5.1Commodity exchange and the necessity of rethinking Aristotelean δύναμις

I now want to consider first of all the phenomenon of exchange of goods on the market with regard to whether and how it can be seen in terms of δύναμις, this fundamental concept that permeates all of Aristotle’s thinking on phenomena of κίνησις, μεταβολή, i.e. movement/change of all kinds. In a later section (5.6) I will return to consider the phenomenon of exchange as the paradigmatic ontological structure of sociating intercourse in general, covering both whats and whos. The exchange of goods in Greek is called ἀλλαγή, συναλλαγή or μεταβολή which is already an indication that it involves change (μεταβολή) in the sense of both alteration (ἀλλοίωσις) and interchanging one with another. Μεταβολή comes from the verb μεταβάλλειν, which means most literally ‘to throw into another position’ and thus also ‘to change one with another, exchange, interchange’. But is there an ἀρχή, i.e. a starting-point governing the exchange, involved here? One candidate for a starting-point governing the exchange is the owner of the goods. The owner of goods is able to exchange them for other goods (barter) or for money (sale). The exchange does not change the goods involved in the exchange themselves, but only ‘changes one with another’ in the sense of interchanging their ownership and possession between two parties. Exchange is a social relation (πρός τι, πρὸς ἕτερον) involving and sociating two exchangers. This ability to exchange could be called a δύναμις in the sense that the goods offered for sale have not only a use-value in use, but also an exchange-value in getting something else. As Aristotle points out, goods (πράγματα) can be used in a double way, namely, not only in their use proper, but also for exchange (μεταβλητική, ἀλλαγή Pol. I iii 1257a10,14):

ἑκάστου γὰρ κτήματος διττὴ ἡ χρῆσίς ἐστιν, ἀμφότεραι δὲ καθ’ αὐτὸ μὲν ἀλλ' οὐχ ὁμοίως καθ’ αὐτό, ἀλλ' ἡ μὲν οἰκεία ἡ δ' οὐκ οἰκεία τοῦ πράγματος, οἷον ὑποδήματος ἥ τε ὑπόδεσις καὶ ἡ μεταβλητική. ἀμφότεραι [10] γὰρ ὑποδήματος χρήσεις· καὶ γὰρ ὁ ἀλλαττόμενος τῷ δεομένῳ ὑποδήματος ἀντὶ νομίσματος ἢ τροφῆς χρῆται τῷ ὑποδήματι ᾗ ὑπόδημα, ἀλλ' οὐ τὴν οἰκείαν χρῆσιν· οὐ γὰρ ἀλλαγῆς ἑνεκεν γέγονε. τὸν αὐτὸν δὲ τρόπον ἔχει καὶ περὶ τῶν ἄλλων κτημάτων. ἐστι γὰρ ἡ [15] μεταβλητικὴ πάντων,... (Pol. I iii 1257a7–15)

With every article of acquired property there is a double way of using it; both uses are related to the article itself, but not related to it in the same manner—one is proper to the thing and the other is not proper to it. Take for example a shoe: there is its wearing as a shoe and there is its use by way of exchange; for both are uses of a shoe, and even he who exchanges a shoe with someone needing a shoe for money or food uses it as a shoe, but not in its proper use, since shoes have not come about for the sake of exchange. And it is the same also with other articles of acquired property; for there is exchange of all of them,...

But does the owner of goods govern the exchange in the sense of having control over it? In the first place, the potential or power to exchange (if it is a δύναμις at all63) resides primarily in the goods, which have an exchange-value, i.e. a δύναμις to exchange for some other good, and only secondarily in the owner of the goods, who enjoys such a power only by virtue of possessing the goods, just as in the case of the productive δύναμις of house-building, where the house-builder has the power to change stone and wood into a house only by virtue of possessing the know-how of house-building.

But even granting that the δύναμις or power to exchange resides first of all in the goods themselves by virtue of their ‘usefulness’ in exchange as possessing exchange-value, and not primarily in the owners of the goods, the answer to the question as to whether the owner of the goods governs the exchange of goods has to be ‘no’ because, in the first place, it takes two to make an exchange, and two already destroys the unity of a single point of origin. An exchange can only come about if two parties agree to exchange goods for goods (barter) or goods for money (sale). The ownership of goods or money does provide the owner with the potential or δύναμις for making an exchange, but this ownership is not potent enough to make it the ἀρχή, i.e. the governing starting-point, of exchange. One could say that in the case of exchange, there are two starting-points, two ἀρχαί which, however, have to coincide and reciprocate for any exchange to come about. The two ἀρχαί are the two goods in the quality as possessing exchange-value, a kind of power.

In the second place, consider the phenomena of money and value. Money and goods are said to have value or, more specifically, exchange-value. The owner of money is able to buy goods on the market to the value of the money he possesses. The goods are offered for sale on the market at more or less definite prices quantitatively expressing their value, and the owner of money can decide at will to buy this or that, depending on how much money he has. The purchase of goods, as distinct from the exchange of goods, would thus seem to be conceivable as the exercise of a potential or potency or δύναμις residing in money, its value potency, which allows its possessor to purchase goods to a certain value. This means that the potent starting-point for the purchase lies in the first place not in the owner of money, but in the money itself. A phenomenal proof of this is that, if the money is stolen, its new possessor, the thief, can spend it just as well as the original legitimate owner. The use-value of money is, in the first place, its exchange-value, which can be exercised at any time, and thus also, secondly, held at the ready as a store of exchange-value. In its simple, perfect presence (ἐντελέχεια), money has the δύναμις of exchanging universally with any goods of a given value. Only the quantitative relations of price can shift. In itself, money refers to all the other commodities available on the myriad markets with which it can potentially exchange.

The owner of goods, by contrast, does not seem to be in such a happy position as the owner of money. Even though goods, too, have a double value in both use and exchange, and the exchange-value can be regarded as a kind of δύναμις, the realization of this value in exchange, i.e. in sale, depends on the momentary market conditions. The current situation on the market may preclude sale altogether at the moment (e.g. real estate), or it may dictate unusually low prices. Thus in both cases, namely, the purchase of goods with money and the sale of goods for money, if not a specific second party, then at least the market or markets or momentary market situation co-determine whether and in what quantitative proportions an exchange can come about. Insofar, the starting-point of exchange (sale or even purchase) may be said to reside neither solely in the owner of the goods or the owner of money respectively nor solely in the goods themselves nor solely in the money itself. The very exchange-value of goods or money is relational (πρός τι), depending on two double poles, the buyer and the seller, on the one hand, and the goods and money, on the other, which meet together on the market or markets which in turn comprise many buyers and sellers, and many exchange-values. The phenomenon of exchange is, after all, a social relation involving sociation of at least two and, in general, of many.

But more than that, it is crucial not to overlook that the two poles of even the simple exchange relation cannot be regarded as an actor on the one hand and another suffering the action on the other, as in the case of building a house, i.e. transforming wood and bricks, which have the passive power of allowing themselves to be changed into a finished building. Rather, the purchaser of goods has to have the ‘active’ consent of the seller for the exchange to take place; the seller does not simply passively suffer (πάσχειν) to have his goods sold. This would only be the case if the seller were under some sort of coercion to sell and therefore could not be regarded as the starting-point of a sales transaction. The exchange would then not be free, which is not the usual situation for commodity exchange.

5.2Productive know-how, acquisitive know-how?

Consider again the exchange of goods for money, i.e. a case of sale, with regard to whether it can in some way be considered as an instance of δύναμις. A change (μεταβολή) is to be brought about in the goods in the possession of the owner. In this case, the change is an ex-change (ἀλλαγή, μεταβολή). Is there something resembling a know-how (τέχνη ποιητική) residing in another being, in this case, the owner, which serves as starting-point for the change? This is thought in parallel to ποίησις as the τέχνη of bringing-forth. The τέχνη in this case would be a τέχνη κτητική, the know-how or art of acquiring, of getting. The goods, whether they be bananas or television sets, would suffer themselves to be changed into money under the direction of mercantile or commercial knowhow. Aristotle indeed points out that the mode of being of δύναμις always involves the unity of two δυνάμεις, an active force and a passive force (δύναμις τοῦ ποιεῖν καὶ πάσχειν 1046a19ff). The passive force in this case would reside in the goods themselves which suffer themselves to be exchanged, and would have to be called the (exchange-)value of the goods. The goods’ exchange-value is expressed in money, in quantitative prices, as if there were a potential or tendency or readiness within the goods themselves to change into money in some ratio or other. The active force or power in this case would be the commercial know-how which has knowledge of the markets, of how to find a buyer, perhaps through means such as advertising, and (interplayfully) effect a sale, i.e. to transform the ‘commercial matter’ into the value-form of money. Advertising itself is the art of adverting, i.e. of turning the attention of others, prospective buyers, to the good for sale.

The analogy of commercial know-how with productive know-how is imperfect, however, because the former is not a simple governing starting-point for effecting a change, an interchange. There are (at least) four poles involved and not just two. The other two poles are the purchaser and his money (or even: two multiple poles comprising the market of potential purchasers and their money). The purchaser embodies an active force for acquiring goods (which could be called desire or appetite or ὄρεξις, the striving of reaching out for something), and the money has the passive δύναμις to suffer itself to be transformed into goods at the behest of the purchaser. Is this an adequate characterization of the phenomenon? It seems not to be because the power of acquiring goods resides in the money, not in the purchaser. The money has an inherent power of self-transformation into goods and the purchaser as possessor of money merely employs this power. Similarly, the owner of goods himself does not have the active power of transforming the goods into money, but rather, the goods themselves, because they are useful, have an exchange-value which expresses itself in the current prices on the market. The owner of the goods only realizes this apparently inherent value in transforming his goods into money. Use-value is also only apparently inherent because it depends on the usages in the society in which the goods could potentially be used and is thus relative. Commercial know-how only facilitates this transformation of the value of the goods into money; it does not create the exchange-value of the goods, which depends essentially on the value of the goods in use.

But what does it mean to ‘create’ exchange-value? Doesn’t a skilful salesperson ‘create’, bring forth — and not merely ‘facilitate’ — exchange-value by arousing and stimulating the desire of the prospective customer and finally bringing the transaction to a close? Isn’t there an analogy here with the skilful house-builder who knows how to create, to produce, to bring forth houses, but nevertheless still requires building materials to do so? To put these questions aside for the time being, it can still be said that in any case the potential for exchange, the exchange-value, does not reside in the respective owners of money and goods, but reified in the money and goods themselves, respectively, i.e. in both, and both are required in reciprocation for an exchange to come about.

Let us examine this more closely with regard to Aristotle’s ever-deepening investigation of δύναμις in Metaphysics Book Theta.64 In Chapter 2 he is concerned with investigating not just the lead or prime meaning of δύναμις as δύναμις κατὰ κίνησιν but more particularly, δύναμις μετὰ λόγου, ability guided by the λόγος, for which the paradigm is ἐπιστήμη ποιητική, the knowledge or know-how of producing, of bringing forth. Productive knowledge is guided by the sight or look of what is to be produced, the εἶδος (which is standardly translated in traditional metaphysics as ‘idea’, ‘species’, ‘form’ or ‘kind’). This sight or look is seen in advance, from the start, before any productive activity has commenced at all, and it determines how the productive activity is to proceed, its sequence, the materials chosen, the tools, the materials for the tools, the correction of mistakes, etc. With respect to the definition of the leading or guiding sight provided in the εἶδος, the materials are without any form or limits; they are ἄπειρον, whereas the εἶδος, the defined, delimited look, is μορφή, form, shape, Gestalt. The materials only assume a form during productive activity under the guiding pre-view and consideration (διαλέγεσθαι) of the sight of the εἶδος, which is seen from the start through the knowing fore-sight of the know-how. Heidegger elaborates further in his interpretation of Met. Theta, after having characterized the role of εἶδος:

Beim Herstellen steht das Herzustellende — obzwar noch nicht fertig, ja nicht einmal angefangen — notwendig im Vorblick; es ist im eigentlichen Sinne nur erst vor-gestellt, aber / noch nicht als Vorhandenes bei- und her-gestellt. Dieses vorblickende Vor-stellen des ἔργον in seinem εἶδος, ist gerade der eigentliche Anfang des Herstellens, nicht etwa erst die Verfertigung im engeren Sinne des Handanlegens. Dieses In-den-Blick-nehmen des Aussehens ist in sich das Bilden eines Anblicks, das Bilden des Vorbildes. Damit aber wird etwas kund: Dieses Bilden des Vorbildes kann nur geschehen als Umgrenzen dessen, was zu ihm gehört; es ist ein Auslesen, ein auslesendes Sammeln des Zusammengehörigen, ein λέγειν. Das εἶδος ist ein so zusammengelesenes Ausgelesenes, ein λεγόμενον, es ist λόγος. Und das εἶδος ist τέλος — das be-endende Ende, τέλιον — das Vollkommene, das Vollendete, Erlesene, Auserlesene; τέλος ist seinem Wesen nach immer ausgelesen: λόγος. (GA33:141f)

When producing, although it is not yet finished, and not even started, what is to be produced must necessarily stand in pre-view, in fore-sight [as what is envisaged]; in the proper sense it is first only fore-seen or pre-conceived, but not yet brought forth as something present at hand. This foreseeing pre-conceiving of the ἔργον [work] in its εἶδος [look] is precisely the proper starting-point for producing, and not the manufacturing in the narrower sense of handling materials. This taking-into-view of the look is in itself the forming of a sight, the building of the pre-image. But in doing so, something becomes known. This forming and building of the pre-image can only happen as a defining of what belongs to it; it is a selecting, a selective gathering of what belongs together, a λέγειν. The εἶδος is something which is selected out and gathered together, a λεγόμενον, it is λόγος. And the εἶδος is τέλος — the end which brings to an end, τέλιον — the perfect, completed, selected, chosen; τέλος is in its essence always selected and gathered: λόγος.

This passage provides a concentrated view of how the λόγος which guides production, ποίησις, is to be seen onto-phenomeno-logically as a gathering into a defined view. The guiding λόγος is the defined foreseen sight seen by the knowing look which allows the knowing producer to make step-by-step what is to be produced. The materials are selected and formed under the guiding pre-view and consideration of the εἶδος seen by the λόγος, thus allowing continual corrections to be made during the making to the as yet undefined and unformed materials to gain form and assume the final shape and look of the product. Δύναμις μετὰ λόγου — as knowing foresight of the defined, standing εἶδος according to which μορφή is to be shaped into the materials — knows how to effectively bring forth if only the chosen materials, each with its δύναμις παθητική (Met. 1021a15), are available.

5.3Commodity exchange not guided by the insight of know-how

The phenomenon of exchange, by contrast, is entirely different in the ontological structure of its specific kinesis. The εἶδος of the goods or money to be acquired through purchase or sale respectively which serves as the immediate τέλος that will complete the envisaged action can indeed be seen and fore-seen, but this is not a knowing look that provides step-by-step guidance for how to effectively bring about the transformation of goods into money or money into goods. Why not? Because there are two starting-points which must coincide, concur and reciprocate if a transformation is to come about in a mutually agreed transaction. Moreover, what drives exchange is not so much know-how but rather the desire for something. Namely, even with regard to ποίησις Aristotle grants that what first moves or motivates the act of production as its starting-point is something desired and striven for, an ὀρεκτόν (De Anima Gamma 10 433a28; cf. GA33:150ff) because the movement of what is living is “always for the sake of something” (ἀεὶ ἕνεκά τινος 432b15), namely the matter for action, the πρακτόν. “So that there is something else more powerful that motivates making in accordance with knowledge, and not knowledge itself” (ὡς ἑτέρον τινὸς κυρίου ὄντος τοῦ ποιεῖν κατὰ τὴν ἐπιστήμην, ἀλλ’ οὐ τῆς ἐπιστήμης 433a5f), which converts the finished product itself from a τέλος into a means on the way to attaining the true τέλος of fulfilling a desire. For the act of making itself, the finished product in pre-view is then the εἶδος as eidetic cause of movement.

The true motivator for the making is desire (ἐπιθυμία 433a3), and appetite (ὄρεξις 433a7), which in turn are subordinated to follow reason in those who have strength in themselves (οἱ γὰρ ἐγκρατεῖς ὀρεγόμενοι καὶ ἐπιθυμοῦντες οὐ πράττουσιν ὧν ἔχουσι τὴν ὄρεξιν, ἀλλ’ ἀκολουθοῦσι τῷ νῷ. 433a7ff). With regard to trade and exchange, a kinesis sui generis, it can at least be seen that desire is a motivating factor for the act of purchase or sale, the desire to gain certain goods or money (for the sake of some existential purpose or other, whether ‘reasonable’ or ‘unreasonable’), and that, for an act of exchange to take place, there must be reciprocal, complementary desire on the part of both purchaser and seller for the transaction (a kind of μεταβολή) to come about. Trade and exchange are not a realm of knowledge (ἐπιστήμη) and know-how (τέχνη ποιητική), but a realm of sociating action, i.e. interaction (πρᾶξις),65 in which desire and appetite hold sway as motivating causes, i.e. as ἀρχαί, whether under the ultimate governance of (practical) reason (νοῦς, φρόνησις) or not. Under the motivation of desire, the exchange relation does not require in addition any know-how, no knowing pre-view of what is to be brought forth, even though what is desired is certainly envisaged, and what is to be exchanged must have been, or must be, produced.

This is illustrated by the historical example of the barter (as opposed to appropriation by sheer force) carried on several centuries ago between European world explorers and primitive natives in far-off regions of the Earth. The kind of τέχνη which comes into play in the case of such social interaction is something resembling rhetoric, which is the technique of ‘knowing how’ to skilfully sway somebody’s (singular or plural) mood and thus persuade them. But the technique of rhetoric, too, cannot be regarded as a τέχνη ποιητική, because the rhetor’s audience is not simply a passive material that is knowingly worked on by the skilful rhetor.66 The ‘know-how’ of rhetoric is thus not a knowledge in the strict sense of a knowing starting-point for governing a change in some thing else, but a social skill and social power (cf. Chapter 10) in talking others around, in engendering trust, in persuading others in an interchange in a given mooded situation, which may or may not be successful. The rhetor who is skilful in ‘reading’ the mood of his audience and swinging it is someone “with a real power of disposing men’s feelings to his wish” and even with the “power to hold men’s minds, and to direct their courses into the willing quietness of eventual obedience”, a power that often depends decisively on who the orator is. The who-status may be derived, for instance, from an authority acknowledged “thanks to the revered descent from the Prophet”.67

For the sake of clarity, it is therefore advisable not to speak of rhetoric as a kind of knowledge or a know-how but as a social power, a power that is not simply a power over others, but a power that comes to ‘effect’ only in an interplay68 between and among free ἀρχαί that have the power of freedom of movement, including interchange, and that not merely as a reciprocation between an active power and a passive power. Namely, it is crucial to see that rhetoric, along with all other phenomena of social interchange, including the exchange of goods, breaks the mould of the schema of δύναμις as worked out in Book Theta of Aristotle’s Metaphysics and cannot be captured by the distinction between active and passive powers. Aristotle characterizes the being of a passive power as “the one [kind of power] namely is a power of suffering, a starting-point in the suffering thing itself for change by an other or insofar as it is an other” (ἡ μὲν γὰρ τοῦ παθεῖν ἐστὶ δύναμις, ἡ ἐν αὐτῷ τῷ πάσχοντι ἀρχή μεταβολῆς παθητικῆς ὑπ' ἄλλου ὴ ᾗ ἄλλο, Met. IX 1046a21–23) The audience or whoever else is on the other side of a sociative interchange, however, is not merely a passive power that has the power to suffer a change (or even to resist such suffering) by an other, active power (a rhetor or whoever), but is itself a starting-point, an ἀρχή of free self-movement in actively listening, exchanging, desiring, etc., and these different ἀρχαί have to intermesh in an interplay. The Aristotelean distinction between active and passive δύναμις, by contrast, applies to a dovetail fit between an active transformative power and its suitable passive material.

The social power of rhetoric is not restricted to the situation of an orator speaking to an audience or to a deliberative situation in which a group is coming to a decision, but comes into play more or less in all situations of social interchange, including that of the exchange of goods, especially where trust needs to be engendered. In essentially breaking the ontological mould of productive δύναμις, and hence the ontology of productive movement, cast in Aristotle’s Metaphysics,69 rhetoric could never become a technology for manipulating others (which would be the dream of modern social science in its Cartesian cast, e.g. by means of learning algorithms fed with huge amounts of digital data for the purpose of advertising), but remains an art of (always reciprocal) persuasion that is an essential component of the technique of getting along with one another. This latter technique is perhaps one of the hardest for humankind to learn, requiring lifelong practice.

Rhetoric, especially in the form of advertising, has a close connection with commercial exchange and is an indispensable part of the art of acquiring, for others have to be talked round, persuaded. Here an ambiguity in the phenomenon and concept of calculation becomes apparent, an ambiguity also present in Greek λογισμός. This ambiguity arises from the essential ambiguity of the term μεταβολή in the Aristotelean definition of the ontological essence of δύναμις, an ambiguity with historical consequences that can scarcely be overestimated. Calculation can be poietically calculating in working out, often with mind-boggling sophisticated technical skill, how to bring something forth in some kind of production process. Such calculation (including arithmetic and mathematical calculation, or deliberation and reasoning) presupposes that there is a passive material that can be worked upon to bring about the envisaged result or τέλος.

But when what is to be worked upon is not merely passive material, but rather a free other or others, each of whom is a free origin of self-movement, as in any rhetorical situation (in court, parliament, meetings of any kind, in the market-place), including any commercial situation of exchange, the kind of calculation employed is the kind of cleverness that can turn a situation with an other or others to (what one envisages as) one’s own advantage. This is also the meaning of Greek λογισμός as ‘cold calculation’ (cf. Benseler). Paradoxically, such cold calculation works at enkindling the warmth of trust to bring others round and always has an eye as to how a situation can be exploited for one’s own advantage. This eye is a kind of envisaging of a τέλος, but it is a one-sided view of a two- or many-sided situation in which two, several or many are involved. Cold calculation is already a perversion of the situation of sociative interchange in which free ἀρχαί come into interplay with one another and have the freedom not only of gaining an advantage at the expense of the other or others, but also of reaching a mutually beneficial and satisfying result. Calculation in this sociating sense of interchange does not have to be cold; one shade of meaning of Greek λογίζεσθαι, apart from ‘to calculate, count, think, consider, view, conclude’ is namely ‘to hope’.

To return to the question of desire and acquiring: In the case of trade, the motivating factor of desire for something, either money or specific goods, does not directly motivate a production process under the guidance of the foreseeing, knowing λόγος which has gathered the sight of the goods to be brought forth into the fore-sight of the εἶδος, but rather it immediately motivates an exchange transaction, a purchase or a sale. This transaction presupposes that the money or goods in the possession of the desiring person can be exchanged, i.e. that they have a reified δύναμις, a potential and potency, for exchange, an exchange-value, within themselves (καθ’ αὑτό), for it is not the mere desire of the owners of goods or money which enables the desired thing to be acquired, but rather what the desiring person can give in return for acquiring what is desired, and what is given must have a potential, potency or δύναμις which, in turn, makes it desirable for someone else to acquire, for any reciprocal, complementary exchange to eventuate at all. There is thus a disjunction between the desire of the desiring person and the potential for exchange, or exchange-value, which resides reified in goods and money insofar as goods or money can be exchanged by whoever possesses them, even a thief, regardless of the desire motivating any exchange.

The δύναμις of exchange-value which resides reified in goods or money is thus essentially, i.e. ontologically, different from the δύναμις μετὰ λόγου of ἐπιστήμη ποιητική which resides firmly in the knowing producer by virtue of having been learned. Indeed, one meaning of the verb δύνασθαι is simply ‘to be worth’, as in ‘five pairs of shoes are worth one table’. The δύναμις of exchange-value in the case of goods is their potential to be exchanged, but this potential to be exchanged is only derivative of their primary potential to be put to use in the usages for which they are suitable. The δύναμις of exchange-value in the case of money is simply its ready potential to purchase anything offered for sale on a market. Neither of these potentials as such has to do with the power of knowledge or know-how to bring forth.

Sociating interplay in its fathomlessness is a fundamental hallmark of the sociating ‘process’ of exchange of commodities, whether they be produced things or services provided. The products themselves are pro-duced, i.e. brought forth knowingly through the exercise or actualization of powers, namely, labour power, natural powers and the powers of already produced means of production. These powers working together as ἐνέργεια — in the literal Aristotelean sense of ‘being-at-work’ — on the raw materials, which themselves possess passive powers to suffer being worked upon, constitute the labour process, whose product is then validated abstractly on the market as being valuable, thus validating not only the labour power producing them as valuable, but also the powers of nature and means of production that have been employed in the labour process. To have value (German: Wert) is itself a power in the sense that these goods and services command a certain price and thus can be exchanged for something else.

The original sense of value derives from L. valere which, apart from meaning ‘to be able-bodied, strong, powerful, influential, to prevail’ can also mean ‘to be worth something in exchange for something else, to have monetary value’. Etymologically, ‘valere’ is related (via an Indo-European root *ual-; cf. Duden) to German ‘walten’ which means ‘to prevail’, again from L. prævalere ‘to be very able’, ‘to have greater power or worth’, ‘to prevail’ and thus itself a comparative or enhanced form of possessing power. L. valere, in turn, is the standard Latin translation of δύνασθαι, so that the connection to the Greek word for power, δύναμις, in all its phenomenal senses, is secured. This is not merely a scholarly matter to excite philologists and lexicographers, since it points not only to power as a fundamental experience of human being in the world, but also to the multi-dimensional layers of the phenomenon of power. In particular, the productive powers that bring forth products of all kinds must be distinguished clearly on a fundamental ontological level from the ‘exchange powers’, i.e. the exchange-values, of those products in being worth something in interchange on the markets where they are validated as actually (ἐνεργείᾳ), and not merely potentially (δυνάμει), being valuable. Since this interchange is an interplay of powers, it is a game in the strict, i.e. not merely playful, sense that defies the specification of any unified, single power, such as the labour power of the labourers producing one of the products in the exchange process, as prevailing over the others, thus determining the product’s exchange-value independently of the fathomless interplay of powers itself.

5.4Two complementary, reciprocal pairs of δυνάμεις: Reified value and desire

Goods and money can be referred to collectively for the sake of convenience as assets, i.e. as the estate or effects in someone’s possession which are sufficient (from the French legal phrase aver assetz, ‘to have sufficient’) for settling that person’s debts arising through exchange transactions. Assets have the δύναμις (social power) of exchange-value capable of ‘effecting’, i.e. providing, satisfaction in exchange transactions. The δύναμις of value residing reified in assets is that they themselves are desirable in the eyes of others and therefore attract the attention and arouse the desire of others willing to acquire them. Valuable assets show themselves off as desirable for others and this gives them the reified, i.e. thingly, power of exercising exchange-value in an exchange transaction which brings about a change of money into goods and, simultaneously and reciprocally, goods into money, depending on which perspective is assumed. In an exchange transaction, the reified exchange-value potentials of both goods and money — that is, of whats — are put to work to bring about the exchange; they are complementary, reciprocal powers or δυνάμεις both largely disjunct from the respective non-reified, living, motivating desires of the exchangers — that is, of whos — (i.e. apart from any ‘powers of persuasion’ which may come to bear to make apparent the good uses of the goods on offer), since the exchangeable, valuable assets owned by any one person are a matter of accident and the vicissitudes of fortune in life.

Goods that are put on display in some way or other on the market show themselves off as being desirable in one respect or another in the sense that they are capable of fulfilling the desire of a prospective purchaser in some existential use or other. The goods potentially (δυνάμει) suffer themselves (πάσχειν) to be used in a usage and hence possess a passive power. This capability of passively fulfilling some desire or other in use, or use-value, is also a δύναμις residing reified in the goods which discloses itself and can be perceived (αἰσθάνεσθαι) by prospective purchasers who thus have the active power (δύναμις) of perception (αἴσθησις) to disclose (ἀληθεύειν) the goods in their desirability as use-values. The two δυνάμεις of being passively perceptible as valuable for fulfilling a desire and the active perception of things in their suitability for satisfying desire are complementary passive and active powers of disclosure. Such powers play out in the open 3D-time-clearing that enables the presencing — and thereby also the disclosive self-presenting — of beings, both whats and whos, to the understanding human mind. This openness of time-mind or Zeit-Geist, whose investigation will not be further undertaken in this study but is constantly assumed,70 is the a priori enabling three-dimensional temporal playground for the play of all social powers.

The perception involved here is namely not merely sense perception but a kind of understanding of the goods in their suitability for satisfying certain desires in use, i.e. the αἴσθησις is αἴσθησις μετὰ λόγου, perception guided by the λόγος, which gathers the sight put on view into an understanding of existential usefulness (a mode of being). This perception of the goods as desirable can motivate the prospective purchaser to acquire them by giving money in exchange for them. Money will only be accepted in exchange because it, in turn, has the reified universal δύναμις of being able to purchase any goods offered on the market up to a total price equal to the amount of money involved. As universal means of payment, money is the reified universal δύναμις, potential, power or potency for acquiring commodity goods and is therefore, in turn, itself desirable as being universally valuable for the purpose of acquiring goods of all kinds. In other words, the use-value of money is its exchange-value.

There are thus, to start with, three pairs of δυνάμεις involved in exchange: i) the reified δύναμις of goods being exchangeable for money, which in turn has the complementary reified δύναμις of being able to acquire any goods offered for sale on the market; ii) the active and passive δυνάμεις of perceiving goods as being valuable for use in their self-display and therefore as being desirable, thus potentially motivating a purchase; and iii) the active and passive δυνάμεις of perceiving money as being valuable in its self-display and therefore desirable, thus potentially motivating its acquisition. The latter two pairs are alaethic or disclosive powers relying on the self-disclosure of beings in their being and human understanding of beings in their being in conjunction with human desiring itself. If the active and passive pairs of δυνάμεις are counted only as one (because all δυνάμεις involve complementary active and passive forces or potencies, capabilities or potentials), then there are two complementary, reciprocal pairs of δυνάμεις: i) the reified power of goods and money to exchange for each other (whereby money has a peculiar use as universal means of purchase and thus embodies pure exchange-value) and ii) the reciprocal powers of buyer and seller to perceive in their understanding the use-value of goods and money as something desirable.

When the goods offered, the money available, the respective desires of purchaser and seller, and the perception of the goods and money to fulfil desire all coincide and complement each other, then an exchange transaction will actually come about, i.e. presence (always at some quantitatively definite price). There must therefore be a coincidence, alignment and reciprocity of various potentials or δυνάμεις for the potentials of exchange-value to be exercised in realizing an exchange. The prime motivating starting-points (ἀρχαί) are the coincident, complementary desires of prospective buyer and seller. Such coincidence happens κατὰ συμβεβηκός, i.e. at happenstance, contingently, and does not, in turn, fall under a superior governing starting-point or ἀρχή that makes it happen. Advertising, for instance, is only a rhetorical way of encouraging the coincidence of buyer and seller, not of knowingly and surely bringing it about (more on this below).

Desire is always desire to acquire what one does not possess. Desire derives from lack, absence, στέρησις motivating the overcoming of lack by bringing what is lacking into presence by some method of acquisition, of reaching out (ὀρέγεσθαι) and getting (κτᾶσθαι). Desire must therefore be endowed, like all understanding, with the double temporal vision of seeing the present state of lack and also ‘simultaneously’ a future in which the lack is remedied by the presencing of the goods hitherto lacking or temporally withheld. This presupposes that what is lacking, i.e. absent, is mentally present in its absence as something lacking. Its absence is felt and seen by the mind which in turn, is motiviated or driven by desire. Desire therefore motivates movement, a movement of sociation with the end of getting from another. Trade is a practice of mutual, reciprocal acquisition motivated, i..e. set in motion, by mutual desire which constitutes a sociating relation, i.e. an interplay sociating two or more people with each other. The sociating interplay is constituted for the sake of two goods (ἀγαθόν), namely, realizing an existential end in each of the exchange partners’ lives. Something valuable is given away in return for something else of value. The motivation of desire can only come about because the goods are put on display in some way or other and reveal themselves, i.e. show themselves off as reified whats being useful for satisfying certain existential desires. This is the function of a market or an exchange: to put goods for sale on display.

The exchange of goods for money must be motivated by desire (ἐπιθυμία), especially the desire of the prospective buyer, who must be motivated to exercise the exchange-value potential inherent in his money. Such motivation presupposes an understanding of the goods on offer as having the potential to quench desire in some respect or another, i.e. the perceived use-value of the goods on offer is a necessary element in motivating a purchase as part of the movement of factical everyday life. The purchaser’s motivation residing in his desire is thus also a decisive starting-point or ἀρχή for an exchange.

Merely putting goods (including services) on display either directly (say, in a display window) or indirectly (via advertising or listing on a market) discloses them to prospective buyers whose desires are aroused (or not) for something they lack, but potentially could acquire through exercising the power of money, i.e. its reified, universal exchange-value. With the arousal of desire for something lacking, buyers suffer themselves (i.e. passively) to have them aroused in response to the active potential of advertised goods on offer to arouse them. Here we have yet another complementary pair of δυνάμεις: the passive power of prospective buyers to suffer the arousal of their desires in response to the active power of goods on display to arouse them. (On the other side, the sellers of goods are motivated by their desire to gain money-income in general, which is why they are in business in the first place, suffering themselves to willingly become players in the gainful game, as will be explicated in Chapter 6.8 below.)

The disclosure of goods can and often does take the form of desire-stimulating advertising, which puts up signs in the public domain adverting, turning the attention of all and sundry to goods offered for sale. The goods are then not displayed directly and physically on a market-place, but indirectly through the means of advertising in its attention-drawing, referential sign-function. Such signs have to be understood by prospective buyers. (All practical dealings with the world are in an elementary way μετὰ λόγου, i.e. guided by the basic perspectives uncovered by understanding, including the categories,71 but not μετὰ λόγου in the sense of amounting to pro-ductive knowledge.) Advertising endeavours to present the goods in their self-display in such a way as to stimulate prospective buyers’ desires to acquire them. Advertising is thus motivating in the sense of an active δύναμις, or power, of persuasion which aims at bringing about a decision on the part of prospective buyers to suffer their desire to be aroused to the point of actually (ἐνεργείᾳ) purchasing, thus bringing about a change of hands (μεταβολή́), a sociating movement, so that, after the hand-over, what is present-to-hand for the purchaser in full and final presence (ἐντελέχεια) is the commodity good in the stead of money and what is present-to-hand for the seller in full and final presence (ἐντελέχεια) is the money in the stead of the commodity good. In disclosing goods in their potential usefulness, advertising can also obscure this potential usefulness or present it falsely, or arouse potential buyers’ desires which cannot truly be fulfilled by the goods in question. This is false advertising which arises when the advertising signs indicate not how the advertised goods show themselves of themselves but rather misleadingly and enticingly indicate that certain consumer desires can be fulfilled by them.

There is a peculiar and essential intertwining of the δυνάμεις of reified use-value and exchange-value. The potential or δύναμις of use-value resides in goods (they are potentially useful), which potential can be perceived and understood by human beings owing ultimately to the identity of 3D-time and mind. The potential is only exercised in use itself; the potential is then at work in the goods being used. This being-at-work of the potential is what Aristotle calls ἐνέργεια, en-erg-y. The second potential or δύναμις residing in goods is their exchange-value. This potential is put to work or realized only in the act of exchange, i.e. in the interaction, or rather interplay, of sale for money. Goods only have exchange-value by virtue of having a use-value. Said negatively, goods which are useless or no good (lacking in ἀγαθόν) for any practice in human living in the widest possible sense do not have any exchange-value either. Why not? Because for goods to arouse the desire of prospective buyers to acquire them in an exchange transaction, they have to offer something in their self-display by way of being useful, i.e. good, for some practice or other. The δύναμις of exchange-value is also the potential residing reified in goods to effect an actual (ἐνεργείᾳ) social interchange between buyer and seller. When exchange-value is exercised and thus at work in a state of ἐνέργεια, a sociating interplay between people is being realized, presencing. Such being-at-work of exchange-value brings about a movement of social life, which consists, among other things, of a multitude of exchange transactions in which goods and money change places in a kind of μεταβολή, i.e. change as ex-change, inter-change. The end of this movement is the final and complete presence of money and goods in changed hands; the δυνάμεις of the exchange-values have achieved ἐντελέχεια.

With regard to money as distinct from goods, it can be said that the two δυνάμεις of use-value and exchange-value coincide or intermesh, since the usefulness of money lies precisely in its being exchangeable universally for commodity goods offered on the market. The use-value of money is exercised in the movement of exchange itself and not subsequently in a further practice of (individual or productive) consumption. The function of money as reified store of value, too, is simply due to its potential consisting in exchange-value, which is retained over time. This potential, exchange-value, may, of course, be impaired by the passage of time through a general rise in prices (price inflation), but this quantitative change does not entirely negate the function of money as store of value. The only requirement is that the money itself does not deteriorate so that it will still be recognized by others as money. Such longevity can be assured by a metal such as gold, or today simply by binary digits in an electromagnetic medium kept secure in a bank or similar.

The function of money as store of value is entirely secondary to understanding the modes of being pertaining to goods and money with regard to the sociating practice of exchange. Insofar as goods and money possess exchange-value within themselves they are δυνάμεις in the sense of ἀρχὴ μεταβολῆς, i.e. starting-point for a change or interchange, but this sense of ἀρχὴ μεταβολῆς is neither the sense of productive know-how which resides in something other than what changes, nor is it the sense of natural change or movement according to which a living being changes itself through growth and decay, natural alteration, locomotion or progeneration. In the case of productive know-how, the governing starting-point brings about a change in something else, whereas in the case of living physical beings, the starting-point (the psyche in the Greek sense) governs a change initiated by the being itself. The phenomenon of exchange-value as δύναμις does not accord with either of these senses of starting-point. Once more, why not?

Consider the potential of exchange-value residing in money. The money has reified in itself — by virtue of the social usage of commodity exchange — the power to purchase something else. The ἀρχή therefore resides reified in the money (and, by virtue of owning money, derivatively in the money-owner), but the change brought about is neither of the money itself (φύσις) nor of something else such as the goods that are purchased (ποίησις). Rather, the change which the money brings about in being exercised as exchange-value at work is its own change of place (μεταβολή) for something else, so that both itself and something else (the goods purchased) are affected by the change. This change of place (τόπος) is not a physical locomotion (κίνησις κατὰ τόπον), but a change of social place or ownership: goods and money swap ownership places and re-place each other. The change that is brought about through the exercise of exchange-value is a social change of position or re-placement directly constituting a sociation and involving social relations, viz. the sociating interplay between buyer and seller and their respective ownership relations (for ownership, as rightful possession, is a phenomenon to be distinguished from possession as such).

A further peculiarity of the δύναμις of reified exchange-value as a starting-point, as already noted, is that for an exchange to be effected, two reciprocal starting-points (two δυνάμεις) must be exercised (ἐνέργεια) complementarily and coincidentally, i.e. the exchange-value residing in the money and the exchange-value residing in the goods must be exercised (contractually, whether written or not) simultaneously and reciprocally to effect the re-placement interchange (ἐντελέχεια), which is an ownership swap in which money and goods interchange their ownership and possession status. A change of ownership and possession is a change only within the social dimension of whoness and makes sense only within this dimension. A change in possession, which could be regarded as a physical change in the sense of who has control over an article of property, is not necessarily a change of ownership, as is apparent in the case of theft. Here, however, it is the phenomena of exchange-value as reified δύναμις and the social practice of exchange which are at the focus of investigation. Neither a poiaetic nor a physical understanding of δύναμις suffices to account ontologically for the sociating phenomenon of exchange of goods against money, as banal and self-evident as this phenomenon may seem.

An entirely different ontology of movement is demanded, an ontology of social-sociating movement. For the sake of conceptual clarity and of avoiding a confusion firmly entrenched in the onto-theological tradition itself, we would be well advised to keep exchange and production, Austausch und Herstellen, κτῆσις and ποίησις quite distinct. At long last ‘we’ — that is, we few left, still able to think the phenomena from the ontological difference despite the progressive wilful degeneration of mind in the end-game of modern times perpetrated by the institutions of higher learning themselves — must become sharply aware that there is an ambivalence in the term μεταβολή that lies at the very heart of Aristotle’s key concept of δύναμις, namely, μεταβολή can mean both ‘change’ and ‘exchange’.72 In its meaning as ‘change’, μεταβολή points to beings in the way of φύσις (self-movement) or ποίησις (productive power over things), but in its signification as ‘exchange’, μεταβολή points to sociating interchange and interplay involving at least two starting-points or ἀρχαί.

The seller of desirable goods will, or may, attempt to gain control over the one starting-point for an exchange by stimulating the prospective customer’s desire, and that not just by extolling the virtues (i.e. use-value) of the goods on offer, but by persuading the prospective customer in any way possible, which includes also engendering trust (because exchange relations would be altogether impossible if trust, πίστις, were completely lacking) and making the purchase seem as easy as possible (say, by way of easily available, low-interest credit). Insofar as the seller has a know-how or technique of how to motivate and stimulate the desire of prospective buyers and gain their trust, this could be termed a psychological or rhetorical know-how or τέχνη ῥητορική through which the bipolarity or bilaterality of the exchange interplay, consisting of two ἀρχαί, would be reduced by subordination to one ἀρχή, namely, that of the seller’s manipulative desire for money, albeit that a necessary precondition remains of having goods to sell at all.

If it were possible to subsume the other manipulatively as an ἀρχή under one’s own ἀρχή, that would indeed be an uncanny power (as discussed in Plato’s Gorgias). Such a psychological (in the modern sense) or rhetorical knowhow is a knowledge, or at least a skill, a knack, of how to deal with people, how to gain their trust and persuade them of the fine qualities of a product offered for sale. Dealing with people with an eye to persuading them, gaining their trust and arousing their desire for purchase, however, (and despite the turn of phrase saying that a charismatic speaker is able to ‘make’ his listeners into ‘putty in his hands’) is not the same thing as knowingly and surely impressing the form of a finished product step by step on passive materials under the guiding fore-sight of the εῖδος, as in the case of τέχνη ποιητική, since the other, as a living being guided in its actions by understanding, is itself an origin of action, its own ἀρχή, i.e. it is a free source of its own movement. The other’s freedom of movement is therefore the ontological limit to any rhetorical or psychological know-how, no matter how insidiously manipulative, employed as a technique of persuasion in order to bring about a sale. This bringing-about must be distinguished ontologically from bringing-forth under the guidance of a reliable, fore-seeing knowledge, i.e. from ποίησις as a δύναμις μετὰ λόγου.

5.5Recapitulation and the coming together of goods in commerce

By way of recapitulation, what has been gained so far through this investigation of the ontology of exchange proceeding from the basis of the three crucial concepts in the Aristotelean ontology of productive, effective movement? As has been laid out in the preceding section, the ontology of exchange differs essentially from the ontology of ποίησις or production on which Aristotelean (and all of Western) ontotheology is based, including the onto-theological investigation of the unmoved mover as the supreme producer, the divine maker. Despite all misguided attempts to force a square peg into a round hole, starting with Aristotle himself in his study on Rhetoric, the simple ontological structure of the phenomenon of exchange-movement does not admit a reduction to a single ἀρχή but instead is irreducibly an interplay between, at least, the one and the other in which there are four ἀρχαί and four δυνάμεις (namely, two principal, ‘wilful’ ἀρχαί residing in the desirous, understanding buyer and seller, and two reified ἀρχαί residing in the things — goods and money — to be exchanged, namely, their respective exchange-values as powers). The unity of the productive ἀρχή amenable to efficient, linear causality disintegrates into the fathomless, uncontrollable, polyarchic interplay among many ἀρχαί. Despite the exercise of powers of persuasion, the free other is not subsumed under the governing control of a starting-point, but rather, one thing is “changed away” (μεταβάλλειν) for another, one thing is “given, relinquished whilst receiving something else in return” (OED), and therefore exchange-movements are unpredictable in the strict sense of being inherently outside the certain, calculating reach of a τέχνη ποιητική proceeding from a single governing origin.

The interplayful relationship is bilateral in the case of an exchange transaction between two individuals or multilateral, if a market as a whole is considered. In accordance with Heidegger’s thesis that the original sense of being for the Greeks is Hergestelltsein,73 the social interplay of exchange can also be thought (misleadingly) in the broadest sense as a Herstellung conceived as a bringing-to-presence to stand in the defined outline of a self-presentation in the 3D-temporal clearing. Exchange is then thought of as a Herstellung in the sense of a (reciprocal) bringing-forth into presence through the (reciprocal, intermeshing) exercise of two reified exchange-value potentials so that another being stands respectively present-to-hand for the exchangers (buyer and seller) but, as shown in detail in the preceding section, such Herstellung is not only ontically, but ontologically distinct from ποίησις, i.e. production. Such exchange-Herstellung is indeed a movement of practical life, but its ontological structure conforms neither with the ontological analysis of movement (κίνησις) constituting physical being (φύσις) which Aristotle carries out in the Physics, nor with the ontological analysis of the movement of production (δύναμις μετὰ λόγου) in Book Theta of the Metaphysics.

Analogously to the paradigm of artisanal production for developing the Aristotelean ontology of productive movement, exchange is the simple paradigm for a genuinely social kinesis sociating people in the interplay of practical life which can be called commerce. These two paradigms are not merely epistemological paradigms such as those invoked frequently and facilely since Thomas Kuhn introduced the term but, much more deeply and far-reachingly, two different ontological paradigms for interpreting movement capable of overturning the as-yet unchallenged hegemony of modern science’s theological absolute will to effective power over movement/ change of all kinds.

The ‘com-’ in commerce means ‘together’, whereas the ‘merce’ comes from ‘merx’ for ‘good’ or ‘ware’. Commerce is the social practice of goods coming together, reflecting, estimating and validating their value in each other, sociating and changing places. Mediated through the goods, people come together and sociate. The social relation of exchange can therefore be termed reified, i.e. mediated by things. The prefix ‘com-’ or ‘together’ implies a horizontal, at least bipolar relation which cannot be hierarchized under a single, dominating, governing ἀρχή. The coming together of goods on the market, their trafficking and trade, is a fundamental, elementary practice of sociation constituting society on an everyday, lived plane. Plato’s and Aristotle’s insight that society is constituted practically in the first place through trading in merchandise seems to be a genuine phenomenological insight requiring explicit explication onto-hermeneutically as the basic ontological structure of sociating movement and social being. The exchange of goods on the market, in which the potential exchange-value of goods is exercised, is the common, rudimentary practice constituting social life.

Etymologically, the word ‘common’ comes most probably from ‘com-’ ‘together’ and ‘-munis’ ‘bound, under obligation’ (cf. OED). In the present context, this etymology, when interpreted with a view to the phenomena themselves, implies that trade is the bond which, at first and for the most part, brings people bindingly into sociation with one another. This bond obliges them to exchange, to give and take and, for the purposes of exchange, also to trust each other. In giving and taking goods through the mediation of money, humans individually practise the bond which sociates them in society. The giving and taking imply that this is not a relation of domination of one over the other, but one of equal intercourse between free individuals as free origins of their own life-movements in which each constitutes an independent starting-point for diverse, renewable, potential transactions. In striving to fulfil their individual desires, people in their generality bring about and maintain the social bond forming the fabric of practical quotidian life and share to a greater or lesser extent in the wealth produced by the whole.

Exchange as an elementary form of movement of sociating life depending on myriad transactions resulting from individual decisions to reciprocally exercise the exchange-value potential latent in goods and money, of course, does not and cannot bring about an equal distribution of social wealth. This is an immediate corollary of the contingent nature of the exchange interplay that will be taken up again later when investigating (redistributive) social justice in Chapter 6.