Publication details
Spor o abstraktní práci: Ke konceptuálnímu založení kritiky politické ekonomie
| Title in English | The Conflict over Abstract Labour: Towards Conceptual Establishment of the Critique of Political Economy |
|---|---|
| Authors | |
| Year of publication | 2014 |
| Type | Article in Periodical |
| Magazine / Source | Sociální studia |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Web | Článek na webu Sociálních studií ve formátu .pdf |
| Field | Sociology, demography |
| Keywords | Abstract labour Marx dialectics value-form theory Marxism critical theory |
| Attached files | |
| Description | This paper highlights the recent Marxist debate on abstract labour and seeks to make Czech sociologists aware of the question. Following Marx, labour that creates commodities has a double character: as concrete labour, it is a specifically useful activity; as abstract labour, it adds value to its product. The subject of dispute is the actual content of the category of abstract labour. The interpretative problem can be found in the conflicting formula that delimits this concept in Marx’s work. Marx sometimes stresses its value-creating character, while at other times he speaks of abstract labour as a productive expenditure of the human body. Rubin’s solution of the riddle suggests that abstract labour is an exclusively capitalist social form of labour. Under the conditions of commodity production, exchange equalizes various kinds of concrete labour by converting them to a unit of value. From this perspective, abstract labour appears as the abstraction of labour of socially necessary labour time that is crucial for the production of value. Kicillof and Starosta criticize Rubin’s approach as idealistic and argue that abstract labour represents the generic materiality of human labour, which takes the form of value in commodity production. They claim private and independent labour is the form of labour specific to capitalism. Bonefeld supports Rubin and denounces Kicillof and Starosta as falling back to the positions of political economy and affirming the capitalist conception of labour rather than criticising it ad hominem. |
| Related projects: |