmoller’s support. See also his letter of October 28, 1897 (also to Jellinek) in which he referred to a professorship in Königsberg and affirmed that Schmoller was interested in his possible appointment to it. See also Simmel’s letter to Max Weber, July 17, 1908, for further proof of this confidence in Schmoller’s support. However, see also Schullerus 2000 for a detailed exploration of Schmoller’s relation to Simmel. This research brings the fact that Schmoller was not only fascinated by the work of his young colleague, but also shared some of the prejudice that his other colleagues had against him (evident in a critical distancing from the “Jew” Georg Simmel), to light. All the same these prejudices did not stop him from supporting Simmel and his work on an academic level. 14 Thus, in his works we find references to sociological works such as, for instance, von Lilienfeld (Schmoller (1875)1898a:194), Lazarus (Schmoller (1875)1898a:48, the Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaften (Schmoller (1893)1898b:313), Le Play (Schmoller (1875) 1898a: 84), Tocqueville (Schmoller (1875)1898a:124), Spencer (Schmoller (1893)1898b:254, 282, 283, 313), Comte (Schmoller (1893)1898b:282, 313), von Stein and Schäffle (Schmoller (1893)1898b:282, 313), Tönnies, Gumplowicz, Durkheim and also, of course, Georg Simmel. (Schmoller (1893)1898b:314) 15 Dahme 1989:11-46. 16 As well as the speech of 1889 ‘On the Psychology of Money’. ‘On the Psychology of Money’ appeared in Schmoller’s Jahrbuch für Gesetzgebung, Verwaltung und Volkswirtschaft im Deutschen Reich (Yearbook of Legislation, Administration and Economy in the German Empire) and On

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Of interest here too is the fact that Simmel started his analyses of the value of money from a social-psychological point of view within the context of Schmoller’s circle of discussion. Thus, the chain of thoughts that finally led to the development of Simmel’s (relational) theory of value was initiated in close consultation and dialogue with Schmoller and the other participants in these discussions, in which Simmel became acquainted with the central issues and topics of the economic sciences of his day. He even took active part in these discussions with the lecture ‘On the Psychology of Money’. In this lecture Simmel reproached the economists of his day (1889) for leaving their perspectives and questions so narrowly framed by the scope of their own discipline that they were captured in endless debates that would otherwise be rapidly overcome. His main argument was that the inclusion of (social-) psychological considerations would help widen the scope of economics, and also make the pointlessness of some discussions apparent. This argument fit in smoothly with Schmoller’s efforts to redefine the national economy as a social science. It should include contributions from the other social sciences—especially from history, but also from psychology and sociology—in order to be able to analyse economic phenomena better. Schmoller’s point was that the economy is a part of a wider social whole and therefore a certain knowledge of this wider whole should be an indispensable part of economics. This also helps explain Schmoller’s interest in Simmel’s work: he expected from sociology, and especially from Simmel as a sociologist, some support for his own endeavours, and support in the subsequent Methodenstreit with Carl Menger.17 In fact, he considered Simmel’s work a sociological contribution to the case of the Younger School of the National Economy. And in this context we must understand the long, laudatory review of The Philosophy of Money which he wrote a few years later, immediately after the publication of its first edition in 1900.18 Beyond acknowledging this work as a contribuSocial Differentiation in his Staats- und Socialwissenschaftliche Forschungen (State and Social Science Studies). 17 Fascinated as he was by Dilthey’s basing the human sciences on psychology, he hoped to find helpful arguments in Simmel’s social-psychological work for his dispute with Menger. See Lichtblau 2003:143-144 and Schullerus 2000. The most relevant aspects of Schmoller’s redefinition of the national economy and his key arguments in the Methodenstreit with Carl Menger included, on the one hand, his insistence on the fact that the economy of one society cannot be well analysed if it is taken to be isolated from the rest of social spheres, and, on the other hand, his conviction that the work of the scientist is not over once the analysis has been concluded. Schmoller included within the tasks of science the proposal of solutions for the problems that had been identified in the analysis. 18 Schmoller 1901: 1/799-18/816.

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tion to the Younger Historical School, Schmoller certainly showed that he had not forgotten that the origins of this monograph resided in the brief text that Simmel had delivered eleven years before, in 1889, in his own discussion group.19 A closer look at Schmoller’s conception of the national economy will shed some light on the points of similarity and divergence between Simmel and Schmoller, and will thus allow a reconstruction of the concrete issues that might have been the basis of their dialogue. Schmoller framed the object of study of the national economy within the boundaries of a nation (i.e., a nation-state). However, as was mentioned above, he insisted on the artificiality of the separation of the national economy from the rest of the social, since this separation only resulted from an analytical abstraction—and thus the social “Umwelt” should somehow be taken into consideration by the economists as well.20 Besides, Schmoller argued, the macro forms of economic organization should not be the only object of economic analysis. Customs, habits, and practices (Sitten) are what make these organizations what they are, and therefore they should become a key object of analysis for the economic discipline since they play a central part in the economic practices that take place within a society. This argument is very reminiscent of Simmel’s redefinition of the object of sociology. Simmel also emphasized that the “macro” social institutions, such as the state or the church, can only be well analysed if the focus is set upon that which makes them possible: that is, on the reciprocal actions and effects (see chapter 1). Thus, both Schmoller and Simmel considered that small events like the opening of a new business, a walk, a handshake, a letter, among so many other apparently meaningless events weave the endless net of processes which make ‘the economy’ and ‘the society’ possible. 21 The caution with which these two authors regarded the formulation of general laws in the social sciences delivers a further example of the relevant parallels between them. They both argued that the social sciences would never be able to formulate any general laws, thus positioning themselves at a remarkable distance from the positivist assumptions. This was not because Schmoller and Simmel dismissed the formulation of general laws in principle. On the contrary, Schmoller dismissed them 19 I.e. ‘On the Psychology of Money’. 20 According to him social phenomena such as the state, the church, law, and ethics (among others) had to be of interest for them. He considered it a mistake to develop an economic discipline that did not pay attention to the fact that the economy remains an integral part of social life (Schmoller (1893)1898b:220). 21 See, for instance, Schmoller (1875)1898a:48-49 and GSG5 1992:54.

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only because he did not think that their formulation was a feasible aim in the social sciences, and yet he still presented them as the ideal goal towards which the economic sciences should evolve. Thus, he considered that the closer the national economy was to the formulation of general laws, the closer it would be to the formulation of causal explanations and also to the identification of general economic mechanisms and characteristics. He praised these goals highly, but did not consider them realistic and therefore argued that they had to remain ideal goals: the complexity of social phenomena does not allow the formulation of valid general laws or of all-encompassing causal explanations.22 Simmel rejected the possibility of formulating general laws for the social (historical) sciences as well, and continued to argue throughout his life from different viewpoints and understandings of science. The young Simmel of On Social Differentiation shared many arguments with his senior colleague Schmoller,23 and maintained, like Schmoller, that the complexity of the social would not ever allow the social sciences to formulate any. He consoled himself by arguing that the formulation of partial laws—in order to explain certain phenomena—was a realistic undertaking.24 An important difference between these two authors resides in their different conceptions of the social sciences. Schmoller considered the social sciences as not being restricted to an analysis of a social problem; instead, he viewed the proposal of effective solutions to the problems analysed as a constituent part of scientific work. Schmoller’s conception of the social sciences can best be understood by bearing in mind how strongly positivism and evolutionism influenced him. Riding on these currents of thought, he did not fear making projections and delivering proposals for the future. He insisted on the importance of planning what takes place today, in order to mould what will happen tomorrow, and 22 Schmoller (1893)1898b:277. 23 See, for instance, GSG5 1992:60. 24 GSG5 1992:60-61. The ideal of formulating general laws is an element of positivism which resonates in the works of many social scientists of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Immersed in the atmosphere of the time, Schmoller and Simmel were, in the late 1880s and early 1890s, quite close to positivism in many aspects—Schmoller more so than Simmel, and much more than the older Simmel. Schmoller also seemed to be rather influenced by positivism from a methodological point of view. Thus, he defined observation, description, classification, comparison, and formulation of regularities and causal explanations as the central elements of the methodology proper to the economic sciences. (Schmoller (1893)1898b:229230) In fact, this type of methodological questions only occupied Simmel’s attention during the time that he was in close contact with Schmoller. They gradually lost centrality within the whole of his work as time went by.

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furthermore, he believed that it was possible to do so.25 He did not, then, conceive of evolution as a chaotic system of unpredictable evolving, but rather as a clear line, a path towards progress that could be identified and co-designed with the help of science.26 Although Simmel did not, for his part, conceive of evolution as a straight line, it is not easy to know what position he did in fact adopt in reference to the tasks that the social sciences should fulfil. As we know from chapter 1, in a supplementary note to the English translation of ‘The Problem of Sociology’ (1894), he emphasized that the aim of sociology is to solve social problems. In light of this assertion, Simmel could be seen as being close to Schmoller in his conception of the social sciences. However, this is the only time in which Simmel argued in this direction so explicitly. For instance, when he replied to an Enquête about what sociology was in 1908, he did not once mention the dimension of solving problems as belonging to the scientific tasks of this discipline. He did not do so in the whole of Sociology either.27 Furthermore, on some occasions Simmel even argued from a position which is very similar to the premises of the value-free sociology which Weber would elaborate on years later.28 For instance, at the very end of the famous essay ‘The Metropolis and Mental Life’ (1903), Simmel asserted that his task was ‘neither to accuse nor to pardon, but only to understand.’29 Simmel did not follow Schmoller at all in considering the state to be the institution that should ultimately assume the task of solving the social problems that had been identified, with the help of science. He did not even enter into the discussion, in which Schmoller postulated that a direct state intervention was necessary in order to palliate the “collateral damage” of evolution.30 Schmoller’s thesis was that a political economy 25 26 27 28 29

Schmoller (1875)1898a:91-92. Schmoller (1875)1898a:34. Dokumente des Forschritts, Simmel 1908: 220. Precisely in opposition to Schmoller and the Younger Historical School. GSG 7 1995:131. For more details on Simmel’s precursory role in the formulation of the freedom of values in the social sciences see Dahme 1984:219-220. 30 This position introduced a great distance between Schmoller and the Manchesterian, liberal position. In fact, for him, intervening to reverse the undesired effects of evolution (without stopping progress) was totally necessary. He thought that acting otherwise would lead human beings back to the purest struggle for life. Schmoller claimed that through intervention (which would reintroduce the minimum of welfare which had been erased by the advance of progress) a palliation of the most striking social inequalities of the time could be best achieved. In contrast to Treitschke, for instance, Schmoller emphasized that social inequalities are (also) socially and historically conditioned, and not merely dependent on each individ-

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directed by the premises of the laissez faire approach had not led to the general welfare, but to damage of the weakest. Therefore he considered the intervention of the state—backed with the knowledge of economics and other social sciences—crucially important in order to palliate the more socially damaging consequences of the quickly succeeding progress of his time.31 In fact, he was fascinated by the thought of progress and evolution, and was wholly convinced that the transformations that his time was witnessing were proof of an astonishing improvement in and for almost every sphere of life. His ideal was to reach a society in which all human beings could enjoy these improvements, the assets of welfare, culture, and education. He referred to this ideal as the ‘democratic task of evolution’ as well as the ‘greatest goal of world history’.32 However, these evolutionary ideas (which were also to be found to some extent in the theoretical baggage of Völkerpsychologie) did not leave Simmel untouched, as has already been stated on several occasions above. In fact, it is plausible that evolutionism contributed to destroying ual’s intrinsic characteristics, and that therefore an intervention from the state that would change the situation of the most disadvantaged would also change them to a certain extent. (Schmoller (1875)1898a:34-35.) 31 Schmoller’s political reformism was based on the assumption that individual and group sacrifices are inevitable for the further progress of any society. Therefore he emphasized that, if progress requires that some human beings, or groups of human beings, have to “pay” a higher price for its fulfilment than other individuals and groups do, this high price should be compensated within the limits of the existing possibilities. This means that some measures should be undertaken in order to palliate the necessary but damaging effects that progress has on some individuals (especially in the lower strata). Schmoller’s intention was to search for ways to reduce the human costs of progress to a minimum—introducing reforms here and there to a social model which he considered, in general, to be adequate. He argued also that state intervention would have the further effect of reinforcing progress through the elimination of the dysfunctional interventions of fate and coincidence—in the tracing of the social dynamics as well as of individual trajectories (Schmoller (1875)1898a:79). 32 Schmoller, Gustav, Eröffnungsrede der Eisenacher Gründungsversammlung des „Vereins für Socialpolitik“ (Opening speech of the inaugural meeting of the Eisenach “Social Policy Society”), 8/10/1872’, quoted in Pankoke 1989:32. This led Schmoller to ask for an analysis and a revision of what most economists and historians of his time considered nonnegotiable: the existing social order and the idea of social justice (See for instance, Schmoller (1875)1898a:102). In accordance with Spencer’s The Data of Ethics, Schmoller emphasized that the notions of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ as well as of ‘just’ and ‘unjust’ vary as evolution goes by. Hence he argued that the society of his time punished deeds that had not been considered bad in more ‘primitive’ (roher) times, while the ethics of the future would surely sanction, punish or mistrust practices against which his time had not had anything to say.

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for him the contemporary imagery of the immutability of the established legal and moral canons, as well as the forms of apprehension and valuation of the world.33 However he did not accept an evolutionary model that claimed that the direction of human evolution is predictable. ‘Savoir pour prévoir,’ as the Comtian formula states, is not an assertion that Simmel ever accepted. Thus, Schmoller and Simmel did not agree upon the meaning of evolution.

On the Influences of Herbert Spencer, Charles Darwin and Social-Darwinism The picture of Georg Simmel at the time that he published his first sociological work (On Social Differentiation, 1890) that can be drawn from the account given above, shows a Simmel of thirty-two, poised to start his academic career and who, after having written a doctoral thesis and a Habilitation on Kant, was seeking to specialize in the new field of sociology. As we know, he was in close contact with Gustav Schmoller and deeply influenced by Moritz Lazarus of Völkerpsychologie. Despite the fact that his two qualifying dissertations (PhD and Habilitation) already dealt with the Kantian oeuvre, the period in which he worked most intensely on Kant was yet to come, and his dialogue with the neoKantians had not begun to occupy much of his attention either. At this time the proximity of his sociological work to Herbert Spencer’s evolutionary theory was remarkable, and his deep interest in the natural sciences and, more specifically, the works and theories of Charles Darwin was no secret to his colleagues. Simmel’s interest in Darwin had already been awoken during his student years, especially through the works and words of some of his teachers, such as Lange, Helmholtz, Zeller, and Bastian (the latter being an anti-Darwinist).34 Moreover, it is quite probable that Simmel did not 33 The same could be stated about Völkerpsychologie which, again, was itself also influenced by positivism and social-evolutionism. 34 A witness of this interest is Zeller‘s Gutachten of Simmel’s text on The Presentation and Judgement of Kant’s Different Views upon the Essence of Matter: The Century is Advanced, but Each Individual Begins from Anew (Darstellung und Beurtheilung von Kants verschiedenen Ansichten über das Wesen der Materie: „Das Jahrhundert ist vorgerückt, jeder Einzelne aber fängt doch von vorn an”), the text which became Simmel’s doctoral thesis and with which he had earned a royal prize in August 1880 (See Köhnke 1996:44 for more information). In fact, although the English philosopher and sociologist had already published some of his works before Darwin’s publication of On the Origins of Species in 1859, Spencer

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develop an interest in Spencer until a few years later when he was in closer contact with Gustav Schmoller. Indeed, Schmoller incorporated some theses of the English philosopher and sociologist into his work, and cited him often in his texts, so that Simmel was surely drawn into debates about Spencer’s theories through his participation in Schmoller’s discussion circles.35 Be it as it may, it is a fact that in his works Simmel referred to Darwin more frequently than he did to Spencer. This is interesting to observe, although it might only be due to the fact that Spencer was regarded as a Darwinian thinker in the Germany of the time, while Darwin was the most prestigious author.36 At any rate, it is also certain that Simmel was strongly influenced by Herbert Spencer, an influence which is most clearly seen in his first sociological work, On Social Differentiation.37 In this book, Simmel concentrated, among other things, on the modern processes of individualization, and explained them in terms of was considered a Darwinian thinker in the Germany of those days (Dahme 1989:84-85). It is therefore very probable that Simmel became acquainted with Spencer’s works through his interest in Darwin, and not the other way round (Dahme 1989:86). 35 See ‘Georg Simmel und Gustav Schmoller’ in Dahme, Köhnke & Rammstedt 1988. Moreover, On Social Differentiation (Über sociale Differenzierung), the work closest to Spencer’s theories, was written at the time Simmel was in close contact with Schmoller. 36 Besides, in some central aspects of his thought, Simmel was closer to Darwin’s positions than to Spencer’s—especially concerning evolution. In Simmel’s eyes, historical and social changes are totally contingent and follow no clear logic, no predetermined direction, and there are no lines of evolution that could somehow be foreseen beforehand. Hence Simmel did not incorporate Spencer’s conception of ‘the survival of the fittest’ into his thought, but Darwin’s ‘struggle for life’ (which he formulated as ‘Kampf ums Dasein’). Somehow, the concept of ‘the survival of the fittest’ already reveals who the winner will be in evolution: the fittest. This concept offers a further clue to understanding the mechanisms of evolution in the eyes of Spencer. If differentiation and integration are the structural consequences of growth, its consequence on an individual level is the survival of the fittest. This implies that, if no artificial intervention is involved, only the best, the fittest, the strongest and/or the cleverest will make it. In the biological realm, they will manage to have offspring; in the social realm, they will, on the one hand, prosper, and on the other, establish and ensconce their own norms and institutions, while the less effective and “less fit” systems and individuals will gradually disappear. This theoretical standpoint explains why Spencer was so against any kind of state intervention (totally contrary to Schmoller’s position for instance). On the other hand, the concept of ‘struggle for life’ focuses more on the fight to adapt oneself, and does not anticipate in the same manner who the winner will be. 37 Darwin did not talk about ‘differentiation’ but about ‘variations’. For an overview of Darwin’s main theses see Bowler 1990.

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the differentiation of the social circles in which individuals partake. Thus, the concept of differentiation held most of the explanatory weight of this work. Individualization was possible, according to the young Simmel, because the number of social circles in which individuals participate has so greatly increased that the opportunities of becoming unique have also largely increased. Thus, individuality is made possible by the many new combinatory possibilities of social circles. The centrality that the concept of differentiation attained in Simmel’s works invites us to concentrate (briefly) on Spencer’s definition of this concept, as well as to focus on his concept of evolution, since his concept of differentiation was the heart of his evolutionary theory. Spencer’s concept of evolution had a great impact on the social scientists of his day and also exerted a powerful influence on the next generation, the one that produced the classics upon which modern sociology was founded. According to Spencer, evolution implies a transformation from a homogeneous and incoherent whole to a heterogeneous, integrated, and coherent whole.38 Spencer argued that the pace of evolution follows natural laws which human beings cannot alter, though they can stimulate, endanger, or delay evolutionary development. In many passages in his works, he seemed to suggest that the progress of humanity is predestined to go through stages, in much the same way that individual human beings develop from childhood to maturity, advancing from a primitive stage to a civilized one. Thus conceived, evolution follows a clear progressive line and can be considered synonymous with progress. Yet Spencer’s conceptualization of evolution is not totally consistent: he did not always postulate that evolution is equivalent to progress. While he identified evolution with progress on some occasions, on others he identified it only with a growing differentiation which does not necessarily imply progress.39 A constant in this theory of evolution is that Spencer always saw in differentiation a necessary condition for evolution. Furthermore he identified growth as a crucial factor in differentiation, as his parallels between the living bodies and societies help illustrate.40 Ultimately, then, Spencer’s theory of evolution is somewhat two38 A Hegelian motto, by the way. Yet, beyond this general definition, at least four different meanings of social evolution can be found in his works: 1) Social evolution as a synonym of progress, 2) Social evolution as the differentiation of social aggregates into functional subsystems, 3) Social evolution as an increasing division of labour and 4) Social evolution as the development of different types of societies (Kunczik 1999:77). 39 Coser 1977:96. 40 When an organism grows larger, its parts can specialize in tasks which the very few elements of a minute organism have to sort out together or cannot accomplish at all. See, for instance, Spencer (1904)1966:291.

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sided: one side consists of processes of differentiation and the other of integration of the differentiated whole.41 Although many substantial differences separate Simmel’s use of the concept of differentiation from Spencer’s evolutionary theory, some of his assertions are reminiscent of Spencer’s prose, especially on those occasions in which Simmel used examples: these reveal a decidedly progressive concept of evolution, similar to that of the English philosopher. The clearest example is the analogy between social evolution and the evolution of a human being. Both Simmel and Spencer compared children to primitive peoples, thereby positing that the evolution from primitive cultures towards civilized ones was similar to the evolution from childhood to adulthood.42 Moreover, a further indication that the influences of Darwin and Spencer accompanied Simmel for the rest of his life is the fact that Simmel continued to use concepts (such as ‘differentiation’ or ‘struggle for life’) that he had acquired from these authors in his later sociological works—even though he explicitly distanced himself later in life from social-Darwinism as well as from many of the theses that he had developed in his youth (e.g., the thesis that the processes of individualization can be explained in terms of the differentiation of the social circles).43

On the Influences of Kant and the Dialogue with Neo-Kantianism At the time Simmel began his studies at the University of Berlin the neoKantians were the leading philosophical school on the academic horizon.44 This meant that Kant, and especially a particular reading of Kant,

41 While a mere differentiation does not achieve “progressive evolution”, integrated and differentiated evolution does. 42 The Philosophy of Money is full of such examples. See GSG6 1989:80, 84-89,406. Yet this was a motto that was so frequent in those times that Spencer—in spite of being the one who constructed the most systematic theory of it—was only one among many to use it. 43 See, among many others, GSG11 1992:13,64,178, GSG16 1999:104. 44 Neo-Kantianism gained this dominant position over the second half of the nineteenth century. It replaced Hegelian philosophy—which had reached its zenith (also of popularity) during the first half of the nineteenth century. Neo-Hegelianism still saw the birth of this new ‘ism’, neoKantianism and even partially influenced it (See Köhnke 1993 for a detailed study of the rise of neo-Kantianism). The most relevant focuses were the faculties of philosophy in Heidelberg and Freiburg (known as the Southern-German School—Süddeutsche Schule) on the one hand, and the

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was a central element in philosophy curricula. This early and intensive encounter with Kant and, indirectly, the all-pervading neo-Kantianism he was exposed to at that time strongly influenced Simmel for the rest of his life. However these influences did not make him a neo-Kantian. He swam against the tide, and often adopted a critical position towards the neo-Kantian interpretations and towards many of the main theses of the approach. On some occasions he certainly sought to establish a dialogue with the neo-Kantian philosophers, though it is not easy to ascertain to what extent he was actually interested in their ideas, and to what extent he was seeking to survive (and promote himself) in an academic world that was dominated by the neo-Kantian school. In my view, most of his contacts with the neo-Kantians can be seen as a variety of forced cooperation with a more powerful philosophical current, and also as an attempt to defend himself from the fierce attacks on his relativist approach from the neo-Kantian front.45 Despite the different productive phases through which Simmel’s intellectual trajectory went, his interest in and work on Kant remained a constant element in an otherwise richly diverse range of themes and areas of interest and study. Indeed, even in his early, to a certain extent positivist phase, Simmel was deeply interested in Kant. It was due to this combination of interests (i.e., Darwinism and Kantianism), that the young Simmel came to work on Kant’s theory of the human perception of nature as well as on other scientific texts by Kant.46 It was also on this account that the young Simmel conceived of the project of developing a ‘scientific philosophy’ that would follow the same rules and procedures as any other scientific discipline.47 Simmel’s early interest in Kant was also what led him to write The Presentation and Judgement of Kant’s Different Views upon the Essence of Matter: The Century is Advanced, but Each Individual Begins from Anew—which later became The Nature of Matter According to Kant’s Physical Monadology. As we know, this essay won him an imperial prize when he was still a student and ended up by being his doctoral thesis—after the paper on the origins of music had been rejected by the philosophy faculty. Simmel also attained his next academic qualification (the Habilitation) with a treatise on Kant: faculty of philosophy in Marburg (which received the name of the School of Marburg—Marburger Schule) on the other. 45 See, for instance, Rickert 1888:12 Rickert 1892:72-74, Rickert 1899:68, Bevers 1985:71, Köhnke 1991:134, Merz-Benz 1995:15. 46 In fact, as Rammstedt has pointed out, he even had the plan of bringing Kantianism and social-Darwinism together in the field of the social sciences. See Rammstedt 1993:27. 47 Fachwissenschaft. See Simmel, Georg, ‘Eine neue Popularisirung Kants’, quoted in Köhnke 1996:101. See also Köhnke 1991:126.

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Kant’s Teachings of the Ideality of Place and Time.48 Curiously enough, this text was also the revised version of a manuscript that he had submitted to a competition in which he was awarded second place.49 At the end of his life, as Simmel turned away from sociology and from Kantian philosophy in order to concentrate on the philosophy of life, Kant continued to provide a philosophical basis for him: one of the main topics of discussion shared by Simmel and Henri Bergson was the transcendental theory of knowledge.50 It was in the middle phase of Simmel’s intellectual journey that he most worked on—and with—Kant. Thus, as his fascination with Darwin and the natural sciences decreased as the 1890s went by and the positivist colouring that was manifest in his first sociological and sociopsychological works faded away, Simmel began to work intensely on Kantian transcendentalism, and sought to adapt some of its key concepts for the social sciences.51 To be more precise, after the publication of On Social Differentiation (1890) and of Introduction to the Moral Sciences (1892/1893) Simmel begun to apply his knowledge of Kant to his sociological thinking systematically.52 He paid particular attention to the human apprehension and communication of the social as a condition of possibility of the social itself (‘How is Society Possible?’). This interest led him to intensify his dialogue with the neo-Kantians (especially with Heinrich Rickert). On the one hand, he sought to build bridges of dialogue towards them. On the other though he kept himself at a prudent distance since he was also aware of the almost irreconcilable differences 48 Lehre Kants von der Idealität von Raum und Zeit. 49 Despite the fact that he had not mentioned the term ‘Kantian sciences’ (‘Kantwissenschaften’) yet, it was quite clear that neo-Kantianism was not going to be the direction towards which he would evolve even in this early phase of Simmel’s intellectual production. Actually Simmel’s ‘Kantian sciences’ seem to be a rejection of, or at least an alternative to, neoKantianism. Thus, it opposes the intention of developing a strictly scientific re-elaboration of Kant’s teachings to the neo-Kantian revival which did somehow imply a ‘popularization’ of Kant’s philosophy (Köhnke 1996:102). 50 See Fitzi 1998b:89. The French philosopher Bergson was Simmel’s most important interlocutor in the elaboration of his philosophy of life. We will briefly focus on their relationship below. 51 The growing rejection of social-Darwinism and this growing interest in the transcendental theory of knowledge brought him—in the early 1890s—to a position somewhere between positivism and neo-Kantianism—if I may borrow Klaus Christian Köhnke’s formulation. See Köhnke 1991. 52 As we know from the last chapter, in these years he elaborated on a distilling of the forms of sociation as the main object of sociological analysis. This analytical distinction between form and content was certainly articulated with the Kantian oeuvre in mind.

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between their approaches. Indeed, despite the academic atmosphere of the time and Simmel’s enduring interest in Kant, he felt but little sympathy for neo-Kantianism. He was more interested in developing a Kantian approach to the social sciences and to philosophy than in the work of the neo-Kantians.53 This simultaneous proximity and distance coloured all of Simmel’s relationship with this school of thought. Simmel and the neo-Kantians concentrated upon the oeuvre of the same philosopher and even asked similar questions. Yet their answers went in remarkably different directions and their perspectives often mixed as badly as oil and water. This curious situation of sharing many questions and few answers settled into a somewhat ambivalent relationship, especially with Heinrich Rickert, with whom Simmel had the most contact.54 Their proximity was just as present as the obvious distance. Simmel and the neo-Kantians were interested in the Kantian theory of knowledge and on developing it further in order to apply it to the social sciences. The question about the conditions under which history and culture become objects of scientific knowledge is a question that occupied many of the philosophers of the second half of the nineteenth century.55 After the great advances made by the natural sciences the social and human sciences, as well as philosophy, sensed the impossibility of catching up with them, at least on the basis of the same methods and approaches that the natural scientists had already developed for their disciplines. The answer to the question about what the social and human sciences ought to do in order to palliate what, in comparison to the natural sciences, could be regarded as their weaknesses divided the philosophers and social scientists of the time into two camps. Comte, and the positivists in general, as well as Spencer and Durkheim, argued that all sciences ought to follow the same methodology, and be subject to the same scientific criteria. The neo-Kantians, together with Dilthey and Max Weber, argued that the natural, social, and human sciences constitute two different types of science (the first concentrating on the level of being, the second on that of values—to put it in neo-Kantian terms).56 These authors argued that no unitary criteria and common methodologies could be developed that would be useful for all types of science. Instead, the social and the natural sciences need to develop their own perspectives and methodologies separately. 53 Köhnke 1991:123-137. 54 Among others due to the close friendship that united their wives, Gertrud and Sophie, who had attended the same art school as young women. 55 Merz 1990:70. 56 The sciences of culture or of the spirit, to use Rickert and Dilthey’s terminologies.

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The answer of the first group of authors implied, for those who accepted it, that they had to work hard in order to catch up with the natural sciences. For they did not accept the existence of any fundamental impediments to their reaching the level of methodological and theoretical development that the natural sciences had already reached using the same (or similar) theories and methods.57 The answer of the second group of authors led rapidly to the question of which standard methodologies and scientific canons should be developed for the cultural sciences to scientifically legitimate the knowledge they produced. If the social and human sciences were basically different from the natural sciences, then social scientists had to show what the specificity and, at the same time, common denominator of these sciences were. The Kantian teaching of the apriorities for the apprehension of the natural world came to be of central importance in the response that the neo-Kantian authors gave to the question of the specific character and methodology that the cultural sciences (should) share. They argued that, while the natural sciences concentrate on the being (on “that which is”), the cultural sciences needed to develop a similar “set” of apriorities regarding the cultural values that are valid (gelten). Thus, the neoKantians picked up the thread that Kant had left loose in his Critique of Judgement, and developed a sort of transcendental approach to the cultural world.58 Hence, in the light of the neo-Kantian perspective, values are a priori categories for the human apprehension of the cultural world. Consequently, values were considered to be logically deducible, and not created by experience. Moreover, due to their transcendental character, in the light of the neo-Kantian perspective, these values do not ever change, and thus escape any cultural and social relativities. They are previous to them, so to speak.59 According to the neo-Kantian approach, values do not belong to the sphere of being, only concrete valuations do. Values do not exist as stones, trees, or private preferences do. Instead, they are valid (Werte gelten), and previous to the human experience and apprehension of the cultural world. In fact, they “form” this experience and thus make it possible in the first place.60 57 Durkheim’s The Rules of Sociological Method (Durkheim (1895)1973) delivers a paradigmatic example of this position. 58 Kritik der Urteilskraft. 59 See Bevers 1985 for a brief depiction of the neo-Kantian position and for a comparison with Simmel’s one. 60 The neo-Kantian approach to values became the foundation of the neoKantian understanding of the cultural sciences. Wilhelm Windelband and Heinrich Rickert are the neo-Kantian authors who worked the most on elaborating a (neo-)Kantian approach to the cultural (social and human) sciences. See, for instance, Rickert 1899 & 1902 and Windelband

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A comparison between the neo-Kantian and the Simmelian position reveals their substantial differences. While the neo-Kantians postulated that there are two different types of science, Simmel did not position himself clearly. Despite acknowledging the existence of differences between the different branches of science, he did not seem to consider (1894)1904. Furthermore, Rickert embarked on developing a theory of value as a stable theoretical grounding for the cultural sciences. He argued that, since the cultural sciences (in contrast to the natural sciences) do not strive for the formulation of general laws (for which every particular case would represent a mere example amongst many others), the only general and generalizing element that they all share is their orientation towards accepted cultural values. The objects of interest of the cultural sciences lie in that which is particular: in deeds, phenomena, and events that will not repeat themselves ever again in exactly the same way. In the light of this fact, he suggested that only the orientation towards the cultural values (which all the same only become manifest in that which is particular and individual) could deliver the general and common element of the cultural sciences (Rickert 1899:52). He argued, moreover, that this proposal to focus on the ‘valid values’ as the guiding thread of the historical construction of concepts (historische Begriffbildung) would overcome the reproaches of arbitrariness to which the cultural sciences had often been exposed. He based this hope on the conviction that these cultural values were indeed logically deducible and therefore of general validity (Allgemeingültigkeit). He asserted that ‘the acceptance of objective or transcendent values was inevitable for purely logical reasons.’ (Rickert 1899:71— footnote 18) Subsequently, a scientific work that would concentrate on them could not be considered mere opinion. Furthermore, Rickert emphasized the dimension of belief which we all share about the existence of these cultural, objective values. He depicted them as the stars in the sky that mark out and show us the way, and argued that it was nothing but legitimate that science should rest upon these foundations—or foundational beliefs (Rickert 1899:68). He qualified his approach to the cultural sciences as a Copernican shift in the theory of knowledge. More than likely he was thereby relating his work to Kant’s by alluding to the Kantian formulation in the preface of the Critique of Pure Reason (Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Kant 1988:25). Rickert’s approach can be briefly summarized in the following premises: 1) Any definition of concepts, and the concepts themselves, are not preconditions for the formulation of judgements, but the comprised summary of a set of judgements. 2) Judgements are then ontologically prior to definitions. Every judgement reaches beyond the preferences of individual subjects, and brings them to the position of having to choose between the falsity or the truth of the statement in question. 3) The choice between affirmation and negation, between right or wrong, which is, according to Rickert, the conditio sine qua non of every judgement, is answered through the recognition of a value in the process of judging itself. 4) The recognition of a general value leads to the formulation of the right judgement, which is not a matter of choice, but a response to an ‘ought to’, a Sollen. 5) Given the four premises above, it becomes possible to affirm that to know is to recognize (Erkennen als Anerkennen).

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them essential enough to trip up the concept of science.61 Thus, he allowed himself to introduce analogies to geometry, medicine, or physics into his sociological works, especially when he was seeking to illustrate what he meant by sociology and his relational approach. He would have made less use of these analogies had he been convinced of the radical separation between the natural and the cultural and social sciences.62 In fact, Simmel even compared what he was attempting to do for philosophy and the social sciences with Einstein and Laue’s works in the field of physics: namely introducing a relative (relational) perspective.63 He would not have introduced these parallels if he had fully accepted the argument that these disciplines do not have anything in common. At the very least, he acknowledged the existence of relevant similarities. Furthermore, Simmel was convinced that the relational approach was the approach of modern science, that is, of all modern sciences, of the natural as well as the social and human sciences. Especially in the early phases of his life (when he was close to Darwinism) as well as at the end of it (as he turned his attention towards the philosophy of life), Simmel did not work with a clear differentiation between the natural and social sciences.64 But the discrepancies between Simmel and the neo-Kantians do not stop at their different conceptions of science. What can be considered the most fundamental differences between Simmel’s and the neoKantian’s approach lies in the irreconcilable theories of value and the views on relativism. These two issues are closely related to each other. In fact, Simmel’s relativism (relationism) is the starting point for the development of the theory of value posited in The Philosophy of Money. Not only Rickert (with whom Simmel held long discussions about his relativist approach and his theory of value), but, in fact, the neoKantians in general, systematically refused any relative approaches to values. They did not only find it nonsense to regard values as relative, they went so far as to argue that it brought down the solid pillars upon

61 Merz-Benz 1995:19. 62 See, for instance, GSG6 1989:210. Furthemore, in his Fundamental Questions of Sociology, he argued that the different objects of analysis which make out the different sciences, are rather a matter and the result of the distance the observer interposes between her and the object of her analysis. (GSG 16 1999:66-67) 63 In a letter to Heinrich Rickert written in April, 1917, GSG 16 1999:439. 64 The intention of developing a scientific philosophy inspired by the methods of the natural sciences mentioned earlier is a further example of Simmel’s distance from the neo-Kantian dualist understanding of science.

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which human apprehension and judgement of the world rest.65 Thus, while the neo-Kantians searched for logically deducible, transcendental values, Simmel wanted to escape the absoluteness of their approach. He endeavoured to prove that, although values could—like society itself— have a general character, and impose themselves as objectified realities upon the individuals, they were not abstract and eternal, but the product of human relations, and therefore not logically deducible but socially constructed. Furthermore, he gave importance to everyday life values (such as economic ones—which Rickert only considered ‘valuations’), and turned them into the main object of his theory of value in The Philosophy of Money, as a special case of values in general.66 He thereby sought to understand how these values emerge and crystallize on the basis of daily Wechselwirkungen. Simmel introduced a substantially sociological dimension into the construction of his whole theory of value with this new focus. Valuations are not just valuations. They constitute the basis upon which values emerge. Values are not personal preferences, but individual valuations constitute part of the primary material from which valid values emerge. Values are, according to Simmel, somehow objectified valuations in the sense that they have lost the appearance of being a personal choice in the eyes of the subjects that have made them possible, and reproduce them in their daily deeds and experiences. Values are furthermore the lens through which the individuals capture the world in which they live.67 We can conclude by stating that Simmel and the neo-Kantians actually agreed more upon values’ function in the human apprehension and experience of society than on what they are. When Simmel—in analogy to the Kantian apriorities—proposed researching the apriorities of the social world—first in his The Problems of the Philosophy of History and later in his first digression in Sociology—he went down a path that was not frequented by the neoKantians.68 In ‘How is Society Possible?’69, Simmel proposed three ap65 Windelband, for instance, argued that ‘relativism was the philosophy of the blasé character who does not believe in anything anymore.’ See Wilhelm Windelband, Präludien. Aufsätze und Reden zur Einleitung in die Philosophie, 1884, quoted in Köhnke 1991:134. 66 From a neo-Kantian viewpoint economic values are not ‘valid values’, but only ‘valuations’. See Rickert 1910/11:12 67 We will focus in much more detail on Simmel’s theory of value in the second part of this book. 68 Köhnke 1991:133. 69 Soziologie. GSG11 1992. ‘Digression on the Problem: How is Society Possible?’ (‘Exkurs über das Problem: Wie ist Gesellschaft möglich?’), in GSG 11 1992:41-62.

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riorities of the apprehension of society which make society possible as an object of knowledge and of experience.70 He certainly borrowed much Kantian terminology in this text. Yet he argued on a totally different level from Kant—and the neo-Kantians. Simmel’s apriorities of the social cannot be understood as the teaching of the categories (Kategorienlehre) with which a transcendental subject forms and experiences the social world, as a sort of counterpart to the apriorities for the apprehension of the natural world. Simmel explicitly mentioned that the proposed apriorities could not even be considered the only possible ones.71 He argued that his list was incomplete and that it would vary with the passing of time.72 Furthermore, as Simmel did not want to accept that there are any a priori, logically deductible cultural values that form human social and cultural experience, he did not accept the Kantian apriorities for the apprehension of the natural world as being transcendental and forever the same either. In his ‘On a Relation of the Teaching of Selection to the Theory of Knowledge’, Simmel argued that the way in which living beings apprehend “the natural world”—i.e., what they perceive as being the true apprehension of the world as well as what they perceive as false—varies from species to species and, within each species, with the pace of evolution.73 Thus, the categories for the apprehension of the natural world cannot be considered a priori categories, independent of experience, but are in fact shaped by experience. In a similar way, Simmel argued that the “valid values” of a certain society cannot be understood separately from the relations which weave this society together. Therefore, he did not agree that values can be logically deduced and are therefore unchangeable, as the neo-Kantians had suggested, following the model of the Kantian apriorities. Yet Simmel also agreed on some points with the neo-Kantians. Their Kantian roots led them to build a common front against historical realism, which postulated that the historian had to strive to deliver an exact copy of what happened.74 If this were the case, then historical work 70 They can be summarized as follows: 1) Human beings apprehend others as well as themselves, to a certain extent, in a typified manner, 2) Human beings are social beings and, beyond this, something else, 3) Human beings believe that there is a place within society for them. 71 GSG11 1992:47. 72 All the same, he was convinced that the three apriorities which he had identified did offer a satisfactory answer to the question about how society is possible. 73 ‘Ueber eine Beziehung der Selectionslehre zur Erkenntnistheorie’, in GSG5 1992:62-74. 74 A perfect reproduction of objects and facts as they took place without any elaboration on the part of the scientist at all.

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should resemble photography in its effort to catch images exactly as they were at a precise moment in time. Both Simmel and the neo-Kantians argued that an exact reproduction of objects and events, feelings and thoughts is impossible. Selection and a “forming” of the impressions received are unavoidable—in human perception in general, and therefore also in the work of the social and cultural sciences. The analogy with photography (which is mine and not theirs) helps to illustrate this point further. For even photography does not reproduce reality exactly as it once was. It frames this reality, and highlights objects that the eye of the photographer has highlighted—so that this highlighting was not part of the photographed object, but resulted from the photographer’s looking at it. The reasons for concentrating on one aspect or another cannot be derived from the objects themselves. Furthermore, a perfect reproduction of the phenomena as they really were does not make much sense for the purposes of science: the concentrating on some objects and the highlighting of certain aspects is a central part of the scientific work. Hence, an unmediated reproduction of what once was is not the point and object of history. History looks at phenomena, processes, words, and deeds from a particular viewpoint, and is led by particular questions and interests that determine the standpoint from which the different deeds, phenomena and events will be approached and analysed. Thus, the questions asked by the scientists turn some aspects of the totality of deeds and facts into significant ones, while others become secondary or vanish from the picture. This selection takes place against the background of a certain discipline and a certain question.75 For Simmel as well as for the neo-Kantians, the knowledge of reality as such is not the object of scientific research; it is not possible at all. Impressions must, of necessity, always be formed. In this they all followed the master closely.76

75 What the queen had for breakfast and when she declared war against the neighbouring country are facts that can be selected for historical research. It all depends on the question posed by the historian. Any scientific analysis, as well as any apprehension of reality in general, implies a sort of translation, a transformation and a production: from the immense number of chaotic impressions (deeds, events and phenomena), a certain perspective and a derived picture emerge. 76 Yet, Simmel’s interest in epistemology led him to ask the question about the way in which society becomes an object of human apprehension and experience, how it becomes possible at all (i.e., he asked about the way in which human beings apprehend themselves, others and the environment so that they can live socially). This is a question that the neo-Kantians never asked in these terms.

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On the Influences of Karl Marx and Marxism No particular phase of Simmel’s intellectual development is characterized by a particularly intense elaboration on the Marxian oeuvre or an intense dialogue with Marxian thinkers. Marx and Simmel did not ever meet and Simmel cannot be considered “a Marxist thinker”. All the same, and despite the many differences that separate their work and perspectives, the Marxian oeuvre was of great importance for the development of many of the theses that Simmel developed. I would go so far as to say that Marx’s influence on him was, ultimately, crucial, especially (though by no means only) in the case of The Philosophy of Money, which could in many respects be interpreted as Simmel’s response to Karl Marx. In fact, Simmel himself asserted that this book was, from a methodological point of view, the attempt to build a floor beneath historical materialism.77 Marx is actually one of the very few authors that Simmel ever explicitly referred to which is a tribute in its own right.78 In my view, this acknowledgement was not so much because they had many arguments and conclusions in common (many more than it might appear at first sight, though), as because Simmel found in the Marxian oeuvre a great source of inspiration and, above all, of discussion.79 Despite the fact that these two authors never met in person nor had any kind of contact with each other whatsoever, Marx was one of the best interlocutors that Simmel ever had. Many Marxian arguments moved Simmel to think further, to ask himself crucial questions for the development of his theoretical work, and thus led him to work on hypotheses and ideas that he would perhaps not have worked on otherwise.80 However, it is not easy to know how deep Simmel’s first-hand knowledge of the Marxian oeuvre was. An exact picture of which Marxian works Simmel actually read, and what he only found out about

77 See GSG6 1989:13, 719. 78 For instance, in The Philosophy of Money: GSG 6 1989:120, 138, 410, 587. 79 The first work relating Simmel’s to Marx’s works is Koppel’s Für und wider Karl Marx, 1905. 80 For this reason and because Simmel commented extensively on the Marxian theory of value in The Philosophy of Money, we will concentrate on Marx’s theory of value in a digression at the end of the first part of this book. This intense dialogue with Marx was certainly not Simmel’s peculiarity. The works of Karl Marx provided material, inspiration and argumentation for the entire generation which produced the sociological classics; and his writings have kept on doing so until today.

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through secondary sources, is impossible to construct.81 It is likely that Simmel could have attained a general picture of the Marxian oeuvre without needing to spend much time reading it. In fact, Simmel did not always refer directly to Marx, even when he was discussing ideas that had their origins in the latter’s work. He more often referred to ‘socialism’ or to ‘the socialists’ instead, showing that on many occasions he was more concerned with the socialist thinkers of his time than with Marx himself.82 We should also bear in mind that Simmel had restricted access to the Marxian oeuvre. Texts which from today’s viewpoint are absolute classics (such as The German Ideology or The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844) were not published during Simmel’s lifetime.83 Therefore, it is certain that he could not have known them at the time that he was writing The Philosophy of Money, nor indeed when he wrote his other sociological works. It is also certain that Simmel knew the third volume of Capital which was published posthumously in a version edited by Friedrich Engels in 1894. Simmel was, like many of his contemporaries, deeply struck by it, and commented extensively upon it in the third part of the fifth chapter of The Philosophy of Money.84 His comments focused mainly on the Marxian theory of labour value which he criticized from the standpoint of his own.85

81 Indeed Marx’s popularity at the end of the nineteenth century as well as at the beginning of the twentieth brought many of his theses to almost every discussion circle, so that many intellectuals had a rough and simplified idea of some of the contents of Marx’s most popular works without ever having had them in their hands. The same observation may well be applicable to the knowledge of Darwin’s and, to a lesser extent, Spencer’s oeuvre. 82 Thus, while 124 entries for socialism can be found in Simmel’s collected works on a CD-ROM (Georg Simmel. Das Werk, Berlin 2001), only 10 can be found for Marx. Ulrich Busch has argued that Simmel’s reception of the Marxian oeuvre was more coloured by the popularized Marxism of the turn of the twentieth century than by a direct reading of Marx himself. He has ventured to suggest that Simmel possibly only read Marx’s Capital, and that therefore most of Simmel’s knowledge of Marx was only collected from secondary sources (Busch 2000:117). 83 Die Deutsche Ideologie, MEW 3 1990:9-530, Ökonomische Philosophische Manuskripte, MEW Ergänzungsband I 1981:455-588. In fact, these works were first published in the 1930s (Kolakowski 1988:151, 175). Parts of them had been published at the beginning of the 20th century, but even this occurred after the publication of the first edition of The Philosophy of Money. 84 GSG6 1989:563-590. See also Rammstedt 1993:27-28. 85 We will focus upon Simmel’s critique of the Marxian theory of value in The Philosophy of Money in some detail in the digression at the end of the first part of this study.

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Simmel’s dialogue with Marx and with Marxism focused mainly on those aspects of Marxian theory with which Simmel did not agree, or which he considered to be in need of elaboration of some kind. The dialogue which Simmel initiated with Karl Marx and Marxism can be subsumed under four main headings: 1) historical materialism, 2) the conception of the human being, 3) the theory of value and 4) the analysis of the modern society and modern culture. We will now briefly focus on the first, second and fourth issues, leaving the third for the digression below. Simmel’s assertion that The Philosophy of Money is a complement to Marx’s historical materialism illustrates his position with respect to the first issue under discussion from the outset. It suggests that, despite all differences and critiques, Simmel did not wish to distance himself from Marx completely, but rather to work with and complement him.86 Thus, although he accepted Marx’s historical materialism, he did not believe that the last words about what it is to be human had been delivered by Marx’s materialist direction of analysis. Moreover, he did not consider historical materialism to be a satisfactory model with which to explain the course of history. In his view, other directions and modes of analysis still had to be developed in order to complement the Marxian proposal.87 This is precisely what he told his readers that he was seeking to do in The Philosophy of Money. In spite of accepting historical materialism as one possible analysis, he believed that another layer, a deeper layer, was necessary to complement and complete it. This layer was ‘the storey beneath historical materialism’ that he was trying to construct, and which was to focus on the emergence and configuration of the material and economic basis—that is, which was to explain the constitution of the very starting point of the Marxian theory. Simmel did not believe that the economy was the first motor force of history.88 According to him, it is constructed and achieved by individuals who are tied up together by invisible threads of reciprocity, of culture and sociation, and express ‘deeper currents of the individual and social spirit’.89 In publi86 It could certainly also be argued that Simmel presented The Philosophy of Money as a response to Marx in order to attract the attention of his contemporaries, and make his book popular. However, this would not alter the significance of the fact that he opted to present his work as a complement rather than as a refutation of the Marxian model. 87 Namely from the material conditions and relations of production (base) to the analysis of institutions, morals, religion, ideology, politics and forms of consciousness (superstructure). 88 The thesis that, in fact, the forces of production are what set the rest into movement was not directly discussed by Simmel. 89 See GSG6 1989:719.

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cizing The Philosophy of Money upon its publication, Simmel argued that both directions of analysis (from the material basis to the cultural and spiritual level and the other way round) are valid, since the process of history is an interplay (Wechselspiel) between them.90 This summarizes to a great extent the attitude which Simmel (as well as Max Weber later on) adopted to the works of Karl Marx. They believed that the Marxian oeuvre helped understand one direction of this interrelation or ‘Wechselspiel’. But this was not enough. The other direction was theirs to analyse, since they considered that both directions were just as valid and just as necessary.91 Weber pursued his research from the superstructure back to the base in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, while Simmel looked from a yet lower (spiritual and cultural) level back to the economic forms.92 In the end one might understand this Wechselspiel as a never-ending circle.93 If we turn towards other issues upon which Simmel established a dialogue with Karl Marx, we become aware of further points of (at least partial) accord between the two authors. I am referring here to Marx and Engels’ assertion that human beings make their own history: that they are malleable and construct themselves to be the way they are and live through the material production of their lives as well as through the relations of production they undergo. I also have in mind the Marxian analysis of the consequences that the monetarization of the economy has had on human beings and on their relationships to each other and to their life world. The first of these two issues fits in quite nicely with Simmel’s relative approach in the sense that taking relations to be the central element of the social life of human beings (and this social life indeed as a central element of their whole existence) does not leave much space for the assumption that Simmel would not have agreed with these premises in large part. The second point (i.e., the analysis of the consequences of the monetarization of the economy for the rest of the social world) shows that, when these two authors focused on the same topic, their arguments were indeed in many respects rather close to each other.94 Yet, 90 91 92 93

GSG6 1989:719. See, for instance, Weber 1988:205-206. Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus. Weber 1988. Harry Liebersohn, referring to Weber and Simmel’s relation to Marxian historical materialism, has affirmed that Simmel actually mixed in his Wechselwirkungen what Weber kept apart. Simmel’s theoretical model showed ‘how economy influenced society and society simultaneously influenced economy.’(Liebersohn 1988:134) 94 Strong similarities between the works of these two authors can be found above all in Simmel’s analyses of modern economic forms (and of their general consequences for social relations and culture) and the Marxian

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beyond these affinities, Simmel’s radical rejection of the Marxian conception of the human being as a ‘species being’ (Gattungswesen), and his emphasis on the liberating aspects of the monetarization of modern life also require some attention and, especially, need be considered in the light of the affinities just mentioned.95 Initially, the focus will be on the affinities and then turn to Simmel’s strong critique of the Marxian conception of the species being. Marx and Engels depicted human beings as historical beings. On the one hand, because they make their own history, and on the other because their being is not the same forever but depends on the conditions and relations under which they live. The main thesis of these two authors was that human beings construct themselves in direct relation to the way in which they materially produce their lives, and as a result of this continuous production they make their own history, although they might not be aware of it. By “the production of their lives” we must understand that which they produce, that which they use to produce it, and the way in which they produce it: that is, the techniques, knowledge and tools (productive forces) as well as which relations with each other and to their environment they establish in order to produce (relations of production). As a consequence of this direct relation between the being of individuals and the material production of their lives, Marx and Engels argued that the nature of human beings is malleable and that, therefore, there is nothing like “the human being as such”, but rather many different versions of it. Opposing the idea that human beings are greedy and competitive by nature, and only care about their immediate others (a picture of human nature which, in their opinion, was in accordance with the patterns of behaviour and competition of the capitalist form of production), they argued that these characteristics can only be understood in the light of the concrete system of production under which greedy and analysis of the bourgeois relations of production and their consequences for the lives and thoughts of individuals. It is important to note that neither Marx nor Simmel referred to the ‘capitalist’ mode of production, but to the ‘bourgeois’ mode of production and to the ‘modern monetary economies’ respectively. In fact, ‘capitalism’ is not a term that played a theoretical role in Capital or in The Philosophy of Money. Max Weber criticized Simmel’s The Philosophy of Money for this ‘neglect’ years later. Yet, the term ‘capitalism’ had hardly ever been used before Weber and Sombart published their The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904/1905) and The Modern Capitalism (1902). Indeed, Marx had brought the term ‘capital’ to the very centre of the economic, philosophical and the emergent sociological discussion, but not the concept of ‘capitalism’. I owe this observation to Antoni Estradé. 95 The other main topic of discussion, namely the theory of value, will be addressed later in a digression.

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competitive human beings “have been socialized”.96 As a matter of fact, according to these authors, there is only one trait that belongs to all human beings at all times and places. This trait is not the human capacity to believe, to imagine, to think, or to pray, but rather the capacity to produce the necessary means of subsistence, and thereby human life itself.97 In producing their material lives, human beings also produce particular ways of dealing with their needs and even that which they will experience as their needs.98 In The Philosophy of Money Simmel elaborated on quite similar theses. Yet, despite the compatibility of his analyses with those of Marx and Engels, he did not follow the Marxian terminology and patterns of argument. For instance, in contrast to the Marxian thesis, Simmel argued that human beings are better defined as ‘exchanging beings’ than as ‘producing beings,’ thus emphasizing the importance of the social reciprocal relations for the constitution of human beings.99 This idea, which he generally expressed with the concept of Wechselwirkung, was articulated in this concrete case through the figure of exchange.100 Furthermore, Simmel was taking Marx and Engels’ assertion that being determines consciousness as a basis when, also in The Philosophy of Money, he focused on the ways in which the generalization of money as a means of economic exchange, on the one hand, as well as the resulting consolidation of the modern, monetary economies, on the other, have modified the material basis that these authors had presented as the explanatory factor for consciousness. According to Simmel, the level of being which Marx and Engels presented as undifferentiated must be reformulated as an interrelation between ‘having’ and ‘being’—which in Simmel’s eyes

96 If I may use a term which is not Marx and Engels’. 97 By producing their means of subsistence, human beings produce the material conditions of their own lives, and thus define the frames within which their lives will evolve. (MEW3 1958:21) 98 MEW4 1972:74. 99 GSG6 1989:385. Moreover, Simmel commented upon the Marxian assumption that values emerge in production and contrasted it with his own thesis that they derive from processes of exchange in GSG 6 1989: 61-63. For more on this point see chapter 4. 100 For a discussion of Simmel’s concept of exchange see chapter 4. At any rate, Simmel’s concept of exchange must be much more widely understood than as a mere economic exchange. It embraces every relationship between human beings or between them and their environment through which reciprocal actions and effects emerge (attention, a look, care, smiles, apples, bracelets, and numerous others are actions and things that are capable of being exchanged in Simmel’s eyes). So, according to Simmel, exchange is a paradigmatic example of Wechselwirkung.

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are not static categories but processes.101 In his analysis, the interrelation between these two elements is extremely close in non-monetary economic systems. That which one possesses determines to a great extent what one is. Thus, it is not the same to possess a farm rather than a factory, a shop, a hostel, or just oneself. Depending on that which one has, one will live one life or another—and this without directly entering into a discussion about consciousness. Simmel argued that this close relation between the ‘having’ and the ‘being’ is interrupted by the monetarization of the economy. Money only differentiates between those who possess it and those who do not. It separates that which people are from that which they possess because it allows them to distance themselves from the possessions which are the source of their subsistence, and receive in the same monetary form the fruits of their possession: be it concretely the fruits of their land, of the work of their employees, of the sale of their goods, or of their own labour power. Marx made a very similar argument in The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, although Simmel could not have known it. There Marx postulated that money separates the human beings from their qualities, for it relativizes them, making them disappear behind the special “quality” of having (or the defect of not having) money. In order to illustrate this, Marx used the example of the ugly man whose ugliness vanishes behind the “beauty” of his money.102 The monetarization of the economy relativizes that which one is (or, using Simmel’s terms, loosens the bond between that which one is and that which one has), and thus the consequences of this monetarization reach far beyond the economic level. Despite the fact that the parallels between Marx and Simmel are often striking and cannot be stressed strongly enough, some important differences remain between them. Simmel vehemently rejected the Marxian conception of the human being, even if it does seem compatible with Simmel’s relationism. This rejection is paradigmatically articulated in the short text ‘Roses. A Social Hypothesis’ of 1897. According to Simmel, the Marxian conception of the human being delivers a much too homogeneous picture of what it is to be human, as if all human beings were the same, and could be freed from all greed and envies, implying that they would stop perceiving the differences between themselves as relevant.103

101 Hence possessing something is an activity, and not a document hidden in the desk. 102 MEW Ergänzungsband I 1981:564-565. 103 See Simmel 1995a. In his critique Simmel did not refer directly to Marx, and, in my view, he was mentally discussing this point simultaneously

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Simmel’s rejection points somewhat indirectly to a black hole in Marxian theory. If we concentrate on the Marxian conception of human beings, we will quickly realize that the relative, historical approach to human nature that Marx and Engels developed falls into a trap: precisely the argument that they delivered to assert that the relativity and historicity of the human nature is built upon the assumption that all human beings at all times and all places share one and the same characteristic, a characteristic that is neither historical nor relative at all. This “something” appears in the works of the young Marx as the ‘species being’ (Gattungswesen).104 Indeed, the Marxian conception of the malleability of the human being is based on the assumption that all human beings in every time and place produce (and have produced) themselves through labour, and furthermore, that a free realization of this production is a necessary condition for the free realization of human life. Thus, despite the fact that there is actually not just one version of what it means to be human, but innumerable ones, all these innumerable ways depend on just one single and constant factor. They depend on the way in which the production of these people’s lives is realized. Furthermore, all human beings share this species being which, if it were acknowledged and could develop in free conditions, would realize them completely and as individuals. However, according to these authors, in order to realize this species being, concrete human beings must free themselves from any unequal and antagonising forms of production and overcome their alienation (from themselves, their products, from each other and from their species being). Thus, although the concrete historical individuals are what they are as a direct result of the material conditions of their existence and production, that which they should be or could become (i.e., the realization of their potential species being) is a constant for them all, everywhere, and at all times.105 Thus, this element of the Marxian theory with Marx and with the socialist thinkers of his time—perhaps indeed especially with the latter. 104 For a discussion of Marx’s concept of the Gattungswesen and his approach to human nature see Wood 1981. 105 If we push this point a bit further, we could argue that the malleability and variability of human nature can be interpreted as a sort of “mistake”, for it merely shows the innumerable possibilities that human beings have of being alienated from their species being. Once they recognize themselves as all belonging to the same species, and overcoming all sorts of alienation and antagonisms, they will no longer have incompatible, opposed interests, but, despite their differences, they will agree on the basics and will live cooperatively with each other: they will be generous, fond of sharing and of solidarity… and this will remain so, despite the fact that each human being will cultivate her abilities and preferences, as

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which Simmel so strongly criticized does indeed show some inconsistencies, or, at least, some need for further clarification. That said, although Simmel’s critiques do point in the direction of this inconsistency, Simmel did not directly address his critiques to the paradox of basing the variability of human nature on a constant principle. His main argument for rejecting the Marxian (or the socialist, as he used to write) conception of human nature was rather that, in his view, it had strong homogenizing implications.106 In The Philosophy of Money as well as in ‘Roses. A Social Hypothesis’, Simmel argued that, in the Marxist vision of the human beings, that which is common to all human beings is strongly emphasized, as if all human beings were just about the same, and so the relevant differences that make them unique, and therefore different from each other, are turned into details of secondary importance (if acknowledged at all) in comparison with the centrality of that which they share. For Simmel the relation between what is common to all individuals and what is unique is exactly the opposite. Hence, two completely different views of what constitutes human beings collide with each other. According to Simmel, that which is common to all human beings is only the most ordinary and “mean” (gemein); what they share is nothing like their ‘species being’ and the key to their realization, but only their lowest common denominator, so to speak, including the most basic needs and characteristics as well as some activities that individuals perform. That which turns a human being into a unique individual (thus realizing her) is not that which she shares with the other individuals but that which distinguishes her from them. Thus while, according to Marx, the realization of each individual goes through the realization of the human species being, according to Simmel, this realization actually implies a distancing from what all human beings share, and the development of that individual’s own and peculiar personality. Besides, Marx and Simmel’s view of human beings collide with each other on another front. This front is the Marxian thesis that, after the revolution of the proletariat, a classless society will emerge within which no antagonisms will arise and no differences between human beings and their particular qualities and capacities will be used to separate them into opposing groups. This thesis is based on the assumption that in a classless society the interests of the individuals coincide with the well as contribute to the common good in a different way than the others. The measurement of her contribution will be calculated on the basis of the amount of time that she will have dedicated to the production of the common good. 106 This is of course in a way a critique of this last common element that all individuals share and that makes them human, but in an indirect way.

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interests of the collective, and therefore make social life without durable conflicts possible. This is strongly reminiscent of Rousseau’s concept of the ‘volonté générale’.107 Beyond the particular and private interests of the concrete individuals, there is a ‘volonté générale’ of the whole group that contains or, better said, includes that which is good for them all. Marx’ thesis is that, if the group is no longer divided by classes and antagonism, the private interests and preferences of the individuals will coincide with the interests of the group, and thus the individuals will act for the common good without needing to force themselves to do so. Moreover, they will be able to evolve freely but will nevertheless not encounter difficulties in making their own interests compatible with the interests of the group. This point is closely connected to the point above on the species being. Since there is only one species being that all particular individuals share, there is also only one ‘volonté générale’. In contrast, Simmel did not accept the commonality of a ‘species being’, and he did not accept that there is something like a ‘volonté générale’ that includes all that which is good for all human beings either. In fact, according to Simmel, human beings are actually ‘beings of difference’ (Unterschiedswesen).108 The sensing of differences is the most central mechanism of their apprehension of the world. They will always sense differences and, from them, form the realities they perceive.109 Consequently, individuals will always have a special eye for the differences between themselves and the others, and they will appear to be relevant. Since these differences will certainly not escape their notice, they will, at a given moment, offer enough material for conflicts and envies.110 The conflicts which Marx and Engels attributed to the private interests of individuals (who are caught in antagonistic relations of production) were, for Simmel, general characteristics of human perception and relations—regardless of the conditions of production. Hence, while for Marx the antagonisms between human beings were to be overcome by the establishment of a classless society and the subsequent change of the mode of production, they remain a constituent element of all human interrelations for Simmel. In his view, differences are always central and liable to deliver the basis for antagonisms and conflicts, thus casting

107 See Iorio 2003:216-218. 108 See, for instance, Simmel 1995a:170-171. 109 Thus he argued that, therefore, the inhabitants of a metropolis act differently and are so different from the inhabitants of a small village. See GSG 7 1995:116-131. 110 This is precisely the point which Simmel made in ‘Roses. A Social Hypothesis’ (‘Rosen. Eine soziale Hypothese’, Simmel 1995a).

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shadows over the harmonious Marxian picture of human relations.111 Moreover, that which makes a concrete human being special, unique, and precious is that which she realizes in her life that which elevates it from the common ground all human beings share. In the light of these assertions, two things spring to mind. On the one hand, in spite of Simmel having a relativist/relationist perspective and Marx a historical one, they still had to a greater or lesser extent a common kernel, an invariable conception of the human being in their thought. On the other hand, it is also interesting to observe that, although these authors completely disagreed in their view of human nature, the free evolution of individuals was nonetheless given a position of central importance in their respective theoretical works. And thus we encounter another significant point of coincidence between these authors. That which introduces a great deal of distance between their positions, and makes them irreconcilable on this point is not the fact that the one gives individual liberty a prominent role while the other does not. It is rather that Marx included in his conception of the species being the aspect of individual freedom in the production of one’s own life, while Simmel conceived individual freedom as separate and almost in opposition to the species being.

On the Philosophy of Life and the Influences of Henri Bergson The last important influence on Simmel to which we will direct our attention here, and one which deeply influenced the course of his further work, was the French philosopher Henri Bergson and the philosophical current of which he was the paradigmatic representative: the philosophy of life. In the works of Bergson and in the perspective provided by the philosophy of life Simmel found fruitful ideas for further development of his theory of culture.112 This is a topic which by then had become his primary interest. The beginning of Simmel’s relationship with Henri Bergson and the awakening of his interest in the philosophy of life coincide. Both began in approximately 1908 at the time Sociology was published.113 Simmel’s orientation towards Bergson and the philosophy of 111 Simmel 1995a. 112 Especially for his analyses of modernity and of the conflict of modern culture (Fitzi 2002:119). 113 Papilloud, A.Rammstedt and Watier situate the beginning of their relationships around 1909, Fitzi estimates the same. See GSG19 2002: 407 (editorial report), Fitzi 1999:191.

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life offers further proof of his intention to leave sociology behind and concentrate fully on philosophy (once again). Hans Simmel recalled in his unfinished memoirs that his father and Henri Bergson maintained an animated correspondence in the years before the outbreak of World War I.114 Although their intellectual relationship must surely have been an intense one, unfortunately none of these letters survived. It is therefore extremely difficult to ascertain what they discussed and what sustained such an intense intellectual exchange over the years. According to Fitzi, as well as Papilloud, A.Rammstedt and Watier, their relationship started and was nourished by their mutual engagement in organizing and supervising the translation of each other’s works into their respective languages.115 Fitzi believes that their topics of discussion ranged from the transcendental theory of knowledge and the Kantian oeuvre in general to the levels of penetration of the transcendental philosophy into their respective conceptions of the philosophy of life. Thus their intellectual exchange probably included a debate about the question of whether the experience of life must necessarily be formed, as Simmel postulated, or whether the Bergsonian concept of ‘durée’ is sufficient to approach it. Despite the intensity of their engagement in the promotion of each other’s works, the relationship broke down abruptly when the First World War began. They were not able to reconcile their friendship with their national loyalties and their productive relationship of intellectual exchange died with the onset of the war. In 1918, at the end of Simmel’s life and the end of the war, Simmel’s intellectual will was published: Vision of Life (Lebensanschauung). This work was conceived after its author’s initial acceptance of (and near enthusiasm about) the war had slowly turned into a distanced rejection. Yet the personal relationship with Bergson was never re-established. Nevertheless, in Vision of Life, Simmel set down his answer to Bergson’s approach to the philosophy of life and also delivered his own contribution to it. He sought to complement Bergson’s concept of durée with the introduction of the concept of forms which he considered a necessary complement and even an element of life itself.116 Thus, as Simmel turned his attention towards the philosophy of life, he did not forget the theoretical background that he had accumulated during his intellectual journey. He took his Kantian 114 See GSG19 2002: 407 (editorial report). 115 See GSG19 2002:407-411. Thus, Simmel organized the translation of Bergson’s Matière et Mémoire, while Bergson took care of Simmel’s Mélanges. 116 A figure which we know well from his sociological works (see chapter 1).

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roots with him and sought to reconcile them with the philosophical trend that he considered best for grasping modernity. In his reconciliation of Kant and the philosophy of life, he opposed the ever flowing life (i.e., the Bergsonian durée) the concept of forms—and thus made of them a necessary condition for life. This new dimension of life crystallized into the formula that life is necessarily more-than-life.117 Thus, Simmel by no means rejected Bergson’s durée, but all the same did not consider that this ever-flowing durée alone could adequately deal with life and the modern individual experience. He postulated that human experience is only possible through the mediation of the forms, and therefore he sought to complement the insufficiency of the concept of durée with the conceptualization of the forms needed to enable experience. On the basis of the concepts of life and form, as well as on their necessary relationship, Simmel elaborated on a theory of culture that included a good deal of his sociological reflections, and hence brought together the two main axes of his intellectual work: philosophy and sociology.118

A L o o k B a c k , a L o o k Ah e a d In this chapter the focus has been on the authors and theories that, in one way or another, contributed to making the Simmelian oeuvre possible: 117 See chapter 1 for Simmel’s understanding of form—also in the light of the philosophy of life 118 As has already been presented in chapter 1, the concept of life replaced the concept of content in this late phase of Simmel’s work. Hence, Fitzi has argued that Simmel, at the end of his life, actually fulfilled Dilthey’s intention of grounding the human sciences (Geisteswissenschaften) as the study of culture and society within a historical dimension (Fitzi 2002:1214). Moreover, Fitzi has underlined that already Simmel’s sociology concentrated on the forms of consciousness as the heart of the problematic of sociation, for they are the necessary condition for the establishment of bridges towards the others and thus enable social life (See Fitzi 2002:11). He points at the three apriorities that Simmel developed in the first digression of Sociology in order to prove this point. These three apriorities concerning how society becomes possible are less representative of Simmel’s sociology than a proof of the fact that Simmel’s paradigm was changing in certain respects by the time he finished Sociology. Hence, after having focused on that which takes place between the human beings, and thus elaborating on the invisible threads that keep relations alive and thereby produce society, Simmel focused on the individuals with the important question: What happens at an individual level that makes these relations possible in the first place? From this question emerged the first digression of Sociology, and possibly also his interest in Bergson’s works.

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because they inspired him, provoked him, supported him in a hostile academic milieu, or a combination of all of these things. This is the influence that Völkerpsychologie (and especially Moritz Lazarus) had on the young Simmel when he was a student at the University of Berlin. Through the acquaintance with this now-vanished discipline Simmel became aware of, and interested in, an analysis of the supra-individual, of objective culture, and the individual’s relationship to it, and was thus launched on his journey towards sociology. Furthermore, he became acquainted with a form of cultural “relativism” that understood the values and imageries of each group in relation to the group within which they had emerged, thus viewing them as specific and characteristic of the evolution of the group in question, and not as fundamental, a priori categories of “the cultural”. The influences of Gustav Schmoller and the Younger School of National Economy on the young Privatdozent Simmel were noted as well. Schmoller’s conception of the national economy as a social science, and his will to integrate bits of knowledge from other social sciences into economics, enticed Simmel to participate in the debates of the Younger School, and thus to broach the issues of money and economic value. Furthermore, Schmoller’s emphasis on the scientists’ task of proposing solutions for the social problems they analysed certainly did not leave the young Simmel unmoved, as the English version of his ‘The Problem of Sociology’ shows. Yet Simmel never went beyond this programmatic assertion of the supplementary note, and did not follow an interventionist path like Schmoller’s. This might be explained by their different conceptions of science. The next influence explored is that of Kant and the neo-Kantians. Despite the fact that Kant’s influence was a constant element throughout Simmel’s works, it was especially intense in the middle phase of his intellectual production. Simmel’s conception of sociology as the study of the forms of sociation offers a clear example of the traces of Kant’s influence on this author. Yet his elaborations on Kant did not make easy bedfellows with neo-Kantianism. Simmel’s theory of value and his argument that cultural values can only be understood as resulting from reciprocal human relations (instead of considering them as a priori categories of a transcendental subject) illustrate the extent of his deviation from neo-Kantian thought. The Marxian influence was also crucial for Simmel’s intellectual development, especially for his Zeitdiagnose. Marx’s theses inspired Simmel to an extent that can be compared to Kant’s or Goethe’s in other spheres of his intellectual production. In fact, Simmel depicted The Philosophy of Money as a methodological complement to Marx’s historical 92

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materialism. On many occasions the arguments of these two authors develop along parallel tracks. All the same, Simmel’s tone, when he dealt with Marx’s oeuvre and with Marxism, was critical. It was characterized above all by his resistance to the (in his eyes Marxist) assumption that the differences between the human beings are not relevant in comparison to the traits they share. In contrast to this position, Simmel postulated that what is common to all human beings is only the meanest and the lowest. The really precious elements of each individual are those which are specific, unique, and peculiar to each one. Finally, the last relevant influence upon which we focused is Bergson’s. This is most probably the last determining influence on Simmel and it led him to explore the philosophy of life. He devoted his attention to it until his death in 1918. Simmel’s approach to the philosophy of life is a curious one, especially in view of the importance that the Kantian influences attained in his perspective, or, in other words, that which Simmel made out of his Kantian influences for the philosophy of life. Special attention has been paid in this chapter to those influences on Simmel which finally crystallized in the writing of The Philosophy of Money and especially in the formulation of its theory of value. This has been due to the fact that, from the next chapter onwards, we will concentrate on this one work, seeking to trace the intellectual path that Simmel followed from his first works to The Philosophy of Money. We will deal with his changes of perspective and with the possible reasons for these changes. Furthermore, in the second part of this work, our attention will focus exclusively on the theory of value that Simmel developed in this monograph. The main theses that will be discussed there are, on the one hand, that this theory of value contains a sociological kernel that derives from Simmel’s application of his relational approach to the theory of value, and, on the other hand, that this theory of value constitutes the central motif of The Philosophy of Money.

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3. The Philosophy of Money: History, Intentions, Perspective, Methodology

Introduction The Philosophy of Money, first published at the end of 1900, was Simmel’s fourth monograph, and represented a considerable departure from the first three books he had already published: On Social Differentiation (1890) and the two volumes of Introduction to the Moral Sciences (1892/1893). These earlier works had been written by an enthusiastic young author who was engaged in developing the emerging discipline of sociology and fascinated by its heuristic possibilities. This young social scientist and philosopher did not yet know that his hard work and engagement were not to be rewarded with an appointment to a professorship. In the 1880s and early 1890s the young Simmel concentrated his efforts on the social sciences and argued provocatively in favour of a social science that would include some elements of social-Darwinism and apply a relativist perspective. He attained international recognition and prestige—especially in the USA and in France. And yet, by the year of publication of The Philosophy of Money, this prestige had already begun to fade away: the relationships that he had forged with contacts abroad through his sociological work had become steadily weaker; and, no appointment to a professorship was in sight.1 In the academic milieu of fin de siècle Germany, an interest in, and an affinity with, social-Darwinism and a relativist (relational) approach in the fields of philosophy and the social sciences were not characteristics that aroused much acceptance and recognition. Above all, they did not appeal to those philosophical

1

Rammstedt 1993:26-27.

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schools that dominated the academic scene.2 The neo-Kantians strongly criticized Simmel’s relativism and Wilhelm Dilthey rejected his proposal that the forms of sociation should be the object of sociology; he understood this proposal (and to a great extent rightly so) as a relegation of individuals, as well as the meanings and sense of their actions, to a secondary role. The critiques from the academic milieu as well as Simmel’s lack of academic success undoubtedly influenced the development of his theoretical work from the 1880s to the 1900s, and partially account for the considerable distance between The Philosophy of Money and Simmel’s previous works. In fact, we are dealing with a twofold distance: temporal (a good seven years separate the publication of the first edition of The Philosophy of Money from that of his previous book, the second volume of the Introduction to the Moral Sciences) and theoretical, since The Philosophy of Money marks a significant development in his theoretical approach and interests.3 It is impossible to know whether Simmel would have distanced himself so much from the works of his youth if the academic milieu had responded to them with admiration and a rapid appointment to a professorship instead of with mistrust and reluctance. Speculation aside, it is a fact that The Philosophy of Money differs considerably in terms of content and theoretical approach from Simmel’s previous works. The positivist and social-Darwinist perspective (which he had applied at the beginning of his career) is nothing but a remote echo in The Philosophy of Money.4 All the same, there are not only ruptures and discontinuities between The Philosophy of Money and Simmel’s previous works. If one examines the earlier text ‘On the Psychology of Money’ (1889), it is possible to make out lines of continuity between the young Simmel and the Simmel of 1900. Quite apart from the fact that the 1889 text was the cornerstone of The Philosophy of Money, the evidence that its author had been occupying himself with the issue of money for over a decade by 2 3 4

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As it did not appeal to the bureaucracies and ministries of the different Länder which ultimately had the power to decide upon the final lists of candidates to be appointed to professorships either. See Rammstedt 1993:16-17. The discontinuities and reorientations that separate this monograph from Simmel’s previous works make it an interesting object of study (also) from a historical point of view. Indeed, the transitions which Simmel underwent intellectually in the period in which he conceived the arguments of The Philosophy of Money left clear traces on this work. Therefore, a focusing on this monograph allows us to analyse the different layers of theory that Simmel embraced in the years of the preparation and maturation of the arguments of this work.

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the time this monograph was published constitutes in itself the first important line of continuity. Furthermore, the thesis that money had and has many other dimensions before and beyond the economic one, and the critique of the economists of his time for ignoring this fact, hence focusing on money from a point of view that is much too narrow, are key theses of the text from 1889 which can be found again in the first paragraphs of The Philosophy of Money.

F r o m ‘ O n t h e P s yc h o l o g y o f M o n e y’ t o T h e P h i l o s o p h y o f Mo n e y In 1889 Simmel embedded his analysis of money in psychological frameworks. The main point of his text was not so much to deliver another economic analysis of money as to criticize the narrowness of the scope of traditional economic analyses. Indeed, his perception of the need for such a critique was what made Simmel choose to focus on money. He sought to prove that even the analysis of such a paradigmatic object of economic science as money required the inclusion of sociopsychological considerations. This argument fit in smoothly with Schmoller’s intention to redefine national economy as a social science, and he warmly welcomed it in the circle of discussion of the Younger Historical School of National Economy. Furthermore, since Simmel’s conception of psychology was very close to what would be known today as social psychology, his contribution suited Schmoller’s intention to redefine the national economy as a social science even better.5 Thus, Simmel’s first elaboration on money was written under the influence of Gustav Schmoller in the immediate context of the Younger Historical School of National Economy and still under the strong influences of Völkerpsychologie and social-Darwinism. These influences led not only to the idea that economics should widen its perspective to embrace a (socio-) psychological approach, but also to the analysis of economic values from the perspective of the function they accomplish in the complex web of human relations. This was, as we know, in the year 1889. In the course of the 1890s Simmel’s theoretical orientation shifted. This was not least due to the increasing attention he paid to the Kantian oeuvre, and to the way in which he related this oeuvre to his sociological and psychological work. The combination of Kantianism and the social sciences led Simmel to focus on epistemological questions such as the 5

See Rammstedt 1993:20-22 and also Frisby 1992:20-41 for more details on Simmel’s conception of, and relation to, psychology.

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way in which society becomes an object of human knowledge and experience at all. He also dealt with the human apprehension of nature, thereby combining his Kantian and Darwinist influences.6 This reinforcement of the Kantian influences on Simmel’s work took place in roughly the years that separate ‘On the Psychology of Money’ from The Philosophy of Money. This helps to explain the differences in the approaches of the two works. These differences become palpable above all in the way that Simmel dealt with the theory of value.7 It should be borne in mind that, with The Philosophy of Money, Simmel was seeking to present himself as a philosopher, thereby distancing himself from his profile as a social scientist. Furthermore, with this monograph he was hoping to be recognized by a philosophical public that had signalled with abundant clarity that Simmel’s relativist (relational) approach did not fit in with the canons of the dominant philosophical schools of the day. In other words, Simmel sought to use his book to gain the acceptance of a public that did not share his theoretical position. It is not far-fetched to suppose that his weak academic position did not leave him many other alternatives: if he wanted to be appointed to a professorship, he would have to leave sociology behind and reorient himself towards philosophy once more. Nonetheless, it would be wrong to assume that Simmel completely distanced himself from the work that he had done in previous years or from the theoretical position that he had developed therein. On the contrary, with The Philosophy of Money Simmel attempted to reformulate his relational approach in such a way that it could be accepted by his philosophical colleagues.8 He could not allow himself to argue too directly and insistently against the philosophical schools that dominated the academic arena.9 6

7

8 9

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See for paradigmatic examples: ‘How is Society Possible?/ Wie ist Gesellschaft möglich?’ for society (GSG11 1992:42-61), and ‘On a Relationship between the Teaching of Selection to the Theory of Knowledge/ Ueber eine Beziehung der Selectionslehre zur Erkenntnistheorie’ for nature (GSG5 1992:62-74). In fact, Simmel had begun to seriously elaborate on a theory of value at the threshold of the twentieth century, as we can conclude from reading his correspondence with Heinrich Rickert (the Georg Simmel Archive, University of Bielefeld). See below for some details of this correspondence. Thus, he even highlighted in the foreword of his monograph that he was hoping that it would become the best proof of the viability of the relative approach. See GSG6 1989:13. I am not arguing that The Philosophy of Money became the book it is for strategic reasons (although I am convinced that Simmel was deliberately seeking the acceptance of his colleagues). The milieu in which Simmel had to articulate his thoughts, as well as his lack of academic success, led

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In 1899, in a letter to Célestin Bouglé, Simmel described The Philosophy of Money as his first philosophical ‘opus magnum’, and asserted that he intended to write a ‘philosophy of the whole historical and social life’.10 Thus, Simmel’s writings on money advanced a long way between 1889 and 1900. A crucial change of perspective in fact took place in the last years of the 1890s. Still in 1895, Simmel affirmed in another letter to Bouglé that he was planning to write an empirical work on money based on his lecture of 1889.11 He also affirmed his intention to finish this book by 1896. Yet, already at the end of the same year (1895), Simmel had distanced himself from this plan, and in 1896 only the essay on ‘Money in the Modern Culture’ saw the light of day. He had decided to give the old ideas of 1889 a new perspective. He conceived the intention of “writing them up” into a new book, one which would not be an empirical work but a philosophical one: its aim would be to deliver an understanding of the ultimate significance and values of all that is human.12 The Philosophy of Money was finally published at the end of 1900. In the four years which Simmel needed to adapt his original thoughts to the level of a general, philosophical work about the ultimate significance and values of all things human, he also elaborated on a theory of value— which had now become central in view of the new goal of the work. Indeed, as will be argued in the second part of this thesis, this is what became the central theme of The Philosophy of Money. Before we go into a more detailed analysis of The Philosophy of Money, however, we should glance back at its initial seed, ‘On the Psychology of Money’ so as to trace more accurately the continuities and divergences between these two works.

him to turn his attention towards those schools which, at the turn of the twentieth century, had the reins of academic philosophy in their hands. This reorientation shaped and modified his theoretical approach. Perhaps, if his own position had been rewarded with recognition and success, he would have made fewer concessions, and his work could possibly have evolved in somewhat different directions. But these thoughts are only speculative and we should leave them at that. 10 In a letter from December 13, 1899 (Rammstedt 1993:26). 11 He reported this intention to Célestin Bouglé in a letter dated June 22, 1895 (the Georg Simmel Archive, University of Bielefeld, see also Rammstedt 1993:19 and GSG6 1989:726—editorial report). 12 As he reported to Bouglé in a letter dated December 26, 1895. See also GSG6 1989:12.

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‘ O n t h e P s yc h o l o g y o f M o n e y’ Simmel’s main objective in ‘On the Psychology of Money’ was to reveal the narrowness of the standard perspective of economics. For this purpose he focused on the debate between those economists who claimed that money was actually valuable and those who asserted that money was merely the symbol of the values of genuinely valuable objects. Simmel argued that this discussion (a central one in the economic discipline of his time) could be solved by widening the scope of economic analysis and viewing it from the perspective of other social sciences, especially (social-)psychology.13 According to Simmel, the assumption that the value of an object is intrinsic to this object (implying that its value is part of its nature) is a mistake that the economists of his time tended to make, since they never asked themselves what value is and how it becomes possible from a (socio-)psychological point of view. In order to prove his point he endeavoured to analyse the phenomenon of money through the lenses of psychology. Simmel argued that the distinction between “really valuable objects” and “objects which symbolize values but are not valuable themselves” rapidly vanishes into thin air if one acknowledges that value is never an intrinsic quality of a valuable object, but rather the result of a psychological process that is projected upon it, so to speak. Hence, goods like clothing, food or shelter, as well as gold or diamonds, are not intrinsically valuable. They only become valuable on the basis of the functions they fulfil and the desire that they awaken in individuals.14 In light of this perspective, it does not make much sense to argue that money is only valuable because it refers back to the value of gold or any other valuable metal or commodity. Money is valuable because it accomplishes a function that is socially valued and it awakens a strong desire in individuals. Gold, silver, or anything else is valuable for exactly the same reason. All this said, although this is certainly the main theoretical point that Simmel was seeking to make in his paper of 1889, a closer look shows that he actually focused in more detail on other issues than on considerations about the emergence and consolidation of economic values and on widening the scope of economics. For instance, he examined the elaborations on the chains of means and ends and the length they reach in modernity, as well as the development of money as a generalized means of exchange and the most highly valued asset in developed monetary 13 GSG2 1989:55. 14 GSG2 1989:55-56.

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economies. The parallels between The Philosophy of Money and the short text written in 1889 are striking if we take into consideration the number of topics and angles that they share. Let us start then by looking for a moment at the main issues dealt with in ‘On the Psychology of Money’:15 • On the chains of means and ends: A necessary condition for the development of a teleological consciousness (Bewußtsein) and, consequently, for the establishment of chains of means and ends is a causal consciousness, since one cannot establish chains of means and ends without knowing the relations of causation. These chains of means and ends have different rhythms and velocities of change, since means undergo more and quicker changes than ends, which are more stable. Furthermore, the lengths of these chains vary according to the level of development of each culture. In modern societies (‘cultivated nations’) these chains are much longer than in pre-modern (‘primitive’) ones (rohe-/kultivierte Völkern). The considerable length of the chains of means and ends in modern societies makes bearing in mind the final ends increasingly difficult, since there are many intermediate steps in the chain that must be borne in mind in order to be able to achieve the final ends. • The introduction of money as means of exchange: The larger a group grows, the more ineffective and unwieldy natural exchange or barter becomes. Money mediates between relations of exchange, and thus makes exchange in large groups manageable and effective. • The origins of the value of money: The question here is whether money is a value itself or the symbol of the value of other objects. In other words: does the value of money reside in the value of the substance which embodies the monetary function? Simmel’s thesis is that all values emerge from psychological processes of valuation, and no values are intrinsic qualities of any objects. Therefore the differentiation between really valuable objects and symbols of valuable objects is less categorical than it might seem. • The path of money from being a means to becoming an end: The principle of the saving of energy (Kraftersparnis) plays a central part in the transformation of money from being a pure means of exchange 15 Although Simmel almost perfectly thematically organized his lecture in paragraphs, the scheme that follows does not attempt to respect the original thematic sequence, but reorganizes the contents in thematic blocks.

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toward becoming an end. Since money is the means for the attainment of many ends, in the consciousness of many individuals it becomes an end in itself. These people constantly associate the attainment of the goals that they have with the necessity of having money first. Psychological interruptions in the chain of means and ends turn money into the most important end for some character types (greed or thirst for money are paradigmatic examples). • The tempting (verführerisch) character of money and those who resist this temptation: The fierce defence of poverty as denoting a state of virtue and the association of money with a evil in certain worldviews is a further proof of money’s transformation into an end, the most important one, in its own right. Instead of viewing money as the most valued goal it becomes the most abhorred earthly evil in this constellation. The case of Saint Francis Assisi illustrates this point. • The generalization of money as a means of economic exchange: Since money mediates between economic relations of exchange, it has become a central feature of everyday life. The more dominant its presence in daily existence, the more it has lost its old function as a symbolic means of making reparations for offences against the gods or crimes against human life. It has become “profane”. • Money equalizes everything, it brings each element to the (lowest) common denominator: Through its function as mediator of economic exchange and expression of values, money translates everything into the “language” of quantities (‘how much/how many’). It turns the values it expresses into quantities and thus makes them comparable. This has not elevated the general level of what money compares but it has driven it to the lowest common denominator. Money is common to all, the same for everyone (gemein). Only that which is individual, unique, and peculiar is distinguished. Money does not, and cannot, have any of these qualities. In fact, money erases that which is personal in the expression of the values of objects; it is neutral and equally distant from everything and anyone. • Therefore, money non olet, does not smell: It is not possible to know where and how a certain amount of money has been earned. By looking at it, one cannot distinguish “dirty” from “clean” money. Money is indifferent towards all personal qualities as well as towards criteria of justice or goodness.

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• In the monetary economies things are not valued for themselves, but indirectly because they cost money: This fact increases the indifference towards particular objects. People tend to buy according to the price rather than to the merchandise itself. Money is characterless. Money’s lack of content and lack of character makes it appear like a coincidentia oppositorum. There are surprising parallels between God and money from this viewpoint. •

The stranger and money: Money offers the stranger a way to integrate herself into a community since it is not bound to any special group in any way.

A careful reading of this overview, and a subsequent comparison with the contents of The Philosophy of Money,16 reveals that Simmel retained most of the ideas of 1889 in the writing of this monograph. Most of them were integrated unchanged into its third chapter, but others found their way into other parts of the book. As the title of the third chapter (‘Money in the Sequence of Purposes’) suggests, Simmel included his illumations of the chains of means and ends, the processes and consequences of the transformation of money from being a pure means towards becoming an end, and an elaboration of the psychological consequences of this transformation for diverse character types in The Philosophy of Money.17 Furthermore, in the first chapter (‘Value and Money’), Simmel included an analytical theory of value that is based on the general theses about the emergence and consolidation of economic values that he had already formulated in 1889.18 In the second chapter he focused on the thesis that money derives its value from the social function it accomplishes, and not from the value of the substance in which it is embodied. In the fifth chapter (‘The Money Equivalent of Personal Values’) he included considerations on the relation between the expression of personal values and money.19 In the sixth (‘The Style of Life’) the focus is on values in modernity, on the effects that the monetarization of the economy have had on economic values themselves, and on the way in which the logic of these values has expanded to colour the general perception of values. Furthermore Simmel concentrated on por16 An excellent overview of the contents of The Philosophy of Money is provided by Simmel himself in its table of contents, see GSG6 1989:15-20. 17 ‘Das Geld in den Zweckreihen’, GSG6 1989:254-371. I have used Bottomore and Frisby’s translation above (Simmel 1990:204). 18 ‘Wert und Geld’, GSG6 1989:23-138. 19 Simmel 1990:355. ‘Das Geldäquivalent personaler Werte’, GSG6 1989: 482-590.

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traying the multiplicity of lifestyles that have emerged in modernity in close relation to the monetarization of the economy.20 Since Simmel remained faithful to many of the ideas and analyses of 1889 in his monograph, many parallels and similarities between both texts can be found on the content level. We will focus on them in more detail in a moment. However, a detailed comparison of the texts does not only bring parallels to light. There are also clear lines of discontinuity between them. On the one hand, and still on the level of content, discontinuities can be found in the (many) theses and observations which Simmel included in The Philosophy of Money that were not yet present in 1889. On the other hand, the most important differences lie on the level of their theoretical approaches. Indeed, in the course of the eleven years that separate both texts, Simmel changed the content he elaborated upon less than the approach from which he viewed and elaborated upon it.

The Lines of Continuity and Divergence b e t w e e n ‘ O n t h e P s yc h o l o g y o f M o n e y’ a n d T h e P h i l o s o p h y o f Mo n e y The main lines of continuity and divergence between ‘On the Psychology of Money’ and The Philosophy of Money can best be traced through three distinct levels of analysis. They are: 1) the general approach, 2) the leading questions, and 3) the contents. The general approach adopted by Simmel in the writing of both texts shows the fewest lines of continuity. As I have suggested above and will argue below, the theoretical perspective and intentions that led Simmel to write The Philosophy of Money did not have much to do with his perspective and intentions in ‘On the Psychology of Money’. In contrast, the second level of analysis (i.e., the one concerning the leading questions of each text) brings clear lines of continuity in Simmel’s thought between 1889 and 1900 to light. Indeed, the leading question of ‘On the Psychology of Money’ remained the leading question in The Philosophy of Money, since the question of values is the central theme of both texts. 20 Simmel 1990: 429. ‘Der Stil des Lebens’, GSG6 1989:591-716. Furthermore, the legacy of the ideas of 1889 is not only to be found in The Philosophy of Money: for instance, some of the theses that Simmel formulated in the digression on ‘The Stranger’ in Sociology (regarding the special relationship of the foreigner to money) can be traced back to ‘On the Psychology of Money’ as well (See ‘The Stranger/Exkurs über den Fremden’, GSG11 1992:764-771).

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This line of continuity is somewhat difficult to identify, since the change of perspective that took place between 1899 and 1900 does not facilitate the recognition of the continuity of the leading question of Simmel’s work on money. Yet upon closer inspection, this hidden continuity does emerge. The text of 1889 deals with the question of values from the perspective of their psychological origins, foreshadowing the contribution of psychology to the economic debate about the value of money. The 1900 text deals with the question of values in terms of a much wider frame of reference. Indeed, as you will recall, Simmel’s intention with The Philosophy of Money was to reach an understanding of the ultimate values and significance of all that is human. His discussion of money in The Philosophy of Money is, therefore, a kind of platform from which to undertake such an endeavour. In another context Simmel used the metaphor of a plumb line (Senkblei) in order to illustrate the way in which the focus on a superficial object or fact could lead to the depths of the soul. This metaphor could easily be applied to the role that the analysis of money played in The Philosophy of Money: it provided a reliable point of reference.21 However, despite the considerable changes in scope and approach that characterize the later text, the question of values remained the central concern of Simmel’s works on money from 1889 to 1900. Finally, as has already been pointed out above, the most frequent lines of continuity between the texts are located on the third level of analysis, that is, on the concrete contents that they share. We will now examine these in more detail. The focus on the relations between the modes of causal and teleological thinking, as on the chains of means and ends, constitute the clearest examples of shared content in the two texts. In both, Simmel argued that the chains of means and ends become possible on the basis of a teleological reflection. According to him, this direction of thinking (from means to ends) and its translation into actions (purposeful rationality) presupposes a knowledge of causal relations (no one can think in terms of means and ends without knowing their causal connections). Furthermore, in both texts the considerations about the chains of means and ends play an important role in the explanation of the psychological processes through which money evolves from being a simple means of exchange to becoming an end itself. In 1889 Simmel argued that the chains of means and ends change at different speeds, with the means changing more rapidly and the ends being more constant. Furthermore he argued that the more cultivated (i.e., civilized) a group is, the longer its chains of means and ends will 21 GSG7 1995:120.

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become.22 This prolongation of the chains of means and ends results in the (psychological) transformation of intermediate means into ends, since the last ends are too remote to be constantly borne in mind. The last ends of the chain tend to vanish from sight which is fully occupied with the many intermediate steps that are necessary to attain the ends; these steps are much more immediate and present than the ultimate ends themselves. Simmel argued that this conversion of means into ends is actually quite effective for the achievement of final ends: forgetting them and concentrating on the means makes the reaching of ends easier, since it saves energy. Hence, when the chains of means and ends become longer, the intermediate steps (means) tend to be perceived as ends.23 It is interesting to note, then, Simmel’s emphasis on the psychological mechanism of the saving of energy (Kraftersparnis) as an explanatory figure for the conversion of means into ends came to play a much less prominent role in The Philosophy of Money. Although Simmel focused on the chains of means and ends there as well, he did it from a different standpoint. This might best be explained in terms of the loosening of Simmel’s affinities with social-Darwinism that had taken place since 1889. Despite the fact that its legacy still echoed in the differentiation between actions led by instincts (causal) and actions led by motives, goals, and ends (teleological)—which also appears in the monograph of 1900—in general terms, different aspects of the relation of means and ends were highlighted in this book. In The Philosophy of Money Simmel elaborated on the special character of tools, describing them as a sort of man-made means to a very concrete end, and on money being a very special type of tool. From this standpoint, he developed an anthropological approach which focused on human beings as ‘tool-creating animals’. Money, as a crystallized relation of exchange, is a ‘tool’ that has been especially created for making exchange possible and easier. It has furthermore become a general key that can be used in any economic exchange. It has become such a generalized means of exchange that, in the eyes of many people, it is an end in itself—for, without it, the greatest majority of economic exchanges would simply not be possible.

22 This idea of the chains of means and ends and their prolongation as a sign of increasing civilization, i.e., human evolution, which was also present in the works of Herbert Spencer (see, for instance, Spencer 1890:109), is an old motif that can be traced back to Aristotle’s Nichomanean Ethic. 23 Although Simmel did not argue this case explicitly, his point seems to suggest that when the same means is shared by many people, the conversion of this means into a central end is almost inevitable.

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Furthermore, common to both texts is, on the one hand, the argument that the generalization of money as a means of exchange delivers a paradigmatic example of the transformation of means into ends, and, on the other, the idea that money enables exchange in large groups, and that it is an outstanding means or tool for this purpose. After the constitution and stabilization of monetary economies, money stops being a means of exchange. It becomes the means of economic exchange, and thus the means to obtain (almost) any good or service. It stops being perceived as a mere means of acquiring something else and becomes, in the chains of means and ends, one of the most desired ends possible for different psychological types of character. The elaboration of these peculiar character types, which Simmel had only briefly sketched in 1889, became central in the third chapter of The Philosophy of Money, as we will see presently. There are still more parallels. In both texts Simmel referred to the fact that money has become the common denominator of the expression of all economic values, and thus has turned the economic values of all commodities into immediately comparable quantities. Moreover, money does not only hide the qualities of the commodities behind their price, but also the qualities of the giving and taking hands. The characteristics of the owner as well as the receiver of money are not projected onto the amounts of money they exchange. Hence, money never shows its origins or destination. It is impersonal and anonymous. Echoing Marx in Capital to some extent, Simmel affirmed that ‘money non olet’.24 The most important characteristic of money is precisely its characterlessness; that is, its lack of any quality that would make it special, peculiar, or personal. The thesis that the generalization of money as a means of economic exchange has led to money becoming an object of everyday life is also present in ‘On the Psychology of Money’ and The Philosophy of Money (this time in the fifth chapter). As a consequence of this “banalization”, money stops being the special carrier of personal values. In fact Simmel argued that an inversion of the situations in which money can be used has taken place. While it had, at times, been so symbolically loaded that it was used as a means of compensating for offences and crimes against human values and human life (as well as the appropriate way of “paying” for the bride), its generalization in modernity as the means to fulfil all sorts of economic exchange has made it the best form for expressing and exchanging all sorts of (economic) values, but not the personal ones.

24 GSG2 1989:60.MEW13 1972:88, MEW23 1985:124.

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In the logic of money, Simmel argued in both texts, nothing is valuable but money itself.25 After considering the many lines of continuity regarding the contents of ‘On the Psychology of Money’ and The Philosophy of Money, we will now concentrate on the shift of perspective that took place in the time that separates these two works. Despite the fact that the central theme of both texts remained the question of value, in 1889 Simmel did not deliver a theory of value beyond arguing that the value of the objects which accomplish the function of money derives precisely from the social valuation of this function. Indeed, he paid more attention to his analyses of money in the modern chains of means and ends than to developing a systematic theory of value. So, despite the statement that there is no substantial difference between the value of gold and the value of paper money, the discussion of values was overshadowed by the discussion of money and of its transformation into the general modern means of exchange and, subsequently, into a final goal for many individuals. In contrast, the discussion on values occupies a central position in The Philosophy of Money. As we know from Simmel’s letters to Heinrich Rickert, he developed his theory of value during the very last years of the 19th century, as he was “writing his ideas up” to become a philosophical work. It is therefore not a coincidence that only the third chapter of The Philosophy of Money (i.e., the chapter which drew most from the ideas of 1889) discusses chains of means and ends while the rest of the book does not argue in these teleological terms but in terms of value. In my view, the most relevant difference between these texts concerns the concept of Wechselwirkung—which plays a much more central role in The Philosophy of Money than it did in ‘On the Psychology of Money’. It constitutes, so to speak, the lens through which Simmel looked at society, at human actions and relations, at life, and, of course, also at values (economic as well as general values) in his monograph. While the influences of the Marxian and the Kantian oeuvres had become much more central for Simmel by the time he wrote The Philosophy of Money, those influences that had been relevant to him in 1889 (i.e., Völkerpsychologie, Herbert Spencer and social-Darwinism, and Gustav Schmoller) had lost some of their weight in the course of the 1890s. The distancing from social-Darwinism carries an especially good deal of the weight of the change of perspective and theoretical approach that took place between 1889 and 1900. Therefore we will now briefly concentrate on this process of distancing. On the one hand, it will help to 25 GSG2 1989:60 and GSG6 1989:595.

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shed some more light on the differences that separate The Philosophy of Money from one of its primary influences (the text of 1889), and, on the other, it will also contribute to a better understanding of some of the disharmonies within this monograph, which can be explained either by the fact that some of the thoughts Simmel elaborated in its pages are older than the distancing from social-Darwinism or by the fact that this process of distancing was not completed—at least by 1900/1907.26

On Simmel’s Distancing of Himself from the Influences of Herbert Spencer and Social-Darwinism between 1889 and 1900 Although Simmel had already distanced himself from positivism and evolutionism by the time The Philosophy of Money was published, the seed of many of the ideas he elaborated on there had been already planted, so to speak, in the late 1880s and 1890s; that is, in a phase in which Simmel was still ‘between positivism and neo-Kantianism’.27 Thus, there is a certain tension inherent to this monograph between ideas that were inspired by an evolutionary model of thought (and for which parallels can be easily found in the works of Herbert Spencer), and ideas that reject some of the fundamental theses of the works of this author. We will now pay closer attention to the theses of Herbert Spencer which are echoed in the pages of The Philosophy of Money. As has already been suggested in chapter 2, social-Darwinism and Völkerpsychologie quite probably played a relevant part in awakening Simmel’s interest in developing a relational approach to the social sciences. Herbert Spencer had broken with any absolute conceptions of truths and ethical values—disembedded from their contexts. Hence, he argued that truth as well as values can only be conceived in relation to the particular context, situation, species, and race (i.e., group) in which they have originated and in which they are right: and they are relative to their relation to human life and to its preservation. Subsequently Spencer defined truth as that which leads human beings to preserve their lives, and the reflection upon it in the form of positive valuations as the right ethical values.28 Furthermore, he argued that, as we call a knife a good knife if it performs its function well, values are “good values” when they contribute to fulfilling the ends of human life—which he defined as its

26 The years of the first and second edition of The Philosophy of Money. 27 Here, again, I borrow Köhnke’s expression. See Köhnke 1991. 28 Spencer (1892) 1966:47-63.

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preservation and reproduction.29 This implied, in the light of his theory of evolution, that ethical values are not forever the same but that they necessarily change along with the swings of evolution. Consequently, nothing guarantees that a certain idea or belief will continue to be a value in the future, as it was not always so in the past. As time (and evolution) goes by, human definitions of the good and the bad change. Nonetheless, values were not, for Spencer (as they were certainly not for Simmel either), a question of arbitrary choice or of definition. For Spencer they were a question of ‘self-preservation’.30 Moreover, he was convinced that it is possible to recognize in the constitution and health of a human being whether she has acted according to the laws of nature and life or against them, regardless of whatever might have led her to do the one or the other.31 Spencer insisted on the fact that pleasures and pains are relative to each species, to each stage of evolution, and to the particular conditions of the living. Thus he argued that, beyond any individual preferences, the re-moulding of the human nature by ongoing evolution turns what is required for the preservation of human and social life into pleasure. In the same way, it turns all that which has the opposite result into displeasure. Given time, ‘the things now done with dislike from a sense of obligation will be done with immediate liking, and the things desisted from as a matter of duty will be desisted from because they are repugnant.’32 Simmel developed similar arguments when he focused upon the connections between the human apprehension of the natural world and that which is favourable for human life in the text, ‘On a Relation of the Theory of Selection to the Theory of Knowledge’ in 1895. There he argued that the human apprehension of the world that is considered the true one depends on that which is favourable for the preservation of hu-

29 After noting the coincidence between the everyday life qualification of something as ‘good’ and the fulfilment of its assigned end and the field of ethics, Spencer highlighted that, since the qualifications of good and bad depend on whether the objects judged are well or ill adjusted to their ends, human conduct will be considered as good if it fulfils the goal of preservation of human life. In constrast, it will be called bad if it leads to selfdestruction. The best conduct will be that which fulfils three ends in one act, thus achieving the ‘greatest totality of life’ simultaneously for oneself, for the offspring, and for one’s fellow human beings (Spencer 1890:2526). 30 See, for instance, Spencer 1890:39. 31 Thus, motives and good reasons do not alter the effects of not listening to nature and to the necessities for the preservation of life (Spencer 1890:95). 32 Spencer 1890:183-184.

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man life and the human species.33 Some of the main arguments of this text found their way into The Philosophy of Money. There Simmel repeated the thesis that what human beings consider true can only be understood in light of the positive correlation between the usefulness of each “true perception” and the preservation of life. Moreover he argued that it is precisely for this reason that there are different truths for each species: what is favourable for the preservation of the life of the one species need not be valid for the preservation of the life of another. Truth is a relative category that points at the adequacy of a certain perception in relation to its usefulness to the perceiving subject. While he accepted the idea of “true” apprehensions of the world for each species, he denied an absolute truth for them all. What is useful and, therefore, true in the eyes of a species, can be destructive and therefore false for another.34 However, of even more interest than tracing Spencer’s influences in Simmel’s dealing with the perception of nature and truth in The Philosophy of Money, is tracing these influences in his dealing with values. If, regarding the first issue, Simmel took many of the ideas that he had elaborated on in 1895, he did certainly not do so in the case of his theory of value. In fact, he mainly worked on it in the very last years of the 1890s, when these influences were already weak. Furthermore, since Simmel aimed at shedding some light on the way in which subjective valuations become crystallized and stabilize into ‘objective’ values, Spencer’s explanatory model that thought of this step as almost mechanical had little to offer: that which is good for the preservation of life is an objective value. All the same, this mode of arguing did not completely disappear from Simmel’s prose. Still, he relegated the exceedingly close Spencerian relationship between values and that which is good for the preservation of life to a far distant past. Hence, Simmel’s argument developed as follows: despite the fact that this connection might have been relevant a long time ago, the ongoing processes of civilization (which go hand in hand with processes of increasing objectification) has led to the emergence and crystallization of values (be they aesthetic, ethical, or of any other kind) which are neither related to particular subjective needs nor to the needs of the human species in order to survive and proliferate. Values have become objectified and cultural, and thus have, on the one hand, become relatively independent from their creators and, on the other, become unrelated to the preservation of the human species. Simmel elaborated on this thought especially regard33 Arguments which are certainly also found in the works of the American pragmatists. 34 GSG6 1989:102.

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ing the case of aesthetic values.35 His dealing with aesthetic values simultaneously delivers a wonderful example of Spencer’s influence on The Philosophy of Money as well as of Simmel’s dismissal of Spencer’s approach, hence illustrating the relegation of the Spencerian argumentation to a far distant past. Simmel’s argument is that the transition from usefulness to beauty (in the past, not in modern societies) crystallized in successive processes of objectification. Calling an object “beautiful” confers upon it a quality and significance which is less dependent on subjective needs than it would be if it were “only” useful. A useful object is easily replaceable as long as the function it fulfils is guaranteed. From the moment an object becomes beautiful, it also becomes unique and individual; and it cannot simply be replaced by another object, even if it were just as beautiful in its own way.36 This argument shows again that Simmel accepted Spencer’s point about the relation of usefulness for the preservation of life and satisfaction of needs and values. But he only accepted it as projected upon a distant past.37 Thus, things are not aesthetically valuable because they are presently good (i.e., useful) for the preservation of life, but perhaps because they were so in the past.38 Simmel did not apply this argument to every specific aesthetic value that might exist today, but accepted it as a model of explanation for their emergence. In conclusion, Simmel did not accept that values of any kind could be reduced to what is favourable to human life; he only accepted this motif to explain their emergence in a remote past. In fact, he even refused to qualify those values which are totally directed by needs and impulses as actual values. He argued that the necessary strong and conscious differentiation between subject and object that is required for the emergence and stabilization of values cannot take place as long as the satisfaction of our most immediate needs blindly guides the choice of what will satisfy them.39 In other words, thinking in categories of valuable objects is not possible as long as the valuations are strictly reduced to the satisfaction of needs and desires. As soon as the desire in question has been quelled by an arbitrary object, this object will often no longer be present in our consciousness until a similar kind of desire reappears. Then again, any object able to quench the desire will be just as welcome to do so.40 35 36 37 38 39 40

See GSG6 1989:44-47. GSG6 1989:47. GSG6 1989:45-48. GSG6 1989:48. We will focus on these issues in detail in chapter 4. GSG6 1989:40.

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Consequently, we can conclude that Simmel and Spencer’s positions diverge considerably from one other on this issue. While Spencer argued that, along with the evolutionary process, human desires and ethical values will develop to incorporate all that is necessary for the consolidation of more peaceful and pleasurable forms of social life (thus revealing an almost unbelievable evolutionary optimism), Simmel argued that along with the processes of cultural development, that which people value is released from the bonds of necessity, impulse and preservation of life.

Georg Simmel’s Dialogue with Heinrich Rickert d u r i n g t h e W r i t i n g o f T h e P h i l o s o p h y o f Mo n e y Some insight into the evolution of Simmel’s ideas can be gained from an examination of his reports to Heinrich Rickert in which he recounted his advances and problems with the development of a theory of value at the time he was writing The Philosophy of Money. As is clear from Simmel’s correspondence, Rickert was the author with whom Simmel discussed his theory of value the most. In contrast to Simmel, Rickert had had a successful academic career from the very beginning, and was one of the leading figures of the Southern-German neo-Kantian school. Although the relationship between the two authors was never exactly smooth, they kept in touch over the years, until Simmel’s early death. At first glance, it might seem surprising that, despite their significant theoretical differences, Simmel sought this dialogue with Rickert when he was engaging in developing a theory of value. Yet, upon reflection, it becomes clear that Simmel in fact engaged in this exchange of ideas not least because of their theoretical differences. In The Philosophy of Money, Simmel’s aim was to develop a general theory of value which would remain compatible with his relational approach. He was very well aware of the enormous reticence that he would meet on the neo-Kantian front—whose approval he needed notwithstanding—if he hoped to be integrated into the academic milieu. Although we can do no more than speculate about the concrete motivations that led Simmel to initiate a dialogue with Rickert on his theory of value, the hypothesis that he was (also) seeking to “test the field”, and to placate his potential opponents by means of dialogue, is plausible. It is therefore of interest to deal very briefly with the Rickertian approach to values—in order to see the conditions under which this took place as well as to learn more about the theoretical position against which Simmel had to articulate and defend his own. We will then concentrate on the concrete points of the theory

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which Simmel discussed with Rickert as well as on Simmel’s comments on the progress of his work. Rickert, like Simmel41, based his approach to value on the neoKantian differentiation between value and being. Yet, in contrast to Simmel, Rickert did not consider valuations as the processes through which values crystallize; instead, he argued that values and valuations belong to completely different spheres. Valuations do not belong to the realm of value, but to the realm of being, as economic goods and personal preferences do. Rickert sought to prove this point with the following argument: while it is possible to wonder about the existence of one valuation, it does not make much sense to ask about the existence of a certain value. Values do not exist, they are valid (sie gelten) independent of the level of being. This implies that, if a value has never been recognized by a human mind, it is valid all the same. Hence, to wonder whether a theoretical value manifests itself in a certain sentence (i.e., to wonder whether the sentence is “true”) does not have much to do with wondering whether the same sentence has actually ever been recognized as true by concrete human beings, or whether this theoretical value (theoreticher Wert) has actually ever been the object of valuation. Thus, while values do not need be recognized in order to be valid, valuations result from such a recognition. Nonetheless, Rickert did not consider values to be totally detached from reality. They manifest themselves in it, or more specifically in culture. For this reason he argued that philosophy should concentrate on cultural objects in order to be able to distil those values which manifest themselves in the cultural objects from the level of reality. If it did so, philosophy would be in a position to identify, to apprehend and to understand values in all their purity.42 Despite the fact that values are independent from the historical development as well as the individuality of particular facts, they can only manifest themselves in them. By approaching that which is particular, by focusing on history and culture, the philosopher will be able to distil what resides beyond particularity; that is, the permanently valid values.43 Although Simmel did not explicitly refer to Rickert’s works in The Philosophy of Money, their correspondence proves that he actually discussed the problems he had with the development of a theory of value with Rickert. From their correspondence it can be inferred that they exchanged materials and papers which Simmel used for the writing of his monograph as well. Thus, Simmel, in a letter to Rickert of December 31, 41 As we will see in detail in chapter 4. 42 Rickert 1910/11:17. 43 Rickert 1910/11:18.

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1898, explicitly mentioned that parts of The Philosophy of Money had been written with Rickert’s work in mind. He affirmed that he had focused therein on questions which he (Rickert) had dwelt upon already. Yet Simmel was unsure about the results of his analyses.44 From Simmel’s letters it can be easily inferred that he had great difficulties with the development of his theory of value. In fact, the writing of the first chapter of The Philosophy of Money (‘Value and Money)—in which he attempted to develop a general theory of value—was a source of serious doubts and theoretical problems. One of them was, as he reported to Rickert, how he could develop such a general approach to value so as to embrace all types of values (economic, aesthetic, ethical, and so forth) with the same theoretical model, and, this from the standpoint of his relative approach. For him, the latter was the only acceptable theoretical possibility, but he also recognized how difficult it would be, from this position, to address the existence of values which appeared to be absolute to him (like Rickert’s ‘valid values’); and which, therefore, seemed to escape every relativization. Beauty and morality are examples of these kinds of values. In his letter of May 10, 1898, he asserted, for instance, that the concept of value for him entailed not only a ‘regressus in infinitum’, but also a ‘circulus vitiosus’. If one pursued the connections far enough, one was only able to find that the value of A was based on the value of B, and that the value of B was based on the value of A. He commented that this would be an acceptable solution for him, if these absolute and objective values did not lay claim to recognition. He argued that he had only found partial solutions to this problem, and could not foresee an end to these difficulties. However he reaffirmed his intention to remain faithful to his relativist approach (Relativismus).45 He certainly did so, even delivering a relational explanation of why some values appear to us as absolute.46 Finally, in a letter of August 15, 1898, Simmel expressed his discontent with his theory of value again, emphasizing his problems in reconciling different theoretical issues for which he could not find any satisfying general solution.47 Moreover, Simmel expressed his concern about the systematic rejection of the relativist position, showing that he had the impression of being misunderstood in his theoretical approach. He was certainly right.48

44 45 46 47 48

Gassen & Landmann (1958)1993:97. Gassen & Landmann (1958)1993:94. See GSG6 1989:26-28. Gassen & Landmann 1993:96. A more detailed portrait of this relational approach will follow in chapter 4.

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The Purpose and Methodology of T h e P h i l o s o p h y o f Mo n e y Thus, The Philosophy of Money rests on a relational worldview, and a relational methodology is applied throughout. As we know, one of Simmel’s main intentions with this work was precisely to prove the correctness of his relational approach through his analysis of money. From this starting point, he extended the scope of his analyses to embrace the formulation of a general theory of value, a depiction and diagnosis of modernity, and a general conception of human beings.49 Therefore, from the perspective and purpose of The Philosophy of Money, it is a philosophical work rather than a sociological one. For, as we know from chapter 1, Simmel understood sociology as an empirical science that should work on the grounds of the analytical distinction between forms of sociation and contents, thereby focusing on the forms.50 One can certainly never grasp the ‘ultimate values and significance of all that is human’ with the tools of sociology. Yet, as was also mentioned in chapter 1, Simmel argued in Fundamental Questions of Sociology that this discipline is divided into three main problem areas: 1) a general sociology (allgemeine Soziologie), 2) a pure or formal sociology (reine or formelle Soziologie)—that is, the area of sociology that actually works on the basis of the analytical distinction between forms and contents—and 3) a social philosophy (Sozialphilosophie).51 The Philosophy of Money is a paradigmatic example of this last problem area. It stands at the threshold between philosophy and sociology. And this is not meant in the sense that it swings between the two areas, and does not quite belong to either of them, but rather in the sense that it belongs completely to both. Furthermore, although Simmel was attempting to reorient himself towards philosophy with his monograph on money, he could not detach himself from everything he had done before and thus his previous, more sociological works inevitably influenced his later production. Hence Simmel’s sociological reflections found their way into The Philosophy of Money. Besides, this book is also worth sociological attention for it delivers a splendid analysis of European modernity at the turn of the 49 And hence fulfilled the purpose of the book -that of using the economic surface phenomenon of money to reach an understanding of the ultimate values and significance of all that is human. 50 See chapter 1 of this book. However, Simmel did not stick to his own prescriptions and focused quite often in his sociological works on concrete institutions and not only on institutionalized patterns of interaction (forms of sociation). 51 GSG16 1999:84-87, 122-149.

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twentieth century. In this sense, it does not only have a clear sociological character, but has become a sociological classic thanks to the fact that it includes one of the most lucid sociological analyses of the flourishing of modernity. Without the sociological work and thinking that Simmel did in The Philosophy of Money, much of his later production would never have been written the way it was. Paradigmatic examples of the enormous heuristic influence that The Philosophy of Money had on Simmel’s later works are witnessed in ‘The Metropolis and Mental Life’ (1903), ‘The Concept and Tragedy of Culture’ (1911/1912), ‘The Crisis of Culture’ (1917), ‘The Conflict of Modern Culture’ (1918), and even some chapters and digressions in Sociology (1908). And this list is not complete. Despite the fact that the relational perspective which Simmel had originally developed as a methodology actually grew to become his “worldview”, it did not completely loose itself from its sociological roots. Thus, for instance, as I will argue in the second part of this work, the theory of value that Simmel constructed on these relational foundations became a sociological theory of value: it seeks to explain the emergence and stabilization of values on the basis of social relations.52 On a different level of argumentation, Simmel also returned to his relational approach to illustrate why he assumed it would be possible to grasp ‘the ultimate values and significance of all that is human’ by taking an analysis of money as the starting point. He argued that philosophers had often sought to reach a direct understanding of human life as a whole, and the results of their work were invariably meagre and disappointing, since they had chosen the wrong means of getting at the question. Accordingly, he opted to focus on one single element of modern life, framing it in the same way as a work of art. His argument was that art has shown that the framing of one single element makes the presentation of the picture much more effective, whilst at the same time the picture expresses so much more than the object that happens to be represented. But how did he imagine that this would work? His argument was based on the premise that all the elements that compose a system do so because they are interconnected with each other through often invisible threads of sociation. He argued that if the philosopher could depict the object of her analysis in the same way as a work of art frames its object, she would produce a self-contained work that would deliver a global interpretation of the object. In order to do so she would pull at the threads that connect this object with all the rest, 52 I will argue in the digression below that Simmel was being innovative at this point, having to a certain extent Karl Marx as his precursor in the elaboration of a theory of value based on human relations.

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thereby offering a general picture of the net of Wechselwirkungen of which her depicted object partakes. In order to do so he believed that the framing was of central importance. And, therefore, he argued that the philosopher should strive to develop a framing from which an interpretation of the whole (in his case the ultimate significance and values of all that is human) could be attained. Concretely, Simmel argued that the ‘unity of his research’—parallel to the work of art—‘lay in the possibility of finding, in each singularity of life, the totality of its meaning’.53 In my view, Simmel’s metaphorical parallel with the framing of works of art in the foreword of The Philosophy of Money is somewhat misleadingly expressed. It does not, at any rate, formulate explicitly enough what his reference to art (as well as the idea that the whole can be grasped from a singularity) concretely implies. These assertions must be interpreted in the light of Simmel’s interest in the philosophy of life. An interest which would develop, years later, into a complete dedication. Furthermore, they constitute another attempt to legitimize in some way his preference for a relational approach, a preference with which he stood to a large extent alone in the philosophical arena. While Simmel applied a relational perspective to his sociological work because he was convinced that the object of sociology should be the forms of sociation, in The Philosophy of Money he focused on relations because they held the key of his anthropological and philosophical message. He assumed that by focusing on a concrete object of analysis such as money, he would have better chances of reaching the totality, and thus deliver a general social anthropology and a picture of modernity.

The Influence of Simmel’s Conception of Philosophy on the Structure of T h e P h i l o s o p h y o f Mo n e y Despite the fact that Simmel intended to focus on money from a purely philosophical viewpoint in The Philosophy of Money, and went so far as to emphasize that not a single line of his research should be considered as written from an economic viewpoint54, he did not manage to do so.55 His knowledge of the social sciences as well as of the national economy 53 GSG6 1989:12. A depiction, moreover, that automatically makes one think of the philosophy of life which he elaborated on years later. 54 GSG6 1989:11. 55 As Gustav Schmoller already stated in his review of The Philosophy of Money (Schmoller 1901) and Paschen von Flotow has recently emphasized (See Flotow 1992 & 1995).

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became a central part of this work. Moreover, Simmel delivered theses and made analyses in The Philosophy of Money which were of interest to these disciplines. Hence, neither its contents nor the academic orientation of its potential readers were purely philosophical. However, if we briefly pay attention to Simmel’s conception of philosophy, we will understand more about what he meant when he characterized this work as philosophical. We will also understand more about how the work is structured since he designed its structure in close relation to his conception of philosophy. According to Simmel, philosophy is a discipline that lies on both sides of the empirical sciences, coming before and going beyond them. The part of philosophy that lies before these sciences is epistemology (Erkenntnistheorie), while the part lying beyond them is metaphysics. Simmel divided The Philosophy of Money into two parts in accordance with this conception. He named them, following the Kantian terminology, the ‘analytical’ and ‘synthetic’ parts. The analytical part deals with what lies ‘before’ the empirical sciences and approaches money from the perspective of ‘the conditions and relations of general life’.56 Here he sought to give answers to questions such as, what are values? How are these values socially constructed and apprehended? What is money? How come does money become an object of valuation? How do people perceive and value money? The synthetic part concentrates on what is ‘beyond’ the empirical sciences and thus deals with ‘the being and form of life’ from the perspective of ‘the effects of money’.57 Here, he sought to depict the way in which the generalization of money as a mediator of economic exchange had altered all of modern life, the meaning and apprehension of values (especially economic, but not only), and the configuration of lifestyles. Furthermore, Simmel depicted the objectives of the analytical part of The Philosophy of Money as an attempt to understand money from ‘the perspective of the conditions of its being and the meaning of its existence’. To do so, he dealt with money from the perspective of its ‘historical apparition, its idea and structure’, and this from the following points of view: 1) ‘from the feelings of value’, 2) in relation to the ‘praxis of things’, 3) and through the ‘reciprocal relationships between people’; that is, from the perspective of the preconditions of money.58 The synthetic part of the book concentrates on the effects which money has had on the societies in which it has flourished, as well as on the people who, through their ongoing interrelations, make these socie56 GSG6 1989:10-11. 57 GSG6 1989:10-11. 58 GSG6 1989:10.

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ties possible and keep them “alive” in the first place. Simmel set out to analyse the effects that money has had on the ‘internal world’ (innere Welt) of these people from the following viewpoints: 1) ‘from the individual feeling of life’, 2) ‘from the intertwining of human destinies’, 3) and ‘from the general culture’.59

Why Should We Take the Theory of Value be the C e n t r a l T h e m e o f T h e P h i l o s o p h y o f Mo n e y ? Still to be described in detail are the reasons why the theory of value should be viewed as the central theme of The Philosophy of Money, the thread that runs through the entire monograph and sews its analytical and synthetic parts together. The following arguments support this position: The first argument for this thesis can be already found in the foreword of The Philosophy of Money. There Simmel depicted the main goal of his book as reaching an understanding of ‘the ultimate significance and values of all that is human’. He argued that money was, for him, ‘the means, material or example for the presentation of the relationships which exist between the most superficial, realistic and accidental phenomena (Erscheinungen) and the most ideal potentialities of being, the deepest currents of individual lives and of history.’60 Hence, the thematic focus on money was only a means of approaching that which really interested him. And this was less money than the ways in which human beings construct their world, relate to each other, think of each other, imagine and, above all, value and give meaning to their world and experiences. The ways in which these values and meanings emerge and consolidate was, for him, the key to understanding that which is intrinsically human, as well as how human beings are in a particular place and time, in concrete forms of sociation and webs of Wechselwirkungen. Furthermore, the focus on money, as well as on the emergence and consolidation of economic values under modern conditions, allowed him to develop a general theory of value as well as to deliver a diagnosis of modernity. This theory of value served as the basis from which he was able to trace a general depiction of what it is to be human: namely, of human beings as exchanging, objective and objectifying, and—last but not least—valuing beings. Hence, if money is the example that confers upon this extensive work a thematic unity, its theory of value is the unit59 GSG6 1989:10. 60 GSG6 1989:12.

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ing thread which binds its elements together from a theoretical viewpoint. In fact, the hypothesis that the theory of value constitutes the main axis of The Philosophy of Money imposes upon the thematic mosaic of this book a clear, even symmetrical, structure. Indeed, while the analytical part begins with a sketch of a general theory of value, it goes on to elaborate a special theory of economic values, and on this basis develops a sort of functional definition of money. The synthetic part traces the path back from an analysis of money to an analysis of modern values and lifestyles. Most of the modifications which Simmel introduced in the second, revisited edition of The Philosophy of Money (published in 1907) are concentrated in its first chapter; that is, the chapter in which he presented his analytical theory of value. In my opinion, this also goes some way towards demonstrating the importance that the theory of value had for him in the writing of this monograph. In fact, when Simmel referred to the modifications that had been introduced in the second edition of his work, he argued that no modifications which altered the main line of argumentation of the work had been undertaken. He asserted that the changes only sought to clarify the foundations of the work in order to facilitate its being understood.61 Simmel’s correspondence with Heinrich Rickert provides further testimony to the importance that the theory of value had for the author during the writing of The Philosophy of Money. Another argument that makes the thesis that Simmel made his theory of value the central theme of The Philosophy of Money plausible is that, with and through it, he was seeking to prove the appropriateness of his relativist, relational approach. According to Simmel, and despite the misinterpretations by his contemporaries, his relativism (renamed “relationism” here) was not a sceptical relativism, but an answer to the question of the way in which human culture and social relations become possible. Simmel’s intention was not only to deliver a definition of what value is, and which consequences and effects values have on the human apprehension of the world. His intention, furthermore, was to give an answer to the questions of how values become possible, how they emerge, how they crystallize, what their source is, and what makes them stable. He attempted to answer these questions by concentrating on economic values (for him a special case of general values) and on their relation to money under modern conditions of monetarized economies. However, Simmel never explicitly stated that the theory of value was the main theme of his monograph and, thus, this must remain my own thesis. 61 GSG6 1989:14.

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A Look Back Simmel’s The Philosophy of Money opened a new phase in Simmel’s theoretical production. Much distance separates this book from the author’s previous monographs. Yet, there are also important elements of continuity between the young Simmel and the Simmel of The Philosophy of Money. On the one hand, his interest in the issue of money did not awake with this work first; its origins can be traced back to the late 1880s, when Simmel was a regular participant at Gustav Schmoller’s discussion groups. On the other hand, the influences that the young Simmel had received remain palpable in The Philosophy of Money, despite all the differences that mark it out as the beginning of a new phase in Simmel’s writing. The most significant novelty of this book, beyond the fact that it stages Simmel’s attempt to return to philosophy, lies in the perspective of analysis developed therein. This perspective rests upon two pillars. On the one hand, it is based on the conviction that philosophy can learn from the framing of a work of art, and, thus, starting from the analysis of a clearly framed object, it reaches an understanding of a much wider whole. On the other hand, it is based on a relational perspective. As has been mentioned above, Simmel’s relativism (or relationism) was not only a methodological approach for him at the time he wrote The Philosophy of Money, but it had grown to become his worldview. But this does not mean that it ceased to function as a method. On the contrary, it retained its central role as a method, and allowed the formulation of a theory of value based on relational foundations. Simmel worked on the assumption that, by concentrating on the phenomenon of money, he would be able to plumb the depths of the societies which have not only made money possible, but have been, later on, modified to a great extent by the effects of its consolidation and generalization as the means of economic exchange.62 Hence, recalling what has already been asserted on several occasions, he presented the significance and the intention of his work in terms of a plumb line which, lowered from the economic surface, would reach down to something much more fundamental, the metaphorical ocean floor of the ultimate values and significance of all that is human.63 Thus, Simmel did not only intend to depict modernity in The Philosophy of Money, although modernity does occupy a great part of the work; he also intended to offer a picture of human beings, an anthropology which would present them as exchanging beings who mainly constitute themselves in relation to others.64 62 GSG6 1989:12-13. 63 GSG6 1989:12. 64 See Haesler 2000, Papilloud 2002a & 2002b.

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Introduction The Marxian labour theory of value received close and respectful attention in The Philosophy of Money. Of the various approaches to value which Simmel considered during the writing of his monograph, the Marxian was the only one that he considered worthy of explicit mention; indeed, he devoted a whole subchapter of his book to it.1 Despite the fact that we cannot know whether Simmel’s knowledge of the Marxian oeuvre was mainly direct or indirect (not to mention the impossibility of reconstructing which concrete works he had actually read), we must acknowledge that Simmel considered Marx’s labour theory of value to be extremely interesting from a philosophical point of view, presenting a long discussion of it in the chapter he dedicated to the relation of money to personal values.2 This digression will concentrate first on describing the Marxian labour theory of value, and in so doing will strive to differentiate Marx’s economic theory of value included in his analyses of the capitalist system of production from his more all-embracing views on values in relation to the nature of human beings and history. Afterwards, the attention will turn towards Simmel’s interpretation of, comments on, and critiques of the Marxian theory of value. In some instances we will realize that Simmel’s reception and critique of the Marxian theses suffered because, on the one hand, he did not have access to key Marxian works that were still unpublished at the time The Philosophy of Money was written and, on the other hand, because Simmel probably gathered sundry bits and

1 2

See GSG6 1989:563-590. See GSG6 1989:564 for Simmel’s acknowledgement of the Marxian labour theory of value as a highly interesting from a philosophical viewpoint.

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pieces of the Marxian theory from reading the popularized Marxism of his time rather than from first-hand reading of Marx’s works.

The Marxian Theories of Value Seeds of the Marxian economic theory of value can be found in ‘Wagelabour and Capital’ (1849), and in a more elaborated form in the Grundrisse (1857).3 Yet, it reached its most detailed elaboration in Capital, a work which Simmel surely knew and read, at least partially.4 Marx built his economic theory of value upon the classical differentiation between ‘use values’ and ‘exchange values’. A commodity or service has a use value if any person benefits from consuming or using it. For instance, a spoon has a use value for some people because it allows them to eat soup without needing to drink it straight from the bowl. A pen has a use value because it allows people to write down their thoughts on a piece of paper, and so forth. The same pen, though, has an exchange value if it is not considered as a commodity to be consumed and used but as a means of exchange, namely as representing what might be gained or obtained if it is exchanged for something else. Following this differentiation, use values are related to the sphere of consumption and do not enter into the sphere of market exchange. The latter is exclusively regulated by the second type of values (i.e., exchange values). All merchandise (i.e., commodities or services which have been produced in order to be exchanged) has two dimensions of value or, following the Marxian terminology, two different values: a ‘use value’ on the one hand and an ‘exchange value’ (which Marx shortened to ‘value’) on the other. While use values remain incommensurable, exchange values share a single measure that is common to all merchandise. Despite their perhaps ‘mystical appearance’,5 exchange values are nothing but the expression of the amount of the average, social time of labour that is necessary in order to produce the commodity in question, and all this against the background of the concrete state of development of the forces and relations of production. Thus, Marx reduced (exchange) values to a material basis which makes them objective and allows them to be quantified.6 According to Marx, the different types of work and the most different results can be reduced to units of simple, physical work which constitute 3 4 5 6

Lohnarbeit und Kapital (MEW6 1970: 397-423), Grundrisse. Zur Kritik der politischen Ökonomie (Marx 1974) At the very least he knew its third volume. See GSG6 1989:587. MEW23 1985:85. MEW23 1985:55.

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the basis of the calculation of exchange values, and thus be quantified. Despite the fact that not all types of work involve the same level of complexity, Marx accepted the reducibility of them all to units of simple work as a fact.7 There are no immediate connections between the concepts of use and exchange value of a product of human labour beyond the central fact that if an object does not possess any use value, it cannot attain any exchange value either.8 Use and exchange values are not connected with each other in so far as use values are related to the sphere of consumption, while exchange values are related to the sphere of economic (specifically capitalist) production and exchange. The first are subjective and qualitative, the second objective and quantifiable; the first probably vary from individual to individual, the second remain constant for all. At the precise moment in which a commodity becomes merchandise, thus entering the market, it stops being considered primarily for its use value, but its exchange value becomes relevant. All the peculiar characteristics of merchandise become irrelevant. According to Marx, since the value of a commodity is expressed in relation to the value of another: Xa=Yb, the peculiar qualities of each particular commodity cannot be that which is being compared. For instance, the assertion that a kilogram of apples has the same value as a kilogram of pears (1 kg apples=1 kg pears) refers neither to the colour, flavour or texture of these apples and pears (for they can simply not be measured in relation to each other and made equivalent) nor to the particular amount of time which has been invested in producing (sowing, harvesting, etc) them. Besides all their special characteristics, there must be something that makes them comparable, equivalent, and, following the Marxian argument, this something must be necessarily common to both of them. This common element is the required amount of average, social labour time needed in order to produce these goods. And it is this that makes two objects comparable, not their particular characteristics (including also the peculiar conditions of their concrete production)—which are abstracted. The required social labour time is the only element that remains common to all goods and services after the abstraction of their peculiar qualities has taken place. It 7 8

MEW23 1985:59. MEW23 1985:55. The argument is simple: If an object has no use value at all nobody will be interested in exchanging anything in order to obtain it; and, therefore, it will not attain an exchange value. This object will not be capable of being exchanged even if human labour time has been invested in it. The difficulty of bringing together the dimension of usefulness with the dimension of investment of labour time is one of the main critiques that Simmel formulated against the Marxian labour theory of value, as we will see below.

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is the measure as well as the source of their (exchange) value, and that which lies behind the relations of equivalence between the values of the objects. Only by measuring the values of merchandise in terms of the amount of labour time invested in them, does it become possible that the value of a certain object can be expressed in units of another object. 9 A central divergence between the Marxian and the Simmelian approaches to economic value becomes manifest at this point. According to Marx, the fact that—say—x pieces of cloth are equal to y kilograms of oranges is an objective, measurable fact, and this is not because the value of merchandise is intrinsic to merchandise itself. He actually wrote with remarkable irony about those economists who had suggested this.10 Following the Marxian argument, the possibility of this objective measurement is based on the relations of equivalence between the different amounts of social labour time to produce the commodities in question.11 In the elaboration of his theory of value, Marx assumed that all merchandise was bought and sold in the market according to its exchange value (i.e., that the price of the merchandise did not differ from its exchange value). Only in the third volume of Capital did he concede that the effects of market competition introduced dissonances between prices and exchange values.12 In marked contrast to this, the cornerstone of Simmel’s theory of value was constituted by relations of exchange, thus actually inverting the steps that Marx had followed in his argumentation. As we will see in detail in the following chapter, Simmel argued that the establishment of a relationship of equivalence between the values of two objects results from the crystallization of repeated relations of exchange. In fact, he developed his argument in a way which could be faithfully summarized by paraphrasing the sociological Thomas theorem: those relations of value socially defined as equivalent are equivalent (in their consequences). In Simmel’s view, relations of equivalence of economic values are constructed through reciprocal relations of exchange, and cannot be deduced from any “objective” given facts, such as from the 9 MEW23 1985:58-59, 63. 10 See, for instance, MEW23 1985:98, where Marx argued that no chemist had been able to discover the exchange value of a pearl. 11 MEW23 1985:71-72. 12 Marx elaborated on the theory of surplus value under the assumption that all merchandise was being bought and sold according to its exchange value—including labour power. Hence, working as he did on the premise that labour power can produce more value than it actually requires for its own reproduction, he concluded that it produces a surplus value which, due to the fact that the labour power is being paid for at its exchange value, ends up in the hands of those who are the buyers of this labour power (namely capitalists). In this way they obtain their profits.

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amount of average social time of labour which is necessary to produce x goods under the conditions given by z relations and y forces of production.13 There are still some questions left to answer with respect to Marx’s economic labour theory of value before we concentrate on Georg Simmel’s comments on it: Was this theory conceived to explain the source of all types of values ever? Or was it instead a theory of economic value, leaving ethical, aesthetic, and all other types of values aside? Did Marx recognize only economic values as values? Was this theory conceived to explain all forms of economic values or was it concerned with the capitalist form of production? In what way exactly are we to understand the meaning of “labour” and “production”? When Marx took the exchange values of merchandise to be the relevant values in the capitalist economy (hence contrasting with use values), he dismissed all those objects, constructions and phenomena that were perhaps for sale in the market, but which had not been produced for market exchange through an investment of human time of labour, from his economic analysis of value.14 He thereby depicted the use values of merchandise as being overshadowed by their exchange values. He added that, under capitalist conditions of production, merchandise is not primarily produced for its use or consumption but for profitable market exchange.15 Furthermore, the fact that goods and services become merchandise is neither intrinsic to them nor necessary at all for their consumption, that is, for the fulfilment of their use values. It is, rather, a special characteristic of the capitalist system of production that goods and services (use values) take the general and generalizing form of merAccording to Simmel, there are relations of equivalence between objects which—through continuous repetition—become “equivalent”. Hence the impression emerges that they “should” be equivalent even when, on occasion, they are not. Thus, we have the feeling that a Coke should not cost more than 2 euros, but still pay five at a party because we are thirsty, even though we are convinced that we have paid a price that is over the equivalence relation. If, from now on, everywhere we went it were required that we pay 5 euros for a Coke, we would stop considering this price unfair. The feeling that the price does not follow the relations of equivalence does not stem from observing that one case but from its comparison to the normal (most commonly recurring) situation. See chapter 4 for a more detailed analysis of this point. Here the Marxian and Simmelian perspective seem irreconcilable to me. 14 Conscience and honour, for example, are not values in the light of this perspective, although they can certainly be given a price. We will return to this point below. 15 For a clarification of use and exchange values, the one being independent of the formal social framework, and the other immediately dependent on it, see Cohen 2000:103-108. 13

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chandise attached to their exchange value. Yet, emphasizing that exchange values have not occupied such a central position in all systems of production is what is important to us now. The economic theory of value that Marx delivered, and which situated exchange values at the very centre of the economic theory of value, concentrated on an analysis of the capitalist system of production. If the scope is widened to include all of Marx’s oeuvre (and thus not only his analyses of capitalism), it becomes manifest that, in the light of his more philosophical and historical works, labour remains the most crucial dimension of production and therefore of human life, yet exchange values lose their central position as the concept of average social labour time does. According to Marx (as well as to Engels), human beings are labouring beings; they produce their lives at the same time that they produce what they need in order to live. Furthermore, production relates human beings to their environment and to each other. However, the way in which concrete human beings produce and relate to each other is not fixed and stable forever. It can take place within the frameworks of the most divergent forms of society.16 If Marx had sought to deliver a general theory of value (and not only of economic values under the conditions of capitalist production), no bridges could be built between the conception of value as exchange value and certain assertions in Marx’s works which justify our talking about an “implicit theory of value” within his oeuvre. In the light of this “implicit” approach to values, which is not elaborated on economic grounds, human freedom and the realization of human life (sometimes in the form of the species being) can be taken to be the values most central to human life. In order to decide whether these two understandings of value within the Marxian oeuvre are compatible at all or whether they are in total contradiction with one another, which would mean there are two irreconcilable conceptions of value within the Marxian oeuvre, two passages in Marx’s works will be discussed in which these “explicit” and “implicit” Marxian approaches to values emerge with some clarity. A paradigmatic example of the “explicit” (economic) theory of value can be found in Capital, in which Marx argues that conscience or honour are not values, even when they can command a price.17 Marx argued that the prices of commodities can differ quantitatively from their exchange value and, furthermore, they can also contain a ‘qualitative contradiction,’ to the extent that objects that are not commodities, for exam16 MEW23 1985:57. 17 We must bear in mind here that Marx was delivering an economic analysis of value. The choice of the examples (honour and conscience), though, immediately suggests to us that he picked up two ethical values and argued provocatively that they had no value.

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ple conscience or honour, can actually be for sale and attain through their price the form of commodities. Hence objects can formally have a price without having a value. Marx also mentioned here the price of uncultivated land, arguing that, even if it is given a price, it does not have a value since no human labour has been incorporated in it.18 The assertion that an uncultivated field does not hold within its fence any reified human labour, and therefore no value, is not difficult to understand from the point of view of Marx’s labour theory of value.19 Yet, the assertion that honour and conscience do not entail any crystallization of human labour time is not as easy to accept if we understand labour as production. It is difficult to deny that at least some human beings have invested more time and energy in taking care of their honour than taking care of their wheat or potato fields, and the creation of such a thing as conscience demands many hours of hard work, especially in the early socialization of human beings. Hence we cannot consider the emergence and consolidation of phenomena such as honour or conscience a divine gift or anything of that ilk. They have been produced by human beings and are therefore a crystallization of human “labour”, of human “production”. As human beings are the producers of the cars they drive and the bread they eat, human beings are also the producers of that which they understand as honour, loyalty, or conscience. To be fair, Marx did acknowledge this fact in one of his earliest works, The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, in which he asserted that religion, family, state, law, morals, science, art etc., being only special kinds of production, fall under its general law.20 This assertion invites us to reconsider observations in the first volume of Capital about the phenomena like conscience and honour’s lack of value in a new light. Do these two perspectives actually contradict each other? A schematized reconstruction of the first thesis (i.e., from Capital) develops as follows:21 • Sometimes there are incongruities between prices and values. • These incongruities can be of either a quantitative or qualitative kind. • Qualitative incongruities take place when objects (for instance, honour or conscience) are given a price, despite not being commodities. 18 MEW23 1985:117. 19 Although we could easily picture arguments for the case that it attains its value through its potential to hold such work and to produce more or less fruitful results 20 Ökonomisch-philosophische Manuskripte. MEW Ergänzungsband I 1981: 537. 21 Here I am offering my own interpretation of, and my solution to, this apparent contradiction, but still remaining faithful to my knowledge of the Marxian lines of argumentation.

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• They thus attain the form of commodities although they are not commodities. • There are objects which can have a price although they have no (exchange) value. It is possible to understand this thesis in such a way that it does not necessarily imply a clear contradiction of the assertion that morals, art, or science are fruits of human production. Honour and conscience do not have any (exchange) value under capitalist conditions of production because they are not commodities. They are not commodities because they have not been produced for market exchange. The logic of their production does not have anything to do with the mechanisms of capitalist production and, therefore, although they can be given a price they are strangers in and to the market. In other words, they are not merchandise and (therefore) do not have an exchange value.22 It is coherent and plausible to interpret the statement from Capital as implying that, in the capitalist system of production, despite the fact that human productions such as honour or conscience can eventually be given a price, they have not been produced for exchange and are alien to the market. Honour might play a relevant part in the organization of social relationships— and might even provide the social frame of some economic exchanges— but it is not something with which one can make economic profits. In summary, the argument favoured here claims that, although honour and conscience are not values in the sense of exchange values of merchandise (exactly what Marx was seeking to analyse in Capital) beyond the narrow scope of the capitalist production, they can, nonetheless, indeed be considered values. If human beings have invested their time and energy in developing and shaping their honour and conscience, it must certainly constitute value to them (even if this value cannot be immediately brought to the sphere of profitable market exchange). Classifying them within Marx’s categories they are definitely use values. The apparent contradictions between the Marxian treatment of value and its source in human labour are in fact only apparent. In fact, these theses are incommensurable. They respond to different theoretical per22 This would actually pose the question of the exactness of the assertion that human labour power is a commodity: although through the payment of a salary, it might appear to be (re)produced for the market, it has more than likely not been produced for it. Human labour power should therefore be considered a “false” commodity. Parallel to conscience and honour, human labour power is being treated as a commodity although it is something other than that. And yet it is very plausible to assume that Marx would not have accepted the idea that human labour power does not have a value for it has not (only) been produced for exchange.

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spectives: the first one (from Capital) refers to an analysis of the capitalist economy and system of production; the second one is all-embracing and departs from economic analyses leading us straight to the most central pillar of Marx’s conception of humankind: that human beings produce their lives at the same time that they produce what they need to live. Everything that human beings produce in relation to each other and to their environment is a human product and a fruit of human labour, for labour is not only that which people do for a salary. That which concrete individuals are and become can only be understood in the light of this perspective in connection with the relations of production that they establish and to the level of development of the forces of production to which they are subject. It was upon the foundations of this assumption that Marx asserted that humans make their own history. These theses constitute the background of the assertion that regarding exchange value as value is a specificity of the capitalist system of production and not a historical universal. Within the frame of Marx’s economic theory of value, the (exchange) value of a commodity varies according to the social labour time required for its production, and therefore varies in relation to the development of the productive forces and relations of production. In Marx’s historical and philosophical writings, exchange value does not have such a central position.

Georg Simmel on the Marxian Labour Theory of Value For reasons mentioned above, it can be assumed that Simmel was more familiar with Marx’s later works (especially with Capital) than with the works of Marx’s youth. He did not have access to the complete picture of Marx’s general theses on the nature of humankind or to many key aspects of his philosophy of history. He could therefore only guess, reading between the lines, that Marx and Engels knew other dimensions of value beyond the economic exchange value, dimensions in which human labour and human life attained the highest values. These aspects of the Marxian oeuvre fell into a blurred background in Simmel’s reading of Marx, and not only Simmel’s but also Simmel’s contemporaries. Marx’s elaboration on exchange values under the conditions of capitalism became, to a great extent, the whole of Marx’s theory of value in Simmel’s eyes. Thus, when Simmel referred to the Marxian labour theory of value, he was referring to the economic theory of value that Marx developed in Capital. The same goes for the socialist authors of 131

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Simmel’s time who coloured Simmel’s reception of the Marxian theses, at least partially. The comments on the Marxian labour theory of value that can be found in The Philosophy of Money are characterized, on the one hand, by Simmel’s intense interest in the Marxian labour theory of value, and, on the other hand, by his dismissal of it. Despite considering the Marxian labour theory of value as the most interesting approach to values attempted up to that time (at least from a philosophical point of view),23 Simmel argued that it had fatal analytical errors that, to formulate his critiques succinctly, make it more a normative theory of value than an economic one. This, furthermore, due to its internal incongruities, does not fulfil its objectives (not even as a normative proposal) but ends up creating more problems than it resolves. Simmel’s discussion of the labour theory of value begins with a critique of the differentiation between the concepts of labour and labour force.24 His main point here is that this differentiation only serves the political interests of socialism, and that even these can be articulated without having to split the concept of labour into labour and labour power. Simmel’s argument is that realized labour power cannot be distinguished from labour, and potential (not realized) labour power does not create any values at all.25 In fact, he suggested that the Marxian theory of (labour) value only distinguishes between labour and labour power in order to be able to develop the theory of surplus value later and, from this standpoint, argue in political terms. Simmel interpreted the labour theory of value in this sense only, namely exclusively as an instrument for the political interests of socialism. He therefore interpreted it to be a proposal concerning the way in which labour should be valued and conceived. I believe that he assumed that Marx was also making a pragmatic proposal about the way goods and services should be distributed in a communist society, therefore opt23 GSG6 1989:564. 24 GSG6 1989:563-590. 25 GSG6 1989:564-565. Simmel’s critique of the differentiation between labour and labour power must be related back to Simmel’s reading of this point of the Marxian labour theory of value. This Simmelian reading can be summarized as follows: In the Marxian theory of value, human labour power is the only source of value. Labour itself cannot be thought of as having value since it is a physiological function of human beings. In contrast, labour power has value because it has been produced with human labour. The argument goes as follows: in order to create labour power, products of human labour (food and so forth) must be invested in order to (re)produce it. Labour power has thus a value, because human labour has been invested to produce it.

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ing for taking the invested labour time in producing goods for the satisfaction of social needs as the best distributive criterion. But this is not what Marx had to say about labour time and exchange values. He intended mainly to deliver an analysis of a concrete form of production: capitalism. Thus, besides viewing the labour theory of value in the light of a good proposal or a bad proposal in order to account for what each individual might have the right to use from a total array of available commodities and services, this theory sought to analyse the capitalist system of production and exchange. The fact that a great majority of the labouring population sells labour time, and thus their capacity to labour for a specified period of time, is a peculiar characteristic of this system of production. And this point makes the differentiation between labour and labour force significant for its analysis. The labourers do not actually sell the products of their labour; they only sell their capacity to labour—even if this means that they have to translate this force into actual labour in order to accomplish the contract. The merchandise they sell is their labour power for a certain amount of hours, not an already produced work.26 In close relation to this point, and still taking the labour theory of value as being mainly a normative proposal about the way in which a fair distribution of goods and services should be accomplished, Simmel contemplated the possibility of creating a sort of “labour money”. If the amount of goods and services that one has access to is directly related to the amount of labour time that one has invested in their production, the use of such an alien way of measuring values as money is unnecessary and ineffective.27 Yet Simmel dismissed the functionality of labour money, arguing that it is not possible to transform worked time into such an abstract means of measuring values as money. There are technical difficulties which do not allow labour to be the carrier of the value of all useful objects, keeping these relations of value constant. Money, due to its levelling effects, erases qualitative differences between things, and turns them into quantitative equivalents. Apparently, “labour money” would overcome this erasing of qualities, and introduce personal values back into the expression of value through their articulation by labour. Yet, this new form of (labour-) money would, ultimately, have a much stronger levelling effect than money has, since it would not only bring the value of labour down to the same level, but also all forms of labour. Thus, labour money would not eliminate the levelling effects of money at all, and the unwanted consequence of this new token of exchange 26 See MEW6 1970:399-402 and 593-599 for a detailed elaboration on the reasons behind the analytical separation between labour and labour force. 27 GSG6 1989:588-589.

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would be the levelling down of all the qualities and uses of labour to the same level (therefore making these qualities vanish as well). The erasing of qualitative differences between different forms of labour is an issue that worried Simmel when he addressed Marx’s labour theory of value. He considered the Marxian proposal of expressing all types of labour with the same common unit of simple labour, thus bringing together physical and mental labour, highly problematic. On this point, Simmel toyed with the idea that mental labour could certainly be rationalized as ‘past labour’ which has been condensed into a body of knowledge. Thus, if it allows work to be done more quickly and looks in some sense more ‘sublime’, it might only be because the previously required work has already been done and condensed. Following this argument, and in so doing accepting the derivation of the value of an object from the quantity of labour that has been invested in it, leads to a reduction of all kinds of labour to something assessed merely on a timecalculated basis, hence leaving behind the particular characteristics of each worker, of each particular style, of each need, among others. Otherwise, the reduction of all kinds of labour to a common denominator would be impossible, as would be the calculation of the amount of value which each commodity embodies. All in all, instead of liberating human beings from the chains of quantification and blind rationalization, this new calculation, measuring, and expression of values would only strengthen the already existing tendencies.28 Simmel could not have known that Marx actually would have agreed with him on this point. In his Grundrisse, first published in 1939, Marx affirmed that the measuring of the exchange values of the commodities in terms of labour units (by a “Stundenzettel”) is impossible. Exchange values do not refer to the time that individual workers have needed in order to produce a particular commodity. Instead, the labour time that exchange values refer to is an average amount, the average of labour time required in a particular society under the conditions of particular relations, and forces of production. Therefore, the amount of time that one particular individual has invested in labouring can never be abstracted and generalized to become the social average in the same way and measure as through the monetary detour. The amount of time that one has worked remains the amount of time that one has worked. It cannot accomplish the abstract and abstracting function of money. 29 At this point Simmel might have missed the framing of Marx’s analysis of exchange value within the capitalist system of production, 28 GSG6 1989:589-590. 29 Marx 1974:85.

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thus discussing it as if it were a universal analysis of labour and exchange. Marx’s intention was not really to plead for a substitution of money with any functional equivalent such as labour money. Instead, he was waiting (and working) for the substitution of capitalism by communism, and was very much against any kind of reformatory measures which implied imposing changes “from above”, as if changes could be ordered or planned “from outside.” Hence, in a Hegelian manner, Marx asserted that changes would come when the time was mature and the society (i.e., the people) in question ready; evolution could neither be interrupted nor stopped, but neither could it be forced. This position comes clearly to light in Marx’s critique of Proudhon, precisely on the grounds of the reformatory character of his proposals.30 Apart from the Marxian distinction between labour and labour time, Simmel paid even more attention to the concept of exchange value. He thereby shed some light on some of the problems that this concept brings.31 His argument develops as follows: Exchange values are calculated on the basis of the necessary average social time of labour, and, according to Marx, there must be a common unit of labour time which makes values comparable. This leads to the very problematic assumption that labour must be reduced to a quantifiable and comparable unit, hence necessarily implying that mental labour and physical labour must be made equivalent, viewed as more or less of the same general type of labour. Simmel saw in this reduction a mere illustration of the attempt to develop a unitary and general concept of labour which erases personal or any other kind of differences between forms and qualities of labour.32 Here again Simmel discerned the socialist intention to make individual differences disappear behind such a unitary conception of labour33 and argued that this intention is the foundation of the historical materialism and not its consequence. Yet, before dismissing the Marxian attempt to quantify exchange value in units of simple labour time, Simmel at30 MEW4 1972:159-160. 31 Due to an emphasis on the historical delimitation of Marx’s theory of value as intrinsic to the capitalist system of production and not of an allembracing character, the critique loses some of its grip. Furthermore, in the text that has become the most popular part of Capital ‘The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof’, Marx sought to make a similar point himself. 32 GSG6 1989:567. At this point again Simmel argued that the Marxian theory of value, as Marx and the subsequent Marxist current of thought developed it, was guided by political aims, and had not been developed for analytical purposes (GSG6 1989:568-569). 33 At this point in the discussion it becomes clear that Simmel was discussing these issues much more with the socialist theoreticians of his time than with Marx himself. See in this regard also GSG6 1989:568-569.

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tempted to apply this perspective to those types of mental labour that could be considered superior quality (such as the labour of the master, the virtuoso, or even the genius). Thereby he attempted to redefine their superior quality as a quantitative difference in invested time of labour. He argued that, according to this perspective, the labour time that should be taken into account reaches to the past, when the master, the virtuoso or even, in the case of the genius, previous generations of ancestors, began the learning process that led to the outstanding results. However, at the end of the discussion, Simmel rejected the possibility of considering all different forms of labour as simply quantitatively different.34 In fact, he claimed that it is not even possible to calculate and standardize what a labourer requires in order to reproduce her labour force. In the case of physical work such a calculation would be just possible, for that which a worker who does physical work needs in order to remain fit and reproduce her labour force is more or less the same for everyone (for instance: food, health care, rest). Yet, when it comes to mental labour (especially in areas such as arts, politics, or science), that which a labourer requires in order to be able to do good work cannot be reduced to a certain type and quantity of food and certain standards of health and rest. The conditions under which each “mental labourer” is able to produce and, furthermore, to produce her best, vary enormously.35 Admittedly, this Simmelian critique concentrates on aspects of human labour which Marx did not have much in mind. And this is exactly what Simmel criticized: in his view Marx overlooked those central aspects of human labour that do make a difference, covering them with a veil of averages, so to speak. Marx’s approach is certainly not very susceptible to Simmel’s critique. From a Marxian viewpoint, it is a rather harmless one, since it concentrates on concrete conditions and qualities of human labour, especially of mental labour, while Marx was seeking to deliver a general analysis of capitalism, a picture of the functioning of this system of production, and not one of the particular necessities and individual characteristics of labourers in general. From this standpoint, it is irrelevant whether one intellectual needs to be inspired by the continuous flux of the metropolis while another wants to live withdrawn from social life, secluded in the mountains or in a cloister. Neither is it relevant that one can write a book in three weeks, while another needs years. Marx’s point was not that the products of human labour should be valued on the basis of an abstraction that equalizes all types of labours 34 GSG6 1989:573-575. 35 GSG6 1989:581.

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and labourers, but rather that the capitalist system does so. It functions on the basis of averages, abstractions, and generalizations, and the calculation of the (exchange) value of any commodity for sale is subject to them.36 In my view, Marx and Simmel developed different perspectives on this point because they were focusing on different aspects of human labour. Simmel sought to emphasize the incomparable uniqueness of individuals, and with it, of the uniqueness of the products of their labour. In the light of his perspective, bringing all types of labour down to a common denominator, thus ignoring their qualities and peculiarities, implies going a step further in the levelling processes that the monetarization of the economy has already undertaken, thus bringing all values down to a common denominator and turning their differences into ones that are only quantitative. Yet Marx did not seek to make a normative point with his theory of value. He was not arguing that the values of all types of labour should be expressed and calculated on the basis of units of simple time of labour. In fact, he even argued quite closely to Simmel, in maintaining that the capitalist system of production reduces all products of human labour to their exchange value, and exchange values do not vary from human being to human being but are calculated on the basis of an abstraction, of an average. Capitalism does not care much about the special conditions that people need in order to labour well. Yet, Simmel was right in assuming that the different types and qualities of (mental) labour which he had in mind were not of central importance for Marx—and therefore for those who argued from a Marxian standpoint in his times. In fact, these differences play only a marginal role in Marx’s analyses. It is plausible that he had factory workers in mind rather than piano virtuosi and other geniuses. In the system of production of Marx’s time (and the same goes for Simmel’s and today’s) many more people worked on production lines and in workshops than writing books or composing melodies. From Marx’s perspective, the cases that interested Simmel might appear as marginal; however, this does not make Simmel’s point less right when he claimed that the reduction of all forms and qualities of labour to quantitative differences of the same type can devolve into a standardization ad absurdum.37 Here we encounter a further example of the significant divergences between Simmel's and Marx's conception of human beings. The clash 36 See, for instance, MEW25 1985:150. 37 On the other hand, though, Simmel was well aware of the fact that abstraction is a necessary element of the work of social scientists, so, if Marx intended to develop an economic and social theory, abstraction could not be avoided.

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between their respective approaches can be rapidly reduced to its core element by arguing that, for Marx, the differences between particular human beings were less relevant than they were for Simmel. As we know from previous chapters, the former conceived all human beings as sharing a sort of species being that entails the most precious aspects of being human.38 This led him to believe that the human species was a relatively homogenous species.39 In contrast, Simmel argued that human beings are strongly individual and singular creatures whose special value arises from their uniqueness; conceiving what is common to them all gives only the meanest and lowest common denominator.40 All in all, despite the detailed critique of Marx’s labour theory of value, Simmel’s main argument for dismissing this theory elaborates on a very different aspect, one which has still not been introduced. Indeed, Simmel’s most vehement rejection of the Marxian labour theory of value is based on the implications of the thesis that a necessary condition for any object to have an exchange value is to have a use value as well. This implies that the production of any commodity must necessarily respond to a social demand so that it can attain an exchange value. Furthermore, if the commodity in question is too scarce, or if there is overproduction, its exchange value will not correspond to the invested labour time any longer, causing instabilities in the system of production and satisfaction of needs. In Simmel’s eyes, these premises make the consistency of the whole Marxian theory of value vanish into thin air.41 These premises were articulated in their basic form in the third volume of Capital (which was first published in 1894, only a couple of years before The Philosophy of Money, and which surely became one of the works that 38 The use of this particular expression was restricted to the works of his youth. It is difficult to know whether Marx rejected these ideas in later years or simply stopped articulating them in these terms. 39 He even argued at one point that the differences between capitalists and workers were less significant than the differences between domestic and wild dogs (MEW4 1972:146). 40 A direct critique from Simmel of the Marxian assumption that, after the revolution, people could live together peacefully and that the envies and disputes that were a product of the capitalist system of production would lose their validity can be found in the essay ‘Roses. A Social Hypothesis’ (Rosen. Eine soziale Hypothese) of 1897. See Simmel,1995:169-172. Moreover, for Marx, labour is the specific characteristic of human beings and that which makes human beings human. For Simmel, labour entails a considerable element of effort and suffering, and is not something human beings would undertake if it were not to achieve something else, for it implies overcoming the innate tendency to wish not to work (GSG6 1989: 583). For Marx this is only a characteristic of alienated labour. 41 GSG6 1989:586.

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had the strongest and most direct influence on its conception). Therefore, it makes sense to concentrate briefly on this work in order to be able to contrast Simmel’s critique with the Marxian arguments. In the third volume of Capital Marx reintroduced the issues of usefulness and use values into his argument when discussing the setting of the prices of merchandise under the concrete conditions of market competition between private producers. He argued that merchandise must accomplish two conditions in order to be sold at its exchange value in the market (i.e., according to its cost of production in terms of the socially necessary investment of time of labour). On the one hand, the prices of all merchandise of the same type and quality must be equalized to one market value. The market competition among the producers leads to the standardization of the price. On the other hand, merchandise must have a use value, that is, it must satisfy some sort of social need. The magnitude of this need becomes of great importance when we consider the whole of the production of certain merchandise on the one hand and the social need for it on the other.42 Marx argued that merchandise can be sold at its exchange value when its production responds to the demands of the consumers. This raises the question about the way in which Marx assumed that the production of the socially necessary goods would be more effectively organized than through market mechanisms that bring private producers motivated by the search for private profits to offer products on the market to anonymous potential consumers. Marx’s critique of the absurdity of the capitalist system implies that he thought that social needs would be more effectively covered if the production of goods and services were planned in direct accordance with these social needs. In contrast, in the capitalist system, meeting demand takes place via, and after a detour through, the market, and is led by private profit seeking and the laws of market competition. Hence, Marx argued that, in capitalism, the production develops separately from its actual goal, that is, the satisfaction of social and individual needs. While this analysis concentrates upon the capitalist system of production, the “real” goal of production remains the same for every system: the satisfaction of social and individual needs. The final destination of the products is their consumption and not the attainment of monetary profits, although in capitalism the motivation of production is the search for monetary profits. Marx thought of this disparity as a contradiction inherent to capitalism, not as its saving grace, which allows collective advantages to emerge from private interests—as the Scottish moral philosophers would have argued. 42 MEW25 1985:190-194.

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On the basis of this contradiction, Marx described the way in which the products of private producers (uncoordinated with each other) are given a price which is valid for them all, regardless of the specific conditions of their production. The Marxian argument that the market price of any commodity equalizes its exchange value if the production of the commodity in question coincides with the social need for it is actually not that far from the assumption of classical economics. Classical economics says that the correct price of merchandise is where the supply and demand curves meet. Yet Marx did not accept that the market should blindly undertake this task.43 He believed that avoiding the fluctuating chaos of the market would make the satisfaction of social needs more efficient. Ideally, the production of goods and services should not follow the laws of market competition, but be directly directed by the satisfaction of social needs. In the light of Marx’s analyses, as long as production is led by the laws of the market (instead of orientating itself towards those who are going to consume the produced goods), contradictions and crises will assault the system. Or put another way: this latent contradiction will rise to the surface from time to time, turning the system’s inherent contradictions into explicit and system-disrupting contradictions. Simmel’s objection to this point is that either we conceive of value as an objective category that depends on the amount of labour time that is necessary to produce goods or services, or we conceive of it as depending on the desire and demand for the therefore considered valuable objects. Either values are objective (and thus can be established by looking at given facts such as the amount of socially invested labour time) or subjective (in the sense of depending on individual desires in order to emerge and crystallize). According to Simmel, a mix of both perspectives cannot work since it implies, on the one hand, that the values of goods and services are objective (and hence can be calculated from the amount of socially invested labour time), and yet, on the other, it includes a clause that suggests that this is only the case if, and only if, these goods and services satisfy a social demand. Simmel also criticized Marx for framing social needs in a somewhat monolithic manner, not allowing for differences between the qualities of these needs, in the same way as he did not allow for differences between types and qualities 43 The idea is that in the market, the private producers produce merchandise seeking private profit. They are not motivated by the will to satisfy any social needs. This satisfaction (of social needs) is nevertheless achieved to a certain extent, although the producers do not aim at it in the first place. They simply count on it—in the form of the demand for their products—in order to satisfy their private interest in more profit.

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of labour either. Simmel characterized the Marxian approach as follows: All values stem from labour and therefore all labour is valuable, therefore any labour is just as valuable as any other.44 In other words, Simmel criticized the negation of qualitative differences between different forms of labour as well as the negation of differences between the relation of invested time of labour and utility.45 Simmel more than likely guessed the possible implications of a “harmonization” between production and the satisfaction of social needs. Directly relating production to this satisfaction without the market detour would lead to a strict planning of production. Since we know from historical experience (that neither Marx nor Simmel lived to share with us) planned economies do not necessarily work the way Marx had assumed that they would. Although Simmel’s strongest critique of the Marxian theory of value concentrates on the introduction of use values as the necessary condition for exchange values as well as on the satisfaction of social needs as the flame that should ignite production, Simmel did not actually disagree that social needs (which in Simmel’s prose should be translated into “desires”) played a key role in the theorization of value. In fact, they play a central part in Simmel’s theory. The point that he could not accept was not introducing social needs into the theory of value, but introducing them in a labour theory of value which then mixes objective and quantifiable measures of value with subjective needs. Furthermore, in Simmel’s view, the point of connection between these two approaches is fragile. On the one hand there are objective determinants of value (social labour time) and, on the other, subjective determinants (such as use values and social needs), that somewhat mechanically relate to each other so that a point can be established where they should meet: namely, when the production corresponds to the needs and the price of the products to its exchange value calculated on the basis of the socially necessary labour time. However, and despite the irreconcilable differences between the theories of (economic) value of Georg Simmel and Karl Marx, they share a crucial element which might help explain why the Marxian theory of labour-value received so much attention in The Philosophy of Money. Indeed, despite the fact that Simmel explained his high opinion of the Marxian theory of value by the fact that Marx sought to explain the origins of value from the source of labour only, there is another reason that might shed some light on the question of why Simmel found this focus on labour so interesting: Marx conceived of value as resulting 44 GSG6 1989:587. 45 GSG6 1989:586-588.

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from human production, and not as given by God or intrinsic to valuable objects. I believe that this fact is the most remarkable meeting point between the approaches to value found in these two authors, and that it offers a solid motive for Simmel’s fascination with the focus on labour. In spite of all the problems that Simmel identified in the Marxian theory, his conception of value as deriving from human activities (production), relations (of production), and needs (use values) made Marx’s, from a Simmelian viewpoint, the most interesting theory of value developed up to that time. It shared with Simmel’s view the concentration on the social character of value, despite searching for its source in somewhat different corners of the social. Marx based his theory of value on the relations and forms of production in which individuals engage in order to cover their needs and produce their lives. All the same, he developed an objective approach to value, seeking to grasp it as somehow quantifiable, calculable, and comparable. He did so by defining exchange values as based on amounts of average social labour time. Simmel, by contrast, dismissed the possibility of such a quantification, and conceived values, as we will see in more detail in the following chapter, as resulting from a Wechselwirkung between individual desires, exchange relationships, and wider reciprocal actions and effects of a certain society. Thus, Simmel, since he was more deeply immersed in the unexplored field of social relationality, did not seek any stable and fixed criteria for determining value and based his theory of value solely on the relations into which human beings enter and which are set into motion by their desires. Furthermore, he did not apply this relationality only to his conception of economic value but also to all types of values, thus conceiving of them all as being, to a great extent, social products.

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Part II

Georg Simmel’s Theory of Value

Introduction to Part II: Georg Simmel’s Theory of Value 1

The second part of this book focuses on Simmel’s theory of value. The main thesis developed here is that this theory delivers, from a sociological viewpoint, a highly interesting approach to both value and values which differs from the standard sociological approaches. It conceives of them as a fundamental form of apprehending the world, at a great distance from conceptions of values as mere ideals and ideas of what is good, hence forming an axis about which a community can be integrated as well as a reference point by which to evaluate concrete actions, purposes, and thoughts. Values in Simmel’s sense can be thought of as fundamental, a lens through which to apprehend the environment, oneself, and others as a basis for experience and action. To this extent, it is imperative to question the ways in which these values come into being and are stabilized and to ask whether they are always the same, permanent and immutable, or whether they can be altered or even vanish. It also becomes relevant to ask what it means for social life and social experience that values are a fundamental form of expressing the multiple impressions individuals receive so that these impressions cease to be in an undifferentiated flux and become a reality which makes ‘sense’. Despite the fact that, as we know from above, Simmel developed his theory of value mainly in The Philosophy of Money with the explicit goal of grasping the ultimate values and meanings of that which is human, this theory is built upon the sociological principle of Wechselwirkung, and thinks of values as a result of human relations. It does 1

As has been mentioned earlier, and will become clearer in the next chapters, it is not possible to distinguish between a theory of economic value and a theory of moral, aesthetic or any other values in Simmel’s writings, for what he was attempting was precisely this: to deliver an approach to value/values that would explain them all as being particular instantiations of one and the same thing.

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not seek the origins and sources of stabilization in a transcendental world, in God’s wishes, in what is favourable for human survival or in amounts of labour time. Moreover, Simmel’s theory of value makes no major distinction between economic, moral, or aesthetic values. All these types of values are not conceived as worlds apart (as, for instance, Rickert would have argued) but as special instances of the same concept. Simmel theorized on two fundamental forms of apprehending the world: that of value and that of being—in accordance with the neoKantian tradition. In contrast to the form of being, values introduce nuances and qualitative differences to the homogenous picture that is achieved through the lens of being. Thus, while things are or are not, and no intermediate stages can be conceived, values introduce manifold nuances which turn the world perceived through the lens of being into a world full of nuances, meanings, and significances: a world of values. Simmel argued that, more than likely, human beings cannot perceive anything at all without colouring it with value nuances. From the moment in which humans stop being an uninterested mirror of reality (which they possibly never are) on, they live in a world of values.2 Thus, in the light of this perspective, values are certainly much more than positive ideals which accomplish an integrative function. They are a fundamental condition of the very possibility of social experience and of society. According to Simmel’s general (analytic) theory of value, values can first emerge after the interposition of a distance between the valuing subject and the valued object. In other words, values do not emerge if the individuals (who value) do not experience that which they value as external to them, namely as something which is worth attaining but not immediately attainable. If these objects were immediately attainable, they would not even be perceived as objects, external to the desiring and valuing subjects, and therefore would not become valuable objects either. For Simmel human beings are both cognitive and desiring beings. When they apprehend the world through the lens of being, the picture of it that emerges is that which the natural sciences have made their own.3 When they configure and apprehend the world with the lens of value, the cultural word emerges. At this point Simmel could be taken to be a neoKantian. Yet, as we have seen, there are substantial differences between the neo-Kantian approach and Simmel’s. The most central and revolu2 3

GSG6 1989:25. Whereby Simmel’s doubts about the possibility of an apprehension of the world entirely free of any value colorations must be remembered at this point.

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tionary point of Simmel’s revision of the neo-Kantian teaching of values is the thesis that there are no transcendental values. The desiring subjects construct, in reciprocal relations with each other, the only lenses of value there are: the lenses of value with which they will look at the world, at themselves, at others. However, they do not do so arbitrarily, individually, and in an ad hoc manner. Simmel emphasized that the lens of value is indeed subjective, but only in the sense that values are never intrinsic qualities of any objects. They are not transcendental a priori categories for apprehending the cultural world, and they are not the same forever either.4 Values are, instead, a cultural product, and therefore, although subjective and relative (since they are relational), they never function on an “anything goes” basis. These values, whose origins lie in the desiring individuals, become objectified. Indeed, one of Simmel’s main questions in The Philosophy of Money concerns the ways in which values become crystallized, stabilized, and therefore objective. His answer is: they become objective in reciprocal actions and effects, especially in exchange. Although the initial impulse for the formation of values resides in individuals, the determining moment of the constitution of values lies in their relations to each other. The individual desires, or rather the individual impulses of desire, are the raw materials of what will become values. After stating the relational character of the formation and objectification of values, Simmel turned to the ways in which the conditions of life, social relations, institutions, and social practices shape and modify the lens of value. Thus he asked whether new social forms, practices, institutions, or lifestyles alter what people value and the ways in which they value those things. This reminds us that Simmel did not accept the thesis that values are unchangeable, a priori and transcendental cultural categories. He was convinced that the values of a society and of a time are closely related to the styles and conditions of life and the networks of relationships which bind people together. In fact, Simmel did not argue that only the apprehension of the cultural world is changeable. He conceived the apprehension of the natural world (i.e., the very lens of being) in the same light. In other words, he claimed that the a priori categories for the apprehension of the natural world are variable as well. He argued this case from an evolutionary viewpoint, and asserted that what we apprehend as the world of being is determined by the evolution of the species. Concretely, it is determined by what is useful for the species in order to stay alive. Therefore, if the human species does not come to a halt in its evolution, if it does not stagnate but continues 4

See, for instance, GSG 6 1989:534.

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in its evolution, if it does not stagnate but continues changing and evolving, the categories for the apprehension of the natural world will change and evolve, too. Simmel mainly elaborated this thought, which is echoed in some paragraphs of The Philosophy of Money and the very first paragraph of Sociology, in an article of 1895, ‘On a Relation of the Teaching of Selection to the Theory of Knowledge’, as mentioned earlier. In it he sought to make a point about truth, and argued that what humans perceive as true neither coincides with what other species perceive as true, nor is it forever stable and unchanging. In other words, what humans apprehend as being (i.e., the world they see when they look at it as cognitive, descriptive beings) differs from that which other species perceive as being, and possibly also from that which humans apprehended as being a long time ago, and will apprehend in future generations as evolution continues. Thus the descriptive apprehension of the world as well as its desiring-valuing apprehension vary. Yet, while the descriptive apprehension of the world (the lens of being) is formed by that which makes survival possible, the apprehension of the cultural world (the lens of value) varies as the relations between people vary. It also varies in relation to the ways in which the forms of sociation within which individuals channel their motives and desires are shaped and modified. This point leads us straight to the main thesis of The Philosophy of Money. The introduction and generalization of money as a token for exchange in modern economies has modified the web of social relations enormously and, at the same time, has also significantly changed the cultural world. As we will see later, Simmel divided culture into an objective and a subjective culture, and his thesis is that the monetarization of the economy has had such wide consequences that it has altered the relationship between these two cultures and modified the world of values. Thus, when Simmel asked himself why money had become such a central institution in modernity, he did not ask this question out of pure interest in the phenomenon of money. Rather he assumed that, through it, significant changes had occurred in modern social relations and lifestyles. *** The chapters of the second part of this study deliver an overview of Simmel’s theory of value and analyses of money. Chapter 4 concentrates on the analytical theory of value that Simmel sought to develop, especially in the first chapter of The Philosophy of Money. It includes a gen148

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eral theory of values (which aims to explain the emergence and consolidation of values of any kind on a relational basis), and a theory of economic values—which are a particular type of value with certain special characteristics. Chapter 5 concentrates on Simmel’s analyses of money, and particularly on the emergence and consolidation of monetary economies. It also explores money’s unique and specific characteristics to explain how the amassing of what is, in principle, a means of exchange has become a, if not the, central aim of many people. Chapter 6 is concerned with the transformations that these characteristics of money, and of monetary economies, tend to bring about in societies in which money has become the general means of exchange. Finally, a brief epilogue explores possible relations and interesting connections between Simmel’s theory of value and his concept of culture.

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4. An Analytical Theory of Value *

Introduction This chapter concentrates on Simmel’s theory of value as he developed it in the first part of The Philosophy of Money; that is, its analytical part. There Simmel affirmed that he would approach the phenomenon of money ‘from the conditions of its being and the meaning of its existence’. In order to do so, he developed a general theory of value which would allow him to approach money through one of its primordial characteristics, namely its value, hence closing the debate on the source and nature of monetary value. Simmel’s intention was nonetheless not only to sketch an economic theory of value, but to develop an all-embracing theory of value, which would seek to explain the emergence and consolidation of all types of values including economic, aesthetic, ethical, and cultural values in the same general category of values, and viewing each of them (with special attention directed towards economic values) as special forms of value. He thought of the emergence and consolidation of values within a social context, and it is from this standpoint that he chose not to differentiate between different conceptions and theories of value, but rather to view them all as subtypes of the same genre. For Simmel all values are crystallized in social processes of Wechselwirkung and exchange in a comparable manner. On the basis of this general theory of value, Simmel elaborated a specific theory of economic values. Yet, he did not always draw a clear division between this general theory of value and the approach to economic values; or rather, it is not always easy to discern the fault line along which the division is drawn with precision. In the following the *

The arguments presented here differ considerably from the arguments presented in Cantó Milà 2000.

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main elements of the general theory of value will be traced, and, afterwards the particular elements of Simmel’s specific proposal for a theory of economic values will be distilled from them. In so doing an attempt will be made to explore analytically both continuities with and differences between the general and the economic theory of value as clearly as possible. In order to do so, clear differentiations will have to be drawn on some occasions, differentiations which Simmel himself did not make. This will involve interpreting and closing points that Simmel left open to a greater or lesser extent.

On Being and Value Simmel sketched the main points of his theory of value in the first chapter of The Philosophy of Money (‘Value and Money).1 As we have seen, in this chapter he contrasted the nature of ‘value’ with the nature of ‘being’, and depicted them as two fundamental ways of apprehending reality: two radically different approaches and two different lenses through which to view it. The reality which emerges when viewing an object through the lens of being does not coincide with the reality which results from looking at it through the lens of value. For example, Simmel argued that when we love somebody the person we love does not seem to be the same person that we perceive if we look at them from a neutral position, simply perceiving that human being.2 This is not because when we are in love we see things that do not exist, it is rather that we apprehend the person we love in a different light than when we simply apprehend that human being. The person we love means something different to us, as the Venus de Milo means something different to the aesthete than it does to the crystallographer or to the historian of art, to use one of Simmel’s examples.3 Values break the uniformity of being. Things are or are not, there are no middle stages or nuances. Yet there are more or less valuable objects. Through the lens of value nuances enter into the human perception of the world. Simmel held that valuations reach the valued objects like light and shadows.4 The value of any object does not stem from this object but is projected onto it. Natural events (the level of being) can be entirely depicted without introducing things’ values at all. 1 2 3 4

GSG6 1989:23-138. GSG6 1989:51. GSG6 1989:51-52. As we know from above, and in contrast with the neo-Kantians, Simmel did not make a relevant theoretical distinction between valuations (Wertungen) and values (Werte).

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They do not play any role in the world of being. Of course, the existence of valuations is a fact that belongs to the sphere of being (there are valuations), but what these valuations are cannot be derived from the level of being.5 These lenses (of value and being) are not contradictory or opposed to each other. They simply do not coincide. They function separately, neither with nor against each other, hence constituting independent ways of viewing and approaching reality. Furthermore, an object need not exist under the lens of being in order to be valued; and, an object which rarely or even never appears in the perception of reality can be highly valued. This does not represent a contradiction. Moreover, nature destroys or maintains what is valuable and valueless at random. Both perspectives, both lenses, are strangers to each other. They only share the quality of being ‘fundamental’, and therefore of being irreducible to simpler elements, or to each other. All the same, Simmel relativized this quality of being fundamental to a certain extent, arguing that, before and beyond the separation of being and values, there are areas of life in which value and being are not differentiated. That is, beyond the fundamental separation of the lens (of value or being) with which we look at objects, these objects remain the same, regardless of the perspective of the observer. It is the same person we love or simply acknowledge, and it is the same statue which the crystallographer and the historian of art observe. Prior to the separation of the lenses of value and being, Simmel located the human mind (which he called soul). In the human mind the formation and expression of the apprehended contents takes place.6 And it is the same mind that values and apprehends.

The Differentiation of Subject and Object in the Processes of Valuation If, according to Simmel, values can neither be derived from the level of being, nor found inside objects, and they are not given by the gods either, where do they come from? How do they emerge? How are they consolidated and stabilized? In the first chapter of The Philosophy of Money Simmel held that the achievement of the difference between subject and object is taken to be the first step towards the emergence (though not yet stabilization) of values. Following a path not too far re5 6

GSG6 1989:24. GSG6 1989:28.

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moved from Freud’s—and even less removed from George Herbert Mead’s—Simmel argued that the life of the human mind begins in a state of indifference. The ‘I’ and its objects are one; and thus impressions and ideas fill the consciousness without the interposition of a (conscious) distinction and separation between them.7 The processes leading a person to call herself ‘I’, as well as to recognize the existence of external objects which are not part of this ‘I/myself’ are the two sides of the same coin. That which actually provides the impulse for the realization of this difference is the introduction of a distance between the subject and the objects, which forces the first to realize that often it is not enough to reach out a hand for that which is wanted, but the achievement of external objects which are not part of ourselves may imply a good deal of sacrifice. Indeed, following Simmel’s argument, the conscious realization of the difference between subject and object is the first necessary condition for the emergence of values. If human beings could always immediately satisfy their needs at the precise moment that they emerge, they would not need to become aware of the fact that what has satisfied their need is not part of them, but an external object. By contrast, when this satisfaction is not immediately accessible, the tension produced by an as yet unsatisfied desire destroys the feeling of unity between subject and object, and people become conscious that the satisfaction of their desire will stem from a source which is external to them. People thus consciously desire things after they have been confronted with resistance or opposition, with the distance introduced by a deferred enjoyment (Nochnichtgenießens).8 Simmel, paraphrasing Kant, held that the possibility of our desire is the possibility of the objects of our desire.9 Apprehending and desiring mean that the human mind must build the (chaotic) sensations it receives into objects. Furthermore, those objects which enter into the consciousness of the desiring subjects (for they become aware of the distance between them and seek to overcome it in order to achieve satisfaction) are values to them.10 In contrast, as long as object and subject are thought of as being one, the possibility of their being objects of desire and therefore of valuation is banished. Simmel’s thesis is that it is only in the “separation” between the desiring subject, and the “desired object” that value is conferred on the latter.

7 8 9

GSG6 1989:30. GSG6 1989:34. Following the Kantian statement according to which the possibility of our apprehension and experience—Erfahrung—is the possibility of the objects of our apprehension/experience. 10 GSG6 1989:34.

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The separation of object and subject implies that the subject experiences a boundary between her and something beyond her which has the potential to satisfy her desires. Therefore she will strive to achieve it. At this point, any object able to satisfy the desire experienced will be accepted and used. The impulse of the valuation goes from the subject to the object, and it is not objectified enough to the extent that the object itself (because it is so beautiful or so loved) attracts the subject to it, and only to it. The process that confers an increasing independence (with an increasing objective value) upon valued objects is, according to Simmel, crucial to the processes of civilization. Then their value does not stem from their plain functionality for the satisfaction of needs, but from the attractiveness of the object itself (independent of its concrete functionality). As long as an ‘object’—say a human being—is desired because the desiring subject is led by her needs—be they of a sexual, affective, financial, or of any other kind—she will not much care who the person in question is as long as the desire is satisfied. In the precise moment at which this object—here a particular human being—becomes the motor force of the desire, that particular loved person will become the (only) human being that is able to satisfy the needs and desires in question. Thus, the order will have been inverted. Bear in mind that here we are still dealing with personal valuations, and not with socially stabilized values yet. This means that an object which can be highly appreciated and valued by one individual can, at the same time, be viewed with indifference, or even abhorrence, by another. Although Simmel urged the reader to consider this subjective aspect as a necessary condition only for the emergence of values (and not for their consolidation and stabilization), he elaborated on it in a strongly psychological manner. Hence he looked at particular individuals without paying much attention to the social mechanisms which lead these individuals to desire x or z. Indeed, the contents of human desires can hardly be thought of as independent of the social milieu in which the individuals live. However, one could agree on this point, and all the same argue that these considerations are compatible with Simmel’s analyses. The point that he made was that values are not objective qualities of things, independent of the eye that looks at them. They emerge in direct relation to the subjects who desire. It is interesting to bear in mind that Simmel, despite theorizing on values from a relational perspective, considered the initial spark of valuations only in the light of abstract subjects who experience distances and develop desires—without mentioning the relevance of the social conditions in which they do so. At any rate, it is imperative to remember that so far we have dealt only with the condition for the emergence of 155

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values, and we have not yet dealt with their consolidation. In relation to this point, Simmel emphasized that the subjectivity of values must be thought of in terms of the fact that values are not an intrinsic part of the valued objects.11 They do not reside in the objects, but are bestowed upon them as a result of a mental, psychological process. We will now turn our attention to the processes of consolidation of values in which the social plays a much more important part.

On the Relationality of Values Since most people do not live like Robinson Crusoe, isolated on an island, but within the nets of a society and in continuous relations with other human beings, the processes of creation and consolidation of values do not stop at the individual level of desire and acknowledgment of the distance that separates oneself from the desired object. Under social conditions, what makes individual valuations objective values, and this in such a way that concrete individuals are not able to recognize their contribution to their stabilization any longer is, according to Simmel, the Wechselwirkung of these valuations (resulting from the Wechselwirkung between people), especially in relations of exchange. The result of the objectification of values beyond the level of the individual valuations becomes manifest when we think of values—be they cultural, aesthetic, religious or economic—that come across, not as the taste or the preferences of concrete individuals (and de gustibus non est disputandum), but as indisputable values like beauty, fairness, rightness or goodness. Indeed, something highly interesting has taken place between the emergence of valuations in the subjective awareness of desires and distances, and the moment in which an object, an idea or a human being appear as having an objective value. This means a value that forces individual subjects to recognize it—thus far removed from a personal preference. Simmel argued that the processes that make individual valuations objective values are of a social and relational character. Thus, in exchange, the initially subjective valuations reach out beyond their subjective origins, and are crystallized into objectified values which become independent of the desiring subjects, facing them as objective realities.12 As people exchange love, attention, goods, or time with each other, they set their interests, desires, and feelings of value in relation to those of other individuals. They are forced to accept and deal with the conditions 11 GSG6 1989:29. 12 GSG6 1989:53.

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which are also acceptable for their exchange partner’s, instead of unilaterally dictating the rules of the game. The subjective desires are objectified by relating them to each other within an arena of exchange. This leads to the crystallization and objectification of values. And yet, how do these objectification processes work? According to Simmel, they work through ongoing interrelations and comparisons. The quality of being ‘valuable’ emerges in consciousness as the valued objects are brought into the arena of exchange. The comparison between values, weighing one against the other, is what makes the concept of values possible, bringing them to full consciousness as something external to the valuing subjects, thus completing the task initiated by the interposition of a distance between subject and object mentioned above. The results of these ongoing comparisons slowly crystallize into a scale of values which are bestowed upon each object, and which are not deducible from the initial scales of preferences previous to exchange. To illustrate how these processes of exchange and comparison crystallize, on the one hand, in concrete values, and, on the other hand, in the concept and consciousness of value, Simmel used an analogy with certain physical characteristics such as length. Common sense tells us that length is an intrinsic quality of long objects; yet, the awareness that there are long objects only occurs in ongoing processes of continuous comparison. The length of an object is always measured in relation to the length of another object. It could never be deduced from the object’s own nature. Hence, if one object happened to be the only long object in the universe, it would never be described as such, for, under these circumstances, length would never have become a concept for human beings.13 Most people are not aware of these continuous comparisons being made between objects as the source of categories such as length or value. Moreover, once these categories have emerged, they seem to emancipate themselves from their “relative origins” and, when we think of them, they appear to us as categories and concepts that would exist even if no human mind ever knew of their existence.14 The concepts of exchange and Wechselwirkung play a central role in Simmel’s theory of value as the crucial moments of the creation and stabilization of (objective) values. All the same, it is not always easy to trace clear boundaries between them beyond the fact that Simmel considered exchange a paradigmatic example of Wechselwirkung and as one of the most relevant forms of life. Indeed, throughout The Philosophy of Money, these concepts seem to melt together on many occasions. Due to 13 GSG6 1989:66. 14 GSG6 1989:67.

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their theoretical centrality, on the one hand, and to this lack of clarity, on the other, we will now concentrate on the concepts of exchange and Wechselwirkung, as they are elaborated on in this monograph.

On Exchange The concept of exchange in The Philosophy of Money seems to be used in two distinct senses: a wider and a narrower one. The wider concept of exchange refers to a basic form of sociation. This not only in the sense that it holds a society together but, furthermore in the sense that it contributes to the very formation of this society through the generation of durable bonds like those of faithfulness or gratitude.15 The narrower meaning refers to economic exchange. Thus, economic exchange is, in terms of Simmel’s exchange theory, only one specific form of exchange.16 Moreover, for Simmel exchange is not only a basic form of sociation, but also a ‘form of life’, upon which he sought to found an anthropological approach to human beings.17 He defined them as ‘exchanging’ and ‘objective animals,’ thus adding two new adjectives to the long list of adjectives that had already been used to describe human beings since ancient times in Western history (a ‘political’, ‘tool-making’, ‘purposeful’, ‘hierarchical’ animal). According to Simmel, human beings have the very special characteristic of being able to create objective realities which no other animal on Earth is capable of creating. Exchange facilitates the creation of these objective realities and, therefore, it is to be considered a revolutionary form of sociation. It allows the overcoming of mere subjective strivings, making the emergence of an objective result at the end of the interaction possible.18 Exchange, as a form of sociation, cannot be thought of as being the combination of an act of giving and an act of receiving. Simmel argued that it is a reality sui generis. It takes place when both processes of giving and receiving become, simultaneously, the cause and effect of each other.19 From the perspective of the wider concept of exchange, most of social relations can be described as relations of exchange.20 Thus the teacher and her class, the journalist and her readers, the leader and the 15 16 17 18 19 20

Atoji 1984:23. GSG6 1989:67. See, for example, GSG6 1989:15, 67. GSG6 1989:385-386. GSG6 1989:73-74. GSG6 1989:59.

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masses, and the orator in front of the assembly are, for Simmel, all examples of relations of exchange. All these examples share the peculiarity that apparently one main figure seems to be the only one who is acting, while the others passively receive the effects of her actions. But this is only in appearance. In fact, they stand in a permanent relation of exchange, and the actions which the teacher, the orator, the journalist, or the leader will perform depend to a great extent on the apparently passive pupils, assembly, readers, or masses. The main differences between the wider and the narrower concepts of exchange are the dimension of sacrifice (which gains a special importance in the case of economic exchange), and the dimension of the objective equivalence between the exchanged objects (which is required only in the case of economic exchange). According to Simmel, it is a peculiarity of economic exchange that one must give something away in order to obtain what one desires. Something that is sacrificed must be of an equivalent value to that which will be attained. In contrast, other kinds of exchange do not require the same kind of sacrifice, for in exchanges of love, attention, knowledge, or self-presentation, one does not lose anything for giving oneself away. Thus, for example, if I exchange love for love or friendship for friendship, I do not lose units of my “stock of love” or of friendship for having used them with a certain person. This differentiation—in relation to the dimension of sacrifice— between economic and general exchange becomes, in my view, somewhat problematic if the factor of time is taken into account. If one partakes in a love relationship, one gives a part of one’s life away in it; one “invests” time that never be recovered. Hence, one also gives something away that will not be recovered. In the light of these considerations, I find the second criterion of differentiation between the wider and narrower concepts of exchange introduced by Simmel more determinant than the first. The specific trait of relations of economic exchange lies more in the necessary objective equivalence between the values of what is being exchanged than in the dimension of sacrifice. In fact, Simmel was aware of the blurred contours of the first criterion and presented it as a gradual difference. He asserted that, in relations of economic exchange, the dimension of sacrifice is the least avoidable—thus not arguing that in non-economic relations of exchange sacrifice is non-existent, but rather less obligatory. However, he did argue that for the case of an exchange of love for love that the energy which is given away is an energy that people would not have known how to use otherwise, while in economic exchange (surely above all in monetary) that which has been spent in a concrete relation of exchange could have been spent in many 159

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other ways. It is not difficult to understand what Simmel meant by this but it remains problematic. He is assuming that human beings have a specific quantum of energy for love that they could not use otherwise; but perhaps this is not the case, at least not for every human being in every time and place. Furthermore, when considered from the point of view of invested time, one could certainly have invested the time in another way, and, for instance, have loved someone else. Hence the dimension of sacrifice is just the same: one restricts oneself to loving a few people in one’s life, perhaps consciously, knowing that a good number of other people out there would have been just as worth being loved instead. One gives life chances away in order to realize others. Perhaps the main difference lies in the fact that the sacrifice in economic exchange must be conscious, while otherwise it is not necessarily the case. And a sacrifice that is not experienced as such is no sacrifice at all. An important problem of Simmel’s wide concept of exchange is that its width blurs the differences between exchange and Wechselwirkung. Simmel argued that exchange is a paradigmatic example of Wechselwirkung, and therefore the narrower concept.21 Yet, considering the examples given above, it is quite difficult to see where the borderline between them can be. This becomes even more complicated if we concentrate on the widest possible meaning that Simmel gave to exchange in The Philosophy of Money. According to Simmel, exchange need not be a relationship between two or more individuals; it can also be a relationship between one individual and her environment. Thus, the lonely Robinson Crusoe on his island (about whom Marx liked to joke) lives, in Simmel’s eyes, in a continuous relation of exchange with the environment.22 In fact, Simmel’s own proposal for a borderline between exchange and the more all-encompassing Wechselwirkung lies so far away from concrete human relations that the difference between these concepts only becomes relevant when reciprocal actions and effects that do not occur between human beings are taken into account. Simmel’s boundary between these two concepts relies on the consciousness that exchange implies. Exchange is thus conscious Wechselwirkung.23 Accordingly, the difference between these concepts does not lie in the fact that, in exchange, people give away that which they have and in Wechselwirkung that which they do not have. The difference lies in the conscious act of exchanging.

21 GSG6 1989:60. 22 GSG6 1989:62. 23 GSG6 1989:60.

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O n R e l a t i v i t y a n d Ab s o l u t e n e s s As we know from the above, Simmel articulated his analysis of values in the language of relationality and on the basis of his relativist worldview.24 Relativism (relationality) constitutes the axial pillar of Simmel’s sociological—or, rather, social philosophical—approach, while Wechselwirkung is the central concept of this relational model.25 It views dynamically, in terms of fluctuations and relations, what an absolute worldview would present as stable and fixed. In Simmel’s view, history swings periodically between times that adopt a relational mode of thinking and times that adopt an absolutist approach.26 Arguing anthropologically, he claimed that human beings frequently tend to search for absolutes, thus giving the highest value to those elements which have the appearance of being eternal. The reason is because they inspire trustworthiness through the promise of stability. As an example of this search for “absolutenesses”, perhaps the reader is familiar with the sensation of feeling suddenly unstable when thinking of the fact that the Earth is not sustained by anything else but an equilibrium of forces and that, if this equilibrium were lost, there would be nothing beneath us that would stabilize our position. Furthermore, Simmel asserted that people construct stable and fixed points that guide them through the chaos of appearances and sensations which are the fragmentary flux of their immediate perceptions. The construction of these perhaps necessary fixed points leads them to seek the absolute, the substance, thus envisaging a giant that carries the globe on his shoulders and keeps it from falling, or a thunderer behind each clap of thunder.27 Simmel characterized this desire for absolutes as a trait of human psychology that has weakened in modern era. He argued, for instance, that modern science reverses this lasting tendency of searching for absolutes in the human comprehension and apprehension of phenomena, hence introducing relativity as a worldview. Modern science has abandoned the search for an absolute basis that upholds the rest of its conceptual system. It has been replaced by a continuous flux that connects single elements to each other, thus constructing a whole. Einstein’s relativity theory is perhaps still the best example of this change of perspective, as Simmel was well aware. Yet, how does this relational or relative paradigm work? The relative or relational paradigm should not be considered an objection to the so24 25 26 27

GSG6 1989:93. Haesler 1983:175. GSG6 1989:117. GSG6 1989:94.

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lidity of that which we are able to know, something that relativizes the truth of true premises, but an explanation of the way in which human ideas become true ideas and human desires become values.28 Not accepting the relationality of true sentences, or of values or laws, and misinterpreting this point as a kind of scepticism, leads to dogmatism. In order to illustrate this point, Simmel argued that it is not possible to derive the criteria by which to decide if a given sentence is true or false from this sentence itself. The decision to ascribe to a sentence the quality of being true can only be made in relation to other sentences. If we wished to escape this relational circle, we would have to accept one sentence as true without any proof, any questioning or inquiry—an acceptance that, according to Simmel, leads to dogmatism if it goes unreflected upon and undiscussed. Thereby, he did not deny the possibility of the existence of such a sentence whose truth holds the truth of any other sentence. But he argued that we have no access to this sentence, and therefore, we must treat every last point that we reach as if it were the penultimate.29 As a response to the reproach of being sceptical, he argued that this relativist approach had as little to do with scepticism as Kant’s redefinition of time and space as necessary a priori conditions for human apprehension. For Kant had denied their absolute and eternal character beyond, and independently of, human beings.30 Simmel’s insistence on avoiding dogmatic thinking is striking, and reveals the modern character of his thoughts. Furthermore, Simmel’s relativist or relational approach by no means implies arbitrariness. It does not argue for mixing all possible standpoints together, holding each for equally as good as the other, or believing that one can be substituted for another whenever one pleases. The relative approach implies something very different.31 In fact, Simmel’s definition of relativity does not negate, oppose, or even question absoluteness in any sense of the term. It redefines it, explaining it in terms of a web of never-ending relations. It is possible to claim that there are relative absolutes; that is, absoluteness within a system, under the conditions and circumstances of a certain system. However, affirming the existence of The Absolute beyond any framework is an ill-founded dogmatism.32 Indeed, Simmel warned against considering relativity as the con-

28 GSG6 1989:116. 29 GSG6 1989:96-121. 30 GSG6 1989:96-97. 31 GSG6 1989:113. 32 GSG6 1989:106, 116.

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trary of absoluteness. In the light of his perspective, absoluteness is neither antonymous nor correlative to the concept of relativity.33

W h y n o t a R e l a t i o n a l Ap p r o a c h ? As we know, Simmel’s relational approach did not find much acceptance in the academic milieu of his time. In spite of the many Kantian elements of his theory, his ideas did not fit into the canons of the neoKantians. In spite of introducing elements from the natural sciences, and being strongly influenced by Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer, he did not share an evolutionist approach either. Rather, Simmel went his own way and developed a relational approach that was an anomaly in the academic milieu of that era. Surrounded as he was by contemporary philosophers he knew personally, figures such as Heinrich Rickert, he was obliged to argue continuously—in his writings, in letters, in university lectures and discussions, and in personal conversations—in favour of his social and philosophical relativism in the face of his colleagues’ scepticism. He theorized about the relational character of the emergence and objectification of values at a time when the established academic philosophy denied the relative character of values or true sentences; and he defended a relational ‘worldview’ (Weltbild) for philosophy and the social sciences. As we have seen, in The Philosophy of Money, Simmel actually intended to prove the validity of his philosophical worldview, and to convince his milieu of the positive relativism he had adopted.34 This intention also had its roots in his theory of value. The case of economic value offered him the best example by means of which to realize this plan. Through the introduction of the figure of exchange as the crucial moment in which subjective valuations become objective values, Simmel provided a solid foundation for his relational approach to value. All the same, as his correspondences with Rickert illustrate, he was well aware of the fact that applying his relational approach to economic value was a good deal easier than applying it to moral or aesthetic values. However, enough examples and analyses can be found in his monograph on money to affirm that Simmel considered his approach to be, despite all of the difficulties, applicable to all types of values.35 33 GSG6 1989:97. 34 According to him, relativism is the only philosophical paradigm which has no exception to its principle. It does not collapse with the idea that it is only relatively valid (GSG6 1989:117). 35 Earlier we dealt with the case of aesthetic values, whose relationality consists in the fact that they originally emerge from a sensation of well being

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Simmel’s Theory of Economic Value Another relevant difference between the general and the economic theory of value derives from the use that Simmel made of the concept of exchange in The Philosophy of Money. The general theory of value is based on the very broad (and somewhat vague) concept of exchange, a concept that, as we know, is not easy to distinguish from the more general concept of Wechselwirkung. It characterizes the relationship between a teacher and her pupils or between an orator and her audience. As has already been mentioned, the orator and the teacher are those who speak and assume the leading role; but, all the same, they could not perform this role without the pupils and the audience performing theirs. In the case of economic value, the concept of exchange that is applied is no longer the broad one, but the narrow one, meaning a relation of reciprocal giving and receiving that is based on the principle of objective equivalence. With regard to this special focus on economic values, Simmel asserted that their very relativity entails their objectification.36 I interpret this sentence to mean that the fact that economic values are relational is the condition for their objectivity. Only in exchange, in their being brought into relation with each other, do they detach themselves from particular, subjective valuations and reach an objective status. Simmel thus bestowed a crucial role on the activity of exchange in the formulation of his theory of value, highlighting the fact that he derived values from exchange, instead of using the most common path which derives exchange from values instead.37 In the light of this perspective, the special characteristic of the economy is not that it exchanges values, but, rather, that it exchanges values.38 At the beginning of the exchange process, the objects to be exchanged might only be subjectively valuable; but, as soon as they are set in the arena of exchange, brought into relation to each other, and their values compared to each other, the subjective dimension is left behind. Simmel emphasized that the assumption that objects enter relations of exchange with a specific value already bethat certain objects awoke in remote human ancestors, since they satisfied some of their desires. The case of that which is considered right was viewed by Simmel as similar to economic value, for it only emerges and crystallizes through human relations that lead to an objectification of that which is right. Simmel did not offer us any considerations about the good, but it is certainly plausible to assume that he would have tried the relational approach as well. 36 GSG6 1989:56. 37 GSG6 1989:64. 38 GSG6 1989:57.

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stowed upon them is right if we consider exchanges within established monetary economies. However, it is false if the attention is concentrated on the basic processes upon which the economy rests. From this standpoint, values are actually formed and objectified in exchange, not prior to it. While the wider concept of exchange emphasizes the reciprocity between the parties involved, the narrow concept of economic exchange emphasizes the equivalence of the values of the objects exchanged, as well as the subjective dimension of sacrifice. There is always something—originally in our possession—which we have to give away in order to obtain what we desire. A sacrifice is necessary in order to obtain what we prefer, or desire, more. Simmel considered, as we know from above, sacrifice and equivalence the two milestones of his conception of economic value, the one residing on the subjective side, the other on the objective side.

On Sacrifice According to Simmel, sacrifice is a necessary, constituent condition for the establishment of economic values. In every economic exchange, ‘goods’ must be forfeited in order to obtain those we desire more. This means that we must be prepared to sacrifice something, to pay a price, in order to get what we desire. Actually, according to Simmel, the fact that we are indeed prepared to give something away is proof that we truly value what we are going to obtain in exchange.39 In his view, all types of economic exchange imply a twofold sacrifice: A direct sacrifice, namely having to give something away, and an indirect sacrifice, namely renouncing other things that could have been attained with the same amount of sacrifice instead. Simmel illustrated this point with the example of what he called labour value: When people labour, they sacrifice the invested time and strength, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, they sacrifice all the other things which they would have been able to achieve with the same investment of time and strength. Thus, even if, on some occasions or to a certain extent, labour did not imply an immediate sacrifice for the labourer, because she enjoys investing her time and energy, it would nevertheless imply the sacrifice of all the other things she could have achieved though the same investment.40 These theses are 39 GSG6 1989:78. 40 GSG6 1989:65-66. A point that strengthens the argument above about the generality of the dimension of sacrifice for all types of relations of exchange, and not just for economic exchange.

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reminiscent of the theory of opportunity cost which argues that the costs of producing x are not only what it costs to produce x, but also the costs of not having produced b, c, or y. For instance, the cost of studying cannot be reduced only to the money which has to be invested in books, computers, trips or fees, but also the money one could have earned and/or the things one could have done instead.

On Equivalence Despite its important role in the articulation of economic values, sacrifice is not the only necessary condition for, and specific characteristic of, economic values. As mentioned above, it is not clear whether Simmel viewed sacrifice as a necessary condition for the constitution of economic values only or as a general condition for all types of values. In contrast, it is clear that Simmel considered equivalence a necessary condition of economic exchange only. Hence, we could affirm, bringing these two conditions or dimensions together, that the specific feature of economic exchange is the sacrifice of goods for other goods of an (objectively) equivalent value. When people enter economic relations of exchange, they do so on the basis of the assumption that they are exchanging equivalently valuable objects, and therefore that they obtain something that is worth what they are giving away, and the other way round. Nevertheless, despite the conviction that objectively equivalent values are being exchanged, it rapidly springs to mind that people would not exchange something for something else they value just as much. Thus, although they exchange things that they consider objectively just as valuable, these things are differently valued at a subjective level; that is, the exchanging partners value what they are going to obtain more than what they are giving away.41 If this were not the case, they would not want to participate in the exchange. From this perspective, exchange fulfils the great social wonder of relating (subjectively differently valued) things which are given away and received under the assumption that they are, from an objective point of view, equivalently valuable.42 The wonder is also what lies behind the conversion of subjective valuations into objective values: in addition to the initial moment of valuation which, as mentioned above, emerges 41 To a certain extent, these subjective relations of value could be identified with the Marxian use values, while the objective relations of value could be identified with exchange values. 42 GSG6 1989:387.

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from an interposition of a distance between the desiring subject and the desired object, a further distancing is interposed between the subject and its valuation. An objectification of values, as well as the establishment and crystallization of relationships of equivalence, takes place through an exchange in which the exchanging partners are detached from their particular valuation. They are brought into relation with each other and the result of these relations and constant comparisons cannot be derived from the initial subjective valuations. Yet, when concrete individuals enter into concrete relations of exchange, they do so with the conviction that the exchanged objects are of equivalent value, and that this is a characteristic of the objects that they exchange and desire, not a result of their relationship and of many other relationships like theirs.43

Which Goods become Objects of Economic V a l u a t i o n ? F r o m U s e f u l n e s s t o D e s i r a b i l i t y, from Scarcity to Sacrifice Everything under the sun, that is all potentially valuable goods and services, does not become an object of economic valuation. Some goods can be given an economic valuation, others cannot, and some are more valued than others. How does this happen? Simmel, in order to answer this question, examined the standard reply in the field of economics, pointing out that usefulness and scarcity were the standard criteria that are used to determine the economic valuation of various goods and services.44 He associated usefulness with the demand for a commodity, and scarcity with its supply. In order to become objects of economic valuation, classical economics claims that things need to be useful.45 Simmel’s critique of this statement is that, even if usefulness might be a reason for attributing economic value to an object, it is not a sufficient, or even a necessary, condition. One would need to extend the concept of usefulness to barely justifiable limits in order to describe many objects that are actually objects of economic valuation as useful. According to Simmel, what lies behind the economic demand for an object is not the usefulness of this object, but the desire for it (Begehren/Begehrung). Desires rule over people’s economic valuations and demands.46 Therefore, Simmel argued that the desirability of objects has to be considered the definitive, deci43 44 45 46

GSG6 1989:55. GSG6 1989:74. GSG6 1989:74. GSG6 1989:75.

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sive first impulse of the economic values.47 Yet this claim does not imply that the relative approach to the theory of value has reached its limits. Simmel realized that the desirability argument could be misunderstood.48 He asserted that, even when desirability is the first impulse of economic values, it is itself a relational category. Thus, values emerge in Wechselwirkung, due to the interposition of distance between subject and object—allowing the formation of a desire (on the subjective side) and a value (on the objective). They become fixed and stable (objective) via relations of exchange that are made possible by the interconnectedness of the exchanging elements through Wechselwirkungen. Moreover, as we know, Simmel denied that desire is the only necessary element in the formation of economic values. No objects, goods, or services can become economically valuable based simply on their desirability. If nature provided people with everything that they desire, the economy as such would not exist.49 In light of this fact, Simmel proceeded to analyse other necessary conditions for the formation of economic values. To do so he turned his attention towards the argument of scarcity. According to this, those goods and services which become economically valuable (i.e., those which enter the economic sphere of exchange and attain an exchange value) are subject to a special balance between scarcity and frequency. Any available goods whose attainment does not require any effort at all are unlikely to become the object of an economic valuation. This kind of commodity only attains an economic value when it replaces objects that require labour and, thus, a sacrifice from those who seek to consume and/or produce it. According to Simmel, those goods and services that can be economically valued are not directly available in nature, but are objects which can be obtained if something (e.g., money, time of labour) is “sacrificed” for this purpose. Unattainable objects can indeed be valued; but these valuations take place outside the arena of the economy. With respect to the necessary relative scarcity of economically valued goods, Simmel stated that things are not difficult to obtain because they are scarce, but they are scarce because they are difficult to obtain. The emphasis is thus not on scarcity but on the implied sacrifice.50 Indeed there are many things that 47 48 49 50

Flotow 1995:52. GSG6 1989:75-76. GSG6 1989:70-71. Thus Simmel questioned the role of scarcity in the articulation of economic values (GSG6 1989:78). He argued that those economists who thought of scarcity in these terms should have realized that the phenomenon that they were actually dealing with is not scarcity but sacrifice. Thus, he asserted that the desirability of goods had been mistaken for their use-

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are scarce, but this does not make them scarce in an economic sense. Scarcity in the economic sense would make them economically valued objects.51 What makes economic goods scarce is the amount of sacrifice that they require on the basis of an existing desire for them. Without desire, scarce goods do not become economic values. Furthermore, Simmel argued that the price of one commodity and its economic (exchange) value cannot differ. In fact, he did not even accept that they were essentially two different things.52 Hence, in contrast to the Marxian theory, he understood the concept of ‘exchange value’ as ‘exchange value’ (for values emerge and are consolidated in exchange). The starving woman who gives away her valuable jewellery for a loaf of bread, values the bread—at least at the moment of the exchange—more than she values gold. With this example, we become aware of two distinct dimensions of value that Simmel analysed. On the one hand, there are stable crystallizations of value which have emerged as a result of reciprocal actions (and their effects) that have taken place repeatedly over a long period of time. They allow the emergence of fixed relations of value which have become objectified in a concrete group as the “correct” valuations. On the other hand, there are spontaneous, fluctuating valuations which emerge under concrete circumstances, and are not backed by a consolidated and accepted “objectivity”. Conflicts between these two levels of valuations may occur when they are brought into direct relation with each other. From the perspective of the first level, that which happens on the second will always be considered wrong if it does not coincide with the first. Thus, if I exchange my diamond ring for a sandwich, I will possibly hear later that this exchange was unjust, for I should not have paid with my ring but only with a few small bills instead. The way in which judgements are formulated from the perspective of the first level (the level of objectified and fixed valuations) does not actually differ much from the way in which the judgements of value are formulated on the second level. Their main difference is the objectivity which the judgements of the first type enjoy due to their stable and fixed character, crystallized in multiple relations of exchange over time.53 Viewed from the perspective of these two levels (Schichten) of valuation, the idea that economic values and prices can diverge becomes graspable again. From the first level an aspiration to an ‘ought to be’ emerges which encounters and judges the sporadic, fluctuating valuafulness, while their scarcity represented an imperfect translation—into the language of economics—of the sacrifice they require. 51 GSG6 1989:90-91. 52 GSG6 1989:79. 53 GSG6 1989:82.

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tions which are formed at the second level.54 But this first level does not contain absolute values; it contains the objectified result—in the form of a value—of numerous repeated exchange relations. They have been crystallized and stabilized due to their continuity over time.55 As we know from above, in the process of being exchanged, each object acquires a measure of its value, not through a subjective valuation, but through its being set in relation to other objects. Hence an objective dimension supersedes the initial subjectivity of valuations. However, exchange is a form of sociation which allows the fulfilment of subjective desires. From a subjective point of view, the function of exchange is to enable people to obtain those objects that they desire. After exchange, the desiring subject can finally consume the desired object and satisfy the desire that motivated the participation in economic exchange. According to Simmel, it is what lies between the initial desire and the final consumption that constitutes the sphere of the economy as well as the arena of economic values.56 Desire and satisfaction are not part of the economy; they lie, so to speak, on either side of it. This thesis can be schematically represented as follows:

Subjective aspect 1: Differentiation of Subject and Object. Subjective emergence of values, through an interposed distance between the desiring subject and the desired object.

Objective aspect: Subjective aspect 2: The initially subjective Satisfaction of subjecvaluations crystallize tive desires. into objective values when articulated and interrelated through relations of exchange.

The second aspect in this scheme (i.e., the objective one) represents the sphere of the economy, and thus the arena in which exchange processes take place and within which economic values are objectified and crystallized.57 Reciprocal social actions and effects reside at the very heart of the economic sphere, while the two subjective sides look—in Simmel’s depiction—at an isolated individual who both develops and experiences desires, and seeks and enjoys satisfactions. This is not incompatible with the argument that the contents of individual desires must also be con54 55 56 57

GSG6 1898:82-83. GSG6 1989:83. GSG6 1989:71. GSG6 1989:57.

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ceived of from the perspective of reciprocal social actions and effects as has already been suggested above. Here, Simmel was less interested in the concrete contents of individual desires or in the different definitions of satisfaction of a desire than in the fact that individuals develop desires, in whichever milieu they might be in, and strive for their satisfaction. Exchange is thus the social form that mediates between these two moments, and this is also applicable to the hypothetical lonely Robinson Crusoe.

A L o o k B a c k , a L o o k Ah e a d In The Philosophy of Money Simmel developed a theory of value which differs from other approaches to value developed at that time. Thus, while some authors (the neo-Kantians) thought values were transcendental a priori categories, and that economic valuations had nothing to do with them, others (the classical economists) concentrated on economic value, viewing it as residing in the nature of things, and others (like Schmoller or Spencer) considered these economic values to be inextricably entwined with what is good for human life. Simmel considered all types of values to be the result of the introduction of distances with regards to the satisfaction of desires as well as the social moment of exchange (and Wechselwirkung) in the search for the best means for satisfying these desires. Influenced by social-evolutionism, he accepted that at the very beginning of human history values were more directly connected with the preservation of life, as Spencer had postulated. Yet, he weakened this point greatly by arguing that, over time and through civilization, values become increasingly distanced from their point of connection with the preservation of the self and the preservation of the species. Moreover, Simmel dismissed the argument that economic values result from people’s need (Bedürftigkeit) as had been proposed by economic theory. Instead, he considered the mechanisms of economic valuation in the light of the concepts of distance, desirability, exchange, and Wechselwirkung. As we have seen, there is another author who predates Simmel who thought of values as resulting from human actions and effects (in this case, those of production). Yet Marx did not renounce the notion that the objectivity of values was a given fact that could be calculated on the basis of the invested time of labour. Simmel did not accept the possibility of finding an indication of their value in the objective world of things. Values are objectified, and thus become objective in their effects on individuals, but no formulae can be found to actually deduce the value of 171

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an object from a general standard. Values are objectified in processes of reciprocal actions and effects. These processes detach valuations from particular individuals, only to present them once more in a modified and objectified form, as objective from and external to those who originally created them. In view of this last argument, Simmel did not accept the position of the Austrian economists who developed the theory of marginal costs (Grenznutzentheorie). Despite accepting their derivation of value from the desiring subjects, he viewed their theory as problematic for they did not incorporate the step—via social relations—that explains why so many values become, to a greater or lesser extent, independent of these desiring subjects. As he did not accept the idea that society is a simple agglomeration of individuals, but believed it to be the sum of their relationships (or the sum of the forms of sociation), he did not consider economic values to be the result of many unrelated individual valuations. There is another issue which also contributes to making Simmel’s theory of value such a significant contribution to a sociological treatment of it. He recognized the centrality of the valuations of everyday life. He also showed that there are no clear boundaries between the emergence and objectification of moral values, aesthetic values, or everyday life values (such as economic values, to give his paradigmatic example), but instead gradual differences between them. Thus, in contrast to authors like Rickert, who considered economic values to be mere valuations and, therefore, worlds apart from cultural values, Simmel argued that they emerge and crystallize along similar patterns. The relativity of economic values is perhaps the paradigmatic example of the relativity of values. Now, having dealt with Simmel’s general and economic approach to value, the time has come to concentrate on his analyses of money. He argued that money is the culmination and the purest expression of the concept of economic value. As we will see in the following chapter, Simmel meant that money is the purest expression of economic values because it embodies their relativeness as no other means of exchange and expression of economic values can. Furthermore, he argued that this characteristic of money is the reason for his focusing on it. Money develops in parallel to a world formula (Weltformel), thus making an understanding of (modern) existence (Dasein) possible.58

58 GSG6 1989:93.

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Introduction Simmel elaborated a “philosophy of money” because he saw in money an exemplary means to arrive, from a philosophical standpoint, at the ultimate values and significance of all that is human.1 He argued that money is the culmination of economic value which develops parallel to a kind of world formula (namely, that of relativism). He believed, therefore, that through an analysis of money a contribution to the interpretation of existence (Dasein) could be made.2 This had to develop from a theory of value since money only gained its relevance in the light of this perspective, as the culmination and purest expression of the relativity of economic value. To this extent, if readers of The Philosophy of Money had expected a book on economic theory, their confusion must have been considerable, since Simmel neither delivered nor wanted to produce such a book. Yet, The Philosophy of Money has more to do with economics than Simmel admitted when he asserted that not a single line of his book was meant to be economics.3 As we learned earlier, the first seeds of this book were planted when Simmel participated in the discussion group of the Younger School of National Economy. There he dealt with the theoretical approaches of the economic sciences of his time and became aware of the debates in this discipline. In ‘On the Psychology of Money’ Simmel delivered his view of this debate and mainly criticized the narrowness of its perspective. He also, it will be remembered, kept in mind his intention to write an empirical book on money and economic values 1 2 3

GSG6 1989:12. See also chapter 1. GSG6 1989:12, 93. GSG6 1989:11.

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until 1895. Only then did he revisit his plan, conceived much earlier, and turn the research into a philosophical work. All the same, the knowledge of economics he had accumulated over the years flowed into this monograph and readers like Schmoller later affirmed that they did not believe its readership should be confined to philosophers, arguing that it contained interesting reflections for the national economy as well.4 In his analyses of money of 1900 Simmel returned to the same questions that he had already dealt with in 1889. He also widened the scope of his deliberations and sought to approach the existence of money from the perspective of economic value and of a general theory of value. Furthermore, he used his analysis of money to interpret crucial aspects of human existence in modern times.

Money as the Reification of a Social Function After developing a theory of value that paid special attention to economic values, Simmel turned his attention towards an analysis of money. He characterized money as the culmination of economic value and defined it as the ‘relation of the economic values among themselves embodied in a tangible substance’, as ‘relativity become substance’ (‘substanzgewordene Relativität’), and, finally, as the ‘reification of the social function of exchange’.5 It is in this context that Simmel argued that he could only picture the relation between two people as the starting point of society (soziale Gestaltung), hence implying that money could not be understood without considering its origins (as with any other social institution) in direct relationships between people.6 After these initial moments of direct relationships between individuals, their further development leads to the creation of supra-individual structures and formations (Gebilde) that might replace them, mediate among them, and, on some occasions, almost absorb them.7 Money is, for Simmel, a paradigmatic example of one of these social creations that come to stand in for direct relationships between people. Concretely, money reifies and incarnates relations of exchange, substituting an exchange of one product for money for the direct exchange of the products of labour (or of products of whatever

4 5 6 7

See the first paragraphs of Schmoller’s review of The Philosophy of Money, Schmoller 1901. GSG6 1989:93, 130, 134, 209. GSG6 1989:208. GSG6 1989:208-209.

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other origins).8 If the social group grows in size and complexity, the relations of exchange become more frequent and more widespread. In order to overcome the difficulties that this growth and complexity imply, two tendencies evolve: processes of division of labour and consequent specialization begin to develop; and, representative and integrating ideals and symbols are created. These tendencies not only emerge in relation to exchange, they also evolve in other spheres of social life when the group grows larger and increasingly complex: the creation of the state can be considered in the same light. With regard to the concrete case of exchange, these tendencies lead, on the side of the division of labour, to the emergence of the figure of the merchant (specialized in mediating the relations of those who exchange), and, on the side of the integrating ideals and symbols, to the emergence of money (as mediating between the relations of the products which are exchanged).9 The reader might be confused here, having noted that the terminology that has been used above to characterize money (i.e., as the crystallization of the social function of exchange) diverges somewhat from the terminology used to characterize exchange in our previous chapter. In fact, Simmel’s terminology undergoes a silent change here. Exchange goes from being a paradigmatic form of Wechselwirkung to being a social function, and money is presented as the crystallization of this social function. Furthermore, as we have seen, Simmel did not only develop a concept of economic exchange: exchange in and of itself was an allembracing concept which played a structuring part in his theoretical deliberations at this time. In relation to this wide concept of exchange, economic exchange is viewed as only one particular type of exchange, characterized by the necessary sacrifice of objects of objective equivalent value to those that will be attained. It is clear only from the context that Simmel did not mean money to be the incarnation of all forms of exchange, but only of economic exchange. Otherwise, his assertion that money is the incarnation of the social function of exchange would be rather implausible. It is difficult to picture money as the crystallization of a love relationship, of a friendship, as the incarnation of what happens between a teacher and her pupils, or between a journalist and her readers, all of them examples of Simmel’s wider concept of exchange. Besides, considering the change of terminology, we might conclude that, for Simmel, the concepts of form and function are to a certain extent related. Yet, we do not find any extra hints in his text to know exactly how. Be that as it may, it is important to note that Simmel did not com8 9

GSG6 1989:209. GSG6 1989:209-211.

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municate the intention of these modifications to his readers. They appear, instead, without comments in this crucial part of the book in which money is being defined on the basis of (economic) exchange. Moreover, after presenting money as the crystallization of (economic) exchange, Simmel argued again that exchange is sociation, one of the crucial relations between people that make an agglomeration of individuals a social group.10 This is something Simmel had asserted about the very broad concept of exchange, yet here he was explicitly making reference to the exchange between individuals of the products of their work (or products of whatever origin that they might possess).11 Thus the argument moves exclusively within the frames of economic exchange. Besides, another conceptual issue to be briefly discussed here is Simmel’s emphasis on the sociological character of money.12 In my view, this sociological character must be translated into a social character since, in these passages Simmel, does not refer to the discipline of sociology at all nor does he present money in such a way that would lead the reader to suspect that it has a sociological character. In fact, the intention of this characterization is only to highlight the importance of the social dimension of money. Without the social in general, and without exchange in particular, money would not make any sense at all. If people stopped exchanging that which they have for that which they wish to obtain, money would lose all its meaning.13

The Value of Money A crucial question when dealing with money is the question of how it attains its value. As we know from above, Simmel already dealt with this question in 1889. In The Philosophy of Money he carried on down this path, arguing that the question of the value of money is the question that runs through the whole discussion of the nature of money.14 Hence, he worked with the old inquiry about whether money needs be valuable to express and measure economic values, or whether it only needs be a symbol of the values of other objects. Almost the entire first part of the second chapter of The Philosophy of Money concentrated on this question, presenting each point with as many analogies and examples as possible in order to give the main argument as much plausibility as possible. 10 11 12 13 14

GSG6 1989:210. GSG 6 19890:209. See, for instance, GSG6 1989:212, 214. GSG6 1989:212. GSG6 1989:139.

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In fact, Simmel needed to ensure that these assertions had firm foundations since, as we will see later, his answer to this question is the cornerstone of his analysis of money as well as a necessary element of his definition of money. If his answer to this question is not convincing, the whole edifice of his analyses of money breaks down.15 Simmel began by commenting on the assumption that the units of measure must share the concrete characteristic which is being measured with the measured objects. Thus, for instance, the measure of the length of an object requires a unit of measurement that is long; the measure of its weight demands something with mass, and so forth. Following this pattern, money should be valuable in order to measure values. Yet, Simmel distanced himself from the exclusivity of this way of measuring, arguing that not all forms of measurement work like this. For instance, temperature is not measured by a hot unit, but by the dilatation of mercury due to heat. Moreover, the effects of a gust of wind on a tree branch and the effects of a push given to the same branch by a human hand can be measured in relation to each other precisely on the basis of the comparison of these effects, despite their not sharing any common characteristics which could be immediately related to each other. Their effects on a third party are that which is compared and measured, despite the lack of other commonalities between the wind and the hand.16 The answer to the question of whether two objects must share the same quality in order to be related to each other by comparison depends on that which is going to be compared. If the interest of the comparison lies in the extent of the possession of a compared quality, they must share it. If the interest of the comparison rests on the effects on a third party (like the gust of wind and the human push), or in the similarities of the form of relation (like the relations of subordination of c by d compared to the subordination of a by b), then that which must be common to them is that they partake in such a relation or that they have effects on the same third party, but not that they share the same qualities as objects.17 Following this, Simmel argued that money can express and measure the value of things without needing to be valuable itself, since all that is required to measure values is that this measurement succeeds 15 Before reading the contents that follow, it is important to bear in mind that no matter how old fashioned the vision of money and of the economy might appear to Simmel's readers more than one hundred years after the publication of his monograph, the relevant point for us, I would suggest, remains the conclusion on which basis Simmel asserted that money need not be valuable to measure values as we will see below. 16 GSG6 1989:140. 17 GSG6 1989:140-155.

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on the basis of the proportions between money and commodities, which are two qualitatively different things.18 Money can express the values of merchandise through a relation of proportionality because, despite the fact that money and merchandise are not commensurate in direct relation to each other, they both play a part in human life (which thus becomes the third party). This suffices for the quantitative modification that allows the one to become an index of the other.19 Thus, money, instead of measuring the value of merchandise in relation to its own value, expresses a proportion between the quantum of money and that of merchandise that is available in a certain economic system. Yet, what kind of relation of proportionality can be used in order to measure the value of things with money? Simmel asserted that this relation of proportionality is established between the quanta of two elements which are not directly comparable: merchandise and money. This relation expresses the proportion between the total quantum of merchandise and the total quantum of money and two particular amounts of both. In other words, money expresses the value of each commodity on the basis of the relation between the total amount of goods and the total amount of money.20 As for the question of whether this proportionality can still work when the fact that there are many more goods than money is taken into consideration, he replied positively in light of two facts. On the one hand, only the merchandise that is actually in circulation (and not piling up in a storeroom) should be taken into account. On the other hand, the velocity of the circulation of money is so much higher than the velocity of the circulation of merchandise that the static disproportion is balanced in movement.21 However, even if money need not be valuable in principle in order to be able to accomplish its function, this does not say anything about its historical evolution. Indeed, after elaborating on why money need not be valuable in order to measure values, Simmel turned his attention towards the historical evolution of money.22 Here, the leading question is, was money the ‘incarnation of the social function of exchange’ and ‘relativity turned into substance’ from the very outset? In order to reply, Simmel concentrated on ethnological depictions of what he called ‘primitive’ cultures (Völker) and on the objects that these cultures used as money. He rapidly concluded that these objects (cattle, salt, slaves and tobacco, among others) were objects with high social values; that is, 18 19 20 21 22

GSG6 1989:141. GSG6 1989:148. GSG6 1989:147. GSG 6 1989:150-152. GSG6 1989:155-156.

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objects that were desired and valued beyond, and independent of, their role as money by most (if not all) of the members of the group in question.23 The intention of these ethnological analyses was not to give an account of the complex historical processes of the creation and consolidation of money, as its historical development in detail was not Simmel’s object of inquiry.24 Rather, the emphasis was on the very relevant processes of the transformation that money underwent from some of its initial forms and functions to what it became at the beginning of the 20th century. On the basis of the thesis that money, in principle, need not be valuable in order to measure values, Simmel depicted this transformation as the progressive transformation from ‘substance money’ to ‘function money’. Let us consider in detail what he meant by these two concepts.

An Ah i s t o r i c a l An a l ys i s o f t h e E m e r g e n c e o f M o n e y. F r o m S u b s t a n c e t o F u n c t i o n M o n e y Simmel emphasized that his interest in money was not historical. All the same he could not help dealing with historical and ethnological data in his analyses of the emergence and consolidation of money as a means of exchange and, consequently, of monetary economic systems. Simmel thereby distanced himself from the viewpoint that one should look at the origins of a phenomenon in order to find the essence of it, as for instance Durkheim had done in The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life.25 In Simmel’s view, money could not have emerged from nothing and gone straight into the form it attained in modern, monetary economies. Instead, it needed a long process and a long chain of changes and modifications to become the general means of exchange and expression of economic values.26 The first forms of money were goods that were considered highly valuable by those who used them as tokens of exchange, independent of this exchange function. Moreover, these first forms of money did not imply exclusivity. Within the framework of one and the same society, the same object or material which now played the function of money could later exercise other functions. For instance, shells could play either the role of money or the role of jewellery, depending on the use they were given by their owners. Only the simultaneity of both functions was 23 24 25 26

GSG6 1989:156. GSG6 1989:10. Durkheim (1912)1994. GSG6 1989:121-122.

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not possible for one and the same object. Furthermore, the goods that actually played the role of money varied enormously from society to society. Yet they all shared the characteristic of being immediately accepted in a situation of exchange. Indeed, whichever goods they were, they were some of the socially most valued goods. After one object had become the recognized carrier of the function of money, its exchange value became the expression and measure of the exchange values of all other objects which were part of the same network of exchanges.27 Simmel called this type of money ‘substance money’. Thus, the shells of the above example were not accepted as a token of exchange because they were money, but because they were shells. In the light of this, substance money could be defined as follows: Substance money is a form of money whose exchangeability resides in the value attached to the substance in which it is embodied. Hence, any material, substance, or object that is highly valued within a certain society is able to play the role of money, as long as it is valued highly enough to guarantee that its acceptability can be taken for granted. The counterpart to substance money, and, according to Simmel, the form of money that corresponds to the actual concept of money, is ‘function money’. Function money, as the term already indicates, does not derive its value from the material in which it is embodied, but directly from its economic, social function. Function money cannot be found in the first forms of money, but crystallizes in the further evolution of money, as an ideal to which money tends, but has not yet reached. After money has evolved to become mainly function money, it is no longer accepted because it is a shell, salt, gold, a piece of paper, or a piece of plastic, but because it is money. This means of exchange has thus gained such a wide acceptance and legitimacy that it need not rely on the value of its substance to be considered valuable. Its function has become sufficient to imbue it with value. Under these conditions, people’s trust in money can be taken for granted, since they trust the function that it accomplishes. As a consequence of this dominance of the function of money over its substance, the value of the material used as money is no longer important. It need only be adequate to allow the efficient functioning of money. In the light of these assertions, Simmel argued that, at the beginning of its historical development, money was accepted as money because it was valuable. Later, as it became a generalized and accepted means of exchange, it was valuable because it was money.28 He viewed the his27 GSG6 1989:156-157. 28 GSG6 1989:197-198.

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torical evolution of money as tending towards a dominance of its function over its substance. Yet, and despite the fact that his concept of money focuses exclusively on its function, pure function money is more a sort of ideal towards which the historical development of money tends than a reality. In the light of this, it is interesting to note that, although Simmel believed that money could and should never become a pure symbol of value, that is, pure function money, he defined it as such. This implies that Simmel’s definition of money as the incarnation of the social function of exchange and of the relativity of values captures more what the historical developments of money tend towards than what concrete money is or will ever become. Simmel was aware of this fact, and argued that money could better accomplish its function when it was not purely function money. Furthermore he suspected that pure function money is not possible. He underpinned this thesis with the following arguments.29 First, as just mentioned, he considered certain remnants of substance necessary for money to be in the position to accomplish its function. It is in the light of this argument that Simmel held that the function of money can be best realized when money is not only function money.30 A remnant of substance makes money recognizable as such, even in a symbolic dimension. Without wanting to decide on the correctness of these assertions,31 it is worth wondering what sort of light the one hundred years that separate us from The Philosophy of Money can shed on them. Indeed, far beyond the era of the gold standard, we have reached the time of credit cards and globalized financial markets where the remnants of substance money to which Simmel was referring have long disappeared. We are confronted today with plastic money and, in the context of financial markets, invisible and even virtual money.32 If we consider the forms of money that can still be touched (i.e., notes and coins), they are certainly no longer backed by any reserves of gold in the national or EU banks. All the same, in a symbolic dimension, they have kept the silver and gold colours, instead of changing at the pace of fashion. This is, one could argue, not a coincidence. They have kept the shine of the material which once embodied money and which has become its symbol. Furthermore, these notes and coins are bigger or smaller depending on the amount of money they are worth. This tendency remains. The newly created Euro strictly follows these aesthetic (and surely not only aesthetic) canons. Furthermore, in the case of credit cards, it cannot be a 29 30 31 32

See GSG6 1989:181-193. GSG 6 1989:193. A discussion that we will not enter into here. See Haesler 1995 and Ritzer 1995 for detailed research on this topic.

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coincidence that having lots of money in the bank gives one access to a gold Visa card. The remnants of the substance, despite their highly symbolic character, are still there. Gold keeps shining even on credit cards. In fact, gold keeps shining on all types of cards that are carriers of money, even on telephone cards. Indeed, the chip of all these cards shines in golden tones, reminding us which part of the card is the carrier of its value.33 Second, Simmel added the dimension of control to all these considerations as a further argument for the desirability of not letting money become pure function money. The scarcity of the substance in which money is embodied does not allow the printing of money willy-nilly whenever a government fancies it (therefore, gold would be an appropriate carrier of the monetary function). According to Simmel, increases or decreases in the quantum of circulating money have, in the long term, only negative effects on the economy, some of them foreseeable, some of them not. By keeping money embodied in a scarce substance, Simmel argued, this danger would be kept at bay. Third, money should not be pure function money and thus highly fluctuating because of the relative inelasticity of prices. Even if all citizens of a country suddenly had twice as much money in their pockets and bank accounts and, simultaneously, all goods and services became twice as expensive, the situation would not be the same as it was previously, despite the fact that all monetary possessions and all prices had grown proportionally. Although people would actually have relatively just as much money as they had before, they would perceive the new prices of merchandise as too high. They would, therefore, more than likely not be willing to pay the new prices. Ultimately, people would spend less and the economic situation would diverge considerably from the one that prevailed before the proportional change. Simmel’s observation is that although conceptually money is the expression of the relativity of the relations of the economic value of merchandise, this is not fully reflected in practical life. For there prices (some more than others) become psychologically fixed. This calls their relativity into question, at least to a certain extent.34 Due to the inelasticity of prices, and to the impossibility of foreseeing or controlling the consequences of increases or decreases in the quantity of circulating money, this quantity should remain as constant as possible; that is, by binding it to a scarce substance. Here the century that separates us from Simmel becomes especially noticeable. All the same, with the experi33 Frerichs 2001:87-91. 34 GSG6 1989:192.

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ence of the introduction of the euro and the abolition of many national currencies in Europe in the immediate past, the question of whether the analyses of The Philosophy of Money anticipate the effects of this innovation or whether they actually do not coincide at all arises. It might be that Simmel’s analyses do contribute to an understanding of some of the attitudes and fears that arose before and after the introduction of the euro. For instance, the perception of so many people that the prices of most commodities went up with the introduction of the euro, making life much more expensive than it had been before, was inaccurate, since the rise in prices that actually took place was lower than what was perceived. This misperception might be (at least partially) due to the mechanisms described above, according to which the perceived reduction of the amount of money circulating (here due to the fact that the units of the euro are bigger than most of the national currencies it replaced) might give people the impression of having much less money than before, or that hardly any money is left in the account after having bought only a few items. Finally, after basing the concept of money upon the difference between substance and function money, Simmel relativized this difference with a thesis that he had already developed in 1889. His argument is that the value of any substance is nonetheless derived from its function. No substance is economically valued for itself, but only for what people make out of it. In the light of these assertions, the difference between function and substance money is less radical than it might seem at first sight, and it forces us to reformulate slightly the assertions outlined above: Function money derives its value from its social function as money, substance money derives its value from another, or other, social function/s.35

Trust in Money A crucial question regarding the transition from substance money to function money remains to be answered. What processes back this transition? Or, in other words, on what social basis can money become function money? In my view, Simmel did not elaborate on this (very relevant) question systematically enough. Rather he worked with historical examples, responding to it indirectly rather than directly. Yet, a careful reading of the last pages of the second chapter of The Philosophy of Money give us 35 GSG6 1989:200.

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significant indications about the social foundations upon which Simmel believed that this process could take place: namely, the emergence and consolidation of the modern territorial state with its bureaucratic organization.36 Let us consider this step by step. The answer to the question of why substance money is accepted is based on the fact that the substance in which money is embodied is so valued within the group in question that one can take that it will be accepted in further exchanges for granted. Its high value stands for its acceptability. This means that one is quite sure about the durability of the value of this substance, that it deserves one’s trust. The reasons behind the acceptance of function money do not differ much from the reasons above. When people accept function money, they also do so because they assume that they will be able to use this money in the future, that it will maintain its value, and that it will be accepted. They trust it just as much as they would trust the acceptability of a valuable substance. The only (relevant) difference (so far) is that they do not trust it because they consider the material they have in their hands to be valuable, but rather because they believe in the social and political system in which they live. They further believe in the stability and legitimacy of the institution (normally the state) that mints the money. Furthermore, they are sure that this institution will keep on guaranteeing its value in the future. If this trust were to wane, and people were no longer sure of the acceptability of their money, or of the fact that the value of their money would remain stable, the value of this money would rapidly decrease. The history of the 20th century has given us enough examples of this lack of trust. In this era of financial markets, these processes have not changed; the example of the Asian crisis in 1997 quickly springs to mind to back up the theses of The Philosophy of Money.

The Characteristics of Money Simmel depicted money as a tool, created by the people in order to be able to reach goals that they would not be able to reach otherwise.37 This attainment of more and new goals is made possible by the substantial alteration of the relations of exchange due to their monetary mediation. 36 See, for instance, GSG6 1989:224, 244. Simmel paid little systematic attention to this political organization (or, as Simmel put it, ‘form of life’); in fact, he did not elaborate on the figure of currency at all. Yet, we are very seldom (if ever) confronted with money without its mediation through currency. 37 GSG6 1989:261-267.

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This mediation implies the increase in the continuity and velocity of the flow of economic exchanges. While merchandise only moves from time to time from one owner to another, money is constantly flowing. It changes from hand to hand continuously. When we buy, say, a watch, we give some money away, and get the watch. We will, more than likely, keep the watch for a longer period of time than the watchmaker will keep our money. The tempo of circulation of money is much higher than the tempo of circulation of merchandise.38 Therefore an acceleration of the rate of economic exchange has been a consequence of the generalization of money as a means of exchange. In its turn, this acceleration has resulted in an acceleration of production. Since more goods can be exchanged, more goods are produced. The fact that more goods are produced also makes possible the production of more varied goods, so that through the mediation of money in the economy, more and more diverse economic goals can be attained which, otherwise, would perhaps not even be thinkable. As a tool that mediates between relations of exchange, money must have very special characteristics that will ensure the success of its mediation of exchange, and guarantee its efficacy in relation to other forms of exchange, such as barter. We will now briefly focus on these special characteristics that money must have so that it can fulfil its role as a more suitable tool for successful exchange. Some of these characteristics will receive more detailed attention below. According to Simmel, money is not valued like other commodities are. Money is not desired for purposes of consumption, but only for its role as a mediator in exchange. This makes a crucial difference since money only makes sense as long as relations of economic exchange take place. If they were to stop, money (as function money) would lose all its value and meaning. A loaf of bread or a piece of cloth does not lose its function (and its value) when a particular form of Wechselwirkung among people stops, even if it were a central form as exchange. But money is a social institution that only makes sense in the context of social relations, particularly social relations of economic exchange. Since money is not desired as money for its beauty, or for any of the qualities of its material, but for the function it accomplishes, the substance in which this function is embodied need not fulfil any other criteria than the highest possible convenience and suitability for the realization of this function. Thus, this substance must be easily transportable—so that the relations of exchange can take place anywhere. It must be long lasting— so that the relations of exchange can take place at any time, and it must 38 GSG6 1989:129.

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be divisible—so that any relation of exchange (of whichever value) can take place in money. Beyond the characteristics of its substance, and somewhat in contrast to its divisibility, money also works as a condenser of values. Hence, although money is able to express any possible quantities of value in its units, each of these quantities is not the sum of, say, twenty-five monetary units (such as 25 euros or pounds) but one single value—as, in the measurements of temperature 20 degrees are not 20 separate degrees but one single temperature.39 Furthermore, money must have a stable value in order to merit the trust of those who use it, and to be able to accomplish its functions of measuring, comparing and communicating the economic values of commodities in a more effective way.40 As a result of these characteristics, in the expression of the economic values of things, money reduces the differences between them to one common denominator. Their qualitative differences vanish, and only quantitative differences are left. Money turns the values of different commodities into immediately comparable values. Moreover, money cannot be anything but anonymous, in the sense that it erases all possible information about the individuals who are or have been involved in transactions involving a particular sum of money. This trait introduces a great modification in the social relations of exchange. While in non-monetary societies phenomena like honour, gratefulness, or honesty are positively sanctioned in relations of economic exchange, these factors have lost relevance in the monetary economies. In the latter, the party who can pay the price demanded gets the desired commodity. Moral considerations, or reflections of any other kind, seldom disturb the economic, monetary transaction. Frequently they remain unknown, losing their relevance. In fact, money “behaves” in the same way in relation to the objects whose economic values it expresses as in relation to the giving and taking hands that make it possible. Money stands equidistant from them all, ignores all their qualities beyond the ‘have’ or ‘have not’ and the ‘how much/how many’. It does not involve itself with some commodities more than with others, or with some people more than with others. It does not let their qualities modify it. Personal colourings are not compatible with the monetary logic. As we know from above, Simmel characterized money as a tool. In addition, he presented it as a highly functional tool, since it enables the achievement of many and very different goals. In order to be such a highly effective tool, money cannot be especially created for, or better adjusted to, one of 39 This is Simmel’s comparison. See GSG6 1989:242-243. 40 GSG6 1989:130.

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these many possible goals. It must be as equidistant from, and as indifferent in relation to, all goods as well as to the taking and giving hands as possible. It is only thanks to these characteristics that money can enable the exchanging individuals to buy anything that is for sale as long as they possess enough of it. The attainment of economic goals becomes “simply” a question about how much money one possesses.

The Double Role of Money According to Simmel’s definition of (function) money, money is the institutionalized result of the crystallization of human relations of exchange, as well as the expression of the relations and interconnections between economic values. In the light of this definition, money is merely the expression of a relation, namely of the reciprocal relations of value of other objects. This is why it is ‘relativity become substance,’ for it is nothing but the expression of the relation of the values of other objects. Yet, as the expression of the relativity of the values of commodities, money itself escapes this relativity. Since all possible types of merchandise are exchanged for and by money, money remains the only constant and ever-present element in economic fluctuations. Furthermore, it is the common denominator of the expression and comparison of economic values and the generalized tool for the exchange of all economic goods and services.41 Yet, as we know from above, money is not only relativity turned into substance. In real economies, that is, within the chain of economic events, money not only expresses the relation between the values of other items, but has a value of its own. In fact, it is not only a mediator in the exchange of merchandise, but it is merchandise itself which can be exchanged with profit, like any other merchandise. In the hands of the banker, for instance, money is indeed not only a means of exchange, but basically the raw material and merchandise with which she works. Therefore, money is not only a relation. If it is considered to be embedded in the time sequence of real economies, and not only in principle, money is also an economic commodity. In the light of this, money is not only relation, but it has relation. Thus, money plays a double role in modern, monetary economies.42

41 GSG6 1989:124-125. 42 GSG6 1989:125-126. For an approach to the Simmelian “double role” of money from the perspective of economics, see: Flotow 1992 & 1995 and Flotow & Schmidt 1999.

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As we know, Simmel depicted stability as a central, necessary characteristic of money. Yet a total stability could only be achieved if money were only ‘relation’. In regard to the way in which money functions in real economies (i.e., as soon as money, beyond being relation, also has relations), it cannot always fulfil this criterion of total stability. Its value fluctuates with the values of the other elements. The introduction of money within the economic system as merchandise makes monetary instability possible. In fact, it becomes inevitable.43 Therefore, according to Simmel, it is of even more importance that money is embodied (and thus controlled) by a scarce substance.

The Levelling Effects of Money and Their Consequences According to Simmel, the monetarization of economic values leads to their reduction to a common denominator which allows only quantitative differences and erases all qualitative ones. Hence, in the monetary expression of the value of things, these lose all peculiarities and special characteristics since the only way to reduce many elements to their common denominator is to reduce them to that which is common to them all, making of it the basis upon which comparisons will be made. The only means left with which to express the special qualities of certain objects in monetary terms is to raise their price sky-high. This is the only way for monetary expressions of value to swing back to differences in quality: through exceptional quantitative amounts. Yet, this is only applicable to rare and very special types of merchandise. Highly valued goods in the art market are examples of this mechanism. Thus, say, a Picasso will surely cost an astronomical sum of money. Thereby it will bring its peculiarity, its unique character, into expression through the enormous sum that is demanded for it. However, this applies only to Picassos and the like. All the peculiar characteristics of those commodities which are not “a Picasso” do not find their way into the monetary expression of their economic value. Thus, in the monetary expression of the economic values of apples and pears, for instance, no clues will be found about what they taste like, what they look like, or anything of this kind. Through their monetary prices these two types of fruit become immediately comparable. Yet this comparison does not have much to do with what pears and apple are like.44 As soon as attention is focused on 43 GSG6 1989:130-131. 44 At this point the parallels between Simmel’s and Marx’s approaches to ‘exchange’ values again spring to mind.

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the monetary values of merchandise, the commodities in question lose their peculiar form and characteristics, and become commensurable as mere quantities of money.45 The centre of interest is no longer the goods, but their price46. Simmel did not emphasize enough that these changes in the perception of the commodities and their prices constitute a way of adapting oneself to the new monetary, market economies. Furthermore, the fact that people compare the prices of merchandise in order to make up their minds about what they are going to consume does not necessarily mean that their consumer choices are based on price criteria alone. The logic of monetary valuation does not make it possible to recognize any differences between the qualities of, say, apples and pears, but this does not necessarily mean that people therefore regard their flavours as being interchangeable. Surely they do not buy something they do not like at all just because they are attracted by its price, although they might sometimes buy something they do not really like because they cannot afford that which they do like, or because they consider “the price-quality trade-off” a good compromise between their demands and that which they are prepared or able to spend. In a monetary economy, people only have a limited amount of money at their disposal, and if they “can choose” between buying apples or caviar, they might choose apples because they cost less money. Yet this does not mean that they only value apples because of what they cost, and that they do not take their taste, as well as the taste of caviar, into account. They might keep all their qualities in mind and perceive all their specific differences. But, regarding the fact that in monetary economies one needs to have a sufficient amount of money in one’s pocket in order to survive, it is hardly surprising that people take prices very seriously when they decide what they will buy. In other words, if in order to survive and, if possible, to live in more or less acceptable conditions, money has become necessary, it is hardly surprising that in making economic decisions the price of a commodity has become at least as important as the commodity itself. If one is not utterly fascinated by some concrete artefact, but wants it merely to accomplish a function (and one does not possess unlimited amounts of money), one will compare commodities on the basis of their prices, and then decide. Not only because their price is the only element which ultimately matters, but also because it must matter. The necessity of adapting oneself to the given constraints is not a special characteristic of the monetary economies. That which is special to them, and here we meet 45 GSG6 1989:360. 46 GSG6 1989:540.

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Simmel again, is the quantification and comparability with which monetary economies express these economic constraints, thus colouring the perception and conception of the world as relations of quantities that are commensurable with each other.

M o n e y a s a R e d u c e r o f Am b i g u i t y Money greatly contributes to reducing the ambiguity of the relationships of exchange. It replaces barter—which cannot deliver the fine and accurate measurements and pondering of values that monetary calculation makes possible—as a form of exchange. Furthermore, money confers upon prices an appearance of objectivity and a fixation that does not allow much discussion or negotiation. In this way, the roles of the seller and the customer change when their relationship is mediated by money. Their pattern of interaction becomes more clearly defined, and any discussion regarding the fairness of the deal becomes more difficult. Simmel thought that the zenith of this process is the stock exchange.47 Nonetheless, certain ambiguities in the relations of economic values, even if they are expressed by money, cannot be totally eliminated. The space for negotiation depends on the concrete situation in which the buyer and seller meet. For example, within the same city, with the same currency, and under the same system of prices, a big chain of supermarkets is in a much better position to bypass bargaining for a better price than a local shopkeeper. This might be because the owners of these small businesses often work in their shops and are in almost daily contact with some of their customers. This results in a situation in which the client demands that the shopkeeper, as the current owner of the merchandise, sell it for a slightly lower price than stated, or that it be accompanied by some kind of bonus, since the client assumes that the shopkeeper, as owner of the merchandise, can do so if she wants to. This might encourage some customers to actually ask for these extras. More than likely, they would not do so in interaction with the employee of a supermarket.

47 GSG6 1989:391.

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Money as a Means of Exchange. Money as a Goal The fact that money attains its value through the function it performs does not, according to Simmel, make it different from other socially valued goods. Yet money’s function does differ from the functions of most of those goods whose value it expresses. As we have seen, Simmel considered these goods to be valued mainly for their consumption, while money is an institution that serves to mediate between exchanges of other objects and among exchanging partners. Therefore, it is only valued as long as people wish to participate in relationships of exchange and as long these exchanges are possible.48 While commodities are the ends of individual desires, money has an intermediate character. Rather than an end in itself, it tends to be a tool with which to reach these various ends.49 In light of this fact, Simmel argued that, with the exception of those liminal situations in which the valuations of some individuals do not reach beyond the desire for money (such as greed or thirst for money), it cannot fulfil any needs or realize any desires. It is only highly desired because it allows desired goods to be reached. Yet, precisely due to this quality, it can become the most desired end. Simmel explained this transition from being a means to becoming an end with the thesis that money is indeed the purest of means, but it is so in an absolute measure.50 This absolute measure makes the “means” character of money appear in a different light. Hardly any good in modern economies can be attained without money. This turns this token of exchange into a necessary means for achieving a great quantity of ends. Since money is, so to speak, the common denominator of so many teleological chains, it asserts itself in the consciousness much more often, and with more strength, than the ends themselves. As we have seen, Simmel viewed this process as a general characteristic of human consciousness. As the teleological chains grow longer and longer with the ongoing processes of civilization, it is not possible to bear in mind each step of these teleological chains. It is often more effective to focus completely on the means needed to attain the final ends than on these ends themselves.

48 GSG6 1989:179. 49 This implies, of course, that Simmel focused at this point on individuals who seek to obtain these goods and services in order to satisfy their desires, and not on these individuals as actors in a capitalist economy for whom the same commodities might above all be valuable for their exchange value. 50 GSG6 1989:283.

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This, in the final analysis, makes their attainment easier, for one thing, and for another it brings to light the relativity of means and ends. There is still another key dimension of money that greatly contributes to its becoming an ‘absolute goal’ for many people: its dimension of power. In each possible amount of money, this dimension of power manifests itself in the fact that it is as valuable as the particular goods which will be bought with it plus the freedom of choice which it allows. For one and the same quantity of money could in principle be just as well exchanged for anything else of the same monetary price.51 This imbues money with a great advantage over all other commodities, and its possessor with a surplus of freedom and of power over the possessors of any other goods. Money can be exchanged for anything, and it can be exchanged at any time.52 Since it is the one means to attain so many and diverse ends (in the economic sphere), it stops being valued as a mere means, becoming an end. Money, as an end, is often more desired and valued than all the other ends that it can help to achieve. In other words, since money is the key that opens so many doors, each single door, so to speak, seems relatively valueless in comparison to the key. Furthermore, where there is an accumulation of money in the hands of one owner, this dimension of power attains a new quality. Simmel termed this the ‘superadditum of wealth’, and argued that the concentration of great quantities of money in one pair of hands confers a different quality upon this money.53 Those who possess money in great quantities have, on the one hand, greater freedom in deciding what to do with their money, and are at liberty to buy whatever takes their fancy, since they are free from immediate necessities. On the other hand, through the fact that they are wealthy they attain a sort of distinction, a kind of nobility, in large measure regardless of whether one profits directly from their wealth or not (say, because they eat in one’s restaurant or are clients at one’s boutique). Wealthy people, according to Simmel, are treated as better people because they are viewed as being better people since they have money. They shine, to put it in Marxian terms, with the same golden glint as money.54 We will deal with this point in more detail below. Simmel presented the thesis that money has become a final end for many people and, as such, has attained a very high valuation, particularly when one compares the desire that these people develop for money to the kind of desire that other commodities awaken. He distinguished the desire for those things which cover the most immediate needs (like 51 52 53 54

GSG6 1989:267-268. GSG6 1989:274. GSG6 1989:274. A hint of the remaining of the substance even in the metaphor.

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food, shelter or clothing) from the desire for those things which are luxury goods (such as books, jewellery, or holidays abroad). The first type of desire is much stronger and immediate than the second, yet also much more limited. There is a limited amount of food everyone can eat and people do not need ten roofs above their heads. One does the job quite well. The second type of desire is not as urgent, yet is unlimited. There is no limit to the commodities we can desire because they please us. And yet we do not need them to stay alive. Now, after the generalization of money as the standard means of exchange, this differentiation between both types of desire is no longer applicable to the desire for money. Money has become the (economic) means to attain the first as well as the second type of desired goods. As a consequence of this coincidence, money itself is longed for with the intensity of the first type of desire and just as endlessly as luxury goods are desired.55

T h e T yp e s o f P e r s o n a l i t y t h a t D e r i v e f r o m Considering Money as the Highest Value In relation to the consequences of the conversion of money being the purest of means to an absolute goal, Simmel concentrated on diverse types of personality that have emerged as a result of the highest valuation of money. He sketched these personality types from the standpoint of patterns of behaviour. His intention was less to portray concrete human beings than to depict attitudes, attitudes which emerge when the valuation of the economic sphere (represented by money) overshadows the motivations for entering this sphere and all that lies beyond it. Simmel concentrated on the steps which individuals normally take when they seek to satisfy their desires by means of economic exchange in monetary economies. He argued that the motivation for entering into the arena of economic exchange is the desire for an object which people assume that they will be able to obtain therein, and the subsequent promise of its consumption (step 1). In light of this desire, individuals identify the most effective way (within the arena of economic exchange) to achieve their goal. This way is the possession of money (step 2). Therefore, they strive to obtain money (step 3), buy the desired object (step 4), and finally—beyond the economic sphere—enjoy the desired object and obtain satisfaction (step 5). These steps make up a process that can be best pictured as a circle that closes itself when desire and satisfaction 55 GSG6 1989:326-327.

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meet again, overcoming the distance that separated them. All steps towards achieving and enjoying the desired goods or services mark out the way to overcome this distance. We could picture this circle as follows:

2

3

1 5

4

The intermediate steps (2 3 4) constitute the arena of economic exchange.56 They are relatively independent of the individual moments (1 5) which do not belong to the sphere of economic exchange. Abstracted from the moments that set this sphere into motion, these intermediate steps can appear as goals in themselves; that is, as if the initial impulse (desire) and the final destination (satisfaction) were of no importance. Karl Marx already illustrated this phenomenon in Capital, asserting that people have become blind to the fact that that which stands behind the mystical dance of commodities are actually human beings and their relations. If they stop labouring, producing, and exchanging, in short, if they stop living (under capitalist conditions and relations of production), the dance of the commodities will stop on the spot. If we apply here the Simmelian differentiation between forms and contents as presented above, points 1 and 5 can be viewed as contents (namely as the motivations of the individual actions), while steps 2, 3 and 4 are the social form that the realization of these contents adopts. They are the way to channel desires and search for their satisfaction with economic means and within a certain social framework. It is only within this framework that economic exchange becomes possible. Furthermore, the arena of economic exchange is independent of the particular objects that are wanted and desired. Regardless of that which concrete individuals desire, the rules of the game (i.e., the steps 2, 3 and 4) are the same for all, and, therefore, money will always come into the picture, regard56 They are equivalent to the objective aspect in the table drawn in chapter 4 to depict the constitution of economic values.

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less of what is being exchanged and desired. Precisely because money has become an ever-present step in economic transactions, and because possessing it implies having access to all other economic goods, the valuation of money above any other good becomes possible. It is easy to see that an orientation towards the accumulation of money soon develops since, through the accumulation of money, one is at the same time accumulating power and potential enjoyment. It can easily happen that the valuation of this power and potential enjoyment becomes more highly valued than its realization and the consumption of any other goods.57 This implies that those who see their highest goal as money do not complete the circle that we considered earlier. They become trapped in the steps that pertain to the economic arena and obtain a special kind of satisfaction there. Simmel elaborated on the different psychological consequences for individuals if they come to consider money a final goal. He classified these consequences in reference to the particular step at which the individual remains anchored. Let us focus on these psychological effects briefly, relating them to the circle depicted above:58 • Greed: This type of attitude stops at step number 2. The attitude of greed is based on the realization that money is condensed economic power, leading to the conception of the accumulation of money as the most satisfying end. The greedy character is best embodied by those who hide notes and coins underneath their mattresses and contemplate them ecstatically. These coins are objectified power and embody the only wishes and desires that the greedy attitude can conceive. If this accumulated money were exchanged for goods, the “magic” of having the power to buy anything else would be lost. This power is the highest value.59 • Avarice: This is a form of thirst for money that stops at step 3. The emphasis here is on the thirst to earn more and more money instead of simply not spending (and contemplating) the money one already possesses, as in the case of greed. The satisfaction of the avaricious 57 Unfortunately Simmel did not complement his analysis of the actual accumulation of potential power by the accumulation of money with an analysis of the possibility of turning money into capital, and on an alternative conception of capital as accumulated power as well as accumulated labour. 58 Here I have used David Frisby and Tom Bottomore’s translation of The Philosophy of Money to find equivalent terms for ‘Geiz’,‘Geldgier’, ‘asketische Armut’, ‘Verschwendung’, ‘moderner Zynismus’ and ‘Blasiertheit’. See Simmel 1990:viii. 59 GSG6 1989:314.

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character is not reached by mere contemplation and conservation but by the accumulation of increasing amounts of money.60 • Ascetic Poverty: This personality type also recognizes money as condensed economic power but values this fact negatively. This leads to a character that is similar to the avaricious one, but with a minus sign, so to speak. It leads to a radical rejection of the possession and accumulation of money. Yet this rejection is not the result of indifference, but the result of the recognition of the power of money, which the ascetic person views as evil. If the ascetic poverty types were indifferent towards money, they would not abominate it as if it were a demon, and, at the same time, dedicate so much time and attention to it, and construct their identity in negative relation to it. This systematic and radical rejection merely proves its highest valuation, even if expressed in negative terms. • Extravagance/Profligacy (Verschwendung): The extravagant/profligate character stops at step 4 of the scheme. The extravagant character finds pleasure in the mere act of giving money away, in wasting (verschwenden) it. The main goal and highest satisfaction for this character type is spending money. The concrete objects that are bought are not those which are really valued. They have been acquired simply for the sake of spending. The greatest satisfaction for the extravagant character (Verschwender) is the act of spending money itself, not what can later be done with the commodities that have been bought. Beyond the personality types which emerge when the intermediate stages of the economic arena are taken to be the final goals, Simmel identified two other personality types that are typical of modernity. They are the reflection of the effects of the devaluation of all economic values to their monetary common denominator. Their common characteristic is that these character types (cynicism and a blasé attitude) act as if the penetration of money into almost all spheres of daily life (and into the patterns of valuation and social relations) not allow the qualities of the valuable things shine with their own light any longer, that is, beyond their monetary prices. In contrast to the greedy and avaricious personalities (who take money to be the most highly valued of goods, thus disregarding its character as a means), these personality types are not able to value anything beyond its monetary expression. They cannot perceive or 60 GSG6 1989:313.

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value any qualities at all. Instead of raising the value of money up to the skies, the cynical and the blasé attitudes devalue all other values.61 All the same, cynicism and the blasé attitude are not identical. They are two different attitudes that respond to the modern levelling down of all qualities to a common denominator which only allows differences in quantity. (Modern) Cynicism: The cynical character type does not recognize any qualitative differences between values. This character is satisfied when all personal values, be they moral, aesthetic, affective—or of whatever other kind—can be reduced to a question of how much/how many. The cynical character thereby obtains reassurance that everything is for sale, that everything can be bought with money. This character type attains its pleasure in the systematic lowering of all values. The cynic recognizes nothing beyond this dimension of selling and buying. Love, pride, respect, or knowledge can be attained with different quantities of the same token: money. For the cynic there are no differences in principle, only in our pockets and bank accounts. No human bonds are strong enough to stand up to the power of money in the eyes of the cynical character.62 The Blasé Attitude: While cynicism still recognizes the value of money, and obtains satisfaction by reducing everything to this common denominator (hence showing that everything on earth can be given a price), the blasé attitude does not recognize any values at all, and cannot obtain a calming satisfaction. It is characterized by its extreme indifference in relation to all values. This does not happen because the blasé character does not care about values deliberately. This character type is simply not able to recognize any. It cannot value anything and, consequently, there is nothing that really moves a blasé personality. The blasé type is not satisfied with this numbed apprehension and experience of the world. In fact, a characteristic of the blasé attitude is to search for strong impressions and for varied experiences in order to be able to feel something. Usually, the only satisfaction is achieved when one exciting activity is quickly followed by another, so that this sensation of “feeling something” is actually attained through the rapid variation of impressions. Yet, here again, the impressions in themselves are not determinant, only their rapid change.63 In the light of this, and in contrast to the cynical character, the blasé attitude does not even value money.

61 GSG6 1989:333. 62 GSG6 1989:333-334. 63 GSG6 1989:336.

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Of the personality types described in The Philosophy of Money, this is the one that most aptly depicts the attitude that has become symptomatic in the wealthy West one century later. The result, especially among young people, is a sort of “culture of experiencing” which consists in accumulating as many experiences as possible, whereby the real kick is given more by the quantity of accumulated experiences and the speed of their accumulation than by the quality of each of them. Indeed, one often gets the impression that each one of these experiences, each one of the places visited, or the names and faces of those with whom one had a brief friendship or an affair, are not valued for themselves. Only when they are put together do they gain value through the quantity of names, faces, experiences and places. The blasé personality type is more likely to be found among those who do not know the way it feels when the most indispensable needs cannot be adequately met, or when beloved people are hungry and ill. Indeed, the blasé attitude is not very popular among those who suffer hunger and poverty (unfortunately Simmel’s attention did not focus often enough upon those who cannot afford to be blasé). It would be indeed interesting to analyse who can actually afford to be blasé, and how blasé Westerners waste the chances others would die for. In the following table, and as a sort of visual summary, the character types identified by Simmel are brought in relation to each other: Positive Valuation of Money Greed Avarice

Negative Valuation of Money Ascetic poverty Extravagance

Devaluation of all (other) Values Modern Cynicism Blasé Attitude

The Social Meaning of Money Beyond being the reification of the social function of exchange, money has, in modern, monetary societies acquired other functions which reside beyond the economic sphere. Through these additional functions, money does not only have an economic value, but transcends the arena of economic valuations and economic exchange, becoming an object of aesthetic, cultural, or historical valuation. For instance, money has attained an aesthetic value. In the eyes of the collector, it has become an object worth accumulating and having a passion for. In the eyes of the artist, it has become an object worth staging as a piece of art. As objects to collect, notes and coins have become favourite objects in the world of numismatics. As works of art, they have been used to compose collages, 198

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sometimes even been simply put in a frame and, through their isolation from their daily use, converted into aesthetic objects.64 To a certain extent, money has also attained a cultural value, or rather, plays a key role in processes of consolidation—and perhaps creation—of national identities. We are in daily contact with money. To be more exact, we are in contact with the currency of the state (or group of states in the case of the euro) in which we live. In fact, these currency forms have become such objects of everyday life that we pay scarcely any attention to them at all. We do not look at the notes and coins we use on a daily basis. Many of us do not even know what pictures and figures are minted and printed on them. If we look back at the immediate European past, we could ascertain that when the euro was about to replace the state currencies, many citizens did look at the then still current notes and coins with interest, curiosity, and sometimes even with nostalgia. They knew that they would soon be gone. In a similar way, once the euro notes and coins reached European wallets, they captured the attention of many people for a short while. After this interregnum, though, they fell back to being almost invisible, hardly ever noticed objects of everyday life—like the flags which wave daily in front of our eyes, although we do not consciously take them into account anymore.65 Perhaps the penetrating effects of these banal national symbols work the best on this level of half-consciousness. In fact, money (as an object which people “see” on many occasions every day, although they normally do not look at it and are only “half aware” of it) rapidly becomes an object with which they identify themselves. They learn to calculate and judge prices using its unit, that is, its currency. It is the language with which people articulate economic exchanges. Simmel gave the unit of currency a deep meaning in the perception of the economic values of a group.66 In this way, we come back to one of the issues mentioned above: money is, in the modern era, inseparable from the institution of the state. Thus, states (or supra-state institutions such as the European Union) mint money and determine what form of money will be current, in the sense of currently accepted, that is, valid currency. Thus, money is not just money. It is also the US dollar, the Deutsche mark, the English pound, the Australian dollar, and the EU/European euro, among so many others. Sometimes the emphasis falls on the dollar, mark or pound, other times on the US, German, English, European or Australian dimension (in cases like the franc or the euro, it underlines both aspects 64 On the relationships of money and art see Rammstedt 1989. 65 For a theoretical consideration of these everyday life state representations, see Billig 1995. 66 GSG6 1989:484.

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in just one word). When the emphasis falls on the second aspect, we realize how money can indeed become an effective means of state identification. When it falls on the first, it highlights the units with which the differences in quantities of value will be calculated—the only type of value difference which monetary exchange allows.

A L o o k B a c k , a L o o k Ah e a d Simmel’s analysis of money is deeply related to his analysis of values. At the same time, his analysis of economic values is bound to a more general theory of value. Thus, The Philosophy of Money begins with a general definition of value and economic value which Simmel developed to analyse money. Afterwards, in his analysis of money, he glanced back at the topic of values from a different viewpoint, seeking to portray how the consolidation of monetary economies had influenced the expression, comparison, and stabilization of economic values as well as the general lifestyles in modernity (and precisely this last issue will claim our attention in the next, and final, chapter). In the light of this recurring theme of argumentation, Simmel’s methodological considerations become manifest once again: from the analysis of a single object (money as a crystallized form of social exchange) the deep, transforming effects that this object has had as it has reached into the most varied spheres of life are depicted. In this way a general picture of modern life is drawn.

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Introduction In the synthetic part of The Philosophy of Money Simmel focused on modern (Western European), monetary (capitalist) societies and analysed them from the standpoint of the transformations that they had undergone—and in which money had played an active part. The transformations of the spheres of economic value (and of values in general) and lifestyles captured Simmel’s attention. As we have seen, Simmel argued that the introduction of relations of exchange (as a central form of sociation) had raised the numbers of possible interactions and relations among individuals and groups enormously, thus allowing the development and consolidation of many social forms and practices which otherwise would have not been possible.2 In the light of this theory of exchange, he viewed money as a sort of catalyst for these exchange relationships. Money crystallizes the social function of exchange into an object that can be used at any time, without requiring a search for an appropriate exchange partner. Money is thus potential as well as condensed exchange. It is a crystallization of exchange in the form of a token. It channels exchange relations so that economic exchange can take place to an extent that would not have been possible otherwise. The fact that all relationships of economic exchange and that many forms of social participation (such as the membership of a political party or a non governmental organization, and many forms of social solidarity) have come to be mediated by money has made a great difference not only in the immediate field of economic exchange and economic values but also in all social relations. Their contact with and

1 2

Lebensstile. GSG6 1989:209-210.

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mediation through money have modified them and, at the same time, have also changed the perception of sociality and of value. Furthermore, money has become an object of everyday life, and has coloured (almost) all spheres of it. There is almost no way to avoid having to come into contact with money for one thing or another. Simmel compared the way in which money has changed social life to the way in which the representations of nature in works of art modify our views and perception of nature itself.3 Thus, as we say of a certain person that she is a Renoir or a Leonardo, of a sunset that it is a Turner or a Monet, the consolidation of money as the standardized means of exchange has had remarkable effects in modern societies. These effects can be located on different levels, which will be listed now and then elaborated on throughout this chapter. • Money has affected the structure and organization of society. It has modified old institutions and contributed to the emergence of new ones. • On the flip side, as it were, money has also modified and restructured human practices and interaction patterns. • Furthermore, the monetarization of everyday life has had profound effects on the apprehension and valuation of the world, of one’s self, and of others.

M o n e y a s a n O b j e c t o f E v e r yd a y L i f e As has just been mentioned, hardly anything we do on a daily basis is entirely free from a relationship with money. Money has penetrated into almost all social spheres and, even if one has the explicit intention of not thinking about it, it is hardly possible to get on with daily activities without taking money into account. Money has even penetrated into the most intimate spheres of daily life. Loving parents who wish to take care of their children must think of ways of getting food, education, and health care to them. In modern, monetary (capitalist) economies, this normally implies having to pay for these things. On a different level, elderly people often say that the younger generations do not know how to enjoy themselves without spending money and they might be right. Yet, these older people do not tend to attribute this characteristic to structural changes in modern societies but to the reprehensible preferences of their grandchildren. In earlier chapters we have discussed the 3

GSG6 1989:615.

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thesis that the value of money resides to a great extent in the fact that it is a key which opens many doors. We should add now that, while an increasing number of doors can be opened with this key, more and more doors can be opened only with this key, leaving all those who do not have it outside. This leads us straight to the question of how money has become such a central element in modern life. According to Simmel, this centrality of money is relatively new. He asserted that, in previous cultural formations (which, as we know, he called ‘primitive cultures’), money was not an exchange token for daily necessities, but rather an extra-ordinary means of compensating for damage to, or an offence against, personal values. It was also an appropriate means of paying for brides. While in non-monetary societies4 money can be used as a symbol of personal values due to its extra-ordinary character, this function disappears in societies where money has become the generalized and almost only means of exchange. Therein it can be depicted as the appropriate form of expression of all values but the personal.5 Simmel argued in this respect that, in (Western) modern societies, money and personal values have evolved in opposite directions to such an extent that they are now at too great a distance to be comparable in any way. The Christian faith and the liberal tradition of thought have turned the value of human life into the highest possible value and have characterized it as incommensurable and impossible to quantify. Money has simultaneously evolved to become the standard means of economic exchange as well as the generalized way of expressing economic values. It has converted the values of all commodities into quantities and, thus, into comparable entities. While comparability and exchangeability are out of the question for personal values, they have become inseparable from our way of thinking about economic values and commodities. Within the Christian and liberal paradigm, all human beings are considered to be valuable in the same way, at least in principle. They cannot, in light of these traditions, be bought and sold. Christian doctrine postulates that human beings have an absolute value. Beyond all their individual traits, they have a value that can neither be measured by any quantitative standard nor compensated for or exchanged by any other value.6 This conception of the human being has evolved in Western liberal societies into a conception of human rights as inalienable and intrin4 5 6

A term we shall use to characterize those societies in which money is not the generalized means of economic exchange. In this way we shall avoid Simmel’s characterization of these societies as ‘primitive’. GSG6 1989:503-504. GSG6 1989:489.

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sic to humankind. Thus, human rights are said to be an essential part of human worth, a natural right possessed simply because they are human.7 Yet, parallel to this evolution of the concept of human rights, money has entered most spheres of everyday life and imposed its logic of calculability and comparability. These two logics live side-by-side in modernity in a continuous conflict with each other. On the one hand, the monetary logic has coloured the relations of labour and production: some individuals pay for the labour (or in Marxian terminology for the labour power) of other individuals, who are thus objects of economic exchange. On the other hand, though, as human beings, they are said to have an incalculable value which is impossible to quantify and measure with monetary units. The logic of economic value and the logic of personal value face a deep, unsolvable conflict. These two logics clash with particular force when it comes to paid work as noted above. Simmel also discussed the effects of the quantification and comparability that money allows as an expression of economic values. He dealt especially with the effects of this quantification when he concentrated on the Marxian theory of value and emphasized the problems of quantifying human labour to the extent that Karl Marx did.8 According to Simmel, this quantification leads to exactly the opposite of what Marx was striving for. Its result is a greater distance between human values and economic values, and therefore a further distancing between economic calculations of labour power and the notion of the incommensurability and uniqueness of the human beings.

On Having and Being The very relationship between having and being has been deeply modified by the generalization of money as a means of exchange and an expression of economic values. This thesis, elaborated on in the fourth chapter of The Philosophy of Money, implies that daily life has undergone enormous changes since the consolidation of monetary economies. Faithful to his relational perspective, Simmel thought of both the act of ‘possessing’ (i.e. ‘having’ something) and the ‘being’ of individuals as relational processes and not as immobile and fixed states. Furthermore, ‘having’ and ‘being’ are related to each other in so far as the possessing 7

8

Simmel was very critical about the naturalization of human rights and sought to deconstruct the sheen of naturalness projected onto them. He thought of them as resulting from reciprocal human actions and effects (GSG6 1989:132-133). See the digression above.

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subjects project their personalities onto the possessed objects while, at the same time, their being is affected by these possessions. This is a subtle but strong connection.9 Moreover, for Simmel, ‘being’ and ‘having’ are not objective, descriptive concepts but concepts of value. Depending on how close to “themselves” people feel that something is, they value it as part of what they have or as part of who they are.10 According to Simmel, money has significantly modified the meaning of having something since one can substitute a concrete object for its monetary equivalent. Therefore, the relation between having and being has been modified as well. People cannot relate to a monetary possession as they would to a house or a field. Simmel illustrated these transformations by focusing on those peasants who own their lands and who, at the threshold of modernity (i.e., in the times of the industrial and bourgeois revolutions), sold them for money. He depicted their situation as an exchange of something they were for something they had. Their land was part of their ‘being’ but its monetary equivalent is only something that they ‘had’. They parted with a possession that gave form and meaning to their whole existence, a possession that marked out a rhythm and a tempo of life, a complete lifestyle and view of life. They got a sum of money in return which could not positively give content to their life as their old land did. Thus, they did not only give away something they owned, but also their work, their home, a certain landscape, familiar smells, and the place where their children had grown up and played. The money they received could not offer them a home, a landscape, and a certain type of lifestyle. It could not stand for all that they had given away. They exchanged a pillar of their lives for something which was not capable of replacing it. If they had received enough money (which was rarely the case) they would have had the freedom of choosing a new house somewhere else and a new lifestyle; but, money itself would never have been in the position to offer them anything beyond this possibility, so to speak. Money does not offer positive contents with which to frame one’s life. It is characterless, distant, and empty. It offers the chance to obtain some goods and then it is gone. Money is not comparable to the fields which give fruit year after year and do not vanish into thin air after the harvest. In fact, even if it is used as capital (a practice which requires substantial amounts of money to begin with, which peasants certainly did not have and which workers do not tend to have either), it cannot be compared to the function of shaping a lifestyle the way that farming, for 9 GSG6 1989:433. 10 GSG6 1989:433-434.

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instance, does. Money binds its possessor to a certain style of life much less than any other possession. This constitutes the basis for Simmel’s claim that, in non-monetary economies, the act of possessing is closely bound to the possessed object, a bond that loosens in monetary economies. In non-monetary economies, the possessed object has a direct influence on the possessor’s being since the act of possessing, without the mediation of money, requires a much more intense relationship the possessed object than it does when money enters the picture. Hence, without the possibility of bringing all possessions down to the monetary common denominator, possessing a farm does not have the same effects on its owner as, say, possessing a shop, a workshop, or a pub. In a social framework in which you cannot convert your possession into money, owning something is less bound to having a document confirming your possession than to a certain way of living. Even the lord of the manor, who did not have an active relationship with the fruits of his fields, had a more direct connection to them. He lived in a castle nearby, ate the products of his land, and, as his part of the contract, promised to fight and protect the peasants against potential invaders. Thus, the ties of possession did indeed have a direct effect on the being of the owner and on his lifestyle.11 In contrast, in modern, monetary economies, the landowner, the gang leader, the owner of the factory, and the owner of a chain of supermarkets can all live in the same neighbourhood and have relatively similar lifestyles, in spite of the great diversity of their possessions. Under modern, monetary conditions, with what earns one’s living and what possessions one has matters much less than the fact that one can translate one’s work and one’s possessions into quantities of money. Moreover, in non-monetary societies, there is a more direct relation between that which one possesses and that with which one earns a living. The monetarization of economic relations, the ongoing and increasing differentiation and division of labour, and the changes in the technology used for production make this relation redundant. These changes mean workers possess fewer and fewer of the objects with which they work and produce. Thus, under these conditions of labour, no direct relationship can be established between what they have and their productive labour.12 Never mind what people do or what they have, the remunera11 At this point Simmel realized the parallelisms between his and Marx’s theories. He compared his point about the chain that unites having and being with the Marxian question of whether the consciousness determines the being or the other way round. He asserted that this question gains a new dimension, and a partial answer, when the Marxian concept of being is reconsidered as a relation between having and being (GSG6 1989:410). 12 The parallels with Marx must here be taken into consideration.

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tion obtained for their labour activities and their possessions is expressed in monetary terms all the same. Furthermore, once one has a certain amount of money in hand, it is not possible to find out where this money comes from, how it has been earned, or whether it has been stolen. Most connections between having and being have been removed by money.13 Yet, if that which people possess and the concrete labour activities through which they earn their living have been blurred by their translation into amounts of money, what happens to those who do not have any money or possess it in very small quantities? Simmel did not give a direct answer to this question. However, we can piece one together by looking at his analyses of the transition from the feudal to the modern (capitalist) system of production. There he concentrated on those peasants who, in contrast to the ones considered earlier, did not own any land and were bound to the lands that they cultivated by a contract with the lord of the manor. Once this contract was broken, they were set “free” to offer their labour on the labour market. They gained the freedom to choose whom they worked for. But this also meant that nobody felt obliged to care for them. The growth of personal freedom does not go hand in hand with well-being. As the workers became free to decide whom to work for, the employers also gained freedom in relation to their employees. The relevance of the well-being of the employees changes if the employers are not bound to a certain group of them who may not be free to go away but who cannot be replaced either.14 We can read about the consequences of this freedom in history books that describe the situation of the working class after the industrial revolution or see it with our own eyes by travelling to countries in which labour conditions are not that far from those in 19th century England. It took a long time before the welfare state grew (especially in Europe) to embrace those who are not integrated into the system of production or occupy a very marginal position in it. We will deal further with this topic below when we focus on exclusion and on individual freedom. These considerations on ‘having’ and ‘being’ also shed new light on the assertion that workers ‘possess’ labour power which they can sell in the market. If we follow Simmel at this point, and define ‘having’ and ‘being’ as concepts of value, we can conclude that it makes a great difference to affirm that workers ‘are’, among others, the labour force, or to affirm that they ‘possess’ labour power. By considering labour power as something they possess, we assume that it is acceptable that they should 13 See chapter 5 for a clarification of the anonymous character of money. 14 GSG6 1989:399-400.

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sell this possession as merchandise in the labour market. If we consider that this labour power as something they are, it becomes more problematic to justify their giving a great part of their lives away for a sum of money.

On Quantification and Calculability Earlier, in chapter 5, we focused on the effects that money has had on the expression of economic values, and quantification and comparability as especially relevant consequences of the monetarization of economic values were highlighted. We will now concentrate on the effects that increasing quantification and comparability have had on the rest of social values in modern, monetary societies. Thus, the focus will be on those spheres of daily life which have been affected by the monetarization of the economy. We will ask whether these spheres have been reshaped by it. Later we will concentrate on the effects of the monetarization of the economy on the way values are articulated and consolidated—economic values and, indirectly, any other kind. The precision in the calculation of economic value has increased enormously with the generalization of money as the only means of economic exchange. Simmel suggested that the quantification and calculability which have coloured the domains of monetary exchange have had powerful effects on other spheres of life which are not directly connected with monetary exchange. The modern way of dealing with time is one of Simmel’s best examples. The calculation and divisibility of time into quantitative units has become generalized and extremely precise. It is plausible that, in the last one and a half centuries, the way of dealing with time has changed radically. This has made it possible (and obligatory) to think of time in differences of minutes and seconds. Simmel suspected that this precision in dealing with the time only made sense in the modern era when human labour is no longer regulated by the seasons and by daylight; the cities grow bigger, the production intermeshed; and the necessity of coordinating all possible spheres of public and economic life require measures that greatly exceed what other epochs and production systems required.15 Indeed, when at the end of the 1920s, Charlie Chaplin sought to portray modernity in his film Modern Times, one of the first images he used to illustrate it was the regularity of the machines and the ticking of the clock. The same can be said of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927). The lifestyles in the big cities (which Simmel described 15 See, for example, GSG7 1995:119-120.

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as so closely related to the monetarization of economic exchange) have, to a certain extent, dissolved the old regularities and introduced new rhythms of life. These new rhythms are not guided by natural events any longer. Moreover they are played at a very high tempo. These facts have turned the calculation of time into an indispensable tool for coping with modern life. The processes of quantification and comparability have reached so far beyond the immediate arena of economic exchange that they have even coloured those spheres of life where the logic of monetary exchange is theoretically out of place. I am referring here to the Christian and liberal conceptions of human values mentioned before. Indeed, in the light of these conceptions, the compensation of damage done to a person (human life being the highest of all personal values) by means of money is unacceptable. Nevertheless, in the system of law, when harm has been done to someone and a court decision awards damages against, say, a hospital whose doctor operated on somebody despite being drunk on New Year’s Eve, the family of the victim will receive a monetary compensation for their relative’s death, the death of a human being whose absolute value could not be compensated with money. Hence, the highest compensation that the modern law system can offer is the most “objective” compensation there is: money. For the unjust death of a beloved human being we will get a lot of money (although, on this occasion, quantity will more than likely not swing back into quality). For an offence or a broken fence we will also get money, yet possibly less money. A quantitative difference.

On Means, Goals and Rationalization As we have seen in previous chapters, Simmel argued that the source of the value of money should be thought of as having an intermediate nature, since the function from which it derives its value consists of the mediation of economic exchange transactions. Furthermore, what pushes individuals towards the sphere of exchange is their desire for an object and the will to sacrifice something that they already possess in order to obtain it. Desire thus provides the first impulse towards the emergence of economic values but is not economic in itself. The intermediate stage between this desire and its satisfaction is the arena of economic ex-

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change.16 The channelling of economic exchange through the mediation of money has brought two phenomena into being. On the one hand, this economic system based on exchange relationships (of equivalent values) has affected many spheres of life which had traditionally been ruled by another form of logic. The arts, religion, love, and friendship have all been coloured by processes of quantification, calculation, and comparison, as discussed earlier. This does not imply that in non-monetary societies love, religion, and the arts were not deeply interrelated with the sphere of economics in the sense that artists and lovers have always needed to get food and shelter from somewhere. Yet they did not need to translate the value of their work, of their relationship, into monetary terms. In modern, monetary societies, the logic of economics—of the “homo oeconomicus”, who rationalizes and calculates costs and benefits for all spheres of life—reaches far beyond the boundaries of economic exchange. Thus, it becomes possible to talk about the time that has been invested in a friendship without one’s efforts being reciprocated without being thought of as bizarre. We can also complain about the number of times that we have called somebody compared to the number of times that we have been called back, and bet that we will be understood. Indeed, calculations of costs and benefits have become a well-established way of reasoning and thinking. In fact, they have become such an integral part of “common sense” that we are not greatly surprised or offended when people give marks to somebody’s beauty or intelligence. The same holds when we are asked in a questionnaire to rate the competence of the government from one to ten, or when teachers express the correctness of children’s work in terms of a number. We can also cope with horoscopes, which define in digits (say, from one to six) how good our week will be, how our relationship with our partner will work, how healthy we will be, and, of course, how full our purse will be. On the other hand, as we know, the fact that money was originally a pure means tends to vanish from consciousness. It stops being valued as a means and becomes an end. Since the whole capitalist system of production is based on monetary economic exchange, it seems as if money were the only important and determinant end in this system of production and exchange. The first impulse (desire) and the final destination (satisfaction) disappear to a great extent behind the means which can make the satisfaction of this desire possible. Furthermore, the objects 16 This does not imply, as emphasized in chapter 4, that desires and satisfactions do not emerge in contexts of social relations, too. Yet, if I interpret him correctly, Simmel argued that these have a primary component which the arena of economic exchange does not have.

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that surround us have begun to be perceived as valuable only if they cost money. Simmel argued that, in monetary societies, for many people a present that does not cost money is not a real present. How many parents tell their children not to touch something because it cost so much money, instead of arguing that it is so useful, so beautiful, or has such a high sentimental value?17 In his analyses of the diverse social meanings of monetary gifts, Simmel argued, as has just been mentioned, that for many people a proper present has to cost money in order to be a present. Yet, he added, it simultaneously needs to hide its monetary value.18 Monetary gifts cannot be given to everyone. They would seem too much like payments. We can tip the good waitress for her service and friendliness with a couple of coins. Yet, we cannot do the same with the professor whose seminars we attend. I can tip the taxi driver, but I cannot tip my doctor, and I do not tip the shopkeeper.

T h e C h a r a c t e r l e s s n e s s o f M o n e y: Equality and Exclusion As we know, Simmel argued that the money’s lack of qualities is, in fact, its main quality. It turns it into a characterless means of expressing economic values. Indeed, money can express the economic value of any merchandise without making any distinctions, showing any preferences, and without revealing its origins or destinations. Moreover, money turns the values of merchandise into immediately comparable units. Transparently, quickly, and effectively, the monetary expression of economic values brings all values down to the same common denominator: their quantitative, monetary expression. In one way or another, the monetary mediation of exchange and the economic sphere have permeated most spheres of social life. There are very few interactions in contemporary social life that have no reference to money in one way or another. This penetration has left clear marks on modern patterns of interaction and forms of valuation. The quantitative and comparative logic of economic 17 GSG6 1989:354-355. 18 Arguments that one hears quite often when choosing presents are something like, “Don’t buy it, it doesn’t look as expensive as it really is,” “They won’t appreciate its value,” or “Great! It’s nice and cheap, and it looks as if it is more expensive than it really is.” The sociology of the gift is indeed a sociology based on fine differences and distinctions. Not least it is a sociology of value, which combines valuations of human beings with valuation of objects.

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values has coloured many areas of social life which earlier responded to other languages, to other spheres than that of the economy. Simmel mentioned the changes in the logic of education and of intellectual life in general as showing increasing parallels with money and the monetary expression of values. Both money and intellectuality are, according to Simmel, characterless. They do not have any specific contents or immediate qualities. They merely express contents and qualities in such a way as to level them and make them comparable. On the one hand, Simmel highlighted how the concept of intellectuality had introduced an enormous distance between the intellectual individual and the ideas she expresses. On the other, he emphasized that the concept of education had changed from being understood as the process of cultivation of the individual, as a sort of subjective enrichment of the self (18th century), towards an objective appropriation of already established content without much individual participation and no individual creation and re-elaboration (19th century). In Simmel’s view, the interposition of a growing distance between modern individuals and the contents of their intellectual activity has actually led to calmer and more objective discussions. The intellectual form of discussion concentrates on the arguments of the discussing agents and, at least in its intentions, excludes emotions from the discourse. Hence, intellectuality does indeed have inclusive effects, for it opens the discussion up to anybody who might wish to participate, regardless of personal beliefs and preferences. All the same, on the flip side as it were, it has somewhat exclusive effects as well. If intellectuality opens the discussion to everyone, no matter what their motivations or opinions, it also radically excludes all those who do not possess adequate tools and knowledge with which to frame their arguments within the intellectual rules of the game. Hence, while in earlier times the mechanisms of exclusion and inclusion might have selected those who shared the same beliefs and opinions (whether religious, political, or some other kind), the mechanisms of inclusion now select those who know the formal rules of the game. These rules have ceased to be subjective opinions or preferences. They are now objective criteria, theoretically available to everyone, practically available only to those who have been able to go to school, high school, and, even better, to the university. Simmel did not pursue the theme of social inequality in his monograph as far as he could have. Yet many interesting observations are sketched in The Philosophy of Money and they provide enough evidence to infer the direction of his thought. In fact, to a great extent, many of the Simmelian theses anticipate a great deal of Bourdieu’s the-

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ory of the forms of capital (especially economic and cultural) as well as his concept of ‘habitus’. Beyond the parallels with intellectuality, and its mechanisms of exclusion and inclusion, Simmel concentrated on the relation between money and social exclusion. In particular, he described the role of credit and creditworthiness in social interactions and sought traces of social inequalities. He focused on the curious fact that, usually, those who do not need credit are those who actually have it. Furthermore, those who actually need it are not “creditworthy”, that is, they are excluded. Moreover, this paradox does not stop at the doors of the banks and credit institutions. It is striking to realize that those who are rich and famous are precisely the ones who sometimes do not even need to pay their bills at expensive restaurants and hotels, and are received with a smile that goes from ear to ear. Even more striking is the fact that those who cannot afford these goods are those who never get them for free. The poor do not get any gifts or any smiles, though these would make a bigger difference to them than to those who take them for granted and who actually think that they deserve the treatment that they are given. Beyond the material privations which the unprivileged must undergo, they must also cope with being treated as second class people, as a burden for the rest. Here, too, we can find a comment in Simmel’s analyses. Indeed, this is the reverse side of those extra advantages of having money which he termed the ‘superadditum of wealth’. Beyond the great advantages money offers directly, monetary societies give bonuses to those who are in the possession of the most highly valued goods as well.19 Thus, money extends its positive valuation to those who possess it. They become privileged people, not because of their own qualities (their friendliness, intelligence or goodness), but because they have money. Simmel added that, through the monetarization of the economy and the standardization of the prices, the wealthy obtain an extra advantage with respect to the less wealthy. Relatively speaking, they pay much less for the satisfaction of their basic needs than the poor do. The lower prices for basic commodities ensure that the less wealthy have access to those goods that they need to survive, thus keeping their prices below a certain level in order to make them accessible to everyone. This is to the advantage of the less wealthy. Yet, keeping basic goods that are accessible to most members of society so cheap implies that the wealthy are going to pay, considering their budgets, ridiculously low amounts of money to cover and satisfy their basic needs. According to the individual curves of marginal costs—a theory which Simmel knew and applied on 19 GSG6 1989:274-275.

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several occasions in The Philosophy of Money—the members of wealthy classes would actually be prepared to pay a much higher price to cover their basic needs than they have to under modern market conditions. They profit from the fact that the prices are equal for everyone and, hence, they actually profit from the poverty of the poor.20 Moreover, money offers a great amount of freedom to those who possess it in great quantities. Those who do not have to sell their labour power in order to cover their basic needs. The salaries they earn do not stretch much beyond the covering of these needs. Thus, they cannot enjoy the liberty of movement and choice which the wealthier enjoy. Money in the hands of the poor is indeed a mere means of exchange; money in the hands of the rich is condensed power. It is, we could also add, capital.

On Individual Freedom Simmel was deeply concerned with (the possibility of) individual freedom, an issue which gained importance in his oeuvre over the years. In The Philosophy of Money this issue occupied an important position. There he approached individual freedom from a social standpoint and defined it as a relation (Verhältnis) between people. Individual freedom does not become possible in a situation of isolation. It results in social relations in which individuals, despite living together, are—and feel they are—able to follow their own rules to a great extent.21 How did Simmel think of whatever it is that produces this feeling? Or, in other words, what helps to evoke this feeling? Simmel argued that the feeling of freedom is the result of a change of obligations.22 When human beings are bound to a certain society and to a subsequent form of life, there are things which they must do and certain obligations which they must fulfil to partake in the social life of their group. These bonds limit their scope of free action and choice, and mark out the boundaries of what is allowed. An experience of freedom consists in breaking these ties with certain social forms and exchanging them for new ones. After the break with the old ties, the initial experience will be the experience of freedom, since the sensation of being free from the old bonds will prevail over the fact that one has accepted new ones. The weight of the new bonds is thus not immediately perceivable, though it can easily grow heavy with the passing of time.

20 GSG6 1989:277-278. 21 GSG6 1989:419. 22 GSG6 1989:375.

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Simmel’s concept of personal or individual freedom could be characterized as the possibility for each individual to change the old ties for new ones whenever this individual in question wishes to do so. Personl freedom is not a synonym for isolation. The individual who is totally isolated does not need to break free from any ties since there are no ties for her to break. She can never be free in the same way that an individual within a social framework can. As Simmel argued, being independent is not a synonym for not being dependent, in the same way as being immortal is not a synonym for not being mortal.23 Thus, independence in the sense of individual freedom only makes sense within a social context, in Wechselwirkung with other human beings.24 Focusing on personal bonds and mutual obligations, Simmel compared the feudal to the modern form of social organization, and asserted that the modern one is more favourable to the development of individual freedom. In feudal systems, the individuals were bound to their land, to the land of their lords, to their handicraft and its guild, or to a particular cloister and religious order. In any of these cases, their freedom of movement and decision was very limited and social control was intense. It was not only a control over the quality of the work that they produced, but also a control which extended to many other spheres of life as well. Furthermore, the circles of interaction were small so that all their members knew each other personally. Thus, one knew the people one depended on quite well, and the relations of dependence did not consist in the mere accomplishment of a function, but were of a personal kind that coloured many other spheres of life. This made the possibilities for anonymous actions rather small. Simmel argued that with the passing of time, these strong ties of dependency have become looser and wider. In modern times, the ties of dependency embrace far larger numbers of people that are interconnected with each other and need each other. At the same time, each of these ties has become much weaker and the carrier of the function upon which we are dependent is substitutable. With the emergence of metropolises (and with the consolidation of nation states, especially with capitalist economies), and the concentration of great numbers of people in one place, the possibilities for the development of a structured division of labour have grown enormously. Self-sufficiency is no longer necessary or even possible within the framework of the metropolis. The organization of modern, monetary societies has made human beings dependent on many people, but only for rather specific and limited tasks. 23 GSG6 1989:397, 400. 24 GSG6 1989:397.

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They are not dependent on particular individuals in the same way and measure as their ancestors were. They are dependent on the concrete functions that many of them fulfil. I do not care who the ticket seller is as long as I get my train ticket; and the same goes for the shopkeeper or the bus driver.25 Simmel’s thesis of the loosening of the relationship between having and being due to the mediation of money has already been discussed. Now I would like to add a new aspect of this relationship, considered from the perspective of individual freedom: the increased distance between having and being increases the chances of the development of an independent personality. The great distance between them which the monetarization of the economy makes possible increases these chances.26 As long as the lifestyles of human beings (sphere of being) are based on and anchored by possessions (sphere of having), their scope for a free development is limited. Under these circumstances, the possibilities of breaking free of old ties and old lifestyles are exceedingly few. Once money, with its characterlessness and anonymous indifference, governs the economy, people can act more freely since they are less restrained by direct social control.27 Moreover, money allows people to participate in the activities of many institutions without sacrificing too much of their time. It allows participation in social relations without personal presence—a kind of social relation that is unthinkable without this monetary mediation. It is not necessary to invest any labour or time in these relations. People are not told how they have to live and what they have to do as they were, for instance, by the medieval guilds. I can become a member of Greenpeace by simply paying regular dues, while at the same time I can work for a company that is one of worst polluters in town. I can also be a member of a political party on the basis of my monetary contribution and so forth. Indeed, many modern institutions function with monetary contributions, and people do not need to tie their lives to their functioning to be able to participate. These kinds of “virtual relationships” have become possible in modern, monetary societies.28 In fact, money has become such an inextricable element of everyday life

25 GSG6 1989:392-394. This argument is indeed similar to Durkheim’s differentiation between mechanical solidarity and organic solidarity, and is also reminiscent of Tönnies’ Community and Association (Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft). However Tönnies’ (and to a certain extent Durkheim’s) clear preference for one of the two forms of social organization is not to be found in Simmel’s work. 26 GSG6 1989:469. 27 Yet, this is to a great extent only applicable to those who have money. 28 GSG6 1989:465.

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that it has made any form of association almost impossible without its mediation.29 The fact that personal freedom has become more possible in modern terms does not necessarily mean that modern individuals are any happier or wealthier than they were before, as was briefly mentioned above. Indeed, if personal freedom consists of the freedom to change obligations, the worker is freer than the slave or the serf, since she can change for whom she works, that is, to whom she has obligations. If she does not want to work any longer, she always has the choice of not doing so, even if the price is starvation. She has the freedom to quit, to go away, or to move from one place to another (at least within the same state—free emigration is not yet a right for many human beings on this planet). This personal freedom does not imply that she is free to eat better, or to go to a concert every weekend, if she cannot pay for it. In fact, being paid with money, she cannot even be sure whether her salary will see her through till the end of the month.30 To use one of Simmel’s phrases, human beings, under the conditions of modernity, have attained freedom from their old ties but they have not attained the freedom to aspire to any concrete, and perhaps more satisfying, new form of life. 31 Furthermore, it is no secret that the freedom which the wealthy attain within modern, monetary societies is of a different kind and quality—it is a different freedom—from the freedom which the working classes obtain (a further aspect of the superadditum of wealth). It is in light of these arguments that Simmel argued that, as soon as the bonds (i.e., obligations) to the lord of the manor or the slave-owner were broken, their respective obligations towards their serfs and slaves also vanished.32 Indeed, no factory owner is obliged to protect the well-being of her workers outside working hours, and she is certainly not obliged to care for the unemployed. In fact, not many people at all feel personally obliged to take care of those who have been left with nothing, or perhaps not even had the chance to become employed. The welfare state (an institution Simmel could not theorize much about) has taken over this vacant job and has become a functional equivalent of these responsibilities and mutual solidarities, as if it were attempting to sew together all those threads which became loose when the old bonds and obligations were put aside and no new firm bonds of solidarity emerged from the monetary market economy. It is possible that it does the job much better than the old ties did. A wellfunctioning welfare state increases the possibilities of personal freedom 29 30 31 32

GSG6 1989:468. GSG6 1989:456. GSG6 1989:552. GSG6 1989:400.

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for those who have little to an extent that was not conceivable earlier.33 All the same, the creation of the welfare state came quite late in comparison to the establishment of capitalism and the monetarization of the economy and has always been a contested institution.34 Finally, parallel to the very important growth of personal freedom that the monetarization of the economy has allowed with the introduction of a great distance between having and being, personal freedom has also experienced an enormous growth as a value. The spheres of independence that have been attained have been converted into valuable spheres of action that one does not readily part with. In The Philosophy of Money we find the example of the girls who prefer to work in factories rather than in private households as servants in spite of the fact that if they pursued the second option they would be materially better off. However, they prefer their independence and the greater personal freedom that work in the factory allows.35 We could add innumerable examples that illustrate this preference and the great value that the victory of personal freedom has meant. Certainly people will frequently opt to renounce material advantages or welfare support in order to keep the greatest possible amount of personal freedom.

The Conflict of Modern Culture and M o d e r n L i f e s t yl e s In The Philosophy of Money Simmel developed the thesis that the styles of life in modern, monetary societies differ greatly from those of previous times and other forms of society. He identified the culmination of the logic of economic values in their monetary expression as well as the consolidation of this monetary expression as the only language of economics as central conditions of possibility for this difference. This must be understood in the context of Simmel’s thesis that most changes experienced by modern societies manifest themselves, on the one hand, in an increasing division of labour and specialization, and, on the other, in an increase in the production of symbols that mediate between and “condense” human relations. These two tendencies, or processes of transformation, complement each other and cannot exist independently. The institution of money can be identified as a crucial element of the second tendency; it is a symbol of exchange and social trust. Money becomes a general means of exchange after a certain division of labour and 33 Vobruba 2003. 34 Katznelson 1988. 35 GSG6 1989:378.

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specialization while, at the same time, becoming one of the major catalysts for further exchange relationships, specialization, and division of labour. Money makes the coordination of many different activities and exchanges possible without the need for personal engagement. The social group can grow larger and the personal contacts between each of its members can become looser as long as money connects them all, flowing through the threads of sociation that keep the group together. The new possibilities of sociation introduced by money also have a great influence on the evolution of individual personalities and lifestyles. The influences of money on personal freedom have already been sketched out above. We will now concentrate our attention on modern lifestyles. Simmel did not provide a definition of the concept of lifestyle.36 Yet, we can find a crucial indication of the meaning he attributed to this concept in his argument that the lifestyle of a group depends on the relation that this group establishes between its objective culture and the culture of its subjects.37 The key to understanding the concept of lifestyle, therefore, seems to lie in Simmel’s concept of culture and, particularly, in the distinction that he made between objective and subjective culture, as well as the relations between them. This invites us to concentrate briefly on Simmel’s deliberations on culture, on his definition of it as a tragic process, and on the differentiation and subsequent relation between the culture of objects and the culture of subjects, on the one hand, and on his analyses of modern culture, especially on the conflict of modern culture, on the other. This will allow us to move towards Simmel’s elaborations on modern lifestyles, dealing with them from the perspective of their relation to the modern centrality of economic values in general and money in particular. In his conceptualization of culture, Simmel worked with the differentiation between subject and object.38 Thus he defined culture as ‘the path of the soul to itself’, arguing that it is a process which departs from a subjective sphere, goes through an objective one, and returns, modified and enriched, to itself—to the subjective point of departure.39 This path necessarily implies an ‘overcoming’ of the purely subjective level, via objectification and estrangement, but the final destination lies in the subjective sphere nevertheless. For Simmel, culture must be understood as a process of subjective enrichment which necessarily implies having to 36 37 38 39

Papilloud & Rol 2003a:179. GSG6 1989:628. As he had done with the concept of value, as well. GSG14 1996:385. Simmel formulated the same thought in a different way when he argued that culture is the path from a closed unity through an unfolded diversity to an unfolded unity (Simmel,1996:387).

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estrange oneself (and it is here that the inherent tragedy of the process lies) to be able to come back, richer, to oneself, making the path of culture a path back to the starting point. Simmel argued in ‘The Concept and Tragedy of Culture’ that the human spirit produces innumerable creations40 whose existences are independent of the individual minds which brought them into being, and are also independent of those minds which reject or accept them and incorporate them into their subjective spheres.41 These reified products of human creative activity constitute ‘objective culture’: all types of values, arts, customs, sciences, laws, technology, social norms, ideas and ideals, are products of objective culture. The tragedy of culture cannot be understood as a tragedy which only happens sometimes and under specific conditions of cultural production. This tragedy is intrinsic to the process of culture. It takes place between the subjects and the contents of the objective sphere which they have actually created but which, once created, have not only become autonomous, but—unlike their creators— are untrammelled by their own mortality.42 In terms of Simmel’s understanding of culture, a human being cannot be thought of as cultivated if she has merely memorized a certain body of knowledge or “content”. Human beings are cultivated when they include the assimilated contents in their beings and make something of them. Only then does the process of culture come, fulfilled, to its end.43 In line with this idea, Simmel illustrated the concept of ‘cultivation’, or of ‘being cultivated’, with an analogy to a fruit tree (both in the above-cited text and in The Philosophy of Money). A fruit tree can be cultivated, starting from an original state in which it does not produce anything that is edible up to the stage of blooming and maturing to produce the most delicious fruit. However, the same cannot be said of a piece of marble which becomes a statue or of a tree which becomes a mast.44 It is within the nature of a fruit tree to produce fruit, even if it has to be “cultivated” to do so. It is in the nature of the human being to become cultivated, too. This cultivation process is the process of culture. The contents of the objective culture allow individuals to cultivate themselves by incorporating these contents into 40 ‘Der Begriff und die Tragödie der Kultur’ in GSG14 1996:385-416. 41 GSG14 1996:385-416. 42 As I understand Simmel, the tragic element of the process of culture resides in the fact that the necessary separation of the objective and subjective spheres and the estrangement of the subject from the products of her creations immediately imply a longing to overcome this dualism as well as an anticipation of this overcoming (GSG14 1996:390, GSG6 1989:33). The promise of the reunion makes the necessary separation seem right. 43 GSG14 1996:387. 44 GSG6 1989:617.

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themselves, into their selves, and expressing, out of themselves, further contents for the objective culture. Thus, if I express myself by producing a book, a machine, or a painting, these objects will become autonomous entities. They will enrich the objective culture, becoming one part of its huge amount of contents. All the same, I will not only enrich the objective culture but, above all, I will incorporate into myself contents from it. As my productions become parts of it, I will find the objectified creations of many other human beings, also disconnected from their producers, and I will assimilate them, making of them a part of myself. It is in this way that we should understand Simmel’s conceptualization of subjective culture. A person who has drunk from the well of objective culture and turned it into part of herself has become more cultivated than she was before—and this is an ongoing process. This enriched human being will then be in a position to make new creations for the objective culture.45 Culture thus results from the coming together of two elements which cannot be classified as culture when they are observed separately: subjective minds and their creations.46 Depending on the way this “coming together” actually takes place—that is, on the social conditions under which individuals (can) relate to the contents of objective culture— the possible lifestyle conditions of this group will be sketched. In other words, the frames within which these lifestyles evolve will be defined. In the case of modern culture—produced under the conditions of monetary economies—Simmel argued that ‘the path of the soul to itself’ faces a conflict which has direct consequences on the configuration of modern lifestyles. Let us concentrate on this conflict and on its consequences step by step. According to Simmel, the monetarization of the economy, the division of labour, and subsequent specialization, as well as mass production and consumption on a scale hardly imaginable before modern, monetary societies, make the relation between subjective and objective cultures more complicated than ever. Beyond the tragedy of culture, which is intrinsic to the process of culture, another tragedy (the conflict of modern culture) adds to it, making the fulfilment of the process of culture extremely difficult. In the closing chapter of The Philosophy of Money, Simmel concentrated on this additional tragedy in detail. According to him, in modern, monetary societies an increasing disproportion between objective and subjective cultures can be observed. While the new possibilities for production make an extremely rapid growth of the contents of objective culture possible, the culture of the subjects has remained the same or even perhaps decreased, and not 45 GSG14 1996:388-389. 46 GSG14 1996:389.

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just in relative terms. Simmel explained objective culture’s potential for limitless growth by its lack of form (Formlosigkeit) which allows it to incorporate all new productions, unclassified and unassimilated.47 He presented the arena of objective culture as opposed to the necessary formation of cultivated human minds. Objective culture can incorporate any new production of the human mind: ever more books, paintings, theories, ideas, symphonies, tools; and it can do so endlessly. It does not have a saturation point. In modernity, objective culture has multiplied its elements at an enormous speed, and its products are even less bound to any subjects than they once were—due to the division of labour, to mass production and consumption, and to the monetarization of their value, as interrelated phenomena. While the division of labour allows more and more (and more elaborate) products to be created at increasing speed, it does not make the workers’s actual work activity any nicer, more satisfying, or fulfilling. In fact, their products are not the direct result of their creative ideas, and can hardly be related to a single human mind any longer. They are the creation of many workers whose productive forces have been brought together. Simmel used the example of the artist’s work to illustrate the polar opposite: the conception and realization of one’s own projects from beginning to end.48 Yet the forms of production of the artist or artisan have become increasingly rare in (Western, capitalist) modernity. Despite the fact that the contents of objective culture have always been independent of their producers, it makes a great difference for their reincorporation into the subjective sphere if they are the result of the work and idea of one human being or of a coordinated creative team, or if they have been produced in a production line. Thus, Simmel held that the modern conditions of production greatly contribute to explaining why it has become extremely difficult for the subjects to reach out to the contents of objective culture and incorporate them into themselves. He thought it likely that a feeling of confusion and estrangement had become more and more frequent among modern individuals. He depicted this feeling as resulting from the fact that for many people it is neither possible to ignore the magnificence of the objective world nor to find it completely meaningful. It is not possible to fully assimilate it, or even to gain an overview of it; yet it cannot be ignored and left untouched either.49 The weight of objective culture, which has no form and knows no boundaries, has an overwhelming effect on the subject, and can even 47 And, as we know, Simmel argued that monetary economies can produce much more than non-monetary economies. 48 See, for instance GSG14 1996:414. 49 GSG14 1996:412.

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arouse aggression. If the sphere of culture is, according to the definition given above, a tragic union of both worlds, this tragedy has modified its appearance under modern conditions.50 Yet, as we have seen, we are not dealing with a one-sided process that has simply constrained the possibilities for the development of a subjective culture, thus narrowing the richness of individual life. Simmel also suggested that monetary economies (through their loosening of the relations of having and being as well as of personal dependencies) offer to many individuals highly favourable conditions for individual evolution and freedom. They are less bound to personal dependencies, and thus to the conventions, obligations and opinions of their collectiveness than in any other society forms. In modern, monetary societies, people are free to change their residence, their workplace, and their personal relations. These, however, are all ‘freedoms from’, but not ‘freedoms to.’ The active side of these freedoms is open only to those individuals who actually have enough money to cover their basic needs (according to the standards of their society), and still have some money left that they can use. The “liberating” dimensions of money enter the picture after these basic needs have been met. Before this happens, money remains purely a means to fulfil these needs. Furthermore, the more money that is left after meeting basic needs, the more potential freedom and power its owner attains. If the accumulation of money is very considerable, this quantitative difference turns into a qualitative one. We face the above-mentioned phenomenon of the ‘superadditum of wealth.’ When an individual possesses money in great quantities, she can actively create and generate a context around herself. Otherwise people have only the freedom to break free from old ties, but not really the freedom to create any new ones. The modern lifestyles develop within this general context, coherently forming and bestowing the many and various contents of individual lives—which are more differentiated than ever before. Generally, lifestyles offer individuals a form in which to express their belonging to particular social circles and social classes. And conversely, it is through the articulation and staging of these particular lifestyles that they gain access to these circles and classes in the first place.51 How are we to envision the contours of lifestyles, though? What are they made of, so to speak? In his analyses of lifestyles, Simmel argued that they are formed by three different components or modi. By no means should these modi be 50 GSG14 1996:415. 51 Fitzi 2002:73

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confused with the actual contents of lifestyles, however. Considered together though, they help to trace the contours of lifestyles, that is, they form whichever particular contents these lifestyles might entail. These modi are: distance, rhythm, and tempo. In modern, monetary societies, all three have been influenced by the central position which economic values have attained in modern societies, by their monetarization, and by the profound social consequences which these changes have implied. Let us focus on each of these three modi, sketching each one’s most relevant characteristics as well as the more remarkable transformations in modern, monetary societies: The first component, distance, refers to the relationship between subjects and objects, which has been altered in modern, monetary societies in a twofold fashion. First, this relationship, as has already been mentioned above, has been modified by the loosening of the relationship between having and being. Thus, the relationships between subjects and objects have become more distant than ever and the personal colouring of things has vanished to a certain extent. Added to this is the distance that accrues from the fact that objects of economic exchange are no longer produced with the concrete human beings that will consume them in mind, but rather for potential, imaginary, and standardized consumers. People relate differently to objects that have been made exclusively for them than to objects produced for everyone and no one in particular at the same time. Second, the monetarization of the economy has made it possible to overcome an important distance, namely spatial distance. Thus people have access to products from remote places and are able to combine, for example, in their clothing style, Arab and Indian elements with a European touch—if, of course, they have enough money. As regards the aspect of rhythm, money has again played a central role. This role can also be best exemplified through the effects which the monetarization of the economy, together with the great technological advances of modern times, have had on the production, exchange, and consumption of goods. Industrial production has become detached from the rhythm of the seasons and the intervals of light and darkness. A factory can function without interruption twenty-four hours a day and threehundred and sixty-five days a year, unimpeded by snow, rainfall, darkness, or tropical heat. The clock has come to replace nature in dictating the rhythm of life and production, and that which it dictates depends ultimately on those who are in the position to say from “when to when”. This makes the rhythm marked by the clock extremely variable and dependent on social conditions. Of course, the same applies to the opening times of a supermarket, an airport, and so forth. Furthermore, because of the monetarization of the economy, exchanges can be undertaken at any 224

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time. No previous appointment is necessary to bring producer and consumer into contact with one another. Seasonal, weekly, and daily rhythms are broken and new ones, characterized by a lack of stability, regularity, and repetitiveness, are created. Furthermore, the monetarization of the economy and the technological and organizational changes in production have also had a remarkable influence on the third component of lifestyle: the tempo of life. In modern Western societies, the tempo at which life evolves in general, and the tempo of production and enrichment of the objective culture in particular, have experienced an enormous acceleration. Thus, over and above the rhythms that have been broken and replaced by new ones that do not have much respect for pauses and sentences, the adagio of life and production as such has been exchanged for an allegro vivace. This demands from each single person the quickest possible tempo with the greatest possible constancy. Speed and time (and time economy) have attained new dimensions and meanings in modern lives. These changes, which substantially affect the three main modi of articulation of modern, Western lifestyles, are, according to Simmel’s analyses in The Philosophy of Money, directly related to the increasingly impersonal, and rapidly growing, objective sphere and to an increasingly intimate subjective sphere, which has grown detached from social reciprocal relations. The cultivation of the subjective sphere is thus removed from social life, and it is up to every individual to cultivate the path of culture for themselves. The chance for the individual not to become a kind of marionette of the objectified conditions of modern life is therefore dependent on her capacity for pursuing this path to its end, of completing the process of culture under her own individual laws. This condition is, as we have seen, simultaneously given and made enormously difficult by the monetarization of the economy and of social relations.52

A Look Back Throughout this chapter I have sought to show that Simmel never set out to reconcile the constraining effects of money with its liberating ones. In his view, money has simultaneously broken personal ties of dependency; widened the frameworks within which exchange (not only economic) is possible; and brought near what was distant and distanced what was close. Through the mediation of money, relations of exchange between products and people who are far away from each other have become 52 Fitzi 2002:74.

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possible. Yet those relations which did not need monetary mediation have also been channelled through the means of money. Furthermore, the monetary economies have allowed the development of personal freedom and have given individuals (above all those who possess money) wider fields of choice and activity. However, they have also made possible a division of labour that is far greater than ever before, one which, despite having increased the effectiveness and efficiency of production to levels that were previously unthinkable, has simultaneously condemned many people to tasks which atrophy their opportunities and capacities for personal development. This makes their work not only anything but an expression of individual freedom, but also an activity which does not really make much sense at all, viewed from the perspective of the individual and not from the long chain of production. Simmel did not attempt to justify, legitimize, praise, or condemn the effects of money on social modern life. His primary goal, rather, was to analyse and understand the phenomena upon which he focused, always bearing the irreducible ambivalence of life in mind, as well as the ambivalence of social structures, forms, and, in this case, money.53 Thus, in his analysis of modernity and of the consequences money has had for modern societies as an objectified means of exchange and an expression of values, as well as a condensed form of economic (capital) and social power (superadditum of wealth), Simmel argued that the social consequences of money reached far beyond the boundaries of the economic arena. In numerous different ways, it has coloured modern lifestyles and many modern interactions and patterns of valuation.

53 Liebersohn 1988:135-136.

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As has been shown throughout this book, Georg Simmel’s conception of sociology as the study of the forms of sociation, his close focus on human relationships, and his finely tuned analyses of the society of his time have made him one of the most interesting “classical” sociologists. Furthermore his oeuvre is so full of loose threads, and leads down so many unexplored theoretical paths, that its heuristic potential reaches far beyond what Simmel explored in any depth himself. In this epilogue I would like to pick up one of these loose threads and attempt to sew two elements of Simmel’s social theory together: his theory of value and the elaborations on the tragedy of culture and the conflict of modern culture. Not, I hasten to add, that Simmel did not relate the one to the other at all. Many indications of such a link can be found in the last pages of The Philosophy of Money, as has been discussed earlier. All the same, these hints, it appears, were left by their author as an open invitation to those who might wish to explore the direction that he pointed out further, and it is this direction that my reflections will now take. If we compare Simmel’s conception of the process of the emergence and crystallization of values with his approach to culture,1 we rapidly realize that both were conceived on the basis of the differentiation between subject and object. However, while culture embraces the subjective as well as the objective spheres, the processes of valuation only take place in the latter. We can only trace a parallel between the creation of values and the process of culture if we consider the path the former takes as it extends itself from the initial subjective desire to its final satisfac-

1

Which have been depicted in chapters 4 and 6 respectively.

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tion; yet in this, the sphere of values is only one stage of a longer journey.2 If we seek to combine these two paths or circles, we will come to realize that actually they are deeply connected, since the path of the soul to itself (the process of culture) necessarily requires a passage through the objective sphere (among others the sphere of values), if only to come back to the subjective sphere at the end. According to Simmel, the specific meaning of culture is only fulfilled when human beings, in their development, incorporate objects which are initially not part of them into their being. Throughout this process, the stress remains firmly on the “them” and not on the “objects”. Once distance has simultaneously created and differentiated between the subjective and the objective spheres, desires emerge within the subjective sphere, while values emerge in the objective one. Thus, while values only make sense in the objective sphere,3 culture has, so to speak, a foot in both camps. This leads to the formation of a subjective and an objective culture. The creations of the human spirit, which become part of objective culture, become valuable because they are not immediately available to human beings when they long for them.4 They have been objectified and have become entities which are no longer immediately related to their creators or to any concrete human being. What makes us value the process of culture is the sacrifice (and not only the economic one) that it requires, its procedural character, the long path that we must continuously traverse in order to fulfil our need for it. If we turn now to the process and tragedy of culture, this time in the light of the theory of value, we reach some interesting conclusions. Following the analyses of The Philosophy of Money, the logic of economic values has extended itself to reach many other spheres of everyday life. At the same time, values have gained a more impersonal character, and have become distanced from individuals through their monetary expression (with its consequent quantification and comparability) which makes them equal for everybody. The logic of economics assigns no value to the actual completion of the process of culture. Thus, if we divide Simmel’s conception of the path of the soul into two stages—(1) from the subjective sphere to the objective, and (2) from the objective back to the subjective—we will realize that each stage is valued differently. This path of the soul to itself implies the tragedy of culture. As we know, Simmel argued that the tragedy of culture is intrinsic to the phe2 3 4

Indeed, for Simmel, values reside only in the objective sphere, despite needing the subjective/objective relationship in order to be possible at all. GSG14 1996:391. GSG14 1996:392.

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nomenon of culture. In order to become cultural beings, human beings must alienate themselves by creating products which will become independent of their producers. To overcome this process of estrangement, and to complete the process of culture, human beings re-incorporate some of the products and creations from the objective culture into their subjectivities and thus close the path of culture. However, this process must take place within the forms of sociation of a specific society, within its institutions, laws, rules, norms, patterns, limitations, and possibilities. The forms of sociation of contemporary, capitalist, societies do not make ‘the path of the soul to itself’ easy at all. The main goal in these societies is production and, above all, the profitable exchange of economic values. If the social relation of economic exchange is the prevailing one, the subjective fulfilment of the process of culture will be overshadowed. The enlargement of objective culture appears interesting, for it is profitable. Whether people buy cultural goods and “cultivate” themselves with them, or whether they simply use them to display or decorate their bedroom walls, is secondary. Let us relate it once again to the picture of the path of the soul back to itself: Path of the soul Subject/ Subjective Culture

Object/ Objective Culture Back to itself

The two stages which are mentioned above are the path from the subjective level to the objective (stage 1), and the path back from the objective level to the subjective, completing the circle. The thesis proposed here is that stage 1 is currently valued as a goal, while stage 2, the path back, is valued as a means to an end. The closing of the cultural path is not valued for itself. Rather, it is valued as a means to an end, because if the subject incorporates new stimuli, she will be more productive for her next objectification, for her next production.5

5

It is interesting to remember here Thorstein Veblen’s reflections on the leisure class, and especially their deliberate distancing from the sphere of production, through—among other things—the consumption of cultural goods for the mere sake of it. Veblen held that the members of these classes pointedly demonstrated thereby that they would not enrich anything with their objective contribution. Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of distinction is to some extent an elaboration on the same theme.

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Economic values can be located in the scheme above only on the objective side. They do not enter into the subjective sphere. When they do so, they do not do it in their capacity of economic values, but as the objects which a subject desires in order to obtain the longed-for satisfaction or from which he or she obtains satisfaction already. Since economic values have become the most central values of modern, capitalist societies—thus leaving personal values behind in the valuation scale— the process of culture has more or less been interrupted, for only one part of it is socially valued, while the other is not (or at least much less so). The whole process is, rather, individually valued—and not by all individuals in the same way and measure. Its subjective side tends to become the object of social concern when the insufficiently cultivated subjects become incapable of producing sufficiently competitive products. Then the cultivation of the subjects becomes an object of social discussion, but only (or perhaps particularly) due to its consequences for the enrichment of objective culture. When this is not at stake, production of objective goods is wholly prioritized while the re-incorporation of the contents of objective culture into the subjective is considered mostly a leisure activity. Under the logic of economic values, production is understood as the production of objects, never of complete and fulfilled human beings which is how Simmel understood the process of culture and Marx understood the sense of human production as a whole. This area has come to be known as ‘reproduction.’ In this way, the bridge between both sides of culture is being transformed into a one-way street. Thus, in modern, capitalist societies, objective culture massively outweighs subjective culture, not only because of its immense volume in comparison to that of subjective culture, but also because it is, ultimately, the one that matters. Thus, we have learned to socially value the products, creations, and objectifications of life more than life itself. We value human beings as long as they produce and enrich objective culture. In other words, human lives and human beings are mostly not socially valued for what they are, but for the results of their performance. Therefore, those human beings who produce human lives, whose work exclusively resides on the subjective side (i.e., who give birth to, take care of, bring up, cook, iron, and clean for other human beings), are not valued as producers. Their work, their creative production, is not valued as production. In fact, it is not even perceived or classified as ‘production’ but rather as ‘reproduction’, as if it were a simple keeping alive of what (and who) is already there, instead of creating and producing daily life anew. This disproportion in the valuation of objective and subjective culture is easy to recognize in all spheres of social life. One example, which 230

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was particularly striking at the time, is the bombing of the giant sculptures of Buddha in Bamiyan, Afghanistan, in March, 2001. Innumerable TV channels showed pictures of the destruction of these sculptures, which were considered part of the world heritage, with great indignation. These were the same newspapers, TV channels, and radio stations which, up until then, had had only marginal comments alluding to the death and physical and mental torture of so many Afghan people under the same Taliban regime that destroyed the sculptures of Buddha.6 The fact is that voices were raised to protect those valuable cultural goods (whose protection is of course absolutely legitimate; that is not the point here). And, far more frequently, voices are raised to protect political and economic interests. Yet they are remarkably silent when human beings are tortured and killed, unless this happens to coincide with a border dispute, a threat to artefacts deemed world cultural treasures, or a wrangle over economic profits or distribution of power. As we have seen, the tragedy of culture is not a specific characteristic of modern culture. Rather it is intrinsic to the process of culture itself. The valuation of those objects which are not part of ourselves, and which we have to strive to obtain, is not a modern novelty. The enlargement of objective culture had taken place long before it was to be channelled by the transformation of the products into merchandise. In fact, transcending the boundaries of subjectivity and enriching the unformed world of objective culture has long been a prerequisite for entering the world of culture and for figuring in the history books. The mothers (sometimes the fathers) and teachers of the wise and the heroes are not wise or heroes themselves, although they are their producers to a great extent. This is not something invented by modern capitalism either. The novelty resides in the way modern capitalist societies have framed the production of culture and the forms in which this production will be experienced and understood. Simmel’s analyses of money highlight how the monetary form of economic exchange and its generalization influence (now as in his day) the way human beings perceive social reality/ies and their interrelationships. Calculability and comparison (originally from the sphere of economic and monetary exchange and expres6

It took the attack on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center to shake the taken-for-granted-world of a great proportion of the global population, and especially of Europe and North America, and force them to focus their attention on that region. Only then did the question of the consequences of the Taliban regime for the lives of the Afghan people receive international attention. Yet we would probably be justified in doubting whether the lives of the human beings affected were really the central issue in the debate.

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sion of economic values) have become standard and general methods of thinking. The sphere of economic values, with its corresponding perspective on life, has expanded and become more central within the general sphere of values. Nowadays the great majority of things in life are mediated and experienced through the lenses of the logic of economic values. This does not imply that the logic of economy did not colour human life before: love, art, and religion, to cite some of those areas where the logic of economics would supposedly not be welcomed, were deeply influenced by the economy long before the generalization of money and the emergence of capitalism took place. Yet the particular characteristics of money, especially its capacity to turn the most diverse objects into comparable ones, have altered our apperception of these phenomena. Nowadays it is not unusual for a person who cannot decide between two alternatives (be they jobs, lovers, or whatever) to make a list with the pros and cons of each alternative in order to decide which one to choose. This deliberation over and quantification of the positive and negative qualities of a course of professional life with all its implications, or of human beings as if they were actually comparable, is an interesting consequence of this logic of calculability and comparability which has become an inextricable and self-evident part of daily life with the monetarization of the economy. I do not wish to discuss the high value that the contents of objective culture might have from a social point of view. What we understand by ‘society’ is to a great extent rooted in the objectified products of human creation: institutions, forms of sociation, knowledge, streets, houses, books, and this is just the beginning of a long list. Nevertheless, without actual human beings—pouring life into the institutions daily keeping these forms alive—they fall apart. The very high value placed upon the elements of the objective sphere gives the impression that there is an implicit feeling of reassurance that accrues from the continuous production of human lives. There are enough human beings on Earth. They are not a rare type of “merchandise” and thus their value falls. Yet, a sociological analysis of contemporary societies, cannot be offered in black and white. There are nuances to each of the phenomena presented here. Or, coming back to Simmel at the close of our reflections, there is always a flip side to everything which makes a different approach possible.

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