The Practical Truth of Abstract Labour - Chris Arthur

Arthur 14-Dec-12 8
capital. As we noted above this is how the Grundrisse presents it:
abstract labour is here a determination of the capital relation, something
that is not true if it is derived in the context of some vaguer notion of
commodity production as such.
However, given the unity of production and circulation, the two aspects
are complementary. 19 Value as pure form is posited in developed
circulation, culminating in the general formula (die allgemeine Formel) for
capital; then this formula is shown to be the form of a content insofar as it
sinks into production. But new value arises in production under the
impulse of capital to valorise itself; in this perspective the capitalist
production process is from the start considered as value-formed insofar
as all inputs including labour–power are commodities purchased with
money-capital. 20 Production is form-determined when located in the
circuit of capital. The objects of value entering production are not
‘devalorised’ when they become active as material factors. The
totalisation effected by the circuit is impressed on everything constituted
in it. Hence we shall find two moments of abstraction according to
whether the context is production or circulation. 21
17 Rubin 1994, p.49.
18 See my critique: Arthur 2002, ch. 2.
19 See my comment on H. Reichelt in Arthur 2009a, p. 178-80.
20 For a macro-monetary reconstruction of the abstract labour theory of value see Bellofiore 2009.
21 Compare Bellofiore and Finelli 1997, p. 53, where they similarly distinguish abstract labour
objectified in commodities on the market and abstract labour as abstract activity aimed at producing a
commodity.