Abstract
Wealth and production always have a constitutive social form. Capital is a social form that aims ceaselessly at profit and accumulation. Capital is elusive because capitalist production conceals itself as production-in-general, and social forms get overlooked. Capital is not a thing, not a means of production, commodities, or money, though each can function as capital. Capital is a value that increases in value. Value results from labor that produces commodities. Value is “supersensible” and necessarily expressed in money, so capital must take its measure in money. Capital requires that free wageworkers contract with capitalists and produce surplus value. In “From Redistribution to Recognition?” Nancy Fraser takes a “left-Ricardian” approach to redistribution: in capitalism, “wealth” is unjustly divided. Capital as a social form of wealth is missing, making her approach too external, excluding powerful conceptual connections between capital and recognition. Fraser emphasizes the interconnectedness of redistribution and recognition, but she misses the innerconnectedness.