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Michael Heinrich | |
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 Heinrich in 2018 | |
| Born | 1957 (age 67–68) Heidelberg, West Germany |
| Education | |
| Alma mater | Free University of Berlin |
| Philosophical work | |
| Main interests | Karl Marx,value-form,critique of political economy,Michel Foucault |
| Notable works |
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Michael Heinrich (born 1957) is a German historian of philosophy and political scientist, specialising in the critical study of the development ofKarl Marx's thought. Heinrich's work, influenced byElmar Altvater and theNeue Marx-Lektüre ofHans-Georg Backhaus andHelmut Reichelt is characterised by its focus on the points of ambivalence and inconsistency in the work of Marx. Through this theme, Heinrich challenges both the closed system he identifies with "worldview Marxism", as well as teleological narratives of Marx's intellectual development throughout his life.[1] He is best known for his 1991 study of the theoretical field of classical political economyThe Science of Value (German:Die Wissenschaft vom Wert), his introductory text to the critique of political economyAn Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx's Capital, and his ongoing project to produce a multi-volume biography of Marx, the first volume of which was published in German in 2018 and English in 2019.
Heinrich was a research assistant at the Department of Political Science atFree University of Berlin from 1987 to 1993, where he received his PhD. His dissertation was published asThe Science of Value (German:Die Wissenschaft vom Wert) in 1991, and is now in its eighth edition in Germany. An English translation is forthcoming on theHistorical Materialism imprint ofBrill Publishers.[1][2] Following his habilitation, Heinrich was a visiting professor at theUniversity of Vienna andHTW Berlin. Heinrich was later appointed as lecturer atFree University Berlin, and returned toHTW Berlin as lecturer from 2005 to 2016. In this period, Heinrich was involved in preparatory work on theMarx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe, and until 2014 served as managing editor ofPROKLA: Journal for Critical Social Science [de].
Heinrich is presently working on a four-volume biography of Marx's life.[3] The first volume,Karl Marx and the Birth of Modern Society, was published in 2018, and appeared in English the next year onMonthly Review Press, with Portuguese, French and Spanish translations following suit.[4][5][6]
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Heinrich is an outspoken critic of what he calls "worldview Marxism" (Weltanschauungsmarxismus), for whichKarl Kautsky was the dominant figure. This form of Marxism is characterized by "a crudely knitted materialism, a bourgeois belief in progress, and a few strongly simplified elements ofHegelian philosophy and modular pieces of Marxian terminology combined into simple formulas and explanations". Other prominent features include "a rather crudeeconomism" and "a pronouncedhistorical determinism that viewed the end of capitalism and the proletarian revolution as inevitable occurrences".[7]: 24–25
Contrary to "worldview Marxism", Heinrich primarily views Marx as "a critic of a social structure that is mediated by value and thus 'fetishized'". Following thestructuralism ofAlthusser andcritical theory, he speaks of a context of deception (Verblendungszusammenhang) to which both workers and capitalists are equally subject. For Heinrich,fetishism is not an impenetrable context of deception, but one cannot speak of a "privileged position of perception occupied by the working class",[7]: 79 nor can one speak of a conscious instrumentalization by capital, making moral criticisms of behaviors of individuals unproductive.
Heinrich rejects the "substantialist" interpretation ofMarx's theory of value, which understands value as the "property of anindividual commodity",[7]: 54 namely the "abstract labor" defined by Marx. Rather, he understands Marx's theory as amonetary theory of value, which marks a paradigmatic shift from the pre-monetarylabor theory of the precedingclassical political economists, and also distinguishes Marx from theutility theory ofneoclassical economics.[7]: 64
Although the value of a commodity appears to be amaterial property, it is a social relationship, namely the relationship between "theindividual labor of producers and thetotal labor of society". This does not mean that exchange produces value, but that only in exchange can value "obtain an objective value form".[7]: 55
Heinrich argues against giving a central place to thetendency of the rate of profit to fall, stating that Marx did not include the argument in his published theoretical work.[8] In order to safely deduce a fall in profit as a general tendency, Marx's argument requires the presumption that the rate ofsurplus-value grows faster than the ratio of capital to value, which cannot be demonstrated from the concepts with which Marx is working. While the general direction of movement of both quantities may be known—both the rate of relative surplus-value, and the ratio of capital to value, are taken in ordinary capitalist conditions to increase— neither can grow without limit, and easy conclusions about their comparative rates of growth are not forthcoming. Over a decade after he wrote the manuscript that became, in Engels' edition,the third volume ofCapital, Marx composed a mathematical manuscript where he deals at length with the case of rising profit-rates under an increasing value-composition of capital.[8]
Along these lines, Heinrich challenges the identification of Marx's theories of crisis with the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, a reading he attributes principally to Engels having edited the third volume ofCapital so as to condense all the fragmentary discussion of crisis under the chapter title "Development of the Law's Internal Contradictions", suggesting all crisis for Marx flows from declining profit rates.[8] Instead, Heinrich suggests we ought to follow the direction of Marx's remarks on the role of crisis in mediating breakdowns of relationships between production and consumption, and extend these arguments through more careful attention to a theory of money and credit. Further, Heinrich is sceptical of the suggestion that crisis for Marx necessarily begets collapse, arguing that the collapse theory "has historically always had an excusatory function: regardless of how bad contemporary defeats were, the opponent's end was a certainty". Heinrich argues that such a theory is not found in Marx beyond a possible trace of one in theGrundrisse, one which is not taken up in Marx's later work.[7]: 176–178
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