Abstract work

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Abstract work is an economic and philosophical category that Karl Marx defines in the labor value theory for the analysis of the concept of value in goods-producing social systems with monetary exchange relationships. According to this, the exchange value of a commodity corresponds primarily to the expenditure of the socially necessary labor expended on average for its production . According to Karl Marx's theory, human work has a twofold character:

  • As concrete, useful work , it creates concrete use values , useful services or objects that satisfy human needs. Carpentry would be an example of this side of the job. It is more precisely determined by the specific activities in the production process , i.e. sawing wood, hammering etc., and can be found as such in every historical form of production.
  • In a society in which producers produce goods separately from one another and exchange them on the market , work also has a second side, namely to create exchange value. As work that creates exchange value , it is to be conceptually differentiated from concrete, useful work that creates the use value of a commodity. A z. B. "Rock" produced as a commodity additionally receives its exchange value through the work. The use value of the commodity “rock” is usually not also a “skirt” on the market, because “skirt” is not exchanged for another “skirt” on the market, but for other goods or for money.

meaning

The abstract side of work is relevant when services or objects are produced for exchange and thus become commodities. In addition to use value, according to Marx, products receive their abstracted exchange value primarily through work. When exchanging goods, different use values ​​can have the same exchange value. Correspondingly, the work that produced these goods can also be viewed separately from their concrete, useful side. Even if the abstract work of z. For example, two hours of generally increased productivity bring about twice the amount of products, i.e. use values, maybe ten pairs of trousers where the seamstress only made five before the increase in productivity, the exchange value created in these two hours must remain the same in the exchange of goods. The exchange value of the individual item of use value - the trousers in this example - must therefore have decreased proportionally, although the individual use value thus present has remained unchanged.

This "real" abstraction , not a conceptual one, always takes place where use values ​​are given a certain, generally recognized price on the market . This generally recognized price is the exchange value of the commodity in question, around which the specific purchase price to be achieved on the market fluctuates depending on supply and demand . The existence of this practical abstraction asserted in reality cannot be refuted simply by the fact that there are different work intensities and different qualifications in reality. In abstract form, there is also something like “simple average work” to which more complicated and above-average or below-average intensive work can be related. This integrating relation in abstraction from the actually performed concrete work is given wherever independent private workers produce for the exchange.

Relationship between concrete-useful and abstract work

In a society in which people do different jobs, one can differentiate between every single concrete activity according to two aspects. Here abstract work comes into view as a general characteristic of every useful activity. This “general property of human labor” initially has nothing to do with “value production”, hence also nothing to do with the historically specific way in which the individual useful activities receive their socially generally recognized form according to the prevailing mode of production . Thus, for example, in a pre-capitalist society without commodity trading, the individual useful activities have their general, socially recognized form precisely in their natural form, which is carried out as concrete useful work . This is due to the fact that the social context of the concrete, useful work is presupposed, so that due to this, the individual useful activities are socially recognized even before their practical exercise. According to Marx, this naturally happens for people in as unconscious a way as they are unconscious of their social context.

Meaning in capitalism

With the free-market commodity circulation, as it exists as the generally predominant abstract sphere of the capitalist reproduction process, there is a historically specific social context that transfers social exchange relationships to labor products. The work products declared as goods receive an exchange value from which the money must also be declared. Since people in capitalist society exchange labor products as commodities on the market, this exchange also decides in the simplest possible way in which form concrete, useful labor receives its socially recognized, general character. The exchange of goods is based on a social equality relationship in which the products of labor and the different useful activities that are objectified in them are equated and related to one another in the respect in which they are actually the same. The same thing contained in the various useful activities, the “general property of human labor” common to them, receives social significance through the value relationship of the work products to one another in the exchange of goods and becomes the socially generally recognized form of the different concrete-useful work. Under the aspect of "value production", according to Marx, through the exchange relationship of the work products, labor acquires the general property of being abstract labor that creates social value.

Dual character of work

In Capital it says: “All labor is on the one hand the expenditure of human labor in the physiological sense, and in this property of equal human or abstract human labor it forms the value of goods. On the other hand, all work is the expenditure of human labor in a special purpose-determined form, and in this property of concrete useful work it produces use values. " general property must be understood. The social abstraction of work is a description of the individual useful activities. If the value-creating physiological expenditure of nerves, brains, muscles, and hands is understood in such a way that the brain, muscles and hands are actually acted on in a sweaty and "hard work" way, then this can only mean that use values ​​are established. In terms of use value, the “dual character of work” does not apply, because one is dealing with concrete, useful work that has been spent “in a specific form”. When it comes to the production of goods, then abstract labor is consequently nothing more than a description which - due to the exchange of labor products - as a “general property” of concrete, useful labor is its socially general form.

literature

Easily explained in chapter 3.3 "Abstract work: Real abstraction and validity" in

  • Michael Heinrich : Critique of Political Economy. An introduction , theorie.org, 2004, online .
  • Alfred Sohn-Rethel : Form of goods and form of thought. With two attachments [incl. Dissertation]. Frankfurt a. M .: Suhrkamp 1978
  • Alfred Sohn-Rethel: Intellectual and physical work. On the epistemology of Western history. [1970] Rev. et al. added new edition Weinheim: VCH 1989 ISBN 3-05-003970-1 .
  • Alfred Sohn-Rethel: The money, the face of the apriori . Berlin: Wagenbach 1990 ISBN 3-8031-5127-9
  • Dieter Wolf : Abstract work as a socially general form of concrete useful work in: Critical Theory and Critique of Political Economy. Part B, Section I, On the Confusion of the Concept of Value. Scientific communications. Issue 3. Argument Verlag, Hamburg, 2004. ISBN 3-88619-651-8 online (PDF; 897 kB)
  • Editor GegenStandpunkt : “A little basic information about money and violence, credit and crisis, currency and gold”, answer to a letter to the editor on the article “The struggle of nations for the wealth of the world”, basic text on the value concept of the subject in GegenStandpunkt 1-01.
  • Ingo Elbe , Tobias Reichardt, Dieter Wolf: Social practice and its scientific presentation. Contributions to the capital discussion Scientific reports. Issue 6. Argument Verlag, Hamburg, 2008. ISBN 978-3-88619-655-5 .
  • Dieter Wolf: Value and abstract human work in the “Grundrisse” and in Capital, Marx's understanding of value and abstract human work in the “Grundrisse” on the abstraction level of the circulation of goods “as the first self-structured totality” online (PDF; 591 kB)

Remarks

  1. ↑ As far as the "real abstraction" is concerned, it becomes apparent that real equating as the same "general property of human work" (abstract work) also means abstraction from all specifically useful forms. What is going on in this way in the social relationships of the products of work and people to one another, Marx reproduces in conceptual abstractions.
  2. ↑ The problem of "simple average work" addressed with the social quantity of value, which is the result of a process that affects society as a whole, also includes the competition of capital and influences the development of productive power, will not be discussed here. Just so much here: “simple work” must not be confused with abstract work, which as a socially general form of individual, concrete, useful work can never - like simple work - be any form of concrete, useful work. Excerpt from the article Quality and Quantity of Value Macroeconomic Outlook on the Connection between the Circulation of Goods and Production ( Memento from September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 65 kB). For the abstract work see in more detail: Reichelt's “objective addable value”. An unsolvable macroeconomic problem ( Memento from October 20, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 127 kB).
  3. ^ Karl Marx: The capital. Volume 1, MEW , 23 p. 72
  4. ^ Karl Marx: The capital. Volume 1, MEW 23, p. 72
  5. ^ Karl Marx: The capital. Volume 1, MEW 23, p. 61
  6. ^ Karl Marx: The capital. Volume 1, MEW 23, p. 72

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