ABSTRACT
Alfred Sohn-Rethel aspired to produce a materialist epistemology that would intertwine Immanuel Kant's critique of pure reason with Karl Marx's critique of political economy. Sohn-Rethel's work endeavors to formulate systematically an ensuing materialist epistemontology and its corresponding theory of temporality. The exclusivity of exchange as the source of abstraction explains Sohn-Rethel's concentration on money – nur am gemunzten Geld die Realabstraktion uberhaupt in Erscheinung treten kann. Marx surpasses Sohn-Rethel in recognizing the replication of the split in exchange within production itself. Sohn-Rethel is the first to spell out the methodology that follows from Marx's theory of commodity fetishism – the ground of Sohn-Rethel's materialist epistemontology. He grasped that Marx's "theory of fetishism" entails "that there is no theory of objectivity without a theory of subjectivity". The relation between Kant and Sohn-Rethel reflects the shift from the State to the Market, which corresponds to the politico-epistemological shift from ideology to commodity fetishism.
