The Philosophical Roots of Anti-Capitalism

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Exploring the roots of philosophical abstraction, the author argues that the "false consciousness" stemming from the money economy of Greek Antiquity influenced Enlightenment thought. Specifically, Sohn-Rethel critiques Kant's separation of phenomenal reality from the "thing-in-itself," linking it to the reified consciousness of commodity exchange and labor division. He challenges Hegel's notion of "totality" as idealist and dismisses Hegel's critique of Kantian dualism as irrelevant to Marx's economic critique, suggesting a continuous influence of universal logic throughout philosophical history.