Re: Negri's Marxism. "Work" vs "Labor" in English.

[cbcox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Carrol Cox)]

    It think both Marx and Engels (though I forget in which work) mark
the general fact that in English the Germanic word (work) refers to
the concrete activity while the Latin word (labor) refers to the
social abstraction.

    So it is possible to express a distinction in extra-verbal reality
in English (that between the activity of work, the social category of
labor) that other languages tend to collapse. Arendt, borrowing from
Marx, makes a big deal of a tripple distinction: action, work, labor. She
also, however, treats "labor" as belonging to the realm of necessity, that
which is always to be avoided so far as possible, in contrast to work and
action which belong in the realm of freedom. (It's been forty years since
I read Arendt, so this is probably not quite accurate.)

    Carrol Cox


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