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

[Angelus Novus <fuerdenkommunismus@xxxxxxxxx>]

Ed George:

> I think I understand what you want to do but I do
not 
> really understand why you want to do it. You want to

> pose abstract labour as an abstraction that exists
in 
> reality (a 'real abstraction') that is brought about
> by the conditions of capitalist production.

Um, no, it's not a question of what I "want to do".  I
provided two quotations from Marx illustrating Marx's
understanding of abstract labour as a relational
category.

If you want to cling to a Ricardian substantialist
value theory, be my guest, but with the state of Marx
research, especially in Germany by scholars such as
Michael Heinrich, Dieter Wolf, and Hans-Georg
Backhaus, this sort of thing is no longer even the
object of controversy.  Hell, I.I. Rubin had already
worked much of this out in the USSR of the 1920s!

The concept of "real abstraction" isn't something I
pulled out of my ass, it's Marx's concept:

"Um die Tauschwerte der Waren an der in ihnen
enthaltenen Arbeitszeit zu messen, müssen die
verschiedenen Arbeiten selbst reduziert sein auf
unterschiedslose, gleichförmige, einfache Arbeit, kurz
auf Arbeit, die qualitativ dieselbe ist und sich daher
nur quantitativ unterscheidet.

Diese Reduktion erscheint als eine Abstraktion, aber
es ist eine Abstraktion, die in dem gesellschaftlichen
Produktionsprozeß täglich vollzogen wird."

http://www.mlwerke.de/me/me13/me13_015.htm






      
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