The Practical Truth of Abstract Labour - Chris Arthur

Arthur 14-Dec-12 32
Value-in-process is carried by the labour-process; but it isn’t labour as
abstract that ‘produces’ value; rather labour is abstracted from when
socially signified as pure motion in time. Yet, when the unity established
in capital’s time is reflected onto the labour process as if that were its
ground, it appears as if the material labour underpinning value-positing is
labour in the abstract i.e. hypostatized as such. But this is an ideal
imputation; and because value can only be generated along with the
commodity that bears this social imputation it is easy to conflate the ideal
social process with the material production process. In his Grundrisse
Marx argues that ‘the incorporation of labour into capital’, along with the
object and instruments of production, means that ‘the process of
production of capital is not distinct from the material process of
production in general. Its determinateness of form is completely
extinguished.’ 47 The upshot is that the material process of production in
its immediacy appears as ‘the self-moving content of capital’. 48 Capital as
absolute form of value determines everything inscribed within it as its
own; but having taken possession of labour it can absent itself and make
its avatar do all the work. This has important consequences for the
fetish-character of commodity production.
47 Marx and Engels 1986, p. 230.