The Practical Truth of Abstract Labour - Chris Arthur

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Arthur 14-Dec-12 4 labour confronts it potentially and it is fortuitous which particular one confronts it at any particular time.’ 8 The important thing about this passage is that it is capitalist production which imposes on labour its determination as abstract (not simply commodity exchange). This is because the aim of such production is wealth in its abstract form. As a productive power capital exists in the various factories; but as a body of value capital is positioned as an abstract totality over against all its particular substances; waged-labour likewise exists as an array of specific jobs, yet as a ‘source’ of value it confronts capital as an abstract totality, to be deployed as capital sees fit, in the creation of abstract wealth, of value. In the next couple of paragraphs Marx pushes the theme of abstraction almost (but not quite) to the point of reducing labour simply to pure activity, In these paragraphs Marx speaks of it as ‘purely abstract activity’, merely ‘formal [formelle] activity’ 9 and as ‘the positing of value’. 10 Here he comes very close to abstracting altogether from the character of labour and treating it as pure movement. (Unfortunately at one point Marx plays with the notion that the actuality of abstract labour requires 8 Marx and Engels 1986, p. 222-3. 9 German distinguishes ‘formal’ and ‘formelle’: the latter is used where it is relevant to bring out the emptiness of the form. 10 Marx and Engels 1986, p. 223-4.
Arthur 14-Dec-12 5 the empirical emptiness of all labours; 11 but it is the social abstraction itself that is real, regardless of any changes in material production. 12 ) Marx goes on, in several related passages in Grundrisse, to explain that labour as ‘the form-giving activity’ passes from the form of activity, of unrest, to that of fixity, of rest, when condensed in the material result, in the form of ‘Being’ (Sein). 13 Moreover this dialectic is inscribed within capital itself because in the production process the productive consumption of the elements of production is at the same time the consumption of labour. Having appropriated the labour process, capital divides into ‘the objective elements … in the form of rest, labour … in the form of activity’. 14 However, Marx does not take this thought far enough because here he remains in the use value dimension, not that of value; for the result is characterised as ‘product’, as a use value. What also should have been said is that this new product is formed as value; this is the true ‘Being’ in which the pure form of activity is fixed. In Grundrisse (as in the Capital chapter on the labour process), Marx treats the process of production abstractly as a form-giving act. There is nothing wrong with such an abstraction from the concrete character of the various material production processes as long as the abstraction is not hypostatised and said to be the real basis of the concrete. If one 11 Marx and Engels 1986, p. 223. 12 See Arthur 2002 pp. 43-4, Finelli 2007, Arthur 2009a. 13 Marx and Engels 1986, p. 226-7; cf. Marx 1976b, p. 287. 14 Marx and Engels 1986, p. 228; cf. p. 238.
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Page 3: Arthur 14-Dec-12 3 specific histori
Page 7 and 8: Arthur 14-Dec-12 7 The question is
Page 9 and 10: Arthur 14-Dec-12 9 But first I will
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Page 13 and 14: Arthur 14-Dec-12 13 ground of valor
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Page 17 and 18: Arthur 14-Dec-12 17 value, the livi
Page 19 and 20: Arthur 14-Dec-12 19 Also, it is nec
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Page 37 and 38: Arthur 14-Dec-12 37 We have argued
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Page 41 and 42: Arthur 14-Dec-12 41 Marx, Karl and
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The Practical Truth of Abstract Labour - Chris Arthur

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