Re: [Marxism] Socially Necessary Abstract(?) Labor Time

["Ed George" <edgeorge1963@xxxxxxxxx>]

Abstraction is that conceptualisation of reality whereby certain
facets of it (of real things) are abstracted away from others and
considered independently. 'Trees', in this sense, is an abstraction,
in that we conceive of certain objects as part of a common category by
abstracting those features which they (definitionally, in terms of the
concept) have in common from others which they do not. I don't think
therefore that you can categorise different types of abstraction
ontologically. Abstraction exists only as conceptualisation, which is
of course not to say that those facets of reality which are abstracted
do not. Labour (which is itself a conceptual abstraction, in that
certain human acts are considered independently from others according
to conceptual criteria) is human activity, carried out in time, which
fashions use-value. If we measure it according to time, then we are
abstracting one facet of it, that it is carried out in time, from
others. This is labour considered as abstract labour. But abstract
labour therefore has no independent existence from really-existing
labour: it is one facet of really-existing labour abstracted from
others; or, to put it another way, really-existing labour considered
from one point of view.

Neither do I think it tenable to assert that money is the measure of
abstract labour. Abstract labour is the substance of value, and value
is â therefore â measured in (socially necessary) time. Money is
(amongst other things) the measure of price. But price is not value
but the form of appearance of value. Asserting that money is the
measure of abstract labour conflates the distinction between the form
of appearance of value and its substance, and begs the question as to
how social necessity asserts itself in the first place.
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