Samezō Kuruma’s interpretation of the ‘detour’ of value expression in Volume I of Capital

This paper examines the Japanese Marxist economist Samezō Kuruma’s interpretation of the theory of the value-form in Volume I of Capital (Ch. 1, Sec. 3), with a focus on his explanation of how Marx unravels the ‘riddle of money’ by clarifying the roundabout mechanism of value expression. Also examined is Kuruma’s account of the relation between Marx’s theory of the value-form and the other problems raised in his analysis of the commodity and money. The author further considers how Kuruma’s interpretation developed through his critical engagement with Kōzō Uno’s alternative reading of Capital , drawing on Japanese-language materials recently published in the first volume of Kuruma’s collected works.