ABSTRACT
The possibility of a science of value, money and capital appears quite impossible. This is indeed the conclusion one has to reach when surveying the methodological literature of theoretical economics. This chapter deals with 'non-empirical theories' where, based on academic criteria of a theory of science, objects are referred to as 'urphenomena' and 'a prions' that cannot be derived rationally. The anthropological or critical standpoint implies that value, money, capital, etc., have to be 'developed' on a 'human basis'. In short, it implies a programme of a 'critique of economic categories'. Marx's conviction that economics is only possible as a 'philosophical discipline', or not at all, and that economic questions necessarily entail 'philosophical' questions, stood not just at the beginning of his 'critical study of economics'. Marx's discovery of the presupposition of economics, presuppositions which are beyond economic analysis, shows itself in some formulations where he stresses the importance to transcend the 'economic standpoint', that is, to suspend it critically.
