Kinetic Theory of Value II

Abstract

This chapter argues that the other three value-forms each unfold (entfaltete) continually from the onefold movement introduced in chapter 7. Money emerges not from natural value or from divine command but strictly from the material-kinetic conditions of transport that bear and support it through each of the value-forms. The simplex form is therefore not something merely inadequate to money but in fact a constant and constitutive kinetic condition of relationality that supports and bears money as a general equivalent. Money, therefore, is not a thing but a kinetic process of value creation that emerges historically and must be continually reproduced through the devalorization process that bears its motion. The key original thesis of this chapter is that the origins of money are not, as is commonly thought, in the “movement of value” but in the movement of matter that bears and transports value.