The equation “time = money” as the capitalist transcendental field: differential temporal-monetary class subjectivation

Abstract

The article proposes, through Deleuzean philosophy and research in Simmelian-based social monetary theory, a transcendental study on the nature of money, affirming it as a field of multiple individuation, seeking an answer to the problem of money that goes beyond the empirical level. Through Marxist and Marxian insights (mainly with Postone), the article a way to think how the identification between time and money occurred and occurs under the capitalist social machine, through the emergence of abstract and decoded time. Thus, time-money ends up constituting the transcendental field in which capitalist subjects are subjectivated, as well as the field of individuation that defines what will or will not be produced and consumed, when, how, and by whom. We then analyze how subjectivation occurs unevenly and differentially between the rich and the poor, capitalists and proletarians, as to some, time, in its three dimensions (past, present, and future), belongs to them, and to others, it escapes them, it is captured. Finally, we discuss the role of the debt economy in this subjectivation and link the phenomenon to the horizon of decreasing expectations (Paulo Arantes) that marks the contemporary, in which the future is predetermined, subjected to the past as accumulated capital, dead labor.