The Practical Truth of Abstract Labour - Chris Arthur

Arthur 14-Dec-12 12
an Alice-in-Wonderland sense of ‘source’ because it is not to be taken
positively as when the sun is a source of energy but rather in the sense
of an unfortunate necessity.) The determination of labour as source of
value is preserved in the negation of the negation wherewith capital
negates that which opposes it (the recalcitrant worker), and presents
value as a positive result. The workers labour but do not ‘produce’ value;
capital ‘produces’ value but does not labour. 27
Now if we ask in this context about the practical truth of abstract labour
we reach a paradoxical conclusion. Labour is practically abstract only in
its negation. Of course the specificity of every labour process requires in
each case a specific technique to impose the despotic rule of capital.
But, as the abstract other of capital, its original concrete character is
thoroughly sublated, preserved only in the specificity of the commodity
that has value. Labour, considered positively as essential to production,
is that concrete labour corresponding to the specificity of the product.
Labour considered negatively is forced labour exploited by capital for
whatever time is socially necessary to produce a commodity.
Capital wants its production process to be frictionless, but, as forced
labour, production retains the moment of negativity. However, this
negation of its negation allows capital to posit itself as the author of value
and surplus value. In sublating the living labour that is the material
because for labour the problem is not merely that the wage-form determines it as an exploited
commodity, but that its proper activity is reificatory.