THE GERMAN DEBATE ON THE MONETARY THEORY OF VALUE: CONSIDERATIONS ON JAN HOFF'S KRITIK DER KLASSICHEN POLITISCHEN OKONOMIE1

In these texts, Engels sets up a parallel between the historical beginnings of economic development and the point of departure for theoretical reflection on capitalist society (in Marx: simple circulation as "an abstract sphere of the total process of bourgeois production," MEGA2, II.2,68). Engels takes as his premise the notion that there was a historical period in which money and commodities existed without capital: "the Marxian law of value holds generally, as far as economic laws are valid at all, for the whole period of simple commodity production - that is, up to the time when the latter suffers a modification through the appearance of the capitalist form of production" (ibid.).