Panpsychism and the exchange abstraction

In Money and the Early Greek Mind, Richard Seaford argues that the invention of money and coinage was instrumental in the development of concepts of the universe as an impersonal, abstract system. Arguments in a similar vein were made by the German Marxist Alfred Sohn-Rethel, who argued that the origins of Kant’s idea of the transcendental subject and of the foundations of scientific abstraction can be traced back to the introduction of coined money in ancient Greece.

The purpose of this post is to explore the relations between money, abstract thought and panpsychism.

At first blush, it might seem like crude economistic thinking to equate the rise of abstract thought with the invention of money. But the idea warrants serious consideration, due to both the historical and literary evidence assembled by Seaford and the argumentation of Sohn-Rethel.  In  Intellectual and Manual Labour, Sohn-Rethel notes that in order to be exchanged, commodities have to be separated from use and that the quantitative exchange value of commodities are abstracted from their sensual qualities. These abstractive features of commodities which are enacted in social interchange, he argues, becomes the basis for abstract thought. This is made possible through the introduction of coined money, which materially embodies the abstractions of exchange and engenders conceptualisation of abstract entities. On the basis of this analysis, Sohn-Rethel traces how concepts such as abstract time and space, atomicity and pure quantity are ultimately derived from this exchange abstraction. In later work, Seaford has extended this analysis of the effect of money on forms of thought to include its impact on the development of the notion of an autonomous and isolated self.                     

The peculiar abstractness of money is bought home in a practical sense by Sohn-Rethel with the example of a dog at the butcher:

"Money is an abstract thing, a paradox in itself - a thing that performs its socially synthetic function without any human understanding. And yet no animal can ever grasp the meaning of money; it is accessible only to man. Take your dog with you to the butcher and watch how much he understands of the goings on when you purchase your meat. It is a great deal and even includes a keens sense of property which will make him snap at a stranger’s hand daring to come near the meat his master has obtained and which he will be allowed to carry home in his mouth. But when you have to tell him ‘Wait doggy, I haven’t paid yet!’ his understanding is at an end. The pieces of metal or or paper which he watches you hand over, and which carry your scent, he knows, of course; he has seen them before. But their function as money lie outside the animal range. It is not related to our natural or physical being, but comprehensible only in our interrelations as human beings." (p. 45)


The exchange abstraction, according to Sohn-Rethel,  also underpins the conceptual foundations of science. This is not to say that the findings of science have no relation to reality. However, science does rely on abstracting features of nature in isolation in order to measure and quantify. It does not encompass all there is in nature. In its methods it must treat parts in abstraction from the whole, such that ‘Owing to this isolation a phenomenon can be subject to investigation only torn out of the context in which it occurs. It is clear, therefore that modern science is not aimed at helping society in her relations with nature’ (p. 132).

In relation to knowledge that might lie beyond contemporary science and which may be be more conducive to helping our relations with nature, Sohn-Rethel notes that a society not relying on commodity exchange as its basis would entail a kind of knowledge based on different conceptual foundations. Such a knowledge would also have a reflexive understanding of its own origin and development.

It is of course impossible to jump out of one’s own skin and know what the concepts and consciousness of a society not based on the exchange abstraction might be. Nevertheless, it seems possible that some speculations on the conceptual foundations of a post-commodity society, based on where we stand know, may give some inklings or prefigurations of what lies in store.

In speculating on such prefigurations, it seems reasonable to assume that the concepts of a post-commodity society may have some similarities to those of a pre-commodity society. That is, notwithstanding the vast differences in technology and systems of production and exchange that exist in pre-monetary societies from advanced technological societies of the present day, such societies still provide evidence of what the nature of knowledge of a society that is not predicated on exchange abstraction is like.

One of the distinguishing features of belief systems of pre-monetary and pre-agricultural societies is animism, the view that all of nature is in some sense alive and animated. Humans and culture are not seen as separate from this living nature, but as part of it. Nature and culture, mind and matter, human and nonhuman are all part of one interconnected cosmos which is imbued with meaning and communicativeness. Animism encompasses the belief that sentience and agency is extended throughout nature and that there is no boundary between material and spiritual worlds.

Looking at present day characterisations of nature which are informed by contemporary philosophy, animism has many similarities with panpsychism, the view that consciousness is a fundamental and ubiquitous part of nature. Whilst contemporary panpsychism may differ from animistic beliefs with regard to what entities are ascribed agency or sentience, it shares with animism the view that the universe is alive with consciousness. As William Seager puts it, for the panpsychist, the word is awake.

Thus, the similarity of the animism of the pre-commodified world to contemporary panpsychism suggest that the latter may provide some idea of what a post-commodified world-view might be like. To put this into context, consider this statement of Marx in the Economic and Philosophic manuscripts of 1844:

"History itself is a real part of natural history – of nature developing into man. Natural science will in time incorporate into itself the science of man, just as the science of man will incorporate into itself natural science: there will be one science."

Interpreting this statement in the present day, it can be said that what currently distinguishes the natural world as described by the physical sciences from the human world is that the human world includes consciousness (subjectivity, experience) within its ambit whereas physical science does not. Therefore, if the science of the future is to be one with human history, it seems reasonable to say that it may be a science in which the whole of nature is once again imbued with consciousness and vitality.