ABSTRACT
The starting point of contemporary reflections on “value” and “values” is apparently the widespread sense of a deep crisis of the modern form of socialization, a form which, according to Karl Marx, is based on value and its movement in itself. This chapter tries to depict this crisis as well as the role that state, politics and law play in it using Marxian concepts, further developed in the not very well-known “Wertkritik” by Robert Kurz and others. Wertkritik is a critical theory, developed by former left-wing political activists outside academia, that claims to capture the totality of modern society in the tradition of Marxian thought – “with Marx beyond Marx” and certainly in distinction from Marxism. Market-versus-state debates are usually prompted by the phenomena of crisis. They take place in times when the “invisible hand” trembles, when the economic machine stutters.
