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Reciprocity and Recognition: Mauss and Hegel in Structural Dialogue

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Gift and Counter-gift. AI image “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” (Acts 20:35) Introduction: From Exchange to Recognition Theories of exchange and accounts of recognition have largely developed along separate trajectories. In anthropology, Marcel Mauss is read as providing a foundational analysis of gift practices, centered on obligations that organize circulation beyond market logic. In philosophy, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel is taken to elaborate a theory of subject formation grounded in recognition. Each tradition has produced its own conceptual vocabulary and interpretive framework, leaving their proximity insufficiently explored. This separation obscures a shared concern. Both approaches address the conditions under which relations between individuals become either reciprocal or asymmetrical. What appears in Mauss as a cycle of giving and returning, and in Hegel as a movement of recognition between self-conscious beings, can be read as distinct formulations ...
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From Use-Value to Sign-Value: Mapping Baudrillard’s Conceptual System

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Introduction Jean Baudrillard’s early work occupies a decisive threshold between Marxist political economy and structural linguistics. Rather than abandoning these traditions, he appropriates their central categories and rearticulates them within a new conceptual configuration. The result is not a simple synthesis but a displacement: economic value and linguistic value are drawn into a shared system in which their underlying logic—exchange, difference, and equivalence—is generalized. This article proposes to read Baudrillard’s theoretical vocabulary as a structured system, a kind of micro-langue , in which each term derives its meaning from its relation to others. By tracing the origins of key concepts in Marx and Saussure, and examining their transformation in Baudrillard’s early writings, we can clarify how his theory of value shifts from a critique of political economy toward a theory of sign circulation. The Marxist Lexicon of Value Baudrillard’s early framework is explicit...
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From Gold to Algorithm: The Revolution of Value

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Hypercapitalism. AI image Introduction: Wealth without Reference In contemporary society, wealth appears increasingly elusive. Fortunes fluctuate within hours, markets react to rumors, and digital assets can surge in value without any discernible material basis. These phenomena suggest a profound transformation in the very logic of value. How can we understand a system in which astronomical sums circulate without clear correspondence to goods, labor, or production? This question cannot be addressed solely in economic terms. It requires a perspective that integrates economy and language, exchange and signification. At this intersection, juxtaposing the classical model of value with its contemporary radicalization reveals a deep conceptual shift: the transition from a value anchored in the real to a value that increasingly operates without any necessary referent. The Classical Model: Value Between Reference and Difference In both linguistics and classical political economy, value...
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The State as Absolute Giver: Symbolic Debt and Reciprocity in the Soviet System

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The  Universal Provider. AI image To C. Félix Thesis When the State becomes the universal provider, it monopolizes the position of the giver, thereby rendering the counter-gift impossible and blocking symbolic reciprocity . The result is a structural form of domination grounded not in extraction, but in the impossibility of return, and a corresponding erosion of social relations. Introduction: The Problem of the Unreturnable Gift Accounts of the Soviet Union—and, more broadly, of state socialist systems—typically foreground its economic structure: the abolition of private property, the centralization of the means of production, and the redistribution of goods through the State. Such analyses, however, remain largely confined to the framework of political economy. They risk overlooking a more fundamental dynamic—one that operates not at the level of production, but at the level of exchange. If the focus shifts from ownership to reciprocity, a different problem emerges. Wh...
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