Market circulation is the first form in which social totality appears independent of individuals

Evidence

Circulation is the movement in which general alienation appears as general appropriation, and general appropriation as general alienation. Though the whole of this movement may well appear as a social process, and though the individual elements of this movement originate from the conscious will and particular purposes of individuals, nevertheless the totality of the process appears as an objective relationship arising spontaneously; a relationship which results from the interaction of conscious individuals, but which is neither part of their consciousness nor as a whole subsumed under them. Their collisions give rise to an alien social power standing above them. Their own interaction [appears] as a process and force independent of them. Because circulation is a totality of the social process, it is also the first form in which not only the social relation appears as something independent of individuals as, say, in a coin or an exchange value, but the whole of the social movement itself. — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 599

Categorization

• DEFINE: Marxes definition of circulation as the first historical/epistemological representation of the social totality as an objective, autonomous force.
• XREF: This is the theoretical anchor for the reader’s goal of mapping their own position in the world system: totality appears as alien power standing above individuals, exactly the position the cognitive map must find.
• DEEPTHINKING: Marxist definition of how the market’s totality arises spontaneously from conscious individual wills yet stands independent of them — the mechanism behind the ‘style as economy’s way of appearing’ thesis, dense and paradigm-shaping.