(The well-tempered crudeness of this doctrine guarantees the kind of survival that involves a threat to anyone who doesn’t pay homage to it. It is a special kind of programmed crudeness, adjusted according to the circumstances. This concept is certainly crude, but it is procedural, in the double legal and physical sense of the word. It assists the general process of what exists by subjecting it, among other things, to a procès, to a trial. The justice of history, which—if the moment is right—can also become “revolutionary justice,” is a valuable expedient for setting in motion the procedures of practice. The theory not only gave new theoretical dignity to praxis, but it was already praxis in action, and obviously disguised as Science: here the word materialism, with the double sneer—historical and dialectical—of the herm, offered an invaluable service.)

Marx doesn’t always abandon all restraint in his worship of progress. Behind that word can be seen changes of stance. There are moments when he is caught off guard and comes perilously close to establishing a break between the two modes of development, one corrupt (that of capital) and one good (what follows after capital).

Society, based on exchange value, having reached its completeness, is defined as follows: “Each individual possesses social power under the form of a thing [exchange value].”⁴⁶⁸ In the next phrase, the revolutionary leap is set down in its simplest terms: “Rob the thing of this social power and you must give it to persons to exercise over persons.”⁴⁶⁹ This is perfectly consistent with the view of Louis Dumont: if the prime characteristic of modernity (but there are so many prime characteristics!) was to give preeminence to man’s relationship with things—contrary to what occurred in all other societies, built above all on relationships between humans—then departure from the order of exchange value will also mean a return to the preeminence of the relationship between humans. And here Marx gives one of the many formulations of the stages of society that we will not find in the Marxist-Leninist textbooks. Here in fact, the conceptual articulations clearly emerge:

a: “Relations of personal dependence (entirely spontaneous at the outset) are the first social forms, in which human productive capacity develops only to a slight extent and at isolated points.”⁴⁷⁰ Characteristics: “relations of personal dependence,” as a crucial element, regardless of relations with things. And here the dependence is entrusted to what is naturwüchsig, spontaneous—solitary growth, forests and swamps. Development “only to a slight extent”: here, development has a limit, a preestablished extent, and in any event it does not include all exchanges: outside, there are, there may be, other modalities.

b: “Personal independence founded on dependence on things is the second major form, in which a system of general social metabolism, of universal relations, of omnilateral needs and universal capacities is formed for the first time.”⁴⁷¹ The individual is a category that is developed during this phase: “individual” means relations of independence from other subjects. But on one condition: that these relationships coincide with a total dependence on things: “Individuals are subsumed under social production; social production exists outside them as their fate.”⁴⁷² This fate that is embodied by the pure existence of things is now called “social production.” It therefore consists of things and their production. Here, in comparison to form a, we see a departure from the provincial context, an expansion of boundaries as far as the universal, total, general, in contrast to the singularity of the individual.